Scientists force computer to binge on TV shows and predict what humans will do
Science & patent news
Following a period of turmoil, Wikimedia Foundation appoints new director
Earlier today, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced that the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees has appointed Katherine Maher as its new executive director.
Maher formerly served as communications officer for Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that governs the massive online encyclopedia. She became interim director in March following a period of turmoil during which a board member and former Executive Director Lila Tretikov both...
US Customs wants to ask visitors for ‘social media identifiers’ as they enter country
Visitors trying to enter the United States might want to pay closer attention to what they’re putting out into the world on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere. A proposed change to the forms used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection will ask for...
Independence Day: Resurgence: Like a high-budget porno, minus sex and fun
Heaven help us that we've reached this point: where the legacy of a blatant B-movie retread like 1996's Independence Day can be looked upon fondly, especially in light of a sequel. I have no interest in holding the original film up to some American Film Institute-level standard; the campy Roland Emmerich original is a classic because it knew its place as a piece of hyperbolic, chest-thumping...
NASA considers turning Curiosity rover into a scout for water on Mars mountain
Real-time dynamics of lattice gauge theories with a few-qubit quantum computer
Gauge theories are fundamental to our understanding of interactions between the elementary constituents of matter as mediated by gauge bosons. However, computing the real-time dynamics in gauge theories is a notorious challenge for classical computational methods. This has recently stimulated theoretical effort, using Feynman’s idea of a quantum simulator, to devise schemes for simulating such theories on engineered quantum-mechanical devices,...
Geek On The Street: iPhone users react to reports that Apple will axe headphone jack
The Wall Street Journal this week reported that the next iteration of the iPhone will not have a headphone jack, confirming rumors that have been swirling for a while. If the report turns out to be true,...
Rates and mechanisms of bacterial mutagenesis from maximum-depth sequencing
In 1943, Luria and Delbrück used a phage-resistance assay to establish spontaneous mutation as a driving force of microbial diversity. Mutation rates are still studied using such assays, but these can only be used to examine the small minority of mutations conferring survival in a particular condition. Newer approaches, such as long-term evolution followed by whole-genome sequencing, may be skewed by mutational ‘hot’ or...
GeekWire Deals: This modern mobile boombox comes with Bluetooth connectivity
Your music is probably always with you in today’s streaming-focused world, but sharing that music with others can be tough. Whether it’s a party on the beach or camping with friends, you probably want something a little more powerful than your phone...
The first gravitational-wave source from the isolated evolution of two stars in the 40–100 solar mass range
The merger of two massive (about 30 solar masses) black holes has been detected in gravitational waves. This discovery validates recent predictions that massive binary black holes would constitute the first detection. Previous calculations, however, have not sampled the relevant binary-black-hole progenitors—massive, low-metallicity binary stars—with sufficient accuracy nor included sufficiently realistic physics to enable robust predictions to better than several orders of magnitude. Here...