SoylentNews

gishzida writes:

In a Blog post over at The Physics Arxiv Blog , The Kentucky Fried Colonel talks about a new paper submitted to the Arxiv.

From the article:

In the 1930s, the American psychologist Burrhus Skinner popularised the notion of operant conditioning, the notion that an individual's future behaviour is determined by the punishments and rewards he or she has received in the past. It means that specific patterns of behaviour can be induced by punishing unwanted actions while rewarding those that are desired. And it certainly works with rats and pigeons.

"This idea has since become one of the foundations of behavioural psychology and is an important driver of the way online social networks are designed and operate. Many have systems that allow people to like, or up-vote, certain types of content while disliking, or down-voting, others. An up-vote can be thought of as a reward designed to encourage while the down-vote is a punishment designed to discourage.

In theory, this should guide contributors towards producing better content that is more likely to be rewarded. At least, that's what the theory of operant conditioning predicts.

But does that actually happen on real social networks? Today, we find out thanks to the work of Justin Cheng at Stanford University in Palo Alto and a couple of buddies.

These guys have measured how up-voting and down-voting influences the behaviour of a large number of contributors to different social networks. And they say that the results are far from reassuring.

The evidence is that a contributor who is down-voted produces lower quality content in future that is valued even less by others on the network. What's more, people are more likely to down-vote others after they have been down voted themselves. The result is a vicious spiral of increasingly negative behaviour that is exactly the opposite of the intended effect."

Gishzida asks:

Hey folks, what does this say about the power to down mod posts here at our favorite news site? Should we eliminate down modding? Why? or Why not? Show your work...

gewg_ writes:

Cider Compatibility Layer Allows Android to Run iOS Apps

Y'say you're disappointed because every mobile app in the universe doesn't run on your thingie. Cheer up, bunkie. If you run Android, some guys at Colombia U have a tweak for that.

Sadly, the software isn't perfect. The iOS apps don't have access to hardware like GPS, and many run quite slowly. That said, Cider is an impressively broad solution to app cross compatibility. With a bit more development and tweaking, it could very well serve as a viable replacement for an iOS device in a pinch. Or it might languish like the Android for iPhone project.

carguy writes:

Amazon controls a big chunk of the book distribution business but as this New York Times article indicates they are not a benevolent overlord--using a number of techniques to bully publishers for more favorable terms.

Over the years this has been a constant problem for small, specialty publishing houses (the source of many important books), but now it's also affecting the majors.

From the article:

The retailer appeared to be using three main tactics in its efforts against Hachette, which owns Grand Central Publishing, Orbit and Little, Brown as well as many other imprints.

Fluffeh writes:

The 28 House members who lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to drop net neutrality this week have received more than twice the amount in campaign contributions from the broadband sector than the average for all House members. According to research provided Friday by Maplight, the 28 House members received, on average, $26,832 from the "cable & satellite TV production & distribution" sector over a two-year period ending in December. According to the data, that's 2.3 times more than the House average of $11,651.

The US has long applied common carrier status to the telephone network, providing justification for universal service obligations that guarantee affordable phone service to all Americans and other rules that promote competition and consumer choice.

Some consumer advocates say that common carrier status is needed for the FCC to impose strong network neutrality rules that would force ISPs to treat all traffic equally, not degrading competing services or speeding up Web services in exchange for payment. ISPs have argued that common carrier rules would saddle them with too much regulation and would force them to spend less on network upgrades and be less innovative.

pillo writes:

What is the largest lawsuit ever filed?

Did you guess Apple v. Samsung? SCO taking over the world? Not even close!

This is Anton Purisima v. Au Bon Pain Store, Carepoint Health, Hoboken University Medical Center, Kmart Store 7749, St. Luke's Emergency Dept., New York City Transit Authority, City of New York, NYC MTA, LaGuardia Airport Administration, Amy Caggiula, and Does 1-1000. Case No. 1:14 CV 2755 (S.D.N.Y. filed 4/11/2014).

What did the defendants allegedly do? "Civil rights violations, personal injury, discrimination on national origin, retaliation, harassment, fraud, attempted murder, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy to defraud. $2,000 decillion ($2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)", not including punitive damages.

Randall Munroe's What If? analyzed exactly how much money that is, and how it could be repaid (I especially like this answer in the forums). Might just have set the new record for the Biggest Known Demand!

It's the weekend and a slow news day, so here's an opportunity to let your imagination run wild. What suggestions do you have for the plaintiff and/or defendants?

Fluffeh writes:

In celebration of its 10th anniversary last August, The Pirate Bay presented a gift to its users: the PirateBrowser. The browser is based on Firefox and utilizes the Tor network to obfuscate people's locations. It is meant purely as a tool to circumvent censorship and unlike the Tor browser it does not provide any anonymity for its users. Recently, PirateBrowser achieved a new milestone more than five million people have downloaded a copy of the tool from the official website. That's an average of more than half a million downloads per month.

There have been no updates to the software since its first release. This will change in the coming weeks: the Pirate Bay team will push out an update soon with upgraded versions of the software. In addition, the new release will have support for social media sites to serve users in countries where these services are restricted or blocked.

AnonTechie writes:

In a presentation titled "Crypto Won't Save You" at the AusCERT conference on Australia's Gold Coast, respected cryptographer Peter Gutmann of the University of Auckland took security bods through a decade of breaches featuring a laundry list of the world's biggest brands. Gutmann's point was to demonstrate how the weakest point of cryptography was typically in its implementation rather than the maths itself. He demonstrated that consumer devices from the Amazon Kindle to the Sony Playstation and Microsoft Xbox consoles were hacked not because of weak cryptography, but due to poor deployment of security mechanisms, which were bypassed by attackers.

View Gutmann's 95-page slide deck here (PDF).

AnonTechie writes:

Stacy Erholtz didn't have many options to treat her blood cancer left when she agreed to being injected with the equivalent of 10 million doses of measles vaccine. Hours later, she was vomiting and feverish. Months later, her cancer was gone. This landmark result-if replicated in larger clinical trials-could open the door to new therapy that uses viruses to target cancer cells. Viral therapy is an old idea with some success in mice, but this is the first clearly documented result of it working in humans. "It's a game changer," one of the researchers told the Washington Post.

AnonTechie writes:

Russian border guards near Kaliningrad "detained" a low-flying drone entering the country from Lithuania last week. According to a spokesperson for Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), it wasn't on a spy mission-it was smuggling cigarettes. The autonomous aircraft, which had a four-meter (13-foot) wingspan, flew close to the ground following GPS waypoints and released cigarette cartons from its cargo bay at designated drop zones. When captured, it was carrying 10 kilograms (about 22 pounds) of illicit cargo.

kristian writes:

I'm currently attempting to wean myself off of all Google services. This is mainly because I would prefer not to have all of my eggs in one basket. Replacing Gmail and Google Calendar was easy enough, but now I've hit a wall trying to replace Google Voice. I've been on Google Voice practically since its inception, and I use it to take all of my calls and to send and receive all of my SMS. I can't seem to locate any information on how to set up a similar service that is self-hosted. I would be willing to pay a reasonable amount for the phone bridge portion of the service, but I would like, if possible, to store the data on my own server (open source is a plus, of course). Suggestions?

AnonTechie writes:

High blood pressure can be a very serious condition, and is usually controlled via medication along with lifestyle changes. For approximately 35 percent of patients, however, that medication doesn't work in the long run. That's why a team of researchers from Germany's University of Freiburg are developing an implantable electronic cuff, that may one day control peoples' blood pressure via electrical pulses within the neck. In tests on rats, the cuff has been implanted in the vagus nerve. In both rats and humans, the vagus nerve extends from the brain stem into the thorax and abdomen, running through the neck along the way. It relays signals that control unconscious body procedures such as heart rate, digestion and breathing. Using a technique known as BaroLoopTM, the cuff is able to determine which of its 24 electrodes is closest to the nerve fibers responsible for transmitting the blood pressure signal from the brain to the heart. It then activates that electrode, to selectively stimulate only those fibers. As a result, it is able to "overwrite" the brain's faulty signal, lowering the blood pressure to a safe level.

Papas Fritas writes:

Joan Lowy writes for AP that the Department of Transportation has issued an emergency order requiring that railroads inform state emergency management officials about the movement of large shipments of crude oil through their states and urged shippers not to use older model tanks cars that are easily ruptured in accidents, even at slow speeds. The emergency order follows a warning two weeks ago from outgoing National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman that the department risks a "higher body count" as the result of fiery oil train accidents if it waits for new safety regulations to become final.

There have been nine oil train derailments in the U.S. and Canada since March of last year, many of them resulting in intense fires and sometimes the evacuation of nearby residents, according to the NTSB. The latest was last week, when a CSX train carrying Bakken crude derailed in downtown Lynchburg, Va., sending three tank cars into the James River and shooting flames and black smoke into the air. Concern about the safe transport of crude oil was heightened after a runaway oil train derailed and then exploded last July in the small town of Lac-Megantic in Canada, just across the border from Maine. More than 60 tank cars spilled more than 1.3 million gallons of oil. Forty-seven people were killed and 30 buildings destroyed in resulting inferno.

Hersman says that over her 10 years on the board she has "seen a lot of difficulty when it comes to safety rules being implemented if we don't have a high enough body count. That is a tombstone mentality. We know the steps that will prevent or mitigate these accidents. What is missing is the will to require people to do so."

Anonymous Coward writes:

The German federal government will -in future- exclude IT companies from projects unless those companies can give a guarantee they are not obliged to pass on data to foreign agencies.

From the article at heise.de (Google translation):

This was prompted by an investigation into the role of US military bases in Germany in the US drone war during which the German arm of US-based company Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and its alleged spying operations came into focus. Projects for CSC Germany total EUR300 million since the 1990s, including the federal firearms register and the new (digitally signed) personal ID card. "Only in special cases there can be exceptions" a spokesman said.

Several states of Germany look to follow this move, excluding companies from public projects that "directly or indirectly work for foreign intelligence agencies."

lhsi writes:

https://peerj.com/articles/372/

Interactive virtual human (IVH) simulations offer a novel method for training skills involving person-to-person interactions. This study trialled IVH simulations for both individual use and use within a small group. Even though the interface had to be shared in the small group, there was little difference in learning compared to individual use.

The participants noted that working alone was beneficial due to being able to work at their own pace, some felt mentally challenged by working independently, and that the absence of others to fall back on when challenged promoted critical thinking.

Most of the participants in the group felt that having the multiple viewpoints was of great benefit, although some noted the lack of control over the pacing and thought it slowed down the process.

Results suggested the IVH activity was an equally effective and engaging instructional tool in both learning structures, despite learners in the group learning contexts having to share hands-on access to the simulation interface. Participants in both conditions demonstrated a significant increase in declarative knowledge post-training. Operation of the IVH simulation technology imposed moderate cognitive demand but did not exceed the demands of the task content or appear to impede learning.

mrcoolbp writes:

Phew, we are almost there, we've reached the last phase of voting. The final list of names is:

• apt-get-news
• crosslog
• dailybacon
• forkdot
• grepnews OR newsgrep
• salientnews OR salientnoise
• soylentnews
• sudonews
• techmatter

All of the above names we have confirmed in at least *.net and *.org, and we even have a few *.com (where possible). There are some new names because the staff held a round to submit and vote also. The above list was created by using the top 5 from both staff and the community, and two extras due to possible copyright issues with two of the names (soylent and apt-get-news).

There were a few names that were nearly identical, the two pairs are listed as one entry (with the variation that got the most points listed first). Should one of these win there will be a runoff to determine which variation gets used. (This is done to keep from splitting the vote for very close names).

The final round of voting will go out within 24 hours after this post and last for one week. We would like to provide an opportunity to discuss the finalists, so here is your chance, discuss below. If you change your mind after seeing an insightful comment, remember you can always change your vote by sending it in again (only most recent will count). We collected a quick writeup from as many submissions as possible to allow for discussion. Some names have more than one advocate due to multiple submitters; conversely, some submitters didn't reply.