Rtersieva

An anonymous reader writes Dr. James Simons received his doctorate at the age of 23. He was breaking codes for the NSA at 26, and was put in charge of Stony Brook University's math department at 30. He received the Veblen Prize in Geometry in 1976. Today, he's a multi-billionaire, using his fortune to set up educational foundations for math and science. "His passion, however, is basic research — the risky, freewheeling type. He recently financed new telescopes in the Chilean Andes that will look for faint ripples of light from the Big Bang, the theorized birth of the universe. The afternoon of the interview, he planned to speak to Stanford physicists eager to detect the axion, a ghostly particle thought to permeate the cosmos but long stuck in theoretical limbo. Their endeavor 'could be very exciting,' he said, his mood palpable, like that of a kid in a candy store." Dr. Simons is quick to say this his persistence, more than his intelligence, is key to his success: "I wasn't the fastest guy in the world. I wouldn't have done well in an Olympiad or a math contest. But I like to ponder. And pondering things, just sort of thinking about it and thinking about it, turns out to be a pretty good approach."

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At one time or another we've all added something tasty to give our plan 'ol glass of water or fizzy seltzer a little boost. A squeeze of lemon or lime, a few slices of cucumber, perhaps a few sprigs of mint.

This summer try something a little different. Cool off your drinks and add a hint of fresh flavor with melon ball ice cubes.

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When MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte says that humans will be able to learn an entire language by eating a pill, you better listen. In this new TED Talk, Negroponte shows all the times he was right predicting the future in the 1970s and 1980s even while people laughed at him. Here's what he thinks that will happen next.

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In the hierarchy of needs, Wi-Fi is now a staple—so when it goes down, we all feel it. Hard. In this short dramatic sketch, Julian Smith imagines a brief wireless outage as disaster movie.

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"The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid."

It's perhaps a more fundamental law of technology than Moore's Law, if we're honest with ourselves. [Truth Facts]

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mpicpp writes with a story about researchers who have developed a way to steal passwords using video-capturing devices.Cyber forensics experts at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell have developed a way to steal passwords entered on a smartphone or tablet using video from Google's face-mounted gadget and other video-capturing devices. The thief can be nearly ten feet away and doesn't even need to be able to read the screen — meaning glare is not an antidote. The security researchers created software that maps the shadows from fingertips typing on a tablet or smartphone. Their algorithm then converts those touch points into the actual keys they were touching, enabling the researchers to crack the passcode. They tested the algorithm on passwords entered on an Apple iPad, Google's Nexus 7 tablet, and an iPhone 5.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I know Wowcraft is supposed to be a World of Warcraft parody, but this episode's trip to Warsong Gulch seems pretty true to my in-game experiences... except, of course, Wowcraft is way more adorable. In every battleground, though, you always seem to run into at least one player trying to organize for everyone else, one player jumping mindlessly around the entrance, one player autorunning against the starting gate, and one player (or more) standing still as a statue. But somehow CarBot makes these player stereotypes seem pretty charming.

CarBot's animated adventures always amuse with its spot-on representation of in-game life. If you've missed any, you can catch the rest of their work -- including StarCraft and Diablo videos -- on their YouTube channel.

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Filed under: Humor

Wowcraft Episode 7 visits Warsong Gulch originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 01 Jul 2014 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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"Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God."

Star Wars fan Frank Wunderlich turned the German airport of Frankfurt into a base for the Imperial Navy thanks to the wonders of 3D and compositing. Despite some failures here and there, it's a great scene full of shuttles and Imperial walkers.

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Downforeveryoneorjustme.com is the site we all use to figure out if sites are actually down or not. But right now, that site appears to be down. I think? Is it really down? Or is it just me? I can't tell.

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Remember when dozens of mating turtles shut down a whole runaway at JFK International Airport in 2009? It was only the start of a turtle invasion that has vexed travelers and perplexed biologists for years. But we may have figured out why turtles are all over the tarmac, and it has to do with raccoons.

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sciencehabit writes A "superathlete" gene that helps Sherpas and other Tibetans breathe easy at high altitudes was inherited from an ancient species of human. That's the conclusion of a new study, which finds that the gene variant came from people known as Denisovans, who went extinct soon after they mated with the ancestors of Europeans and Asians about 40,000 years ago. This is the first time a version of a gene acquired from interbreeding with another type of human has been shown to help modern humans adapt to their environment.

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mdsolar writes with news about the cleanup of the site that exposed Harold McCluskey to the highest dose of radiation from americium ever recorded. Workers are finally preparing to enter one of the most dangerous rooms in the world — the site of a 1976 blast in the United States that exposed a technician to a massive dose of radiation and led to his nickname: the "Atomic Man." Harold McCluskey, then 64, was working in the room at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation when a chemical reaction caused a glass glove box to explode. He was exposed to the highest dose of radiation from the chemical element americium ever recorded — 500 times the occupational standard. Hanford, located in central Washington state, made plutonium for nuclear weapons for decades. The room was used to recover radioactive americium, a byproduct of plutonium. Covered with blood, McCluskey was dragged from the room and put into an ambulance headed for the decontamination center. Because he was too hot to handle, he was removed by remote control and transported to a steel-and-concrete isolation tank. During the next five months, doctors laboriously extracted tiny bits of glass and razor-sharp pieces of metal embedded in his skin. Nurses scrubbed him down three times a day and shaved every inch of his body every day. The radioactive bathwater and thousands of towels became nuclear waste.

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Taco Cowboy writes The subway system in Hong Kong has one of the best uptime, 99.9%, which beats London's tube or NYC's sub hands down. In an average week as many as 10,000 people would be carrying out 2,600 engineering works across the system — from grinding down rough rails to replacing tracks to checking for damages. While human workers might be the one carrying out the work, the one deciding which task is to be worked on, however, isn't a human being at all. Each and every engineering task to be worked on and the scheduling of all those tasks is being handled by an algorithm. Andy Chan of Hong Kong's City University, who designed the AI system, says, "Before AI, they would have a planning session with experts from five or six different areas. It was pretty chaotic. Now they just reveal the plan on a huge screen." Chan's AI program works with a simulated model of the entire system to find the best schedule for necessary engineering works. From its omniscient view it can see chances to combine work and share resources that no human could. However, in order to provide an added layer of security, the schedule generated by the AI is still subject to human approval — Urgent, unexpected repairs can be added manually, and the system would reschedules less important tasks. It also checks the maintenance it plans for compliance with local regulations. Chan's team encoded into machine readable language 200 rules that the engineers must follow when working at night, such as keeping noise below a certain level in residential areas. The main difference between normal software and Hong Kong's AI is that it contains human knowledge that takes years to acquire through experience, says Chan. "We asked the experts what they consider when making a decision, then formulated that into rules – we basically extracted expertise from different areas about engineering works," he says.

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rudy_wayne (414635) writes A Goldman Sachs contractor was testing internal changes made to Goldman Sachs system and prepared a report with sensitive client information, including details on brokerage accounts. The report was accidentally e-mailed to a 'gmail.com' address rather than the correct 'gs.com' address. Google told Goldman Sachs on June 26 that it couldn't just reach into Gmail and delete the e-mail without a court order. Goldman Sachs filed with the New York Supreme Court, requesting "emergency relief" to avoid a privacy violation and "avoid the risk of unnecessary reputational damage to Goldman Sachs."

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Trachman writes The US Transport Security Administration revealed on Sunday that enhanced security procedures on flights coming to the US now include not allowing uncharged cell phones and other devices onto planes. “During the security examination, officers may also ask that owners power up some devices, including cell phones. Powerless devices will not be permitted on board the aircraft. The traveler may also undergo additional screening,” TSA said in a statement.

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Every one of us loses consciousness on a daily basis: it's called sleep. But scientists have never understood which part of the brain controls when you're conscious and when you're not. Now, researchers seem to have found it by coincidence while studying an epileptic patient—and used electronic brain stimulation to flip the switch on and off.

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"The only road to good shows is bad ones. Just go start having a bad time, and if you don't give up, you will get better."

StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "It was one of the most hotly contested questions for decades: we first expected and then found supermassive black holes at the centers of practically all large galaxies. But how did they get there? In particular, you could imagine it happening either way: either there was this top-down scenario, where large-scale structures formed first and fragmented into galaxies, forming black holes at their centers afterwards, or a bottom-up scenario, where small-scale structures dominate at the beginning, and larger ones only form later from the merger of these earlier, little ones. As it turns out, both of these play a role in our Universe, but as far as the question of what came first, black holes or galaxies, only one answer is right."

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ganjadude (952775) writes "I stumbled upon this little scoop and thought the Slashdot crowd would be interested in. The new kid on the block, known as the HummingBoard can handle faster processors, more RAM and will fit the same cases for the Pi. Also, you can expand the memory and the CPU is replaceable! The low end model starts at $45 and the high end costs $100. So tell me guys, what are you going to do with yours?" $45 model is a single core iMX6 (an ARMv7) with 512M of RAM, the $100 model has a dual core i.MX6 with 1G of RAM. Full specs.

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Smoke break. #plantlyfe

Adam Savage finds a Zeebler loose in his workshop. I had the amazing opportunity to visit Adam at his ‘cave’. We nerded out on animation stuff, filmed a little interview, and I created this animation! To see the full video, go to tested.com or http://youtu.be/ivQKRnGwNmQ #adamsavage #mythbusters #zeebler #tested #augdementedreality

by paran0id

[@paperwash]

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stephaniecoco:

guy:

i think the lesson of this photoset is to check yo muthafuckin math calculations before u hand the test in bc sometimes u need to check shit twice before u realize whats up (x)

hahahahahahahqhhqhqhqhqhqhqhq