260
votes
Was credit for the black hole image misattributed?
The metric does not measure what it is claimed it does, and even if it did it would be meaningless for assessing the role of Dr. Kate Bouman in creating the image. I'll go on to why, but I first want ...
- 2,591
133
votes
Was credit for the black hole image misattributed?
Technically, that is the percentage of the code she contributed, 2410 lines in 90 commits.
From https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging/graphs/contributors
But that tells us nothing about what the ...
- 2,637
65
votes
Do four random common words make a stronger password than passwords like "Tr0ub4dor&3"?
It is true that you do not need numbers, special characters, etc for a strong password. If you instead increase the length of the password, the entropy will increase as well. See for example this ...
- 52.1k
53
votes
Accepted
Did an AI-enabled drone attack the human operator in a simulation environment?
Apparently no, this was a purely hypothetical scenario, and the US Air Force has not run that experiment. This is the content of an update made today (2 June 2023) to the original blog post on the ...
- 690
42
votes
Accepted
Was credit for the black hole image misattributed?
The old title asked "Did researcher Katie Bouman only contribute 0.26% of code that created Black Hole image," and the existing answers do a good job explaining why it isn't true and why lines of code ...
33
votes
Does AI use lots of water?
Estimates for AI water consumption are based on spikes in water consumption reported by tech companies who were developing AI, though none of them admitted what caused the increases. The numbers are ...
- 34.1k
22
votes
Accepted
Have ATMs across the US "spat out money" in the second half of January 2018?
Brian Krebs (noted and respected infosec analyst and blogger) reported this on 27th Jan.
27
Jan 18
First ‘Jackpotting’ Attacks Hit U.S. ATMs
ATM “jackpotting” — a sophisticated crime in ...
- 3,063
19
votes
Did an AI-enabled drone attack the human operator in a simulation environment?
According to the Vice article, the Air Force has denied the story:
"The Department of the Air Force has not conducted any such AI-drone simulations [...]," Air Force spokesperson Ann ...
- 3,694
19
votes
Does AI use lots of water?
The futurism article cites this Washington Post article, which in turn states "A full methodology can be found in their paper “Making AI Less “Thirsty” [...]”".
The paper only seems to ...
- 291
19
votes
Accepted
Was this Harry-Potter themed text written solely by a computer program?
No, the text was not generated entirely by a computer program. Humans worked with the algorithm to generate the sentences, selected the ones they liked best, edited them into a story, and even added ...
- 403
17
votes
Accepted
Can the "Xtra-PC" USB device make your old computer faster?
SUMMARY:
No, it does not make your computer hardware run any faster.
It may make the common software applications they provide for you run faster, depending on how your old machine is configured.
As ...
- 286
16
votes
Accepted
Can reading fine print cause damage to eyes?
The "damage" done by screens is in the form of eye strain. Your eyeball focuses by using muscles in the eye to change the shape of the lens within the eye, to properly focus incoming light onto the ...
- 9,691
15
votes
Accepted
Were flight reservations centrally managed on wall boards in huge halls in the pre-computer era?
I found a full account of pre-computerized reservation systems on Wikipedia's Reservisor article. The account is sourced to a single book, which I cannot get due to worldwide library closures, but ...
- 46.9k
13
votes
Do four random common words make a stronger password than passwords like "Tr0ub4dor&3"?
There is no single right answer to how much entropy a password has: the result will depend on the assumptions the attacker will make about it, and these are unknown. More or less reasonable guesses ...
- 2,437
13
votes
Accepted
Was there a ML-backed algorithm that learnt to delete list instead of sorting it
Your own article cites its source, which in similar form is a collection of "interesting" outcomes of machine learning experiments. The relevant portion is here:
when MIT
Lincoln Labs evaluated ...
- 2,401
13
votes
Accepted
Does Windows 10 defragmentation damage your SSD?
Windows 10 recognizes SSDs and treats them differently than standard HDDs, meaning that there is actually no risk on damaging your SSD.
To quote Scott Hanselman
No, Windows is not foolishly or ...
- 146
10
votes
Accepted
Does pulse width modulation (PWM) sensitivity exist in the 362-500Hz frequency range?
tl;dr Don't stick your phone in your face.
It depends on flicker and frequency...
Assessment of the effect on the human body of the flicker of OLED displays of smartphones addresses this, relying on ...
- 22.6k
9
votes
Accepted
Did a TV news show cause lots of Amazon's Alexa devices to try to order doll houses?
TL;DR: Yes the incident (viewer complaints) occurred and is confirmed by a reporter Carlos Correa working in the CW6 television station in San Diego.
Jim Patton and Lynda Martin the anchors from CW6 ...
- 22.9k
8
votes
Does AI use lots of water?
"Lots" is not a technical unit of comparison.
As such, what you consider to be 'lots' is subjective and dependent upon what benchmark you're comparing against. As observed in other answers: compared ...
- 1,127
7
votes
Accepted
Do some captchas record your mouse movements?
There is a system developed by Google, called "No CAPTCHA" or "reCAPTCHA". With that system you do not need to click on pictures with cars, traffic lights or distorted text. ...
- 5,866
5
votes
Did Intel have low chip yields due to a clerk hand-checking blank wafers?
An earlier source is The Mac Almanac (1994 by Sharon Zardetto Aker) (alternative link) at page 390:
At one point (the actual point is obscured by the mists of time—call it a couple of decades ago), ...
- 109k
5
votes
Accepted
Are Teslas with autopilot system safer than vehicles without it?
There's dispute in the numbers. Tesla makes the claim, of course, that their vehicles equipped with Autopilot have lower accident rates than their vehicles without. In 2017, the National Highway ...
- 605
4
votes
Did the Windows XP CD include Microsoft Bob?
This is very likely to be true
This story is verified by the programmer, Dave Plummer, who included the encrypted copy of Bob on the XP installer. He talks about it in a video on his YouTube channel ...
- 2,591
3
votes
Does the color temperature of a computer screen affect sleep patterns?
Yes, the blue colour may affect sleep cycles, but an app might not be enough to fix it, depending on other lighting conditions.
The existing answers are somewhat theoretical, without considering ...
- 145k
2
votes
Accepted
Are (modern) computers/AI (only) as intelligent as Apises (Bees)?
Bees have 1 million neurons and ~1 billion connections
This is reflected in the complicated brain structure and anatomy, with
around 1 million neurons and an estimated billion synapses in the
honey ...
- 1,143
2
votes
Does looking at screens damage your brain?
It may delay development in childhood. It can cause depression in adulthood..
Findings so far are developpement lateness. I couldn't find a study showing these damages would be permanent, though. I'm ...
- 121
2
votes
Was there a ML-backed algorithm that learnt to delete list instead of sorting it
Kamil's answer answers the question correctly, but ends with a suggestion that you ask about why this happened on a different SE. This answer will explain how that outcome can easily be caused by a ...
- 12k
1
vote
Do programmers who learn to type faster become better programmers?
According to Cognitive Consequences of Programming: Augmentations to Basic Instruction Journal of Educational Computing Research , volume 2, pages 75-93 (1986):
Teachers we surveyed recommended ...
- 109k
1
vote
Does the color temperature of a computer screen affect sleep patterns?
The color temperature of lighting can be called warm or cool. A cool light has more blue than a warm or neutral light.
Setting your computer monitor or phone to a brighter setting produces more light ...
- 556
1
vote
Was the QWERTY keyboard layout designed to slow down typists?
Kyoto University Researchers Koichi Yasuoka and Motoko Yasuoka wrote a 2011 paper, On the Prehistory of QWERTY, ZINBUN 2011, 42: 161-174 doi: 10.14989/139379.
The researchers tracked the evolution of ...
- 111
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible