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Comment Re:Wow! Catchy lyrics! (Score 1) 66

by whitesea (#65789460) Attached to: OpenAI Used Song Lyrics In Violation of Copyright Laws, German Court Says

"You've got a pulse of steel. You can hear it loud in the night. You're just too modest! Your mining gold brought us back up, you flower of the Ruhr!

Bochum, I come from you! Bochum, I'm attached to you!" - Herbert Gronemeyer, Bochum

This makes no sense. I expect in the near future there will be lawyers who will sue the trainers for torturing poor helpless AI with such monstrosity.

Comment 18% drivers in fatal crashes were speeding (Score 1) 207

*The article cites statistics that 18% of those drivers involved in fatal crashes were speeding.

Which means 82% of those drivers involved in fatal crashes were NOT speeding.

Not speeding is obviously much deadlier than speeding.

Should we prohibit driving under speed limit?

Comment Re:Was it? (Score 1) 264

The problems with human driven cars is erratic driving, by which I mean even slight variations in speed, such as rubbernecking at car accidents, cause those waves in traffic which are responsible for jams. Automated driving, when coordinated by inter-vehicle communications that can "see" past multiple cars in front of you, have the potential to keep traffic flowing.

And then a hacker could come in and create an epic traffic jam.

Comment Re:"Upend the Internet" (Score 1) 221

by whitesea (#63206914) Attached to: Google Says Supreme Court Ruling Could Potentially Upend the Internet

That's bullshit. The internet worked fine before there was Google, and while it's showing its age, it'll continue to work fine if Google and Facebork disappear (we but can dream...)

Your statement is bullshit. Search before Google was painful beyond belief. I changed half a dozen search engines before I switched to Google.

Comment Not new approach (Score 1) 160

At Northeastern University Matthias Felleisen introduced programming using a very simplified version of Scheme, then adding features as needed. Thanks to this approach he was able to teach two semester worth of concepts in one semester. They use a free book for that How to Design Programs http://htdp.org/.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Who Do You Consider To Be 21st Century Tech's "Steve Wozniaks"?

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: There are some computer engineers — working in software or hardware or both — who were true pioneers. Steve Wozniack needs no introduction. Neither do Alan Turing, Ada Lovelace or Charles Babbage. Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce started Intel decades ago. John Carmack of Doom fame is a legend in realtime 3D graphics coding. Aleksey Pajitnov created Tetris. Akihiro Yokoi and Aki Maita invented the Tamagotchi. Jaron Lanier is the father of VR. Palmer Luckey hacked together the first Oculus Rift VR headset in his parents' garage in 2011. To the question: Who in your opinion are the 21st Century "Steve Wozniaks", working in either hardware or software or both?

Submission + - Businesses using Virtual Reality to learn how to best fire people (latimes.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Barry shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He didn’t know why I’d called him into my office, but he knew it couldn’t be good.

I told him we had gotten another report of inappropriate behavior — his sixth this year.

“Oh come on, everyone is so sensitive,” he said. “You know, it wasn’t like this 10 years ago.”

Barry was in his 60s. Finding another job to fill the years before retirement wouldn’t be easy.

“It doesn’t seem like it now, but this may be a good thing for you,” I said.

Comforting lies were not the move. Barry buried his face in his hands, sobbing. Then everything went black.

I took off the virtual reality headset, and the real-life offices of the Culver City VR studio Talespin, the architects of Barry’s very bad day, came back into focus around me.

I had failed the termination simulation.

Submission + - Study: Pollution tied to psychiatric disorders (studyfinds.org)

Submitted by pgmrdlm
pgmrdlm writes: CHICAGO — Could the very air we breathe have an impact on our mental health? That’s the suggestion coming out of a new international study conducted in the United States and Denmark. After analyzing long-term data sets from both countries, researchers from the University of Chicago say they have identified a possible link between exposure to environmental pollution, specifically polluted air, and an increase in the onset of psychiatric and mental health problems in a population.

According to the findings, air pollution is associated with increased rates of depression and bipolar disorder among both U.S. and Danish populations. That association was actually found to be even greater in Denmark, where poor air quality exposure during the first 10 years of a person’s life was found to predict a two-fold increase in the likelihood of developing schizophrenia or a personality disorder.

“Our study shows that living in polluted areas, especially early on in life, is predictive of mental disorders in both the United States and Denmark,” explains computational biologist Atif Khan, the study’s first author, in a media release. “The physical environment – in particular air quality – warrants more research to better understand how our environment is contributing to neurological and psychiatric disorders.”

Regarding air pollution specifically, it is believed that small particulate matter (the fine dust found in polluted air), makes its way to the brain after being breathed in through the nose and lungs. In numerous studies, animals exposed to polluted air have exhibited cognitive impairment and depressive symptoms.

For the study, researchers analyzed two population data sets. The first was a U.S. health insurance claims database housing 11 years worth of claims across 151 million people. The second data set included all 1.4 million people born in Denmark between 1979-2002 who were still alive, and still living in Denmark by their 10th birthday.

Air pollution levels in specific areas were measured using the air quality standards set by both countries, respectively. For example, for the U.S. the EPA’s air quality measurements were used. As far as estimating each person’s exposure to polluted air, it was a bit easier for researchers to track individual Danes because they had access to each Danish participants’ citizen ID number. For Americans, air pollution exposure estimates were limited to county areas.

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