Your computers, your phones, your medical devices, even your cars are under attack. They are being controlled remotely, with unseen overlords dictating without your consent what you can and cannot do with them.

Who are the attackers I’m talking about? Not foreign hackers, not government spies, but the very manufacturers from whom you bought those products. And their weapon of choice is not computer infiltration, but rather patent law.

In just a few weeks, a federal patent appeals court will be making a key decision as to whether or not this sort of zombie control over your possessions will be permitted by law. The case itself, called Lexmark International v. Impression Products, is being heard today and is about a very specific product, namely laser printer toner cartridges. But the decision could have far-reaching effects as the world moves toward an Internet of Things, where all devices can become computerized, all devices can become automated—and all devices can be controlled by their manufacturers without the buyers’ consent.

Source: How You Can Use Gadgets May Hinge on a Printer Ink Case

Oh dear lord, do I ever want the PocketLab: “A Swiss Army Knife of Science.”

Launched via Kickstarter, the small device contains numerous sensors to measure acceleration, force, angular velocity, magnetic field, pressure, altitude, and temperature and send that data to smartphones or laptops. According to inventor Clifton Roozeboom, it’s a tool for students and citizen scientists who can’t afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars on lab equipment and will get the data they need from this $100 gadget.

Here’s an IEEE article, too, and here’s a direct link to their home page. Check out the video!

[Good 2009 article by Andrew Gelman, in American Scientist, about some of the ways that statistics can go badly wrong. -egg]

Realistically, a researcher on sex ratios has to make two arguments: a statistical case that observed patterns represent real population effects and cannot be explained simply by sampling variability, and a biological argument that effects on the order of 1 percent are substantively important. The claimed effect size of 26 percent should have aroused suspicion in comparison to the literature on human sex ratios; in addition, though, the papers managed to survive the review process because reviewers did not recognize that the power of the studies was such that only very large estimated effects could make it through the statistical-significance filter. The result is essentially a machine for producing exaggerated claims, which of course only become more exaggerated when they hit the credulous news media (with an estimate of 4.7 percent ± 4.3 percent being ramped up to 26 percent and then reported as 36 percent).

Click to access 3.5.Beauty.pdf

Visual artist Noell Osvald creates startlingly bold works through simple gestures all performed in black and white. The self-portraits rarely show the 25-year-old artist’s face, instead expressing emotion through the way she tilts her head or slightly crooks her neck. Emphasizing line, her works incorporate a strict horizon or eliminate it altogether, segmenting the image from left to right…The self-taught artist’s works are mostly composites that only allude to being photographs. She explains that she does not pre-visualize any of her works, all are completely spontaneous. “I find post-processing the most enjoyable part of creating,” she told Lines magazine. “I build my pictures up from several different ones, much like a jigsaw puzzle.”

Source: New Black and White Surrealist Self-Portraits by Noell Oszvald | Colossal

[This is pretty amazing to watch. -egg]

https://goo.gl/o1veLu