Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re: Your mouse is a microphone (Score 1) 26

I did some proof of concept tests with both Pointer Lock and PointerEvents, but both failed because you don't get *any* data if you're not moving the mouse, and only get (heavily rounded) datapoints when you do move the mouse. You'd need raw access to data coming from the mouse, before even the mouse driver, to do what they did.

You *might* be able to pull off a statistical attack, collecting noise in the fluctuations of movement positions and timing in the data you receive when the mouse *is* moving. But I can't see how that could possibly have the fidelity to recover audio, except for *maybe* really deep bass. And again, it'd only apply for when the mouse is actually moving.

Neat attack, but not really practical in the browser.

Comment Re:Just demonstrates that valuations are nonsense (Score 2) 49

It's like there are at least two layers of funny money accounting going on here.

First, you have the strange way that people equate market cap with value. There's no guarantee that holding shares with a current market value of $X will eventually return $X or more in dividend payments plus maybe some eventual disposal of assets, and these are usually the only tangible values involved. A market cap based on ludicrously high P/E ratio will be high, but trading those shares is like trading Bitcoin: it starts to look more like a Ponzi scheme than a genuine value-based investment.

Second, even the market cap is mostly theoretical here, because any shares held can't be freely traded on an open market. The asset is almost completely illiquid other than occasional anomalies like the secondary sale we're talking about. The first IPO of an AI unicorn could be the pin that bursts the bubble.

It's the difference between being one of the AI unicorns that doesn't actually make any real profit yet and is largely funded based on hype and hope, and being a supplier like Nvidia that is actually being paid real money (funded by all the AI investment) and has a P/E ratio that is high but not off-the-charts stupid.

Comment Since nobody is going to mention what was found: (Score 5, Informative) 48

Past studies:

* Volatile, low-mass (100 u) nitrogen- and oxygen-bearing organic species.

* Single-ringed aromatic compounds.

* Complex, high-mass (exceeding 20 u) macromolecular fragments of insoluble organic material, featuring multiple aryl groups connected to hydrocarbon chains, along with nitrogen- and oxygen-bearing groups.

* Aryl (aromatic) and oxygen-bearing compounds in older E-ring grains.

Current study:

* Confirmed aryl and O-bearing compounds in fresh grains (ruling out that they formed due to space weathering)

* Aliphatic O-bearing compounds with carbonyl groups attached to a C2 organic, with acetaldehyde or acetic acid being likely candidates (aldehydes are interesting because they're intermediates precursors in the formation of amino acids)

* Aliphatic and cyclic esters and/or alkenes (on Earth, these are involved in the formation of fats and oils)

* Two classes of ether and/or ethyl compounds (on Earth, these are regularly found in living organisms)

* Tentative N- and O-bearing moieties. Potential candidates for these molecules include derivatives of pyrimidine, pyridine, and nitriles like acetonitrile (such molecules are involved in the reactions that form amino acids).

TL/DR: there may well be not just the atomic building blocks of life in there (CHONPS), but the molecular building blocks as well.

Comment Re:Evolution speaks (Score 1) 52

EVERY point you mentioned has a genetic component.

Menopause has a genetic component? Exactly how much are you planning to reengineer the human race?

The few times its not (environmental causes I suppose) is incredibly rare.

... says PDXNerd, responding to a post where the vast majority of cases listed are predominantly environmental.

If you want to be pedantic, you can probably "find" genetic susceptibilities to literally anything, even dying of a car accident. But you're not going to blame a person dying in a car accident on their genes. It's not even close to the proximate cause.

You literally said "genetic component" or "genetic factor" on every point

I "literally" did not.

PLEASE we do NOT need more old people having babies

Why? No, seriously, why? Because anyone over 50 grosses you out? If you're so obsessed with genes, you should be thrilled with the concept of older people having babies - the older the better! It means they've survived later into life. You should want 90-year-old grannies having as many children as they can.

The low birth rate in western countries

I can't tell if you want to fix it or not.

there's plenty of children that need fostering and adopting.

You could not possibly be more ignorant on the topic. This isn't the 1850s, with orphanages full of orphans just down the street, waiting for someone to show up and sign some papers. There's too much competition for too few children, and it's a bureaucratic nightmare. The average adoption costs $20-50k and international adoptions (most adoptions these days) take on average 2-4 years, but complications can drag them out to far longer - and all the while, the child is growing up without you. It's a massive emotional burden on any prospective parent. Actually talk to any adoptive family before spouting such nonsense.

Comment Re:All that poison people eat and smear on their s (Score 1) 171

Fun fact: the genus name for meadowsweet / mead wort (a plant of waterlogged soils that grows a lot near me), used to be "Spirea". It's a traditional flavoring herb and strewing herb, but also common in herbal medicine. Its traditional medicinal uses were confirmed in the late 1830s when salicylic acid was extracted from it. So in the late 1800s when Bayer started making "acetyl spirea" extract, they named it "aspirin".

Comment Re:All that poison people eat and smear on their s (Score 1) 171

The VOC thing is technically true, but not in practice. It's based on NASA studies in enclosed chambers, but the effect is small enough that it's not meaningful compared to a house's natural ventilation. And plants can also release their own VOCs (though again, very small quantities unless you've turned your home into a forest)

That said, houseplants do two things that help improve air quality:

Humidity: most homes with climate control are too dry (both heating and air conditioning can lower relative humidity). Dry air leads to nasal /throat irritation, nosebleeds, skin and eye irritation, chapped lips, increased susceptibility to pathogens (dried out mucous membranes), longer pathogen lifespans, worsening allergy and asthma symptoms, increased static electricity, wood cracking, and other issues. Plants are natural humidifiers; the loss of large amounts of moisture to the air is an essential part of how they work, and all of the water that you pour in their pots ends up in your air.

Dust removal: not through any sort of fancy process, but simply because plants present very large leaf surface areas that attract and retain dust. When the leaves are shed or water falls on them (or they're wiped down), dust is lost from the system.

A number of studies also strongly suggest that having plants around is just simply good for your psychological well-being, especially in the winter.

Comment Re:All that poison people eat and smear on their s (Score 1) 171

Yeah, I'd advise "natural" people some day to pick a dozen or so spices they like, look up what chemicals comprise the essential oil that give them their aroma and flavour, and then look up each of those chemicals. It's a laundry list of toxins, allergens, carcinogens, mutagens, etc etc.

Thankfully, it's the dose that makes the poison, and most people don't use enough spices to cause a large risk. But "natural" does not mean "safe".

As a side note, I hate the category "ultraprocessed food". If a food contains, for example, whey and has at least five ingredients, that's a NOVA category-4 ultraprocessed food. A large chunk of baby food is "ultraprocessed", and all infant formulas. Specific means of processing are dangerous, and we need to be calling out those specific means, not lumping all forms of processing together. For example, smoked meats adds carcinogens, cured meats adds nitrates / nitrites (carcinogenic), hydrogenation adds trans fats (though the situation is much better than it used to be), etc.

Any food grouping that clusters together bread, ice cream, artificially sweetened yogurt, and vodka in the same category is a nonsensical food category. One of the main goals of food science over the past century has been to break down categories. E.g. moving on from:

"Fat is bad!"
"Well, *saturated* fat is bad, non-saturated fat is good!"
"Well, *saturated fat* is bad, polyunsaturated fat isn't great, mono-unsaturated fat is good!"
"Well, re polyunsaturated, the omega-3s are good but too much omega-6s are bad - and also, trans fat is really bad!"
"Well, *this particular* fatty acid..."

The whole concept of ultraprocessed foods is a huge step in the wrong direction.

Slashdot Top Deals

One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.

Working...