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c0lo writes:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/04/donald-trump-deep-drumpf-twitter-bot

MIT project uses artificial-intelligence algorithm to learn Republican frontrunner's speech patterns before publishing 'remarkably Trump-like statements'

Donald Trump may be a "really smart person" by his own estimation, but his speeches are now fuelling a really smart Twitter bot, which uses artificial-intelligence technology to copy the Republican frontrunner.

[...] "The bot creates Tweets one letter at a time. For example, if the bot randomly begins its Tweet with the letter 'M,' it is somewhat likely to be followed by an 'A,' and then a 'K,' and so on until the bot types out Trump's campaign slogan, 'Make America Great Again.' It then starts over for the next sentence and repeats the process until it reaches the 140-character limit.

The Tweetbot's creator, CSAIL postdoc Bradley Hayes, used techniques from 'deep-learning,' a field of artificial intelligence that uses systems called 'neural networks' to teach computers to to find patterns on their own. Hayes was inspired by an existing training model that can simulate Shakespeare, as well as a recent report that analysed the presidential candidates' linguistic patterns to find that Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level."

I'm not quite sure, but did @realDonaldTrump just replied to this one?

** [Lightweight #LittleMarco] no campaign chance. Believe me, we start winning, winning, winning. That's the mindset.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Iowa State University engineers have developed a new flexible, stretchable and tunable "meta-skin" that uses rows of small, liquid-metal devices to cloak an object from the sharp eyes of radar.

The meta-skin takes its name from metamaterials, which are composites that have properties not found in nature and that can manipulate electromagnetic waves. By stretching and flexing the polymer meta-skin, it can be tuned to reduce the reflection of a wide range of radar frequencies.

...What they came up with are rows of split ring resonators embedded inside layers of silicone sheets. The electric resonators are filled with galinstan, a metal alloy that's liquid at room temperature and less toxic than other liquid metals such as mercury.

Those resonators are small rings with an outer radius of 2.5 millimeters and a thickness of half a millimeter. They have a 1 millimeter gap, essentially creating a small, curved segment of liquid wire.

The rings create electric inductors and the gaps create electric capacitors. Together they create a resonator that can trap and suppress radar waves at a certain frequency. Stretching the meta-skin changes the size of the liquid metal rings inside and changes the frequency the devices suppress.

Tests showed radar suppression was about 75 percent in the frequency range of 8 to 10 gigahertz, according to the paper. When objects are wrapped in the meta-skin, the radar waves are suppressed in all incident directions and observation angles.

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

IEEE Spectrum reports we are closer to the moment quantum computers will be able to crack an RSA key:

...computer scientists at MIT and the University of Innsbruck say they've assembled the first five quantum bits (qubits) of a quantum computer that could someday factor any number, and thereby crack the security of traditional encryption schemes.

...In 2001, Isaac Chuang, an MIT physicist and electrical engineer, managed to use this algorithm to factor the number 15, but the quantum system he used could not be scaled up to factor anything more complicated... for that they'd need a type of quantum computer that stored its qubits in a stable fashion.

They turned to a quantum computer prototype called an ion trap... They needed four qubits to perform Shor's factoring algorithm and a fifth to act as the output... Restricting the measurement step to the fifth ion kept the four involved in the computation from being corrupted.

Chuang and his collaborators found that the five-atom quantum computer successfully calculated the factors of 15. Previously, experts thought such a calculation would require at least 12 qubits to complete. Chuang says the five-ion model can be scaled up to factor much bigger numbers as long as the ion trap can hold its qubits in place. The team published its results in this week's issue of Science.

... "I think people are starting to get freaked out about it," Green says. "They still think it's anywhere from 15 to 30 years away but data can last a very long time. The good news is most of the data we had doesn't have to be kept secure for 30 years, but some of it does."

... Chuang expects to see quantum encryption methods that will inscribe sensitive data into the very states of atoms. "It's the kind of thing that I'm sure governments will not appreciate very much—encryption that is guaranteed by the laws of physics," he says.

Realization of a scalable Shor algorithm (DOI: 10.1126/science.aad9480) (arxiv)

Original Submission

bitstream writes:

Gulfnews: 6 wounded at Somalia airport in 'laptop bomb' attack

Six people were wounded when a "laptop bomb" exploded in the screening area where security screening is carried out before cargo and bags are loaded onto planes in the airport of Beledweyne in Somalia, police said. The second such attack in recent weeks targeting passenger aircraft.

"A laptop computer went off at the screening area, and the security forces have also managed to defuse two other explosive devices, one of them planted in a printer," said police Lieutenant Colonel Ali Dhuh Abdi.

More flight restrictions to come?

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Sydney Morning Herald reports on the death of Ray Tomlinson:

Raymond Tomlinson, the godfather of email, died Saturday morning of a suspected heart attack. He was 74.

Tomlinson, who was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012, is best known for rescuing the @symbol from obscurity and, in the process, shaping the way we talk about being online.

He was also a key driver in the development of standards for the "From", "Subject", and date fields found in email messages today.

The Internet Hall of fame entry on Raymond Tomlinson reads:

In 1967, he joined the legendary research and development company Bolt Beranek and Newman (now Raytheon BBN Technologies). At BBN, he helped develop the TENEX operating system, including implementations of the ARPANET and TELNET protocols. In 1971, he developed ARPANET's first application for network email by combining the SNDMSG and CPYNET programs, allowing messages to be sent to users on other computers. He chose the @sign to separate local from global emails in the mailing address. Person to person network email was born and user@host became the standard for email addresses, as it remains today.

Tomlinson's email program brought about a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate, including the way businesses, from huge corporations to tiny mom-and-pop shops, operate and the way millions of people shop, bank, and keep in touch with friends and family, whether they are across town or across oceans. Today, tens of millions of email-enabled devices are in use every day. Email remains the most popular application, with over a billion and a half users spanning the globe and communicating across the traditional barriers of time and space.

Vint Cerf and the gmail team were among the first to pay tribute on Twitter.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SirFinkus

Here is a curious story from NPR: http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/03/02/468875167/why-do-wild-chimpanzees-throw-stones-at-trees

Anthropologist Barbara J. King explores new research on wild apes who throw stones at trees and cache them to use again — a behavior not seen and documented before and that some say may be ritual.

On Monday, a team of 80 people led by Hjalmar S. Kuhl and Ammie K. Kalan published an open-access paper in Nature's "Scientific Reports" that describes never-before-seen stone-throwing behavior among wild chimpanzees in four West African populations.

The chimpanzees throw the stones at trees or right into tree cavities. Because the apes reuse the tree sites and the accumulated stones — and because their behavior is not related to foraging — the researchers raise the possibility that this behavior is bound up with a type of ritual never before documented in wild apes.

[...] Kuhl, Kalan and their co-authors offer two possibilities. Perhaps the behavior originated as a kind of super-sized, noisy male display and now sometimes occurs outside that context. Or, the chimpanzees could be participating in a symbolic ritual.

So, fellow Soylentils, why do you think the chimpanzees threw rocks at trees?

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

China says economy will 'absolutely not' experience hard landing

China's economy isn't headed for a hard landing and isn't dragging on the global economy, China's top economic planner said on Sunday, but uncertainty and instability in the global economy do pose a risk to the country's growth.

China on Saturday acknowledged it faced tough battle to keep world's No.2 economy growing by at least 6.5 percent over the next five years while pushing hard to create more jobs and restructuring state-owned enterprises.

The comments, as Beijing kicked off its 12-day annual national parliament, underscored the challenges facing China as its economy transitions from an investment and export focused economy to one based more on services and consumption.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

On Saturday [February 27] in Anaheim, California, a rally with the theme "white lives matter" was scheduled by members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The KKK members arrived together in a vehicle. A group of people had already gathered to express opposition. A fight broke out immediately. Three opponents of the KKK were stabbed; two KKK members reported injuries from being stomped upon.

Police arrived and arrested five people affiliated with the KKK along with seven anti-KKK protesters. The arrestees who belonged to the KKK were released, and have as yet not been charged. Police said that video evidence and eyewitness accounts indicated that the KKK arrestees had acted in self-defence. Anti-KKK demonstrators remained in custody on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, and of elder abuse (one victim was over 65 years of age). Another person is wanted by the police in connection with the fight.

According to The Guardian :

Anaheim police chief Raul Quezada said: "Even if the vast majority of our community disagrees with a particular group who visits our city we cannot stop them from lawfully gathering to express their opinions."

"Violence is not acceptable, and we will arrest anybody who assaults another person or commits any other crime in our city," he continued.

[...] "We will always honor free speech in Anaheim, but we vehemently reject hate and violent confrontation," Anaheim mayor Tom Tait said in a statement. "Anaheim is proud to draw strength in its diversity, tolerance and kindness, and Saturday's events run counter to that."

Other coverage:

• KTTV-TV (Fox) and Associated Press
• KPCC-FM
• Los Angeles Times (prior to protest)
• OC Weekly (prior to protest)
• KFSN-TV (ABC) and Associated Press
• Yahoo! News
• editorial by Anaheim mayor Tom Tait in OC Register
• editorial in San Diego Union Tribune
• CBS
• New York Times
• KTLA-TV
• KTLA-TV
• Los Angeles Times
• Los Angeles Times
• City News Service via mynewsla.com
• Daily Mail
• press release by Anaheim police department
• OC Weekly

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

GamingOnLinux reports

Gabe Newell from Valve was quite right to fear about the future when he starting talking up Linux, and now it looks like Microsoft will be trying to push their own store even more.

Microsoft are moving to combine Windows 10 and Xbox One into one platform, and with that the Windows Store will become a bigger thing for them. This is something Gabe Newell of Valve feared, and it looks like it really is starting to become true. While there's nothing wrong with having universal games that work on W10 and XBone, making sure developers have to stick to their store is a problem.

The problem here, is that Microsoft are using their money and their exclusivity deals to keep certain games only on the Windows Store which locks out Steam in the process. There may not be too many doing it yet, but you can be sure over time Microsoft will sign more of these Windows 10 exclusive deals like they have with Quantum Break. Ars [Technica] actually put it quite well in their article here:

Unfortunately for Spencer, not only has the PC as gaming platform seen little improvement from Microsoft--bar DirectX 12--but the company's one-platform-fits-all approach simply isn't going to fly on PC. The PC community has its own rules and expectations. Forcing console-like restrictions on a group that values freedom was never going to end well. And now, with those people backed into a corner with Quantum Break--one of this year's most highly anticipated games--the backlash is only going to get bigger.

On this same theme (different kingpin), El Reg reports:

[Continues.]

takyon writes:

University of Cambridge researchers have derived "naïve" pluripotent stem cells from a human embryo for the first time:

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have for the first time shown that it is possible to derive from a human embryo so-called 'naïve' pluripotent stem cells – one of the most flexible types of stem cell, which can develop into all human tissue other than the placenta.

[...] In research published [March 3, 2016] in the journal Stem Cell Reports, scientists from the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute managed to remove cells from the blastocyst at around day six and grow them individually in culture. By separating the cells, the researchers in effect stopped them 'talking' to each other, preventing them from being steered down a particular path of development. "Until now it hasn't been possible to isolate these naïve stem cells, even though we've had the technology to do it in mice for thirty years – leading some people to doubt it would be possible," explains Ge Guo, the study's first author, "but we've managed to extract the cells and grow them individually in culture. Naïve stem cells have many potential applications, from regenerative medicine to modelling human disorders."

Naïve pluripotent stem cells in principle have no restrictions on the types of adult tissue into which they can develop, which means they may have promising therapeutic uses in regenerative medicine to treat devastating conditions that affect various organs and tissues, particularly those that have poor regenerative capacity, such as the heart, brain and pancreas.

Naive Pluripotent Stem Cells Derived Directly from Isolated Cells of the Human Inner Cell Mass (open, DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2016.02.005)

[We published a story yesterday, where researchers at Michigan State University discovered a new type of stem cell: Induced extraembryonic endoderm (iXEN) stem cells. -Ed.]

Original Submission

Bobs writes of a story appearing in IEEE Spectrum — Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.:

"...reports are coming in that big layoffs across the United States are underway, likely one-third of the U.S. workforce, according to one soon-to-be-laid-off IBMer. (At the end of 2015, IBM had approximately 378,000 employees worldwide; it no longer breaks out numbers for individual countries.)"

..."Likely adding to the pain of many of these workers is a recent change in IBM's severance policy, reducing a potential maximum of six months of benefits to one month's worth."

Also covered at: IBM Layoffs and The Register .

Seems to me IBM over the past fews year / decades has been taken over by fricken MBA's who are more focused on short-term, easy/stupid ways to increase the quarterly profit-margin and who are not interested in long-term investment in growing the business and making new products and services. New Product development is hard, taking skill, time and investment. Firing people and outsourcing is easy and a good way to kill the business over time.

IBM loses its mind

Remind you of the HP implosion anyone?

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

If you're smashing your face into the keyboard trying to come up with a brand-new invention, you need to stop and go for a walk. You could also try watching a movie about an unrelated topic. A new book on the process of invention, Inventology by Pagan Kennedy, reveals that roughly half of all inventions started as ideas or discoveries that people had while working on something else.

As Kennedy writes in a recent New York Times article:

One survey of patent holders (the PatVal study of European inventors (pdf), published in 2005) found that an incredible 50 percent of patents resulted from what could be described as a serendipitous process. Thousands of survey respondents reported that their idea evolved when they were working on an unrelated project—and often when they weren't even trying to invent anything.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/03/half-of-inventions-arise-unexpectedly-from-serendipity-not-direct-research/

What say you, dear Soylentils?

Original Submission

c0lo wrote in with a submission which suggested this story:

Huw Parkinson (who is working as a video editor for Australian Broadcast Corporation), created video mashup of "Game of Thrones" and US Presidential Candidate Donald Trump called Winter is Trumping. "Armed with a Valyrian steel sword named Deal-Maker, Donald Trump embarks on a quest through Westeros to take care its border policies."

Two days later, the youtube clip registers 2M+ hits, so maybe you'll like it too.

mynewsLA.com has an interview with the author at: Aussie prankster tells why he made 'Game of Thrones' Trump video.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Liliputing reports

Most modern desktop and notebook computers ship with Intel or AMD processors and Windows or OS X software. A few companies are positioning products with ARM-based chips as desktop computers. But the Tavolga Terminal TB-T22BT(русский [1]) is something different.

This all-in-one desktop PC has a MIPS-based processor and runs Debian 8 Linux software.

The computer is made by Russian company T-Platforms, which also offers an SF-BT1 processor module for those that want to build their own hardware.

Both devices use a Baikal-T1 processor which is a 32-bit dual-core MIPS P5600 processor. Like the computers, the chip was designed in Russia, although it's based on work from Imagination Technologies (the company behind the MIPS architecture).

The all-in-one desktop features a 21.5 inch IPS display, support for up to 8GB of DDR3-1600 memory, and up to 64GB of flash storage. It has four USB 2.0 ports, a PS/2 port, Gigabit Ethernet, and a fanless case for silent operation. There's also support for smart cards.

T-Platforms is positioning the TB-T22BT as a device that can either be used as a standalone computer with support for Linux-based apps such as LibreOffice and Firefox, or as a thin client system that you can use to connect to remote machines using remote desktop software.

[1] The translation dropdown menu did not work. Google translation

Previous: Russia Plans to Dump Some American CPUs for Homegrown Technology

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

Imagine that within two or three decades we'll have morphed into the Robotic States of America. Most manual laborers will have been replaced by herculean bots. Truck drivers, cabbies, delivery workers and airline pilots will have been superseded by vehicles that do it all. Doctors, lawyers, and business executives will have seen their ranks thinned by charming, attractive, all-knowing algorithms. So how will humans earn a living after they've been made redundant?

Farhad Manjoo writes at The New York Times that one idea has gained widespread interest — including from some of the very technologists who are now building the bot-ruled future — is a plan known as "universal basic income," or U.B.I. - just give everyone a paycheck. "Imagine the government sending each adult about $1,000 a month, about enough to cover housing, food, health care and other basic needs for many Americans," writes Manjoo. "U.B.I. would be aimed at easing the dislocation caused by technological progress, but it would also be bigger than that." Supporters argue machine intelligence will produce so much economic surplus that we could collectively afford to liberate much of humanity from both labor and suffering in the sort of quasi-utopian future we've seen in science fiction universes like that of "Star Trek."

There is an urgency to the techies' interest in U.B.I. They argue that machine intelligence reached an inflection point in the last couple of years, and that technological progress now looks destined to change how most of the world works. Wage growth is sluggish, job security is nonexistent, inequality looks inexorable, and the ideas that once seemed like a sure path to a better future (like taking on debt for college) are in doubt. Even where technology has created more jobs, like the so-called gig economy work created by services like Uber, it has only added to our collective uncertainty about the future of work. "All of a sudden," says Roy Bahat, "people are looking at these trends and realizing these questions about the future of work are more real and immediate than they guessed."

Previously:
"Silicon Valley Startup Funder Eyes Universal Basic Income"

Original Submission