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lhsi writes:

UK ISP TalkTalk have been throttling the whole Imgur domain whenever it receives notice from the Internet Watch Foundation that a single URL from the image sharing site contains child abuse imagery.

[Editors Note] The IWF isn't a legal body, but a registered charity. From wikipedia:

From 2010 the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) required all procurement specifications for the provision of Internet-related services to government agencies and public bodies to require the Internet service provider (ISP) to block access to sites [sic] on the IWF list.

The IWF operates in informal partnership with the police, government, public, and Internet service providers. Originally formed to police suspected child pornography online, the IWF's remit was later expanded to cover criminally obscene material.

The IWF is an incorporated charity, limited by guarantee, and largely funded by voluntary contributions from UK communications service providers, including ISPs, mobile phone operators, Internet trade associations, search engines, hardware manufacturers, and software providers. It also receives funding from the Association for Payment Clearing Services and the European Union.

Open4D writes:

The Guardian has an article about the usage stats of apps and the Web on mobile devices.

The prediction that mobile web use would overtake apps has been disproved by data from analytics firm Flurry ... The idea that people will shift from using native apps on their smartphones to using HTML5 websites offering the same functionality hasn't played out ...

They don't say where that prediction came from, but I could have told them it was dubious years ago. For most users, apps are simply more convenient. I'd bet that a lot more Android and iOS users know how to find their app list than know how to find their Web bookmarks.

But personally I go to significant lengths to avoid apps that I think should just be websites instead. One reason is security; I don't want to be running someone else's code just so that I can read their text. But is my attitude correct? With web browsers having so much functionality these days, perhaps using a dedicated newspaper app with just the "full network access" permission would be less of a security risk than visiting that same newspaper's website using Firefox for Android, for example? Bear in mind the latter also has permissions for the camera, microphone, GPS, NFC, device accounts, 'run at startup', etc.

Also from the article:

For Google, the indifference of smartphone users to the mobile web in favour of apps presents a problem because in general it cannot follow users' activity inside apps ... The search company has begun an initiative offering links to in-app content for Android developers which it will be able to index.

Is avoiding Google another reason I should learn to love apps instead of the Web?

tathra writes:

A NewScientist article discusses how pattern recognition software is being used to help us better understand the communications of animals, including a program that can automatically translate dolphin whistles (but only if the meaning is already known):

IT was late August 2013 and Denise Herzing was swimming in the Caribbean. The dolphin pod she had been tracking for the past 25 years was playing around her boat. Suddenly, she heard one of them say, "Sargassum".

... She was wearing a prototype dolphin translator called Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry (CHAT) and it had just translated a live dolphin whistle for the first time.

It detected a whistle for sargassum, or seaweed, which she and her team had invented to use when playing with the dolphin pod. They hoped the dolphins would adopt the whistles, which are easy to distinguish from their own natural whistles and they were not disappointed. When the computer picked up the sargassum whistle, Herzing heard her own recorded voice saying the word into her ear.
...
Herzing is quick to acknowledge potential problems with the sargassum whistle. It is just one instance and so far hasn't been repeated. Its audio profile looks different from the whistle they taught the dolphins it has the same shape but came in at a higher frequency. Brenda McCowan of the University of California, Davis, says her experience with dolphin vocalisations matches that observation.

Since the translatable vocalization has only been used once, it could be nothing more than a fluke, but if we can teach dolphins new vocalizations with a specific meaning and they actually use them, then we could finally understand each other enough to start gathering the data needed for real communication with a non-human species, which would be an incredible achievement (and might finally force people to accept the fact that humans really arent all that different from other animals).

lhsi writes:

An article was recently published that looks at evaluating First Programming Languages (FPL) the language to use for an introductory course of programming.

An existing issue is that formally assessing a programming language isn't really defined, with a lot of evidence being anecdotal. The proposed evaluation framework looks at technical and environmental feature sets. "The technical feature set covers the language theoretical aspects, whereas, the environmental feature set helps evaluating the external factors." These feature sets are covered in table 2 of the article (link to PDF) and consist of the following:

Technical Features

• High Level
• Orthogonality
• Strongly Typed
• Enforceability of Good Habits
• Security
• Feature Uniformity
• Less Effort for writing simple programs

Environmental Features

• Demand in Industry
• Contemporary Features
• Easy Transition
• Readable Syntax
• Quality Coding
• User Friendly Integrated Development Environment

The article explains each of these points in details, and gives each of the languages being evaluated a rating based on this explanation, followed by a detailed explanation of how the scores of each rating can be compared this includes allowing an evaluator to weigh certain criteria they deem important against the others. As this is for choosing a language to teach someone to program with, different places will have different reasons and goals, so would want to weight things differently.

As the default weight settings do not conform to the original popularity index of the languages, so there should be a different weighting criterion. However, it is very hard to come up with a generic and correct weighting criterion. Therefore, the scoring function should be customizable and the user should be able to tune the weight of each feature based on her preferences. As an example, consider the fact that Ada holds 3rd position in overall scoring, but is not being considered among highly used FPLs as of now.

Dr Ippy writes:

But it doesn't hold true for women. As the abstract of this PLOS ONE paper (open publication) says, "The ability to accurately assess the intelligence of other persons finds its place in everyday social interaction and should have important evolutionary consequences."

So the authors did an experiment to find out whether people could accurately judge intelligence from photos of other people (university students, natch), whose IQ had been measured conventionally. And they could! At least, they could judge men's intelligence well from photos, but not women's. However, "Our study revealed no relation between intelligence and either attractiveness or face shape."

The full report [PDF] can also be downloaded.

lhsi writes:

A small study into quality of life after a stroke found preliminary evidence that those who exercised had significantly less stress and reported less depression than those who didn't. It was also noted that (somewhat unsurprisingly) both stroke groups (exercise and no-exercise) reported lower quality of life scores compared to healthy adults.

This study indicates that those exercising in a group at least once per week reported significantly less depression and stress than people following stroke who were not currently exercising. While we cannot claim that exercise alone is responsible for this association, it is an intriguing possibility. The supervised exercise sessions were conducted in a group, so it could be that social contact and support may have contributed to lowered stress and depression (Babyak et al., 2000). In contrast, both stroke groups reported worse quality of life than the healthy exercisers which is likely reflecting their AQoL scores for dependence on medications, regular treatment by a doctor and often requiring assistance with activities of daily living.

Koen writes:

A team of the Netherlands Institute of Sea Research and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel have discovered a microbial battery in the North Sea off the Coast at Oostende. "By producing electricity, these bacteria extract energy from the sea floor," says prof. Filip Meysman. "It is the first time that such a biological battery has been found in nature. Perhaps, in ten years, a smart phone will be powered by tiny conductive bacterial wires." These bacteria seem to be common all over the world.

sl4shd0rk writes:

Apparently, size does matter as Apple takes a cue from the Samsung playbook. Reuters is reporting that Apple's next iphone, slated for Q4 of 2014, will have a much bigger display than current devices. A whole 1.5" (38mm) bigger. This will bring the iPhone close to the same size as the Samsung Galaxy Note which stands around 5.7" (144mm). It seems Apple will test the waters with an initial 4.7" (119mm) sized device first with the larger version to appear much later. The question is, do all users think bigger is better?

TrumpetPower! writes:

A new study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health authored by researchers at the University College of London has found that the more vegetables (and, to a lesser extent, fresh fruit) you eat the better your chances of longevity.

As the popular press is reporting, Oyinlola Oyebode, the study's lead researcher, said in a prepared statement that "We all know that eating fruit and vegetables is healthy, but the size of the effect is staggering." The research established correlation, not causation, but the findings are consistent with already-established guidelines from worldwide governmental health agencies. If you want to live a long and healthy life, eat plenty of veggies.

Blackmoore writes:

Brian Benchoff at Hack-a-day writes in Hackaday:

After reading an April Fools joke, [Mortimer] decided to replicate this project that turns the common USB mouse into a powerful tool that can bring down corporations and governments. So while the Russians are replacing PCs with typewriters - this project show just how damn easy it is to make a common device into a tool to spy or control someone's PC.

Papas Fritas writes:

Brayden King and Jerry Kim write in the NYT that a team studying more than 700,000 pitches into the strike-zone during major league baseball games found that umpires frequently made errors behind the plate about 14 percent of non-swinging pitches were called erroneously. Using pitch-location data compiled by high-speed cameras , the team found that many of those errors occurred in fairly predictable ways. For example, umpires tend to favor the home team by expanding the strike zone, calling a strike when the pitch was actually a ball 13.3 percent of the time for home team pitchers versus 12.7 percent of the time for visitors. Other errors were more surprising. For example, analysis suggests that umpires were 13 percent more likely to miss an actual strike in the bottom of the ninth inning of a tie game than in the top of the first inning, on the first pitch.

However the research team also observed that there are other errors that are not deliberate that may reflect an unconscious and biased decision-making process. In general umpires tend to make errors in ways that favor players who have established themselves at the top of the game's status hierarchy (PDF). For example, an umpire was about 16 percent more likely to erroneously call a pitch outside the zone a strike for a five-time All-Star than for a pitcher who had never appeared in an All-Star Game and an umpire was about 9 percent less likely to mistakenly call a real strike a ball for a five-time All-Star. Finally pitchers with a track record of not walking batters like Greg Maddux were much more likely to benefit from their All-Star status than similarly decorated but "wilder" pitchers like Randy Johnson.

"This season Major League Baseball is allowing its officiating crews to use instant replay to review certain critical calls, including home runs, force plays and foul balls. But the calling of the strike zone determining whether a pitch that is not swung at is a ball or a strike will still be left completely to the discretion of the officials," conclude the authors. "Technologically, Major League Baseball is in a position, thanks to its high-speed camera system, to enforce a completely accurate, uniform strike zone. The question is whether we, as fans, want our games to be fair and just, or whether we are compelled to watch the game because it mimics the real world, warts and all."

weeds writes:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a proposed rule Monday requiring all new light vehicles including cars, SUVs, trucks and vans - to have "rear-view visibility systems," in effect, requiring reversing or backup cameras.

The rule which would be final in 60 days would start phasing in on May 1, 2016 models and be at 100% May 1, 2018.

NCommander adds: Fixed the headline to show that this is a proposed rule, and not that its mandated (yet).

carguy writes:

Under the headline, "The Wolf Hunters of Wall Street", The New York Times Magazine is running this review of a new book. It tells a long story that ends in the creation of IEX (Investors Exchange), a new stock exchange with the intent of bypassing the unfair advantages that co-located high-speed traders currently have. After a few weeks of operation near the end of 2013, their volume was larger than AMEX(!!)

Here's a quote from near the end of the book review:

IEX had made its point: That to function properly, a financial market didn't need to be rigged in someone's favor. It didn't need payment for order flow and co-location and all sorts of unfair advantages possessed by a small handful of traders. All it needed was for investors to take responsibility for understanding it, and then to seize its controls.

"The backbone of the market," Brad Katsuyama (President & Chief Executive Officer, IEX) says, "is investors coming together to trade." While the article is long, I enjoyed the story. I have no connection to this company, but here's their website.

lhsi writes:

The British Medical Journal reports a study to "determine the relative risks of prostate cancer incidence, metastasis, and mortality associated with screening by serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels at age 60."

"Randomized trials have reported that the benefits of PSA, in terms of reduced mortality, come at a relatively high cost, considering the number of men who needed to be screened and diagnosed to prevent one death from prostate cancer. Here we report that these estimates are an average of two extremes for different PSA subgroups. The benefits of screening the high risk group of men with a PSA concentration < 2 ng/mL, constituting close to a quarter of the population, are large, whereas for men with a PSA concentration 1 ng/mL at age 60, PSA screening will lead to over-diagnosis without a mortality benefit. Therefore, for men with a PSA concentration 1 ng/mL at age 60, no further screening is recommended."

gishzida writes:

A Reuters story continues with news of the on-going litigation between Apple and Samsung:

Apple and Samsung return to federal court on Tuesday for opening statements in their latest patent battle, with the iPhone maker expected to present more detailed evidence in its attempt to win a U.S. ban on sales of several Samsung smartphones.

Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd have been litigating around the world for nearly three years. Jurors awarded the iPhone maker about $930 million after a 2012 trial in San Jose, California, but Apple failed to persuade U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh to issue a permanent injunction against the sale of Samsung phones.A sales ban would be a far more serious threat to Samsung, which earned $7.7 billion in the quarter that ended in December. Samsung's mobile division, which includes smartphones, generated operating profit of 5.47 trillion won ($5.1 billion).