SoylentNews

xyzzyyzzyx writes:

"Avantslash is touting a user hosted perl script that, if paired with any web browser with JavaScript, promises to shave crucial bytes off of the standard Slash-based experience, one of which is our very own SoylentNews. Audiences include those with very limited bandwidth, such as those in developing countries with only 2G mobile access or dialup."

hubie writes:

"An article in the American Journal of Primatology looks at comparing the spatial cognitive abilities between chimpanzees and humans by presenting them a virtual reality environment and seeing how well they can navigate mazes. The goal was "to determine how efficiently chimpanzees could navigate and whether chimpanzees performance in a virtual 3D environment presented on a 2D medium (a computer screen) would differ from that of human performance." The virtual reality environment looked a lot like something out of Wolfenstein 3D. Based upon the small sample of subjects used, the outcome is that the chimpanzee took about as much time as the 3 to 12 year olds to complete the mazes, but ended up taking significantly shorter paths than either the human children or adults in the study."

GungnirSniper writes:

"Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post has 'A message to the nation's women: Stop trying to be straight-A students.'

In her analysis of others' findings, she writes of a discouragement gradient that pushes women out of harder college degrees, including economics and other STEM degrees. Men do not seem to have a similar discouragement gradient, so they stay in harder degree programs and ultimately earn more. Data suggests that women might also value high grades more than men do and sort themselves into fields where grading curves are more lenient.

'Maybe women just don't want to get things wrong,' Goldin hypothesized. 'They don't want to walk around being a B-minus student in something. They want to find something they can be an A student in. They want something where the professor will pat them on the back and say "You're doing so well!"'

'Guys,' she added, 'don't seem to give two damns.'

Why are women in college moving away from harder degrees?"

nobbis writes:

"Toby Walsh at the University of NSW Australia has, as reported in New Scientist, studied a generalized version of the popular game Candy Crush Saga and found it be an NP-hard problem, indeed he suggests 'Part of its addictiveness may be that Candy Crush is a computationally hard puzzle to solve.'

His paper shows that early rounds in the game can be modeled as a collection of 'wires' transmitting information across the board, with candies forming inputs and outputs, which can be seen as equivalent to logical statements, this reduces the game to an example of a Boolean satisfiability problem which is known to be NP-complete. A similar technique has been used to show that Super Mario Brothers and Zelda are also NP-hard.

Given that people have spent millions of hours playing the game he notes 'It would be interesting to see if we can profit from the time humans spend solving Candy Crush problems, perhaps we can put this to even better use by hiding some practical NP-hard problems within these puzzles?'"

AnonTechie points us to a story running at Ars Technica, IMMERSE YOURSELF IN THE WORLD OF SCIENCE - Education for everyone at all levels of interest and knowledge.

From the article:

Yesterday saw the launch of a new entry dedicated to scientific concepts: the World Science University, launched by the group that runs the World Science Festival. The WSU takes a somewhat different approach to things, offering two levels of courses in physics, depending on how interested you are in delving into the underlying math. It's also got what you might call a physics FAQ, with answers provided in video form. We've been playing with the beta version of the courses over the last few weeks, and we sat down with WSU founder and lecturer Brian Greene to talk about why they've decided now is the time to tackle online science education."

astar writes:

"Split decisions on your cell phone privacy upon arrest puts it in front of SCOTUS. Here is one of the amicus briefs: Archive and ALA brief filed in Warrantless Cell Phone Search Case.

Short version: You should not rummage through what books people have in their library."

drussell writes:

"Since I almost forgot to tune in and watch the landing last night, I thought I'd mention that the latest astronauts to depart from the ISS have returned to earth and landed safely. There doesn't seem to be a video of the actual landing available publicly yet, so I'm glad I did remember to watch it live. :)

The minimalist nature of the Soyuz capsule that returns, the look of simplicity despite the actual technical difficulty, watching the landing and seeing them unload the crew in the middle of some field somehow makes it seem a tad more real... At least to me. (So did actually seeing and touching honest pieces of history on a visit to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum many years ago, but that's another story) It may be more frequent and seem more routine now than it did during the early years of space exploration, however, I for one, still find it interesting every time we send people to space and when they return."

nobbis writes:

"In an interview with the Guardian, Tim Berners-Lee proposes a bill of rights for the web. His plan is part of a wider initiative, The Web We Want, a campaign for a 'free open and truly global Internet.' Berners-Lee suggests that governments need an increased understanding of technology, and a revisiting of legal issues such as copyright law.

More controversially he proposes removal of US control of IANA claiming "The removal of the explicit link to the US department of commerce is long overdue. The US can't have a global place in the running of something which is so non-national". He sees the web at risk of fragmentation into "national silos" if people do not fight for the web.

There is potential overlap here with Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights , which states,'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.' Would an internet bill of rights be successful in nations where the principles of the UDHR are ignored ?

Given the anarchic evolution of the internet, is it possible or desirable to attempt to control it in any way?"

prospectacle writes:

"An important choice remains for this site. What kind of organisation will we be, practically, legally and financially?

A for-profit, shareholder corporation seems out of the question, by general consensus (correct me if I'm wrong), but other questions remain. The basic choice is this:

Will we be like a charity, a co-op, or a recreational club?

1. (Like a) Charity:
   Being like a charity means operating for the public benefit. What we produce is news and englightened commentary for the benefit of the world. All our finances and operations would be geared towards this aim. All excess revenue is reinvested into the site.
2. Co-op:
   A co-op is for the mutual financial benefit of individual (possibly paid) members. Three main sub-options for this exist that might be appropriate for this site:
   2a) A retailer's co-op. Members use a common organisation in order to make individual profits. For example if members used this site to display their stunning intelligence, and then put their resume or website links on their profile page so people could hire them. Maybe there are services built into the site to find someone to hire who fits your requirements.
   2b) A worker's co-operative: Employees share any excess revenue. Some revenue would go to expenses, some would be reinvested, whatever remains is shared among employees.
   2c) A buyer's co-op. We exist to get discounts, or to buy together what we can't afford separately. Maybe we're buying well-written news and analysis from professional authors. Or maybe we're bulk-buying electronics, etc, so the price-per individual can be lower.
3. A Recreational Club:
   This takes membership fees to provide access to equipment, organize competitions, etc. Maybe paid members would get to use extra services, like an email account, or storage space, or their own discussion thread area, or software project hosting, or chat-rooms, etc. Non-members could still be permitted, with fewer privileges, and would have to pay-per-use for the extra services (or pay to become a member).

This is a gross simplification, but gives some idea of the options involved. Feel free to offer alternatives. So what should we be, what is our purpose, really? And what kind of a structure is required to make sure we serve that purpose, and that money doesn't end up in the wrong pockets?

Bonus question: which jurisdiction should we set ourselves up in to fulfil our mission most effectively?"

skullz writes:

"Much ado has been made about SXSW and the resurgence of hardware hacking as apposed to software. Even NPR is getting in on the action, airing a story about littleBits SXSW demo, including some videos. LittleBits are small circuit modules which snap together using magnets, much like LEGOs would if they were held together by magnets. The company pays homage to an open source mentality and hosts example projects, such as this LEGO and littleBit soundmachine, on its website, even though it seems to be missing several (or all) of the actual assembly instructions."

From their website:

littleBits (spelled lower case L, upper case B, all one word) consists of tiny circuit-boards with specific functions engineered to snap together with magnets. No soldering, no wiring, no programming, just snap together for prototyping, learning and fun. Each bit has a specific function (light, sound, sensors, buttons, thresholds, pulse, motors, etc), and modules snap to make larger circuits. Just as LEGO (TM) allows you to create complex structures with very little engineering knowledge, littleBits are small, simple, intuitive, blocks that make creating with sophisticated electronics a matter of snapping small magnets together.

If you followed SXSW, please share your favorite discoveries or insights gleaned from the conference.

I promised that we, the staff, would provide a quick status report after all the drama on Monday. The site issues today delayed that, and I thank juggs in IRC for reminding me of my promise. We've been very transparent and we want to continue that trend. Most of the comments we've seen have been encouraging of this method. However, we hope the transparency will result in less drama and in more productivity in the future.

On Tuesday, 4 March 2014, Barrabas, the "Man Behind the Curtain" resigned from his position. In his resignation, he retained ownership of the domain Soylentnews.org and associated domain registrations, as well as certain accounts on linode.com, our host. (See our article on backup plans.) Read more inside.

GungnirSniper writes:

"Edward Snowden shared a statement with NBC News calling US Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) a hypocrite for only being upset about CIA spying once it affected her.

"It's clear the CIA was trying to play 'keep away' with documents relevant to an investigation by their overseers in Congress, and that's a serious constitutional concern," said Snowden in a statement to NBC News. "But it's equally if not more concerning that we're seeing another 'Merkel Effect,' where an elected official does not care at all that the rights of millions of ordinary citizens are violated by our spies, but suddenly it's a scandal when a politician finds out the same thing happens to them."

Feinstein's firm support for the NSA's phone call tracking program just last month while criticizing Snowden for being a runaway whistle-blower who could have instead turned his documents to Congress.

"What keeps me up at night, candidly, is another attack against the United States. And I see enough of the threat stream to know that is possible," Feinstein said at a Pacific Council on International Policy dinner in Century City.

"But the way we prevent another attack and this is tricky is intelligence," she said. "You have to know what's going to happen, because it's too late otherwise."

"There are all kinds of things that are going on. And for some reason, the fear of our government for a bona fide reason, which is to prevent a terrorist attack, raising this kind of concern, when there are only 22 people in our country who have access to this database and every one of them is vetted."

Taco Cowboy writes:

"Yep, it's that ill-fated Boeing 777 with 239 on board which has disappeared without a trace. Even after 4 days of search by a fleet of over 50 vessels and 40+ planes and an increasing number of satellites, no one has yet find that plane, or any part of it.

If you have free time and want to help out, here's your chance.

A US satellite company is releasing high-def photos of the sea near or at the area where that plane was last tracked, in hoping that people can help finding clues in regarding the whereabout of that missing plane.

The link to that crowdsourcing event is at http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/352096/scitec h/socialmedia/us-based-satellite-imaging-company-crowdsources-search-for-missing-mh370-plane. The mapping can be viewed on the Tomnod site here."

[Ed's Note: I tried the Tomnod link 3 times and was only successful on 1 occasion. It seems they are having problems coping with the response.]

nobbis writes:

"NASA is hosting a $35,000 series of challenges for 'citizen scientists' to significantly improve algorithms that identify asteroids in images captured by ground-based telescopes. The winning solution, says NASA, must increase detection sensitivity, minimize false positives, ignore imperfections in the data, and run effectively on all computer systems.

NASA is hoping to improve on current initiatives which only track an estimated 1% of all objects in solar orbit, while also identifying asteroids that can be redirected to a stable lunar orbit for further exploration. The project, which starts March 17th, is jointly run with Planetary Resources, an asteroid mining company. Project executive Jenn Gustetic introduced the project at SXSW, in a talk entitled Are we Smarter than the Dinosaurs?"

threedigits writes:

"A group of amateurs by the name ICEteam, operating from the Observatory at Bochum (Germany) - an amateur-run facility with a 20m radio telescope, have been able to detect the beacon signal from the ISEE-3/ICE Spacecraft. Yes, the one you saw on XKCD.

This is only a first step, though. The final objective of the group is to reprogram the old probe and to send it on a new mission, something ESA and NASA have decided not to try because of lack of funding. But for this they first need to be able to talk to it.

A Facebook page exists with lots of beautiful pictures and there's also this nice video."