273
Yes, and ReCaptcha have always been open about it, before and after being acquired by Google.
From its formation, one of ReCaptcha's main selling points was that the data would be used. At first, it was used for fixing errors and ambiguities in the digitisation of books. Here's an example of this being praised back in 2007, 2 years before Google acquired it,...
answered May 30 '16 at 13:32
user56reinstatemonica8
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151
The Romans built the aqueducts -- as well as bridges, piers, and colossal buildings -- out of concrete. Stone and brick were usually just exterior casings for the concrete structural core. And the secret of super-durable Roman concrete was indeed lost for centuries.
Modern concrete uses a paste mixture of water and Portland cement (a fine powder made from ...
131
There is not much to doubt here. This chip-art seems to have been either common practice or at least a wide spread in-joke among engineers:
Steal the Best
We stumbled across this message while examining the scribe lane on a Digital CVAX microprocessor used in the MicroVAX 3000 and 6200 series computers. Chip designer Bob Supnik tells us that ...
128
No, walls predate wheels by several millenia.
The invention of the wheel is generally placed at around 3500-4500 BCE. However walls were famously built around the town of Jericho in 8000-9000BCE, so they are at least that old.
More information can be found here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/10/president-trump-is-wheel-older-than-...
119
The BIC FAQ says the hole in the cap is to prevent children from choking to death.
It was quoted in the question:
The reason that some BIC® pens have a hole in their cap is to prevent the cap from completely obstructing the airway if accidently inhaled. This is requested by the international safety standards ISO11540, except for in cases where the cap is ...
66
Yes, GPS requires both general and special relativity to work
[Note this is simplified account based on this and this (MS word download)]
We can understand why by looking at how GPS actually determines where you are. The system relies on a number of satellites transmitting signals and your GPS device receiving those signals (see wikipedia). There are about ...
62
You can find information about this on
Wikipedia
ATM SafetyPIN software is a software application that would allow
users of automated teller machines (ATMs) to alert the police of a
forced cash withdrawal by entering their personal identification
number (PIN) in reverse order.1 The system was invented and patented
by Illinois lawyer Joseph ...
58
This is the study itself if you want to read it. Yes it is a study in mice. It is evidence but not proof that blue filters are counter-productive, at least according to the authors of this single, peer-reviewed study. This is a fairly typical example of media fixating on a single study and making it out to a bigger deal than it actually is. More research is ...
41
Yes!
Luis von Ahn, one of original developers, talked in one TEDx conference about reCAPTCHA technology, and his new Project DuoLingo
In this presentation, he talks about CAPTCHA history and problems and how people were wasting about 500,000 hours every day using CAPTCHA. Then he thought how use this time in a useful thing, like helping OCR books.
He ...
36
Yes, but this is a newly reported bug on OS X 10.8.4 and iOS 6.1.3 that affects CoreText API so it will likely be fixed in the near future. The text linked to is the same as appears in a screen shot on the Ars Technica article:
The article then goes on to explain the following:
There's a new bug in town, and it's here to crash your Mac and iPhone
...
34
UPDATE:
Funny or Die have admitted that the video is a hoax on their site.
Original answer:
The "Huvr board" is most probably a hoax product.
In addition to Jwenting's answer depicting the problem with the fact that a breakthrough technological achievement wasn't published in any form, professional, scientific or popular. Several sites on the ...
34
The knowledge of how to build aqueducts was not lost. See Vitruvius and Frontinus among other texts. Some few techniques that were more practical knowledge among workers might not have been written down, though.
Musk is totally wrong here. The real reason people after the Romans didn't build aqueducts is not that they couldn't. It's because if you don't ...
32
The video doesn't seem to be authentic.
The video is used as a parody worldwide, it is international and labeled as a "video meme".
The series of the meme is called : "El Risitas" Interview Parodies
What the meme-creator does is the following:
ignore the content of the video
pick any subject prone to criticism
create the fake subtitles (usually using a ...
32
The quoted statement says "energy to move a kilometer".
On an "energy to move a kilometer" basis, the statement is definitely false.
Acccording to Dr. Karen Oberhauser, a tagged monarch butterfly has been confirmed to travel 265 miles in one day.
According to How Much Fuel Do Monarchs Burn? reporting Dr. David Gibo's research:
On 140 milligrams of ...
32
The question headline seems to be slightly misinterpreting the company's claims
Carefully rereading their claims, I realized they do not specify what Twisted Steel Micro Reinforcement (TSMR) reinforced concrete is better than. On a quick read, I just assumed they meant it is better than rebar reinforced concrete, because that is what the pictures imply, but ...
31
There was a similar question over on IT Security. I answer here as I answered there, based on my job experience in the alarm monitoring industry. The short answer is that the reverse-PIN system is documented as a possibility, but is not currently in use by any ATM network or manufacturer.
The idea of the reverse PIN is the "duress code"; something that ...
30
And the mechanical friction caused by the alternator does not depend on whether electricity is being needed or not.
Correct.
In other words, when energy is not needed it is wasted
Wrong. The electrical energy produced by the alternator is not the result of mechanical friction but of magnetic force on top of the (very small amount of) friction, which ...
29
The radiation is 1000 times stronger
According to Wikipedia The transmission power of a GSM handset is limited to a maximum of 2 watts in GSM 850/900 and 1 watt in GSM 1800/1900.
According to a Radio-Electronics.com article "GSM Power Control and Power Class" the base station controls handset power output in the range 2-19 which is 39 dBm to 5 dBm.
...
29
From TWO INTO ONE Shipbuilding and Shipping Record 28 June 1945:
The U.S. destroyer escort Menges is back in service again. But only two thirds of her is the original ship; the other third was U.S.S. Holder another destroyer escort. Both ships were badly damaged in the Mediterranean, the Menges by two torpedoes, which killed 30 men and destroyed a large ...
28
Nobody knows.
None of the sources for total LOC provide any means or methods.
Sources for hard numbers after 2008 were a little hard to come by, my apologies.
Total number of lines of all code in use?
One trillion (2001).[19]
C/C++: 180 billion, Assembler: 140-220 billion, Other: 280 billion.
Total number of lines of COBOL code in use?
200 billion (...
28
No. A typical home panel might consume the electricity released from about 1/2 a ton of coal. (Update: Or 1/6 a ton of coal, if you use combustion energy rather than electrical generation.)
According to The Energy Balance of the Photovoltaic (PV) Industry:
Is the PV industry a net electricity producer?, the Cumulative Energy Demand for photovoltaic cells ...
27
Yes.
In addition to the 1960 Popular Science article you mention there was a 1923 Popular Science article: TAXI METERS USED IN ROME:
Before the time of Julius Caesar, ancient Romans were called upon to travel in chariots for which they paid by a crude method of counting distances, according to a recently discovered records. The "taxicab" had a ...
21
It depends what you mean by "sold a chip". Intel designs, fabricates and sells a wide range of chips, so for Intel the answer is simple (they don't license out their designs). But ARM doesn't manufacture anything physical. ARM produces the designs for microprocessors. Actual manufacturers such as Broadcom then license the designs, integrate them with other ...
19
I don't know any specific research regarding "Comic Sans" and dyslexics, but there are at least a few fonts designed by and for dyslexics to ease reading. Two examples are the free OpenDyslexic font by Abelardo Gonzalez or the commercial Dyslexie font by Christian Boer.
Christian Boer is a dyslexic, Dutch graphics designer, who has used his own experiences ...
19
The source MIT Technology Review article seems to answer your questions
Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were ...
19
This claim appears to be false or exaggerated. I can't find any patents in the name of the alleged inventor.
The source article identified by Rob in comments above states:
Mustafa’s supervisor, Dr. Ahmed Fikry, who heads the physics
department in Sohag University, has shown great interest in his
student’s invention and helped her patent it in the ...
18
Yes, there is a net environmental benefit from photovoltaic panels.
It would be possible to contrive a corner case where there was not a net benefit (for example, having a PV system illuminated only by a light bulb, rather than by the sun); but such cases are extremely rare.
Let's break down the big, somewhat cloudy question of "net environmental benefit" ...
18
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 some of their own.
Botnik's tweet describes their code as "predictive keyboards"--the same sort of technology that phones without full keyboards use to guess ...
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