Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
EU

Le Pen Concedes Defeat To Macron In France's Post-Hack Election (reuters.com) 671

"France has voted for continuity," candidate Marine Le Pen said in the wake of her defeat in France's presidential election, conceding that Emmanuel Macron had a decisive lead. Reuters has ongoing coverage of Le Pen's concession phone call and reactions from world leaders. "France Rejects Far Right," read a headline at CNN, touting their own live updates and early results showing Macron with a 65.9% to 34.1% lead, "on course for a decisive win." Macron is schedule to speak at the Louvre museum (where the grounds were "briefly evacuated" this morning after discovery of a suspicious bag.) Quartz is calling 39-year-old Macron "the second Generation X president of a major world power" (after Canada's Justin Trudeau).

The election was closely watched after a 9-gigabyte trove of emails from Macron's campaign were leaked online. CNBC reports that "One of the most talked about emails makes reference to binge-watching Dr. Who and masturbating to the sound of running water. It sounds generally incoherent. It could be false, or maybe the person wrote it after a few too many." The New Yorker traces the leak to a right-leaning Canadian site, whose editor says he found the documents on 4chan. But Reuters is crediting WikiLeaks with providing "the largest boost of attention" to the leaked documents, according to an analysis pubished by the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, a D.C.-based think tank on international affairs. WikiLeaks tweeted about the leak 15 times, bragging to Reuters that "we were hours ahead of all other major outlets." On Friday WikiLeaks also disputed the Macron campaign's claim that the leak mixed real documents with fake ones. "We have not yet discovered fakes in #MacronLeaks & we are very skeptical that the Macron campaign is faster than us."

Saturday WikiLeaks noted that several of the Office files "have Cyrillic meta data. Unclear if by design, incompetence, or Slavic employee." And Saturday afternoon they added "name of employee for Russian govt security contractor Evrika appears 9 times in metadata for 'xls_cendric.rar' leak archive."

Meanwhile, on the International Space Station, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet voted from space. Feel free to discuss the election's results in the comments.

Comment Re:Using X's power? (Score 1) 128

'remote windowing feature'? That's like saying http has a 'remote web page download feature' because you can connect to an http server from another machine. The whole point of X is that it is a network protocol from the ground up. It's designed for environments where applications are run over networks; unfortunately nowadays the PC model of computing has won, which is why 'remote windowing' looks like an extra 'feature'.

Crime

Venezuela Bans the Commercial Sale of Firearms and Ammunition 828

Bob the Super Hamste writes "The BBC is reporting on a new law in Venezuela that effectively bans the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition to private citizens. Previously anyone with a permit could purchase a firearm from any commercial vendor but now only the police, military, and security firms will be able to purchase firearms or ammunition from only state-owned manufactures or importers. Hugo Chavez's government states that the goal is to eventually disarm the citizenry. The law, which went into effect today, was passed on February 29th, and up to this point the government has been running an amnesty program allowing citizens to turn in their illegal firearms. Since the law was first passed, 805,000 rounds of ammunition have been recovered from gun dealers. The measure is intended to curb violent crime in Venezuela, where 78% of homicides are linked to firearms."

Comment RTFA (Score 1) 258

The article specifically cites evidence for an important genetic component of handedness, and the model is constructed around that evidence. The authors didn't have to 'show' this, as it has already been shown.

Comment Missing the point (Score 1) 258

Perhaps you are confusing evolutionary modelling (a mathematical technique which describes very general processes of information transfer) with theorising about human origins (an empirical investigation which sometimes uses evolutionary models, along with other sorts of models and lots of physical evidence).

This paper is an example of the former, not the latter. It argues that, because there is a process of 'selection' involved in athletic try-outs, it may be possible to apply some evolutionary models to explain the outcomes of that process. It then shows that the data are indeed consistent with the predictions of that model.

It has absolutely nothing to do with cave men, or Neanderthals. Neither does the vast majority of the field of mathematics which we call evolutionary theory.

Comment RTFA (Score 1) 258

The model in the paper specifically allows for two possible equilibria: one in which right-handed people dominate, and one in which left-handed people do. We just happen to be in the right-handed equilibrium (by chance).

Comment Re:real life frogger = rest of the world (Score 5, Insightful) 43

I think you'll find that outside North America, most of the Western world does walk extensively, and makes extensive use of public transport. There are even a few enclaves of civilisation in the US itself, like New York City, where this exotic practice can be seen without leaving your sacred soil.

Comment Re:Insensitive Barbarians (Score 2) 234

No, no, how can they have been telling us for thousands of years? Every Chinese person knows China has 5000 years of history, while the West has approximately 5 years of history. There were some reported sightings of Westerners once in the Ming dynasty, but this has since been discovered to have been a hoax, constructed from a bearded monkey on stilts.

Comment Re:exactly, and it's unscientific (Score 1) 211

That's exactly the main problem with conspiracy theories, which makes them unfalsifiable and thus unscientific.
(basically, if there's no way to prove it wrong, there's no way to prove it right either)

Wow, in the course of two lines, you've managed both to invoke Popper's long-discredited theory in the philosophy of science (falsificationism) and to misunderstand it completely.

If you want to know why your second line makes no sense, read the work you are (possibly unknowingly) referencing: Popper's 'The Logic of Scientific Discovery'. lf you want to know why no philosopher of science is a falsificationist anymore, read any philosophy of science written since 1965 (and a good deal before then too). I recommend Wesley Salmon, Bas van Fraassen, or an introductory textbook.

Or you can just go on mindlessly spouting this nonsense about scientific theories having to be 'falsifiable'. Popper's ghost will thank you--he's lonely these days.

Space

Submission + - Space Elevator Update: Going Down (spaceelevator.com)

TropicalCoder writes: "The LiftPort Space Elevator, founded four years ago with the lofty dream of building a stairway to heaven, has reached the end of its tether. The dream was to develop a ribbon of carbon nanotubes 100,000 km long, anchored to the Earth's surface at the LiftPort Station and with a counterweight in space, providing a permanent bridge between earth and space. Elevator cars would be robotic "lifters" which would climb the ribbon to deliver cargo and eventually people to orbit or beyond. Now Liftport has all but run out of funds, and the Securities Division entered a Statement of Charges and Notice of Intent to Enter an Order to Cease and Desist, Impose Fines and Charge Costs against Liftport Inc. dba Liftport Group and founder Michael Laine.

Will Michael Laine go down in history as visionary, ahead of his time, or as a scam artist who raised at least $117,000 from some 85 investors and did not market a single product in four years?"

It's funny.  Laugh.

Economic Analysis of Toilet Seat Position 473

Ant writes "The Science Creative Quarterly has published an economic analysis of The Social Norm of Leaving the Toilet Down, employing game theory. This analysis is more thorough than preceding ones cited (from 2002 and 2005), as it factors in the cost of yelling. Both men and women can take some comfort in the conclusion though neither may in the end be satisfied.

Comment Re:You just proved the GP... (Score 1) 434

yes, but the vast majority of scientific research is not carried out with funding from the people with the most money; it is carried out with smaller grants from medium-sized organisations, governments, etc. it may be the case that some particularly high profile research is more connected to those who have the most money, because the same people will pay for press coverage. but that is a tiny proportion of the bulk of scientific research.

again, if it were not, science would be an utter failure.

Networked Landmines Work Together 768

crazedpilot writes "New landmines will soon communicate via a radio network, and move from place to place in order to be most effective." Termed the "self-healing minefield", the individual mines are capable of detecting an enemy breach and then moving to seal the gap.

Slashdot Top Deals

Kiss your keyboard goodbye!

Working...