A recent NSF study found that few Americans know their science, but most believe science fiction is true: A survey of 1,574 adults found that 60 percent agreed or strongly agreed that some people possess psychic powers or extrasensory perception, a premise that is generally discarded as unproven by most scientists. But never fear, the [...]
Faced with a complete deficiency of customer support numbers online, I decided to use my local electicity provider’s website to sign up for new service. Heralded as a convenient alternative to talking to a real person, I received this auto-reply within seconds: The Electric Company has received your request for an application and/or discontinuance of [...]
A group of Italian researchers are using simple compression to detect language, and individual voice, based on the premise that language distribution affects the compression ratio. Clever.