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OutagesI would like to thank you all for your patience during the recent outages. Something is causing a problem with the database itself. It appears to be running out of room and thus having problems when creating backups. This is not a new phenomenon - NCommander observed that the database was corrupted in Nov/Dec 2022, and he fixed the corruptions that were present at that time. I know that others have done similar 'repairs' over the years. Those of you who have been with us a while will know that we have had various site outages since the site's inception in 2014. We try to get the site up as quickly as possible but we currently have a single active sys-admin who has to find the time to fix the site in between running his own business and having a decent work/life balance. The cause of these corruptions has not been identified despite speculation by some individuals.New SiteThe administration associated with creating a business continues and we think that we are now at the final stage. The paperwork has to be signed by several people and this means sending mail around the USA in order to get real signatures from specific individuals. However, we think that this should only take a week or two.Deleting SpamFor the last month or so we have been deleting Spam from the Polls and journals. Deleting content is not new. Spam, doxxing, abusive material, CEOS, inappropriate ASCII art etc has often been deleted in the last 10 years. In fact, most of our registered community have the ability to delete some material (their own journals for example), and this has happened from time to time in the past. We also delete outdated submissions on a daily basis. The site software provides a means of making such deletions and it can cope with them. The software that is being used is not new - it has been in Rehash since the site became active.We have received some positive feedback regarding this measure - the Polls and journals are looking much tidier as a result. Unfortunately, we are going to temporarily suspend this measure to simplify the investigations into the database corruption problems. So, as unsightly as they are, we will be returning to the use of Spam moderations on a hopefully temporary basis. We have, of course, also received some negative feedback but it only seems to have come from a couple of Anonymous Cowards, one of whom is our most prolific spammer.ParticipationFinally, I would like to thank the staff for their continued efforts in keeping the site online and active. The participating user count continues to climb, as does the number of pages served each day. Many usernames that have existed for a long time but appear to have been inactive for a while are reappearing and participating in the discussions. I hope that we will soon be able to restructure our site in an affordable yet more robust structure in the very near future.JanRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

canopic jug writes:Two months ago, Conde Nast bought and folded the music site Pitchfork. For many music fans that marked the end of an era of music criticism and pop culture. Slate magazine has an oral history of the late, great Pitchfork and how it started, what made it unique, and about its demise.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/03/job-flexibility-and-security-linked-to-better-mental-health-among-workers/

owl writes:https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/why-do-regexes-use-and-as-line-anchors/

canopic jug writes:Dr Andy Farnell at The Cyber Show writes about motivations behind dropping use of generative AI for graphics and moving back to manual design and editing of images. The show had been using generative AI to produce images since its first episode, but now find that it is time to rethink that policy. As the guard rails for generative AI are set up and the boundaries restricted, it gets more racist, more gendered, and less able to output edgy ideas critical of its corporate owners and its potential as an equalizing force seems dead already. So, while the show could set up its own AI instance to generate the images they desire, there is the matter of association and the decision to stop using it has been made.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

upstart writes:Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun to step down as part of management shakeup at embattled plane maker:

upstart writes:Scientists are predicting a once-in-a-lifetime nova explosion before September:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Frosty Piss writes:https://www.38north.org/2024/03/revisiting-the-2014-korea-hydro-and-nuclear-power-hack-lessons-learned-for-south-korean-cybersecurity/

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68662881

upstart writes:In total, 11 pythons were caught, with one exceeding 16 feet [4.9m] in length:

taylorvich writes:https://phys.org/news/2024-03-life-blocks-stable-venus-conditions.html

owl writes:https://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surprising.html

upstart writes:Doctors transplant gene-edited pig kidney into living human for 1st time - National:

JoeMerchant writes:Never-Repeating Patterns of Tiles Can Safeguard Quantum Information

upstart writes:Scientists argued that mankind had been reshaping the planet long before the 1950s:

canopic jug writes:Multiple sites are noting that the state of Tennessee has passed a law protecting a performer's right of publicity even in the era of generative AI. The right of publicity is the exclusive right to the individual's likeness whether appearance or sound or other distinguishing characteristics. It is called the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act or HB 2091 for short.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

upstart writes:Mozilla Drops Onerep After CEO Admits to Running People-Search Networks:

wirelessduck writes:[Redis is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store used as a database, cache, message broker, and streaming engine]Redis has decided to move away from BSD license to dual-license Redis Source Available License (RSALv2) and Server Side Public License (SSPLv1), ignoring many historical failures where other companies tried to move away from open source licenses (ElasticSearch vs OpenSearch, MySQL vs MariaDB, Oracle JDK vs OpenJDK, OpenOffice vs LibreOffice, Terraform vs OpenTofu etc.).The decision has not gone down well within the redis community.Any Redis users in our community? What are your thoughts on this issue?Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

taylorvich writes:https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-protein-human-lyme-disease.html

taylorvich writes:https://phys.org/news/2024-03-backyard-insect-invisibility-devices-gen.html

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/hackers-can-extract-secret-encryption-keys-from-apples-mac-chips/

c0lo writes:TLDR**: families of the victims in Buffalo sued social media for providing a defective product that can damage the mental heath and radicalize some people. Defendants asked dismissal under the "we are only a public message board" Section 230, court says "naaah, mate, plaintiff pointed a compelling enough finger to your engagement algos which earn you the money. Those (civil) lawsuits may go ahead (and I'll keep my popcorn handy)".YouTube, Facebook, Reddit must face lawsuits from Buffalo shooting survivors

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/critical-us-water-systems-face-disabling-cyberattacks-white-house-warns/

owl writes:https://nanochess.org/emulator.html

canopic jug writes:The New Weather Institute in the UK and Sweden, as part of the Save Our Snow campaign (warning for javascript), has a joint campaign to end fossil sponsorships in sports. The reasoning is that those companies are responsible for the worsening climate disaster resulting in the decreasingly short winters with reduced snowfall and thus harming the very sports which they are sponsoring. Along those lines, the institute has published a report, Dirty Snow: The Snow Thieves 2 report: how a ban on polluter sponsorships in winter sport can help save our snow (warning for PDF).

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

This month, on the 24th March, it will be 5 years since MDC, denied essential medication, ended his life.Why was Michael David Crawford different? - well, he wasn't. In many ways he was just like many of us. By profession he was a software engineer. He wrote software for OSX. He first became well known - or reasonably so in our circles - for being on Kuro5hin. However, he was certainly different from many of us for the physical and mental health, and social problems that he experienced. Despite all of these things though he remained polite and open to having an interesting discussion on any technical issue that arose, both on Kuro5hin and subsequently here on SN. Someone who knew him far better than I did wrote about him here some 12 years ago. If you search on your favourite search engine I think that you will find his name appears quite a few times.His journal on SN is still there for all to read although it does not do him justice. He was a 'nice guy' and intelligent too.For example, in 2010 he was interviewed on CNN discussing employment problems that were being experienced by software engineers at that time. But this youtube link was not his only 'appearance' on that site. For some reason he thought others might want to hear him sing and elsewhere he thought that we all ought to know that he invented the internet. That last link perhaps shows the battle that he was having with mental problems yet here on this site he remained the same old 'MDC' that we had known since the start of SN and even before then for some of us.An Anonymous Coward has reminded us:

upstart writes:More than 400 of the chemicals identified are in every major commonly used plastic product such as food packaging:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/03/nvidia-announces-moonshot-to-create-embodied-human-level-ai-in-robot-form/

upstart writes:'An act of dishonesty against the company' is among the violations cited:

owl writes:https://www.righto.com/2012/02/apple-didnt-revolutionize-power.html

As discussed in this press release (and picked up by auto industry sites), https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/first-partial-driving-automation-safeguard-ratings-show-industry-has-work-to-do recent tests on "Level 2" types of driving automation suggest that more development is needed.

upstart writes:Starbucks' Odyssey Web3 rewards program ends on March 31 and its NFT marketplace will be shifted over to Nifty:

taylorvich writes:https://phys.org/news/2024-03-crystals-stellar-aging-stars-delay.html

owl writes:https://niemczuk.tech/2024/02/11/detailed-macrophotography-of-PCBs

bootsy writes:Herb Sutter has an interesting article on his blog about approaches to improve security in C++ and modifying the language to assist with stopping programming errors that lead to exploits.https://herbsutter.com/2024/03/11/safety-in-context/There are two interesting insights. Firstly. most CVEs come from issues that could be dealt with with small changes to C++ that are being proposed.

upstart writes:Government wants flying taxis to take off in 2 years:

taylorvich writes:https://phys.org/news/2024-03-method-woodland-resource.html

Just a brief update - but welcome news for a change.After a long wait (and after a query to the IRS regarding the progress of our application), fliptop has received news verbally that we have been approved by the IRS for Not For Profit status. The essential paperwork should be with fliptop by the end of the week. Once it has been received we can then move ahead to create a company. Again, we cannot guess how long this process will take but it is the final step required before the community can take control of the site and its assets.My grateful thanks to fliptop for his efforts.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes:Cisco acquires Splunk in $28 billion cybersecurity deal:

taylorvich writes:https://techxplore.com/news/2024-03-bridge-origami-power.html

upstart writes:Researchers managed to crack Meta's Quest VR system, allowing them to steal sensitive information, and manipulate social interactions:

mrpg writes:https://www.engadget.com/framework-laptop-16-review-modular-wonder-mediocre-gaming-laptop-150026910.html

canopic jug writes:The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which aims to promote world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences, and culture, has added Berlin's techno scene to its cultural heritage list.