Comment âoeGreat Plains?â WTF? (Score 1) 49
The summary says this strike took place in the Great Plains, but the text says âoeacross parts of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi,â which is the Gulf Coast. Who writes this crap?
Comment Re:Bees are fascinating animals. (Score 1) 154
This is not entirely accurate. Swarms always contain the old queen; the new queen stays put. This is because the swarming event actually takes place shortly before the new queen(s) emerge -- the old queen leaves so there is no fight with the new queen.
One of my hive swarmed this spring...it was an awesome event, although bittersweet. I felt some sadness about losing half the bees in that hive, but I also felt happy that I was sending a new colony out into the world.
Comment Ars Technica has an article on this too (Score 3, Informative) 104
Submission + - Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles (reuters.com)
drdread66 writes: The U.S. military is increasing spending on a secret research effort to use artificial intelligence to help anticipate the launch of a nuclear-capable missile, as well as track and target mobile launchers in North Korea and elsewhere.
The effort has gone largely unreported, and the few publicly available details about it are buried under a layer of near impenetrable jargon in the latest Pentagon budget. But U.S. officials familiar with the research told Reuters there are multiple classified programs now under way to explore how to develop AI-driven systems to better protect the United States against a potential nuclear missile strike.
Now if they would just name the program WOPR...
The effort has gone largely unreported, and the few publicly available details about it are buried under a layer of near impenetrable jargon in the latest Pentagon budget. But U.S. officials familiar with the research told Reuters there are multiple classified programs now under way to explore how to develop AI-driven systems to better protect the United States against a potential nuclear missile strike.
Now if they would just name the program WOPR...
Comment To what end? (Score 1) 60
I'm not sure what benefit this really offers, aside from being an interesting project. There was another bee project a while back that recorded hive temperature and aggregate weight -- that thing was able to measure the total weight of bees in the hive with sufficient accuracy that you could easily spot the times when the foragers were leaving the hive and returning later in the day.
FWIW I am an amateur beekeeper and I don't think I would use the bee-counting Rpi gizmo. I would much rather wander out to my bee yard and just stare at each hive for a few seconds. The only thing the Rpi approach would get me is an alarm if the activity is below "normal" for the hive...that would enable me to be lazy and ignore my hives for extended periods. Not sure this is a good thing. But honestly, my once-a-week checkins ( 5 minutes to check in on 5 hives) are totally sufficient for normal conditions.
Comment Destructive resonances (Score 3, Informative) 102
I saw a related phenomenon in ~2006. My employer was developing some software for a DoD system. Everything worked great in our lab but weird things happened when installed on the servers that the Government bought. It took us *months* to figure out that the problem was a resonance between the hard drives and the cooling fans. After an hour or so of running, the drives would stop working.
We contacted the manufacturer of the hardware and they (a) replaced the fans with fans of a different RPM and (b) isolated the fans with rubber mounts. The problem disappeared immediately and never returned.
Submission + - Senate Democrats Force a Vote To Restore Net Neutrality (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and 32 other Democrats have submitted a new discharge petition under the Congressional Review Act, setting the stage for a full congressional vote to restore net neutrality. Because of the unique CRA process, the petition has the power to force a Senate vote on the resolution, which leaders say is expected next week. The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to roll back regulations within 60 legislative days of introduction, a process that today’s resolution would apply to the internet rules introduced by FCC chairman Ajit Pai in December. Pai’s rules reversed the 2015 Open Internet Order, which had explicitly banned blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization by internet providers. To successfully undo the Pai order and restore the 2015 rules, today’s resolution would need a bare majority in both the Senate and the House, as well as the president’s signature.
Comment Re:Wordpad (Score 1) 291
WordPad works on Mac OS files just fine. I use notepad++ if it's available because WordPad defaults to a proportional font, which makes code and script really hard to read...but in a pinch, WordPad will do.
Comment Re:About time (Score 4, Informative) 85
A friend of mine works for one of the companies involved in the Mastercard pilot. As I understand it, their card is powered by the chip reader, which already supplies power to the EMV chip.
Comment Re:About time (Score 3, Informative) 85
A hash is not enough. Fingerprint matching is a notoriously fuzzy process because fingers deform under pressure, they get damaged (cuts, burns), etc. The matching process works by doing a "good enough" comparison between the newly-acquired image and a pre-digested "template" computed from the enrolled image.
Comment Re:Brazil! (Score 1) 1222
Not just my favorite sci-fi film, my favorite film in general. Agree with other comments about preferring the original version. The sappy end one sucks.
Comment Ohio Scientific C2-4P -- a forgotten machine (Score 1) 857
6502 CPU, 8 kB RAM, cassette tape drive for storage. Fun times.
Comment Misleading headline (Score 3, Insightful) 56
WTF? The headline makes it seem like this is a done deal, but the text makes it clear this is legislation proposed by one of the govt ministries.
An accurate headline would read "German transportation ministry proposed requirement for black boxes in autonomous vehicles."
SMH.
Comment Shock (Score 5, Interesting) 61
When the human body goes into shock from blood loss, the first reaction is to shut off blood flow to the extremities so there is enough blood left to keep the brain and core going. I see this announcement as analogous for Yahoo, except it's "cash shock" at work.
Comment Re:Another one bites the dust (Score 5, Interesting) 365
MS must just have cash to burn. This is one of the stupidest acquisitions I have ever heard of. Best I can tell, LinkedIn, serves most people as nothing more than a centrally-maintained contact list so they can find somewhat current contact info for former coworkers. Where is the revenue stream in that?
Has LinkedIn *ever* turned a profit?
Microsoft is rapidly devolving into the most clueless tech firm out there...
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