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Just googling a few seconds brought me to:

This article about cleverbot., which also eeked out enough votes to 'pass' a turing test.

It's all sounds just like Eliza, just put into a character with enough human limitations that you'd expect it not to string together phrases well, or keep to one topic more than a sentence.

I'd interpret it basically as an automated DJ sound board with generic text instead of movie quotes - you can certainly string a lot of folks along with even really bad ones, but that speaks more to pareidolia than anything else.

I'd classify this stage of AI closer to "parlour trick" than "might as well be human" that a lot of people think of when they hear Turing test - but that's also part of the test, to see what we consider to be human.

Ryan Fenton

I'm not arguing for DRM, but that's an awful analogy. No better than saying having a lock on your front door assumes all of your houseguests are criminals. And the latter that you KNEW exactly what you were buying when you did it so nothing was "removed".

I have a computer that can copy videos and convert them to different formats. If I want to watch a Blu-Ray that feature of my computer is removed. It is nonsensical to say "that you KNEW exactly what you were buying". A feature *was* removed, you can't deny that. Why was this feature removed? Because the provider assuming you are a pirate and want to copy and share the video with your friends and others, or even sell it for profit.

And HDMI has nothing to do with Blu-Ray.

Technical you are correct, I meant HDCP, but in practice nobody heart anything about that and only knows about HDMI.

http://www.geekosystem.com/hdc...

HDCP is currently the DRM standard for, among other means of HD transmission, HDMI, DVI, and Blu-Ray.

http://www.hdtvsupply.com/hdmi...

Q: I'm starting to build an HDMI home theater system, what should I keep in mind? [...] Insure all devices are on the most recent firmware [...] Try to buy all the HDMI devices and HDMI cables from one vendor as they have probably all been tested with each other assuring a system that will work. [...] Q: Everything was working and now I don't see video on my TV, what do I do? A: You may have lost your HDCP handshake so power cycle all devices by resetting them or pulling the AC plug

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facebook even collects the posts you start typing but decide not to send.

But unlike McAfee A/V, you can still put poo to good use.

Poop 1, McAfee 0.

Corporations do not have SWAT teams

Tell that to Jason Chen.

Well, nuclear causes less death's than any other energy-source..

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/
http://www.geekosystem.com/coal-oil-nuclear-deaths-chart/

Or you could do a google yourself on "number of deaths coal oil nuclear"

The thing with nuclear-power is that everything happens at the same place and affects more people in one go..... And i prefer something that kills ~90 people per year over for example Oil that kills ~36000 per year... Or natural gas that kills ~4000 per year.. Even wind-power kills ~150 per year....

The problem is that it's public opinion that drives the direction of how we generate power, but the problem is that the general population don't have the knowledge to actually make an informed decision, and neither can i fully.
The thing is that nuclear-power, and there are many types of technologies, is probably the only thing that will be able to sustain the human population for the next 50 years until we can perfect fusion-power or something else that do not have the same impact.

If nuclear-power would still be seen positive by the general population we would also build new reactors that are safer instead of staying with the old reactors that have known safety issues.

Eh, I think the 5th amendment says otherwise, I know there is some legal precedent about encryption keys but I'm not particularly familiar with the cases, and a quick google search reveals an article that seems to support my argument. Of course if you can provide some counter examples I'd be happy to look at them.

Deal with it.

Citation Needed.

Citation given.

Citation given.

Citation given.

Citation given.

Nice try taking it out of context. That is why I said "basically". Here is the background: "Congress Bans NASA from Collaborating with China, Citing Espionage Concerns" http://www.geekosystem.com/congress-bans-china-science-collaboration/

The car analogy is simple. The uber secure keyless systems in cars turned out to be insecure like the hotel rooms. Maybe a tad more difficult to break, but still very breakable. BMW is one of the lucky ones to be hacked. Just one example http://www.geekosystem.com/keyless-bmw-hacked-3-minutes/

Their design looks like they really just took an existing model, and sliced it up to be printable. Not really all that impresive, personally.

http://www.geekosystem.com/3d-printing-plane/

That one is from two years ago, and more interesting.

Don't base your opposition to GMO on that study:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2012/09/24/does-genetically-modified-corn-cause-cancer-a-flawed-study/
http://www.geekosystem.com/no-corn-data-for-esfa/
...and many, many more.

Do you realize what this means?

Given sufficient time and mana, we could simulate a game of Magic within a game of Magic!

Vaguely related

I don't get the article. People have been making guns for a while. Making them on forges you could build in your garage. Anyone with a half assed machine shop could build almost anything.

Then you get guys like this guy that build stuff like the Puzzle Gun.

People seem to be saying 5000 down 1000 up.

If they've found a way to desalinate water with much less energy, practically, that's huge.

TFA isn't wholly explicit but it actually talks about "efficiency" rather than "faster" as per the submission:

According to researchers at MIT, graphene could also increase the efficicency of desalination by two or three orders of magnitude [...] while you can remove the salt from the water, the current methods of doing so are laborious and expensive. Graphene stands to change all that by essentially serving as the world’s most awesomely efficient filter. If you can increase the efficiency of desalination by two or three orders of magnitude (that is to say, make it 100 to 1,000 times more efficient) desalination suddenly becomes way more attractive as a way to obtain drinking water.

Though following TFA's source link to Water Online we come back to "2-3 orders of magnitude faster" and then reference to energy and cost:

In a new study, two materials scientists from MIT have shown in simulations that nanoporous graphene can filter salt from water at a rate that is 2-3 orders of magnitude faster than today’s best commercial desalination technology, reverse osmosis (RO). The researchers predict that graphene’s superior water permeability could lead to desalination techniques that require less energy and use smaller modules than RO technology, at a cost that will depend on future improvements in graphene fabrication methods.

To me that implies subby read that source article, which is a rather better article, leading me to suspect "anonymous reader" subby is from http://www.geekosystem.com/ It does kind of bug me a little when websites find someone else's story, don't contribute anything then go around plugging it like it's their scoop.

And BTW that Water Online source itself is lifted verbatim (stated as being with permission) from Phys.org.

Arduino Grande
Enormous components

Seems to stump the FBI.

http://www.geekosystem.com/fbi-cant-crack-pimp-phone-pattern-lock/

At one-tenth of a pound heavier that really doesn't sound like much, but it can start to matter if you hold your iPad in one hand for long periods or have any kind of repetitive stress injury.

I'm shocked at how physically inept modern people are becoming. The gnashing of teeth over ounces when it comes to gadgets is truly shocking to me. How does one become so incapacitated that an ounce or two is really worth mentioning?

It's about 7% heavier, that is certainly enough to notice with a form factor that is already marginal in terms of being able to hold it for a long time. I would say 7% is a big deal, especially considering why: Apple really overdid it with the screen resolution. All those pixels eat battery, partly because of the screen transistors, but mainly because of having to drive an additional GPU. Not to mention making the device run noticably hotter than the previous generation. Thirteen degrees is a lot of heat in return for what? Saving Apple the fuss and bother of engineering their software to handle a screen that isn't exactly double the old one.

On the face of it, it looks like the Apple execs panicked about how they were going to come up with something "Jobsian" for the next iteration and all they could think of was this. I do not think Steve Jobs would have made this mistake. Of course I could be wrong about that, the iphone antenna happened on his watch.

Unlike this guys who tried to download music and got kiddy porn (and called the police). Banned from seeing his own kids
http://www.geekosystem.com/man-accidentally-child-porn/

If you are wondering how it sounds you can check here.

They're pretty good at taking down websites en masse. Surely that takes some kind of skill?

http://www.geekosystem.com/government-shuts-down-84000-websites/

Laying off thousands of people, cutting hundreds of product lines to focus on three main products which are beginning to stagnate is hardly 'innovative'.

Pixar, a company run by SJ
http://www.geekosystem.com/how-pixar-bosses-saved-their-employees-from-layoffs/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/14/no_layoffs_at_apple_steve/

And if by "stagnate" you mean year over year growth that vastly outpaces the industry you're right....

they still can't "design" an attractive interface for shit! I give you the Windows 8 Explorer Toolbar Ribbon.

I've yet to meet the office worker that likes the Office style ribbon, which is exactly what it looks like.

And encrypt your passwords with DES... and login as root... and don't forget to smudge taco sauch on that post-it-note with that command "yum update" written on it.

Seriously, don't listen to all the naysayers. Just because you call yourself smart and have a million users doesn't make you smart. And just because you don't have a million users and don't think you're smart doesn't make you stupid. Work hard, subscribe to mailing distribution and software mailing lists, and ALWAYS make it a point to check your logs. It might sound pointless, but at least you'll be logging into a shell more often than you clean your gutters.

If that fails, there is always Plan B.

My comment wasn't a general BillG bashing.. he really did say that he gave the go-ahead to the board to takeover Skype. Where's the quote....

"I was a strong proponent at the board level for the deal being done I think it's a great, great deal for Skype ... I think its a great deal for Microsoft."

"The idea of video conferencing is going to get so much better than it is today. Skype actually does get a fair bit of revenue" said Mr Gates.

"It'll be fascinating to see how the brilliant ideas out of Microsoft research, coming together with Skype, what they can make of that"

so there you go - that's the best bit of business analysis I've ever heard, forget build v buy costs, or synergy acquisition savings, or even purchasing unique innovation. Instead we get some vague umm and ahh noises. Oh, revenue at Skype was effectively "sod all" to use the financial terminology. Certainly it just about broke even after the cost of running the show was taken into account.

Now, if you really want a laugh, try this: a list of Microsoft's best, or actually worst, acquisitions.. such as aQuantive.

Given the prevailing options, I'll take nuclear for now. No power is safe, but we over emphasis the rare and unknown deaths while ignoring the common ones that happen every day:

http://www.geekosystem.com/coal-oil-nuclear-deaths-chart/

That said, we need to figure out a better solution for the used fuel. And long term, we really need to work on energy storage so that renewable becomes a better option.

Unfortunately, iPhone Tracking Even When Location Services Disabled. Your "fix" won't work until the next patch comes out.

Here's a tip: to turn Location Services off, slide the toggle to the off position

And imagine your surprise when you find out iPhone Tracking Even When Location Services Disabled .

The researchers who broke the story were not surprised that apps could use location services, they were surprised that:
(1) this data is retained for over a year.
(2) it was accessible to desktop machines when the phone was docked and in backups (using default settings).
(3) that it still logged this data when location services were turned off.

It's true some people are now getting upset about the location service itself, but I think that the media response on that is overblown and the cases are unfounded. It's unfortunate, since it covers the real issue (which Apple will fix soon).

Actually, Morocco didn't ask M$ to suppress access to HTTPS. And in fact, Gmail over HTTPS works perfectly fine there. It looks like Microsoft are just guessing who might want to snoop, and offering that as a feature, without even being asked. Oh, anyone remember the Microsoft Surveillance Guide?

You'd need a PhD to predict the tides.

Or admit that you can't explain that.

This is more liberal lies. Bill O'Reilly told me that you can't explain that!

http://www.geekosystem.com/verizon-unlimited-data-ending/

Verizon is killing off their unlimited data plans and actively working to switch over all their existing customers.

Dan Kaminsky got a key,
Paul Kane got one,
the others well geograpically distributed make the international resque team complete.

BrewDog uses "TurboYeast", which can withstand 22% alcohol. The brewers use freeze distillation to boost the alcohol content. source

Well, according to the hospital, called by geekosystem (which I had never heard of until this story), the magic word is actually "Saturday" and otherwise the test is not done until Monday, though the doctors are strongly encouraged to add "please" as well.

yeah, our site looked into this and got comment from the hospital after reading the slashdot story ... pretty much all untrue.

Link