“The same legalese that can ban Donald Trump from Twitter can bar users from joining class-action lawsuits,” warns the official Editorial Board of the New York Times, urging “It’s time to fix the fine print.” [Alternate URL here] [M]ost people have no idea what is signed away when they click “agree” to binding terms of service contracts — again and again…
Tag: carnegie mellon
Ant Group Sponsors Reality Competition Show About Programmers
“A two-episode series which debuted on Chinese streaming platforms last week has been described as the first reality competition to focus on programmers,” reports the I Programmer web site: The show, sponsored by the Ant Group, an affiliate company of the Chinese Alibaba Group, is called Ranshaoba tiancaichengxuyuan, which roughly translates to “Burn Bright! Genius Programmer,” and followed four teams engaged…
Meet PitRanger: Tiny rover designed to probe the lunar underworld
Researchers have been busily building a prototype of a 33-pound (15 kg) lunar mini-robot, set to be the key instrument in a future mission aimed at capturing high-definition images of moon pits. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/meet-pitranger-a-tiny-rover-to-probe-lunar-underworld…
Edmund Clarke, 2007 Winner of the Turing Award, Dies of Covid-19
“Edmund M. Clarke, the FORE Systems Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University, has died of Covid-19,” writes Slashdot reader McGruber. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Professor Clarke was best known for his work in model checking, an automated method for detecting design errors in computer hardware and software. CMU president Farnam Jahanian said the world had “lost a…
‘Will Remote Work Kill Innovation?’ Ask Silicon Valley Experts
Remote work “is here to stay,” argues a new article in Silicon Valley’s newspaper The Mercury News (also re-published in the East Bay Times). But they’ve also asked industry professionals around Silicon Valley whether this will hurt our ability to innovate. Software engineer/entrepreneur Joyce Park (who’s worked in Silicon Valley over 20 years): “Fast feedback is what we’re all about in…
Is There a Better Way to Create Secure Passwords?
“Forget all the rules about uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols; your password just needs to be at least 12 characters, and it needs to pass a real-time strength test” developed by the passwords research group in Carnegie Mellon’s CyLab Security and Privacy Institute (according to the Lab’s web site). CNET reports:
After a user has created a password of at…
Google’s SoundFilter AI Separates Any Sound or Voice From Mixed-Audio Recordings
Researchers at Google claim to have developed a machine learning model that can separate a sound source from noisy, single-channel audio based on only a short sample of the target source. In a paper [PDF], they say their SoundFilter system can be tuned to filter arbitrary sound sources, even those it hasn’t seen during training. From a report: The researchers believe…
MoonRanger will search for water at moon’s south pole
MoonRanger, a small robotic rover being developed by Carnegie Mellon University and its spinoff Astrobotic, has completed its preliminary design review in preparation for a 2022 mission to search for signs of water at the moon’s south pole. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-09-moonranger-moon-south-pole.html…
It’s Not Just Cars That Make Pollution. It’s the Roads They Drive On, Too
An anonymous reader shares a report: The smell of summer in Los Angeles, or any major city, is often tinged with asphalt. A freshly paved road or a new tar roof doesn’t just wrinkle your nose, however: A new study suggests fresh asphalt is a significant, yet overlooked, source of air pollution. In fact, the material’s contribution to one kind of…
Universities and Tech Giants Back National Cloud Computing Project
Leading universities and major technology companies agreed on Tuesday to back a new project intended to give academics and other scientists access to the computing resources now available mainly to a few tech giants. From a report: The initiative, the National Research Cloud, has received bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. Lawmakers in both houses have proposed bills…