Topics pertaining to science and technology, current or future.
Free will? Yes and no. Even if people are nothing but “moist robots” (quite possibly true), and everything that has ever happened or ever will was predetermined by the state of the universe in the moments after the Big Bang (which I have my doubts about), free will still exists as most people understand it. …
Continue reading ‘“Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?”’ »
It wasn’t just Tumblr users, either. Demand Progress delivered over seven hundred thousand e-mails as well, including mine. Sorry, music and movie industries. The people won’t stand for such draconian and heavy-handed attempts at censorship to protect your outdated business models. You’re going to have to do what every industry eventually does: adapt or die. …
Continue reading ‘“Tumblr users fight SOPA with 87,834 calls to Congress”’ »
This is a little worrisome. As Schneier says at the bottom, “I worry about people being judged by these criteria. Psychopaths make up about 1% of the population, so even a small false-positive rate can be a significant problem.” On a complete tangent, the statistic that 1% of the population counts as psychopathic is disturbing. …
Continue reading ‘“Detecting Psychopaths by their Speech Patterns”’ »
If anyone is looking for a holiday present for me, one of these would be REALLY appreciated. 😉 Think of the possibilities… this could eventually eliminate the need for a screen entirely! Add a way for the computer to understand subvocalized commands, and you could have a full-powered general-purpose computer and entertainment center with you …
Continue reading ‘“Laser display could mean 3D sans screens”’ »
Computers have been the center of my world since I discovered them when I was eleven. Now they’ve become the center of everyone else’s too, in a way, as shown by the fact that the UN is seriously considering changing the whole way that we (as a race) keep time, just so it’s easier for …
Continue reading ‘“UN set to dump GMT for tech-friendly Atomic Time”’ »
It’s getting ever more dangerous out there. No one can afford to ignore the modern world of fraud and theft anymore — educate yourselves and anyone else who will listen, because those who would steal your money are getting better at it all the time.
This had better become required by law, and soon, if the government wants people to trust electronic voting machines. Every security expert who’s even glanced at them has been appalled at how easily they can be manipulated. Related and possibly-interesting note: a significant part of one of the Stainless Steel Rat books — written long …
Continue reading ‘“Researchers propose simple fix to thwart e-voting attack”’ »
There are three interesting things on this page: An “interactive brute force search space calculator” for passwords, which you can play with to get a good idea how easily a brute-force attack would find YOUR passwords. Some comments further down the page on mathematical entropy, and how it doesn’t affect password strength (despite common wisdom …
This is assuming, of course, that these aliens are exactly like us and send dumb, inflexible machines that will run out of power and can’t draw attention to themselves. And, for that matter, that they would want to draw attention to themselves. We’ll probably have some form of strong AI within a generation, and one …
Continue reading ‘“Mars, Moon, solar system could be littered with alien artifacts”’ »
A small excerpt from that excerpt: A few years ago, researchers quizzed more than thirty surgeons and surgical residents on their video-game habits […] Then they put all the surgeons through a laparoscopic surgery simulator, in which thin instruments akin to extremely long chopsticks are inserted into one or more small incisions through the skin …
Continue reading ‘“I Live in the Future and Here’s How it Works”’ »