pgmrdlm shares a report from Live Science: In Douglas Adams’ sci-fi series “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” a pair of programmers task the galaxy’s largest supercomputer with answering the ultimate question of the meaning of life, the universe and everything. After 7.5 million years of processing, the computer reaches an answer: 42. Only then do the programmers realize that nobody…
Tag: algorithm
New Prosthetic Legs Let Amputees Feel Their Foot and Knee In Real-Time
In a paper published in Nature Medicine today, researchers led by ETH Zurich describe how they modified an off-the-shelf prosthetic leg with sensors and electrodes to give wearers a sense of knee movement and feedback from the sole of the foot on the ground. Engadget reports: The researchers worked with two patients with above-the-knee, or transfemoral, amputations. They used an Ossur…
How Apple Stacked the App Store With Its Own Products
Top spots in App Store search results are some of the most fought over real estate in the online economy. The store generated more than $50 billion in sales last year, and the company said two-thirds of app downloads started with a search. But as Apple has become one of the largest competitors on a platform that it controls, suspicions that…
Facebook Wants To Be the Hot New Dating App
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fast Company: In spring 2018, Facebook announced that it was launching its own version of Tinder — but designed for people who are interested in meaningful relationships. Now, after rolling out in 19 countries including Colombia, Thailand, and Canada, Facebook’s dating service is available in the United States. Instead of the rapid-fire swiping found…
What’s new on Coursera for Business – August 2019
By Kyle Clark, Senior Skills Transformation Consultant Coursera released 44 courses on our platform in August. We are particularly excited to announce a range of new courses from the manufacturing, architecture, and engineering design software industry leader, Autodesk, on Generative Design and CAD/CAM for manufacturing. Here are our top picks for enterprise for this past […]
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Sally Floyd, Who Helped Things Run Smoothly Online, Dies At 69
An anonymous Slashdot reader shares a report from The New York Times commemorating Sally Floyd, a computer scientist who recently passed away at the age of 69 from metastatic gall bladder cancer. “Dr. Floyd was best known as one of the inventors of Random Early Detection, or RED, an algorithm widely used in the internet,” reports The New York Times. “Though…
Gaia tracks sibling stars in Milky Way
Rather than leaving home young, as expected, star siblings are more likely to stick together in long-lasting, string-like star groups, according to a new study of data from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/gaia-tracks-sibling-stars-in-milky-way…
Ask Slashdot: How Do You Estimate the Cost of an Algorithm Turned Into an ASIC?
“Another coder and I are exploring the possibility of having a video-processing algorithm written in C turned into an ASIC (“Application Specific Integrated Circuit”) hardware chip that could go inside various consumer electronics devices,” writes Slashdot reader dryriver. The problem? There seems to be very little good information on how much a 20Kb, or 50Kb or indeed a 150Kb algorithm written…
YouTube Removes Videos of Robots Fighting For ‘Animal Cruelty’
YouTuber and robot enthusiast Anthony Murney noticed YouTube has removed hundreds of videos showing robots battling other robots after claiming they are in breach of its rules surrounding animal cruelty. He’s blaming a new algorithm introduced by YouTube to detect instances of animal abuse. The Independent reports: Several other channels dedicated to robot combat have also produced videos pointing out the…
Alexa, Siri, and Google Home Can Be Tricked Into Sending Callers To Scam Phone Numbers
“Don’t ask your smart device to look up a phone number, because it may accidentally point you to a scam,” warn the consumer watchdogs at the Better Business Bureau: You need the phone number for a company, so you ask your home’s smart device — such as Google Home, Siri, or Alexa — to find and dial it for you. But…