"They have done biohacking, clean sleeping and the keto diet, but now Silicon Valley types have coined a new health trend -- dopamine fasting," reports the Guardian: It is thought that depriving yourself of the neurotransmitter, a chemical messenger that motivates us to do things, can help to reboot or rebalance the brain. Fasting might entail abstinence from technology, artificial light, food, drink, conversation, eye contact -- essentially anything that an individual finds stimulating.

But is there any sense to the fad? "Retreating from life probably makes life more interesting when you come back to it," says David Nutt, director of the neuropsychopharmacology unit in the division of brain sciences at Imperial College London. "Monks have been doing it for thousands of years. Whether that has anything to do with dopamine is unclear."
A professor at UCSF Medical School tells the New York Times that the name is a misnomer, since it's more of a stimulation fast. The Times writes that "A dopamine fast is simple because it is basically a fast of everything... The number of things to not do is potentially endless." Silicon Valley is not the first group to discover that moderating emotions or spending periods trying to feel less can lead to happiness. In their quest, they are moving toward two very old groups: those in silent meditation and the Amish.... Karen Donovan, who is developing a new Vipassana silent meditation center in Silicon Valley, said she sees this trend as moving closer to the ultimate dopamine fast: sitting on a dark floor with eyes closed for 10 days.

"There's a growing self-awareness of what in Vipassana terms we would call suffering," she said.

Gizmodo reports that Sony "will happily sell you make-believe virtual meals" for their robotic Aibo dog to unlock tricks, one of several new features added since its re-launch in 2017: The new feature that will appeal to most owners, however, is Aibo Food, which allows the robot to be virtually fed using augmented reality through the Aibo smartphone app. Meals can be purchased using coins, which are awarded to users through random actions like repeatedly using the Aibo app, or during special events. But once users runs out of coins, which is bound to quickly happen as they try out the new Aibo Food feature, they can either wait for more Sony handouts or purchase additional coins for a fee.

Sony points out that Aibo's performance and features aren't dependent on whether the dog is regularly fed -- it is, after all, just a robot. So hopefully the company won't change its mind down the line, making your pup act sluggish and distracted when you're not forking out for pretend food.... Of course, other complications arrive once you start feeding an animal, and the new software update also allows users to finally potty train their Aibos using a new mapping feature so the robot doesn't pretend-shit all over your house.

This appears to be a free feature, until Sony realises it can sell owners virtual poop bags.
There's also a new web-based API/developer program that lets you program the robot dog to perform custom actions -- and Aibo dogs now come equipped with some new patrol/security functionality.

"Using its facial recognition and room-mapping capabilities, Aibo will be able to patrol homes and locate various family members, providing reports on where everyone is, and helping owners track down specific people, according to Sony."

An anonymous reader quotes a Yahoo News 360 report on Americans who hate Daylight Saving Time: A push to end the semiannual clock shift, which has been shown to correlate with negative health and productivity outcomes, is gaining steam throughout the country. Most of the momentum is behind a movement to make daylight saving time permanent so the "spring forward" lasts all year long. A number of states including California, Florida, Washington and Oregon have taken legislative steps to do just that, but an act of Congress would be needed for any of those changes to go into effect.
Meanwhile, CBS News reports: Most people across the country will see their clocks roll back an hour this weekend as nearly eight months of daylight saving time come to an end. It is part of a twice-a-year ritual that most want to stop. Seven in 10 Americans prefer not to switch back and forth to mark daylight saving time, a new poll shows.
The poll also shows that 33% of Americans younger than 45 prefer the current system of switching clocks twice a year -- compared to just 24% of Americans 45 or older.

haaz (Slashdot reader #3,346) tells us that history has just been made as part of the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals annual online game-playing fundraiser, Extra Life:
A man from Milwaukee, Wisconsin is trying to play pinball long enough to break the standing Guinness World Record for Longest Marathon Pinball Play of 30 hours 10 minutes.

He's using Extra Life's gaming/DIY fundraising site to webcast his attempt and raise money for Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. He gets a five minute break every hour, and yes, he's wearing an adult diaper.
Just minutes ago on Twitter, the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin announced he'd beaten the record. And lots of other fundraising game-playing marathons are happening around the world today, including one in Canada -- and many of them are being streamed online.

The event began in 2008, and over the last four years has raised close to $10 million each year. As one gaming site put it, "Let's help the future programmers of our cyborg overlords fulfill their mission by streaming some video games for the kids this weekend!"

CNBC reports that a popular Twitch poker star has been accused of cheating: Stones Gambling Hall in Sacramento, California says it will not livestream poker games pending an investigation into cheating allegations made against one of the game's players, Mike Postle... The original accusations were made by Veronica Brill, another poker player who has played with Postle on "Stones Live." Since then, others have come forward with similar complaints. Brill has no specific accusation of what Postle is doing and even admits that she can't be sure he is cheating. So why does she think he is cheating? His results are too good, according to Brill. She said (and several professional pokers players who talked to CNBC, agreed) no one could do as well as he has, for as long as he has, on these livestreamed games...

It's not just that Postle is winning, it's how he's winning, that is drawing suspicion. Poker commentator Joey Ingram, poker pro Matt Berkey, and others have spent hours reviewing hands Postle played and found several times where Postle made a fold or a call that wouldn't seem "right" but happened to work out in his favor. Berkey said Postle made plays no pro would ever make, and he did them often, and they worked. Poker is a game of incomplete information. Berkey said Postle played "as if he had perfect information."

Stones Gambling Hall said it has hired an independent investigator to look into the accusations. In a statement Stones Gambling Hall said: "We temporarily halted all broadcasts from Stones. We have also, as a result, halted the use of RFID playing cards." The RFID cards contain chips, that combined with readers in the poker table, transmit information about each player's hole cards, so that viewers can see the cards on the broadcast (which is on a 30-minute delay to protect game integrity). At this point, there is no specific allegation, no "smoking gun" as Berkey said. But many pros are pointing to those RFID cards and the hole card information, saying it's just not possible for Postle to play the way he does and win the way he does.

"The US military has been forced to apologise for tweeting that it would use stealth-bombers on 'millenials' who try to storm Area 51," reports Yahoo News UK: More than two million people signed up to a Facebook event recently which encouraged atendees to visit the top secret base in Nevada. But only a few thousand UFO enthusiasts turned up on Friday to the facility, which is rumoured to contain secrets about aliens. As hordes of enthusiasts turned up the PR arm of the US military, called the Defence Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), tweeted: "The last thing #Millennials will see if they attempt the #area51raid today" with a picture of military officers in front of a stealth bomber.

Shortly afterwards the tweet was deleted and the unit apologised saying it "in no way" reflects their stance... "It was inappropriate and we apologize for this mistake."

Around 1,000 people visited the facility's gates on Friday and at least six were arrested by police.

The Storm Area 51 invitation spawned festivals in the tiny nearby towns of Rachel and Hiko, more than two hours' drive from Las Vegas. Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee estimated late on Thursday that about 1,500 people had gathered at the festival sites, and more than 150 made the trip several additional miles on bone-rattling dirt roads to get within selfie distance of the gates.... "It's public land," the sheriff said. "They're allowed to go to the gate as long as they don't cross the boundary."
Most of the arrests were for "misdemeanor trespassing on base property," which carries a $1,000 fine, according to the article. "In the end, no one actually 'stormed' Area 51, although deputies in rural Nye County resorted to 'heated warnings' to disperse as many as 200 people," reports the Associated Press.

In another article the news service also quotes Lincoln County emergency services chief Eric Holt as saying resources had been mustered to handle up to 30,000 people and calling the low turnout a "best-case" scenario... Although there were two car crashes involving cows. "The cows died, but motorists weren't hurt."

The main festival apparently drew 3,000 attendees, while the rival "Area 51 Basecamp" festival sold just 500 tickets for their Friday concert, prompting them to cancel their Saturday concert altogether. Its promoter told the Associated Press, "It was a gamble financially. We lost."

Here's an interesting thought exercise from Slashdot reader dryriver : What is likely to be so different about living in 2039 that it makes our current present in 2019 feel badly dated in many ways? And can we learn lessons about what we are not doing particularly well today in 2019 -- in the technology field for example -- by imagining ourselves looking back at a long bygone 2019 from 20 years in the future...?

Will everything from our current clothing, 4K 2D TVs and film VFX to our computer games, Internet, cars, medical care options and tech gadgets look "terribly dated" to them? Will people in 2039 look at us from their present and think "why couldn't they do X, Y, Z better in 2019?", just as we tend to look 20 years back and wonder "why couldn't they do X, Y, Z better in 1999?"
The original submission argues that "If we could understand today how we look 'from 20 years in the future', including the mistakes we are making compared to how things are (possibly) done in 2039, we might get a better understanding of how we should be doing things today."

So leave your own thoughts in the comments. How will 2019 look to people 20 years from now?

A reporter for SFGate describes what happened when he tried out for the quidditch team at the University of California at Berkeley: The person throwing me what's called a "quaffle" (actually a slightly deflated volleyball) looked at me to make sure I'm ready. I gave them a head nod and grip my "broom" (a PVC pipe), ready to run. "GO!" I run 20 feet and turn back to catch the ball. Success!

But as I take my next step, I get decked by team captain Dara Gaeuman, fall to the ground, drop the quaffle, re-grab the quaffle, get back up, run over to the hoop and score. It's a triumphant moment for my post-healthy, 33-year-old self, regardless of the fact that this a drill. On the first day of practice. Of a sport I'm playing for the first time. With people who likely weren't born when the first Harry Potter book came out....

[I]n 2005, a pair of students at Middlebury College -- Xander Manshel and Alex Benepe -- translated quidditch into a non-flying sport. The game used to be played on wooden brooms until a few years ago when the game got too rough. There are still chasers (offensive players), beaters (defenders), seekers, keepers (like a goalie in hockey or soccer) and quaffles (again the balls, stay with me here) and bludgers (slightly deflated dodgeballs). But here the snitch is actually a person with sock-like pouch attached to their lower back that has to be snatched by the seekers, while the snitch tries to evade them... Almost 15 years after its inception, real-world quidditch has grown into a global phenomenon, with an International Quidditch Association (IQA) that has a World Cup every two years, a couple of semi-pro leagues, several regional and national leagues and more than 150 colleges and universities with club teams.

During practice, Chanun Ong, a sophomore returning for his second year on the team, tells a freshman, "I wasn't a big Harry Potter fan, but this sport is pretty legit."
There's a short video of the quidditch practice, and the the article's author remembers some crucial advice he received from one of the players. "Scrunch your body down if someone is about to throw a bludger at you, so you're a harder target to hit."

Although he also acknowledges that most of the people watching the two-hour practice "were passersby trying to figure out what the hell is going on."

H&âOEouml;vding spent four years developing their next-generation bicycle helmet, the Metro reports: Easier to use, adjustable and enabled with Bluetooth technology, the helmet, according to H&âOEouml;vding 's CEO Frederik Carling, is the world's safest. Donning advanced airbag tech and functions such as the ability to contact next-of-kin in the event of an accident, Frederik and the team spent years surveying people to make the kit as bespoke, safe and desirable as possible. Fredrik says: "Our surveys of cyclists in seven major European cities show that 70% would cycle more if they felt safer. We have focused on this and want to contribute to greater safety."

New features include the new patented airbag, along with an upgraded battery that can last for up to 15 hours. An iOS and Android compatible app allows the company to gather data relating to where urban cyclists experience the most accidents. The result? Data that can be used to argue for more cycling infrastructure and, of course, tech that saves more lives...

When the design-savvy headgear is activated, it registers movements 200 times a second and in the event of an accident, is inflated in 0.1 seconds to enclose the head and hold the cyclist's neck in place. 185,000 cyclists currently use it, with over 4,000 saying that it had made a significant difference during close calls.

In addition to all its safety features, Carling hopes that his helmet can be used to help the environment in the long run. "Cycling may be the answer to many of the challenges relating to the environment, congestion in cities and health, and we want to take cyclist protection to the next level," he says.

CNN reports: Pizza might protect against cancer, why wombats poop in cubes and a diaper changing machine that can be used on human babies -- these are just some of the research and inventions awarded at this year's Ig Nobel Prizes, a spoof of the actual Nobel Prize awards. The Ig Nobels are "intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology," according to its website.

Even if the science does sound, well, hilarious.

Organized by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, the awards have been going on for 29 years, always celebrated in September with a gala held at Harvard University. Winners accept their prizes from "genuinely bemused genuine Nobel Laureates," the website reads.
Long-time Slashdot reader LifesABeach shared a link to that wacky two-hour prize ceremony on YouTube. You can also read the list of 2019's winners on the official web site.

And today, most of this year's Ig Nobel winners also gave free public talks at MIT.

Somewhere along the North Raccoon River in Adel, Iowa -- population 3,682 -- two men were arrested for trying to break into the county courthouse.

And then things got weird, the Des Moines Register reports: The men, outfitted with numerous burglary tools, told authorities they were on contract to test out the courthouse alarm system's viability and to gauge law enforcement's response time, an alleged contract that Dallas County officials said they had no knowledge of, according to a criminal complaint.

Authorities later found out the state court administration did, in fact, hire the men to attempt "unauthorized access" to court records "through various means" in order to check for potential security vulnerabilities of Iowa's electronic court records, according to Iowa Judicial Branch officials. But, the state court administration "did not intend, or anticipate, those efforts to include the forced entry into a building," a Wednesday news release from the Iowa Judicial Branch read.

Evidently, the courthouse's security system did its job. The alarm system was triggered by the two men whom law enforcement found walking around the courthouse's third floor at about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, court records show. Justin Wynn, of Naples, Florida, and Gary Demercurio, 43, of Seattle, Washington, were both charged with third-degree burglary and possession of burglary tools. Their bond has been set at $50,000.
"Our employees work diligently to ensure our engagements are conducted with utmost integrity and in alignment with the objectives of our client," their employer, the cybersecurity company Coalfire, told the Inquirer.

When they contacted county sheriff Chad Leonard, he would only say that "It's a strange case. We're still investigating this thing."

An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider: An ambitious project that purported to turn anyone into a farmer with a single tool is scraping by with smoke-and-mirror tactics, employees told Business Insider. The "personal food computer," a device that MIT Media Lab senior researcher Caleb Harper presented as helping thousands of people across the globe grow custom, local food, simply doesn't work, according to two employees and multiple internal documents that Business Insider viewed. One person asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation...

Ahead of big demonstrations with MIT Media Lab funders, staff were told to place plants grown elsewhere into the devices, the insiders said. In other instances, devices delivered to local schools simply didn't work. "It's fair to say that of the 30-ish food computers we sent out, at most two grew a plant," one person said...
One worker told the site that at one school the students "would joke that the plants they were growing in plastic cups were growing better than the ones in the personal food computers."

That pilot program "ended shortly thereafter."

Microsoft's 2019 summer interns have created Microsoft: the Musical, an 8-minute video whose director describes it as "a Tony Awards-style musical theater opening number."

Long-time Slashdot reader Your Average Joe shared the Verge's article about the video: 150 full-time employees and interns at Microsoft have volunteered their mornings, weekends, and nights to create a Microsoft musical video. The video was shot in various buildings at Microsoft's corporate campus in Redmond, Washington and it features interns and staff members singing and dancing about how it's "all happening here."

It starts off with a section about co-founder Bill Gates, before some classic lines like "all around the world our products are well known, except for when we tried to make a phone!" The musical even briefly acknowledges the company missing a beat with Vista, and features former CEO Steve Ballmer's famous "developers, developers, developers" chant.
The video's description on YouTube says the music is "coming soon" to Apple's iTunes store as well as Spotify.

Directed by one of Microsoft's data science interns, it opens with a narrator remembering that "There once was a lad whose eyesight was bad, but his vision was crystal clear. He looked a line that was clearly defined and declined to align by its rigid design." (Was that a reference to the antitrust case Microsoft settled in 2001?) A later lyric emphasizes that "more than plain old gadgets is the gall that makes the magic..."

The narrator then introduces a woman with a book as Bill Gates, explaining to her that "These days, Bill Gates is more of an idea."

I think it's appalling that there's absolutely no mention of recently-deceased Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. (Although they found room for a tongue-in-cheek reference to "Clippy's strength of will.") But among other things, this whole video project really begs the question: what else did they leave out about Microsoft?

"This was a Wayne's World scene gone awry..." says an attorney for 23-year-old Andrew Harris. "They were Wayne and Garth in a blue Pacer with a dumb idea and a mixed run of luck," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer: Harris previously had filed an application for federal student aid, and noticed that the government form would redirect to the IRS and import his own tax returns automatically. Harris and his fellow classmate Justin Hiemstra wondered: What would happen if they posed as one of Trump's offspring? Could they use an application for aid to land the returns and scoop the nation's biggest newspapers? Tiffany Trump had graduated in May 2016 from the University of Pennsylvania and had announced she was going to graduate school at Georgetown University. It could work.

Six days before the 2016 election, Harris and Hiemstra went to Haverford College's computer lab and logged in using another student's credentials. They accessed a Free Application for Student Aid (FAFSA). When they attempted to register under the name of Trump's child, they were stunned to discover an application under that name already existed. Using Google, they successfully guessed most of the answers to a series of challenge questions to reset the password. Stymied four times on one of the security questions, they gave up.

What they didn't realize was that the Department of Education was monitoring all traffic on the FAFSA site. The failed attempt sent up a red flag. The IRS dispatched federal investigators to Haverford shortly after.
Last month Pulitzer Prize-winning tax journalist David Cay Johnston told the paper "It's surprising they didn't catch them until four tries." They also reported that while Harris was expelled from the college, 22-year-old Hiemstra was allowed to graduate, and both men have pleaded guilty to accessing a computer without authorization and attempting to access a computer without authorization to obtain government information.

When sentenced in December, they'll face a maximum of two years in prison, two years of supervised release, and a $200,000 fine.

"A Boston study published this month suggests people who tend to be optimistic are likelier than others to live to be 85 years old or more," reports NPR: That finding was independent of other factors thought to influence life's length -- such as "socioeconomic status, health conditions, depression, social integration, and health behaviors," the researchers from Boston University School of Medicine and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health say... The study included 69,744 women and 1,429 men. Both groups completed survey measures to assess their level of optimism, as well as their overall health and health habits such as diet, smoking and alcohol use.

In the survey, study participants were asked if they agreed with statements such as "in uncertain times I usually expect the best" or "I usually expect to succeed in things that I do." Health outcomes from women in the study were tracked for 10 years, while the men's health was followed for 30 years. Researchers found that the most optimistic men and women demonstrated, on average, an 11-15% longer lifespan, and had far greater odds of reaching 85 years old, compared to the least optimistic group.

Inside Edition filmed a 10-minute segment with safety expert Steve Kardian to answer the question, "What Will Happen if You Try to Storm Area 51." More than 2 million people have marked themselves as "attending" a Facebook event called "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop Us" on Sept. 20. An additional 1.5 million people have expressed interest in attending, according to the page. But attendees should be prepared for an impenetrable Air Force facility, complete with guards armed with M4-type weapons, night-vision goggles and surface-to-air missiles, said Kardian, who's been in law enforcement for 33 years and has trained Navy SEALs and other military personnel.

"[Visitors are] going to have real trouble the minute they get within 100 yards of the facility," he said. Any closer, "you would likely be approached by a good number of individuals with guns pointed at you, with weaponry, screaming at you to get down on the ground...." Even if you did breach the perimeter and get past the armed guards, you would likely have to cross 50 miles before reaching anything top secret, Kardian said, and "the majority will not be visible from the ground."
Their report notes that the penalty for trespassing on a military base is 6 months in prison, a $500 fine, or both. But Vice reports that the joke Facebook event "has now spurred three supposedly real festivals over the weekend of September 20" -- Alienstock, Peacestock51, and Storm Area 51 Basecamp. "As was reported previously, the local population of Rachel, Nevada is not too thrilled about Alienstock.

In fact, the town's official web site now includes a complaint about "haphazard attempts" by the local bar to put together an event, adding "Locals are not kept in the loop and they certainly are not happy about this event that is likely to bring chaos to Rachel. "Law enforcement will be overwhelmed and local residents will step up to protect their property. It could get ugly. Please consider visiting our town another time."

"As we've discussed in the past, old people are some of the only video game streamers worth watching," writes the AV Club: Filled with the wisdom that comes from age, seniors are the necessary corrective to Twitch and YouTube channels currently dominated by excitable whippersnappers. Fortunately, as outlined in a piece NBC's Kalhan Rosenblatt that explores this world, video games are gaining popularity among the elderly. The piece references a study that found "38 percent of Americans age 50 and older said they play video games" and looks at those who belong to this demographic.... Our old pal, the Skyrim-loving Shirley Curry pops up, too, when Rosenblatt gets into the seniors who stream games or upload videos of what they're playing online. Curry, who is 83, has "more than 700,000 subscribers on YouTube," and refers to her viewers as "grandkids," is mentioned alongside 66-year-old Twitch streamer GrandpaGaming (AKA Will R.). He streams games that include PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Apex Legends, uploading highlights that show him kicking the ass of other players who, when their age is compared to his, are probably quite literal noobs.

c Rosenblatt mentions the social benefits of video games as well as studies that show how, "with their complex controls and fast pace" they provide "a mental workout for seniors" that could help "delay or slow the onset of degenerative neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia." This means that, aside from providing a subgenre of game streams that are far more entertaining than the usual, these seniors are potentially improving their health as well.

An anonymous reader quotes the lead consumer technology writer for the New York Times: I'm neither a Luddite nor a cheapskate. But after testing hundreds of tech products -- and buying some along the way -- over the last dozen years, I've come to a conclusion: People will almost always get more joy from technology the longer they wait for it to mature. [Alternate URL here.] Cutting-edge gadgets can invoke awe and temptation, but being an early adopter involves risk, and the downsides usually outweigh the benefits.

Keep this in mind when, starting next month, we enter the end-of-the-year tech frenzy. That's when companies like Apple, Samsung and Google will try to woo us with hot new gadgets, including premium smartphones, tablets and wearable computers... [M]y default recommendation is to resist hitting the "Buy" button and to wait unless you absolutely need to replace your older tech. "New doesn't always necessarily mean better, or better in ways that will matter," said Nick Guy, a senior staff writer for Wirecutter, a New York Times company that tests products.
He remembers paying $600 for an original iPhone in 2007 -- only to watch the price drop to $200 within six months.

AmiMoJo quote the Verge: At least three smart June Ovens have turned on in the middle of the night and heated up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. The ovens' owners aren't sure why this happened, and June tells The Verge that user error is at fault...

The June Oven debuted in 2015 as a $1,495 countertop oven that uses a camera and computer vision to identify food that's been placed inside. The company raised nearly $30 million in funding and released its second-generation version in 2018 for $599. It's billed as "seven appliances in one": an air fryer, dehydrator, slow cooker, broiler, toaster, warming drawer, and convection countertop oven. It also pairs with an app that allows people to choose their temperature and cooking settings, as well as live stream their food as it cooks thanks to the built-in camera.
The company is planning an update that'll hopefully remedy the situation and prevent it from happening again, but that change isn't coming until next month.

In just 16 days XKCD author Randall Munroe releases a new book titled How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems. He's just released an excerpt from the chapter "How to Catch a Drone," in which he actually enlisted the assistance of tennis star Serena Williams.

An anonymous reader writes: Serena and her husband Alexis just happened to have a DJI Mavic Pro 2 with a broken camera -- and Munroe asked her to try to smash it with tennis balls. "My tentative guess was that a champion player would have an accuracy ratio around 50 when serving, and take 5-7 tries to hit a drone from 40 feet. (Would a tennis ball even knock down a drone? Maybe it would just ricochet off and cause the drone to wobble! I had so many questions.)

"Alexis flew the drone over the net and hovered there, while Serena served from the baseline..."

His blog has the rest of the story, and Munroe has even illustrated the experiment, promising that the book also contains additional anti-drone strategies, an analysis of other sports projectiles, and "a discussion with a robot ethicist about whether hitting a drone with a tennis ball is wrong."