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Submission + - Breakthrough in drawing complex Venn diagrams (wordpress.com)

Submitted by 00_NOP
00_NOP writes: Venn diagrams are all the rage in this election year, but drawing comprehensible diagrams for anything more than 3 sets has proved to be very difficult. Until the breakthough just announced by Khalegh Mamakani and Frank Ruskey of the University of Victoria in Canada, nobody had managed to draw a simple (no more than two lines crossing), symmetric Venn diagram for more than 7 sets (only primes will work). Now they have pushed that on to 11. And it's pretty too.
Technology

Submission + - Dreaming of Digital Glory at Hacker Hostels (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times has a story about a small chain of managed residences that has sprung up in the Bay Area to provide a cheap place where programmers, designers, and scientists can live and work. These 'hacker hostels' are a place for aspiring entrepreneurs to gather, share, and refine ideas. 'Hackers ... have long crammed into odd or tiny spaces and worked together to solve problems. In the 1960s, researchers at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory slept in the attic and, while waiting for their turn on the shared mainframe computer, sweated in the basement sauna. When told about the hacker hostels, Ethan Mollick, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who studies entrepreneurship, said they reminded him of his days in the last decade studying at M.I.T., where graduate students would have bunk beds inside their small offices.'
Science

Submission + - The Science of Humor 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The sense of humor is a ubiquitous human trait, yet rare or non-existent in the rest of the animal kingdom. But why do humans have a sense of humor in the first place? Cognitive scientist (and former programmer) Matthew Hurley says that humor (or mirth, in research speak) is intimately linked to thinking and is a critical task in human cognition because a sense of humor keeps our brains alert for the gaps between our quick-fire assumptions and reality. "We think the pleasure of humor, the emotion of mirth, is the brain’s reward for discovering its mistaken inferences," says Hurley, co-author of "Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind," adding that with humor, the brain doesn’t just discover a false inference, it almost simultaneously recovers and corrects itself. For example, read the gag that's been voted the funniest joke in the world by American men. So why is this joke funny? Because it is misleading. Humor is "when you catch yourself in an error, like looking for the glasses that happen to be on the top of your head. You’ve made an assumption about the state of the world, and you’re behaving based on that assumption, but that assumption doesn’t hold at all, and you get a little chuckle.""
Communications

Submission + - Atomic Clock-on-a-Chip Obsoletes GPS (smartertechnology.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today most applications that require accurate atomic clock readings--from sorting separately routed telecommunications packets to timing simultaneous demolition charges--usually refer to signals from global positioning systems (GPS). For applications where GPS is unavailable, such as indoors, underground, undersea or on the battlefield where electronic jamming is present, large, heavy, power hungry hardware atomic clocks were needed. Now a atomic clock-on-a-chip is available that is the result of 10 years of government funded research and development. The chip is not cheap--$1500--but it costs less than conventional atomic clocks and the price is sure to go down as manufacturing gears up to meet demand from military applications start using it.
Communications

Submission + - Atomic Clock-on-a-Chip Obsoletes GPS (smartertechnology.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today most applications that require accurate atomic clock readings--from sorting separately routed telecommunications packets to timing simultaneous demolition charges--usually refer to signals from global positioning systems (GPS). For applications where GPS is unavailable, such as indoors, underground, undersea or on the battlefield where electronic jamming is present, large, heavy, power hungry hardware atomic clocks were needed. Now a atomic clock-on-a-chip is available that is the result of 10 years of government funded research and development. The chip is not cheap--$1500--but it costs less than conventional atomic clocks and the price is sure to go down as manufacturing gears up to meet demand from military applications start using it.
Communications

Submission + - Atomic Clock-on-a-Chip Obsoletes GPS (smartertechnology.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today most applications that require accurate atomic clock readings--from sorting separately routed telecommunications packets to timing simultaneous demolition charges--usually refer to signals from global positioning systems (GPS). For applications where GPS is unavailable, such as indoors, underground, undersea or on the battlefield where electronic jamming is present, large, heavy, power hungry hardware atomic clocks were needed. Now a atomic clock-on-a-chip is available that is the result of 10 years of government funded research and development. The chip is not cheap--$1500--but it costs less than conventional atomic clocks and the price is sure to go down as manufacturing gears up to meet demand from military applications start using it.
Privacy

Submission + - Your Electricity Meter is Spying on You (eff.org)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "If you have a 'smart meter' it is collecting data that can reveal when you wake up, when you leave for work and come home, when you go on vacation and when you take a shower. This data is commercially valuable and, if sold to third parties, can lead to privacy invasion on a massive scale. The California Public Utility Commission is reacting to the gas & electric company's mass installation of these meters with new proposals for strong privacy protections."
Businesses

Submission + - How WikiLeaks gags its own staff (leaked document) (newstatesman.com)

Submitted by
robbyyy
robbyyy writes: "The New Statesman has just revealed the extent of the legal eccentricity and paranoia that exists at tthe WikiLeaks organisation. The magazine publishes a leaked copy of the draconian and extraordinary legal gag which WikiLeaks imposes on its own staff.

Clause 5 of the "Confidentiality Agreement" (PDF) imposes a penalty of £12,000,000 (approx $20,000,000) on anyone who breaches this legal gag. Sounds like they dont trust their own staff..."

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