Will We Someday Write Code Just By Describing It?

Using millions of programs in online repositories, Intel, Georgia Tech, and MIT researchers created a tool called MISIM (Machine Inferred code Similarity) with a database of code scored by the similarity of its outcomes to suggest alternatives (and corrections) to programmers. The hope is “to aid developers with nitty-gritty choices like ‘what is the most efficient way to use this API’…

CNET Remembers 1995, the Year Hollywood Finally Noticed The Internet

CNET is celebrating its 25th anniversary with articles remembering the 1990s — including that moment “when Hollywood finally noticed the web,” calling it “a flawed but fun snapshot of the moment the internet took over the world…” “Twenty-five years ago, cinema met cyberspace in a riot of funky fashion, cool music and surveillance paranoia. It began in May 1995 with the…

Masked Arsonist Identified and Jailed Because of Etsy Review

An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:
To some extent, every Internet user leaves a digital trail. So when a masked arsonist was seen on video setting fire to a police car on the day of a recent protest in Philadelphia, the fact that her face was hidden didn’t prevent a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent from tracking down the suspect. The keys…

How The FBI Identified That Masked Arsonist Identified and Jailed Because of Her Etsy Review

An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:
To some extent, every Internet user leaves a digital trail. So when a masked arsonist was seen on video setting fire to a police car on the day of a recent protest in Philadelphia, the fact that her face was hidden didn’t prevent a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent from tracking down the suspect. The keys…

Amazon, Pushing Fashion, Opened Photo Studio As a ‘Warehouse’ Exemption

The New York Times reports that Amazon was playing fast and loose with the rules by opening up a fashion photo studio, claiming it could open under state rules that allowed warehouses and fulfillment operations to operate as essential businesses. From the report: A few days after The Times asked the state about the open studio, Amazon closed it. A manager…

Cosmic quasars embrace 1970s fashion trend

Researchers from Russia, Germany, Finland and the U.S. have studied more than 300 quasars—spinning black holes that produce beams of plasma. The team has found that the shape of these so-called astrophysical jets changes from parabolic to conical at some distance from the black hole, reminiscent of the iconic flared jeans of the ’70s. By effectively measuring these “cosmic pants,” the…

Google To Enable the Chrome Anti-Notification Spam System in July 2020

Google announced this week plans to enable its new anti-notification spam system in Chrome over the summer, with the release of Chrome 84, on July 12, 2020. From a report: Known internally as the “quieter notification permission UI,” this Chrome component works by blocking sites from showing notification requests, which are hidden under an icon in the Chrome URL bar (on…

The New York Times Phasing Out All 3rd-Party Advertising Data

The New York Times will no longer use 3rd-party data to target ads come 2021, executives tell Axios, and it is building out a proprietary first-party data platform. From a report: Third-party data, which is collected from consumers on other websites, is being phased out of the ad ecosystem because it’s not considered privacy-friendly. This has forced several big publications to…

4 amazing astronomical discoveries from ancient Greece

The ancients made some jaw-dropping discoveries without modern technology. For example, the size of the moon. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/4-amazing-astronomical-discoveries-ancient-greece…