Slashdot

"Red Hat is going to do away with the X.Org server and support Wayland and XWayland for apps that currently (or only) run on X11," writes Slashdot reader motang. Red Hat's Carlos Soriano Sanchez confirmed on the Red Hat blog: "The result of this evaluation is that, while there are still some gaps and applications that need some level of adaptation, we believe the Wayland infrastructure and ecosystem are in good shape, and that we're on a good path for the identified blockers to be resolved by the time RHEL 10 is out, planned to be released on the first half of 2025. With this, we've decided to remove Xorg server and other X servers (except Xwayland) from RHEL 10 and the following releases. Xwayland should be able to handle most X11 clients that won't immediately be ported to Wayland, and if needed, our customers will be able to stay on RHEL 9 for its full life cycle while resolving the specifics needed for transitioning to a Wayland ecosystem. It's important to note that "Xorg Server" and "X11" are not synonymous, X11 is a protocol that will continue to be supported through Xwayland, while the Xorg Server is one of the implementations of the X11 protocol.[...]This decision will allow us to focus our efforts starting from RHEL 10 solely on a modern stack and ecosystem. This means we will be able to tackle problems such as HDR, increased security, setups with mixed low and high density displays or very high density displays, better GPU/Display hot-plugging, better gestures and scrolling, and so on. We are confident that Wayland will provide a solid platform and we're excited to work with the community and all of our partners and customers on building the future for Linux."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: As the host of global climate talks that begin this week, the United Arab Emirates is expected to play a central role in forging an agreement to move the world more rapidly away from coal, oil and gas. But behind the scenes, the Emirates has sought to use its position as host to pursue a contradictory goal: to lobby on oil and gas deals around the world, according to an internal document made public by a whistle-blower.In one example, the document offers guidance for Emirati climate officials to use meetings with Brazil's environment minister to enlist her help with a local petrochemical deal by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the Emirates' state-run oil and gas company, known as Adnoc. Emirati officials should also inform their Chinese counterparts that Adnoc was "willing to jointly evaluate international LNG opportunities" in Mozambique, Canada and Australia, the document indicates. LNG stands for liquefied natural gas, which is a fossil fuel and a driver of global warming. These and other details in the nearly 50-page document -- obtained by the Centre for Climate Reportingand the BBC -- have cast a pall over the climate summit, which begins on Thursday. They are indications, experts said, that the U.A.E. is blurring the boundary between its powerful standing as host of the United Nations climate conference, and U.A.E.'s position as one of the world's largest oil and gas exporters. [...] In private, delegates preparing to travel to Dubai expressed concerns that the cloud surrounding the host nation threatened to discredit the talks themselves. The allegations, they said, risked undermining what many have hoped the negotiations will yield: a deal to replace polluting fossil fuels with clean energy such as wind and solar power. But many said they were reluctant to speak out publicly, for fear of jeopardizing their ability to negotiate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

American Airlines today announced a deal with Graphyte to purchase "carbon removal credits" to help accelerate its long-term goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. According to the announcement, the airline will purchase credits equivalent to 10,000 tons of permanent carbon removal with delivery scheduled for early 2025. From the report: Graphyte uses a process called carbon casting that converts byproducts from the agriculture and timber industries such as wood bark, rice hulls and plant stalks which have captured carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. The plant material is dried to prevent decomposition and then converted into carbon dense bricks that are sealed with a polymer barrier. These bricks are stored in underground chambers and monitored with sensors to make sure the carbon does not escape, according to the company. Plant byproducts from the agriculture and timber industries are typically burned or left to decompose, which returns carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This biomass material is equivalent to 3 billion tons of potential carbon dioxide removal annually, according to Graphyte. Graphyte says carbon casting is a cheap, scalable alternative to expensive and technologically intensive methods of carbon capture and removal. The company is backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an investment firm founded by Bill Gates that funds clean energy technologies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Emilia David reports via The Verge: AWS added new languages to its Amazon Transcribe product, offering generative AI-based transcription for 100 languages and a slew of new AI capabilities for customers. Announced during the AWS re: Invent event, Amazon Transcribe can now recognize more spoken languages and spin up a call transcription. AWS customers use Transcribe to add speech-to-text capabilities to their apps on the AWS Cloud. The company said in a blog post that Transcribe trained on "millions of hours of unlabeled audio data from over 100 languages" and uses self-supervised algorithms to learn patterns of human speech in different languages and accents. AWS said it ensured that some languages were not overrepresented in the training data to ensure that lesser-used languages could be as accurate as more frequently spoken ones. In late 2022, Amazon Transcribe supported 79 languages. Amazon Transcribe has 20 to 50 percent accuracy across many languages, according to AWS. It also offers automatic punctuation, custom vocabulary, automatic language identification, and custom vocabulary filters. It can recognize speech in audio and video formats and noisy environments. With better language recognition, AWS said advances with Amazon Transcribe also bleed into better accuracy with its Call Analytics platform, which its contact center customers often use. Amazon Transcribe Call Analytics, now also powered by generative AI models, summarizes interactions between an agent and a customer. AWS said this cuts down on after-call work creating reports, and managers can quickly read information without needing to go through the entire transcript.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anton Shilov reports via Tom's Hardware: Engineers from Frore Systems have integrated the company's innovative solid-state AirJet cooling system, which provides impressive cooling capabilities despite a lack of moving parts, into an M2-based Apple MacBook Air. With proper cooling, the relatively inexpensive laptop matched the performance of a more expensive MacBook Pro based on the same processor. The lack of a fan is probably one of the main advantages of Apple's MacBook Air over its more performant siblings, but it also puts the laptop at a disadvantage. Fanless cooling doesn't have moving parts (which is a plus), but it also cannot properly cool down Apple's M1 or M2 processor under high loads, which is why a 13-inch MacBook Air powered by M1 or M2 system-on-chip is slower than 13-inch MacBook Pro based on the same SoC. However, making a MacBook Air run as fast as a 13-inch MacBook Pro is now possible. A video posted to YouTube by PC World shows how the AirJet system works. They also released a recent demo showing off the strength of the AirJet technology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A prolific espionage hacking group with ties to China spent over two years looting the corporate network of NXP, the Netherlands-based chipmaker whose silicon powers security-sensitive components found in smartphones, smartcards, and electric vehicles, a news outlet has reported. The intrusion, by a group tracked under names including "Chimera" and "G0114," lasted from late 2017 to the beginning of 2020, according to Netherlands national news outlet NRC Handelsblad, which cited "several sources" familiar with the incident. During that time, the threat actors periodically accessed employee mailboxes and network drives in search of chip designs and other NXP intellectual property. The breach wasn't uncovered until Chimera intruders were detected in a separate company network that connected to compromised NXP systems on several occasions. Details of the breach remained a closely guarded secret until now. NRC cited a report published (and later deleted) by security firm Fox-IT, titled Abusing Cloud Services to Fly Under the Radar. It documented Chimera using cloud services from companies including Microsoft and Dropbox to receive data stolen from the networks of semiconductor makers, including one in Europe that was hit in "early Q4 2017." Some of the intrusions lasted as long as three years before coming to light. NRC said the unidentified victim was NXP. "Once nested on a first computer -- patient zero -- the spies gradually expand their access rights, erase their tracks in between and secretly sneak to the protected parts of the network," NRC reporters wrote in an English translation. "They try to secrete the sensitive data they find there in encrypted archive files via cloud storage services such as Microsoft OneDrive. According to the log files that Fox-IT finds, the hackers come every few weeks to see whether interesting new data can be found at NXP and whether more user accounts and parts of the network can be hacked." NXP did not alert customers or shareholders to the intrusion, other than a brief reference in a 2019 annual report. It read: "We have, from time to time, experienced cyber-attacks attempting to obtain access to our computer systems and networks. Such incidents, whether or not successful, could result in the misappropriation of our proprietary information and technology, the compromise of personal and confidential information of our employees, customers, or suppliers, or interrupt our business. For instance, in January 2020, we became aware of a compromise of certain of our systems. We are taking steps to identify the malicious activity and are implementing remedial measures to increase the security of our systems and networks to respond to evolving threats and new information. As of the date of this filing, we do not believe that this IT system compromise has resulted in a material adverse effect on our business or any material damage to us. However, the investigation is ongoing, and we are continuing to evaluate the amount and type of data compromised. There can be no assurance that this or any other breach or incident will not have a material impact on our operations and financial results in the future."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Futurism has accused Sports Illustrated of publishing AI-generated articles under fake author biographies. The magazine has since removed the articles in question and released a statement blaming the issue on a contractor. From the report: There was nothing in Drew Ortiz's author biography at Sports Illustrated to suggest that he was anything other than human. "Drew has spent much of his life outdoors, and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature," it read. "Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn't out camping, hiking, or just back on his parents' farm." The only problem? Outside of Sports Illustrated, Drew Ortiz doesn't seem to exist. He has no social media presence and no publishing history. And even more strangely, his profile photo on Sports Illustrated is for sale on a website that sells AI-generated headshots, where he's described as "neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes." Ortiz isn't the only AI-generated author published by Sports Illustrated, according to a person involved with the creation of the content who asked to be kept anonymous to protect them from professional repercussions. "There's a lot," they told us of the fake authors. "I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist." "At the bottom [of the page] there would be a photo of a person and some fake description of them like, 'oh, John lives in Houston, Texas. He loves yard games and hanging out with his dog, Sam.' Stuff like that," they continued. "It's just crazy." According to a second person involved in the creation of the Sports Illustrated content who also asked to be kept anonymous, that's because it's not just the authors' headshots that are AI-generated. At least some of the articles themselves, they said, were churned out using AI as well. "The content is absolutely AI-generated," the second source said, "no matter how much they say that it's not." After we reached out with questions to the magazine's publisher, The Arena Group, all the AI-generated authors disappeared from Sports Illustrated's site without explanation. [...] Though Sports Illustrated's AI-generated authors and their articles disappeared after we asked about them, similar operations appear to be alive and well elsewhere in The Arena Group's portfolio. An Arena Group spokesperson issued the following statement blaming a contractor for the content: "Today, an article was published alleging that Sports Illustrated published AI-generated articles. According to our initial investigation, this is not accurate. The articles in question were product reviews and were licensed content from an external, third-party company, AdVon Commerce. A number of AdVon's e-commerce articles ran on certain Arena websites. We continually monitor our partners and were in the midst of a review when these allegations were raised. AdVon has assured us that all of the articles in question were written and edited by humans. According to AdVon, their writers, editors, and researchers create and curate content and follow a policy that involves using both counter-plagiarism and counter-AI software on all content. However, we have learned that AdVon had writers use a pen or pseudo name in certain articles to protect author privacy -- actions we don't condone -- and we are removing the content while our internal investigation continues and have since ended the partnership."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Registry released a new top-level .meme domain that you can now add to your website. The Verge reports: The new .meme domains are available to register right now as part of an early access period for an "additional one-time fee." If you don't want to pay extra, you can wait until they become publicly available on December 5th at 4PM UTC (12PM ET) to pay just the base annual price. There are already a handful of sites that are embracing the .meme domain, some of which are dedicated to memes from the days of yore, including grumpycat.meme, nyancat.meme, and keyboardcat.meme. The meme tracker knowyour.meme even adopted the new domain. However, some of these .meme sites just direct you to a .com address or point you to another platform.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: App developer Elias Saba has had some bad luck with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedowns. His Android TV app Downloader, which combines a web browser with a file manager, was suspended by Google Play in May after several Israeli TV companies complained that the app could be used to load a pirate website. Google reversed that suspension after three weeks. But Downloader has been suspended by Google Play again, and this time the reason is even harder to understand. Based on a vague DMCA notice, it appears that Downloader was suspended simply because it can load the Warner Bros. website. [...] The notice includes a copy of the DMCA complaint, which came from MarkScan, a "digital asset protection" firm that content owners hire to enforce copyrights. MarkScan said in its complaint that it represents Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. A DMCA notice is supposed to identify and describe the copyrighted work that was infringed. But MarkScan's notice about Downloader identifies the copyrighted work only as "Properties of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc." It provides no detail on which Warner Bros. work was infringed by Downloader. A DMCA notice is also supposed to provide an example of where someone can see "an authorized example of the work." In this field, MarkScan simply entered the main Warner Bros. URL: https://www.warnerbros.com/. The Downloader app had been installed over 10 million times before the takedown, according to an Internet Archive capture taken before the latest suspension. Saba appealed the takedown today, but he told us that the appeal was rejected by Google Play after 24 minutes. Saba said he also submitted a DMCA counter-notice, which gives the complainant 10 business days from today to file a legal action. After his first takedown in May, his app was reinstated after the DMCA complainant didn't take any legal action. Saba also wrote a blog post today about the latest takedown. "Given that my app still does not contain any copyright-infringing content and never has, I've countered this new DMCA takedown which will, hopefully, mean the app will be restored sometime in the coming weeks," he wrote. "In the meantime, you can sideload the app onto your Google TV or Android TV devices by downloading the APK from https://www.aftvnews.com/downloader.apk. Downloader remains available on Fire TV devices directly from the Amazon Appstore." Saba said it's "absurd that Google seems to make no effort at all to verify the copyright claims being made on my app which is just a web browser that can download files and has no content of any sort in it." "If loading a website with infringing content in a standard web browser is enough to violate DMCA, then every browser in the Google Play Store including @googlechrome should also be removed," said Saba in May. "It's a ridiculous claim and an abuse of the DMCA."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The rapid adoption of AI could reduce wages, but so far is creating, not destroying jobs, especially for the young and highly-skilled, research published by the European Central Bank showed on Tuesday. From a report: Firms have invested heavily in AI leaving economists striving to understand the impact on the labour market and driving fears among the wider public for the future of their jobs. At the same time, employers are struggling to find qualified workers, despite a recession that would normally ease labour market pressures. In a sample of 16 European countries, the employment share of sectors exposed to AI increased, with low and medium-skill jobs largely unaffected and highly-skilled positions getting the biggest boost, a Research Bulletin published by the ECB said. But it also cited "neutral to slightly negative impacts" on earnings and said that could increase.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is returning to the Bliss hill once again with this year's entry in its now-traditional ugly retro-computing sweater series. From a report: Blue hemming at the bottom and on the sleeves evokes Windows XP's bright-blue taskbar, and in case people don't immediately recognize Bliss as "a computer thing," there's also a giant mouse pointer hovering over it. The sweater is available from size small up to a 3XL, and costs $70 regardless of which version you buy. All sizes are currently expected to arrive sometime between December 2 and 6.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon on Tuesday announced a new chatbot called Q for people to use at work. From a report: The product, announced at Amazon Web Services' Reinvent conference in Las Vegas, represents Amazon's latest effort to challenge Microsoft and Google in productivity software. It comes one year after Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI launched its ChatGPT chatbot, which has popularized generative artificial intelligence for crafting human-like text in response to a few lines of human input. A tier for business users will cost $20 per person per month. A version with additional features for developers and IT workers will cost $25 per person per month. The Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Duet AI for Google Workspace for business workers both cost $30 per person per month. Initially, Q can help people understand the capabilities of AWS and trouble-shoot issues. People will be able to talk with it in communication apps such as Salesforce's Slack and software developers' text-editing applications, Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS, said onstage at Reinvent. It will also appear in AWS' online Management Console. Q can provide citations of documents to back up its chat responses. The tool can automatically make changes to source code so developers have less work to do, Selipsky said. The service will be able to connect to more than 40 enterprise systems, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon's cloud-computing unit announced updated versions of its in-house computer chips while also forging closer ties with Nvidia -- dual efforts designed to ensure it can get enough supplies of crucial data-center processors. From a report: New homegrown Graviton4 chips will have as much as 30% better performance than their predecessors, Amazon Web Services said at its annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. Computers using the processors will start coming online in the coming months. The company also unveiled Trainium2, an updated version of a processor designed for artificial intelligence systems. It will begin powering new services starting next year, Amazon said. That chip provides an alternative to so-called AI accelerators sold by Nvidia -- processors that have been vital to the build-out of artificial intelligence services. But Amazon also touted "an expansion of its partnership" with Nvidia, whose chief executive officer, Jensen Huang, joined AWS counterpart Adam Selipsky on stage. AWS will be the first big user of an updated version of that company's Grace Hopper Superchip, and it will be one of the data-center companies hosting Nvidia's DGX Cloud service.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A first-of-its-kind geothermal project is now up and running in Nevada, where it will help power Google's data centers with clean energy. From a report: Google is partnering with startup Fervo, which has developed new technology for harnessing geothermal power. Since they're using different tactics than traditional geothermal plants, it is a relatively small project with the capacity to generate 3.5 MW. For context, one megawatt is enough to meet the demand of roughly 750 homes. The project will feed electricity into the local grid that serves two of Google's data centers outside of Las Vegas and Reno. It's part of Google's plan to run on carbon pollution-free electricity around the clock by 2030. To reach that goal, it'll have to get more sources of clean energy online. And it sees geothermal as a key part of the future electricity mix that can fill in whenever wind and solar energy wane. "If you think about how much we advanced wind and solar and lithium ion storage, here we are -- this is kind of the next set of stuff and we feel like companies have a huge role to play in advancing these technologies," says Michael Terrell, senior director of energy and climate at Google.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A study of more than 2 million people's internet use found no "smoking gun" for widespread harm to mental health from online activities such as browsing social media and gaming, despite widely claimed concerns that mobile apps can cause depression and anxiety. From a report: Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, who said their study was the largest of its kind, said they found no evidence to support "popular ideas that certain groups are more at risk" from the technology. However, Andrew Przybylski, professor at the institute -- part of the University of Oxford -- said that the data necessary to establish a causal connection was "absent" without more co-operation from tech companies. If apps do harm mental health, only the companies that build them have the user data that could prove it, he said. "The best data we have available suggests that there is not a global link between these factors," said Przybylski, who carried out the study with Matti Vuorre, a professor at Tilburg University. Because the "stakes are so high" if online activity really did lead to mental health problems, any regulation aimed at addressing it should be based on much more "conclusive" evidence, he added. "Global Well-Being and Mental Health in the Internet Age" was published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science on Tuesday. In their paper, Przybylski and Vuorre studied data on psychological wellbeing from 2.4 million people aged 15 to 89 in 168 countries between 2005 and 2022, which they contrasted with industry data about growth in internet subscriptions over that time, as well as tracking associations between mental health and internet adoption in 202 countries from 2000-19.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After making steep cuts to personnel earlier this year, Evernote's Milan-based owner Bending Spoons is now experimenting with a new plan that would push more users to upgrade to paid versions of its service. From a report: The company confirmed to TechCrunch it's been running a small test that placed limits on the number of notes free users could create, but said the new plan is not yet finalized. TechCrunch was alerted to the test by an Evernote user who logged in to a pop-up message that informed them that unless they upgraded to a paid plan, they would now be limited to only 1 notebook and 50 notes. That change would dramatically limit the service for longtime Evernote users who have accumulated hundreds or thousands of notes over the years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Economist, in an interactive post: In 2024, countries with more than half the world's population -- over four billion people -- will send their citizens to the polls. But many elections are not fully free and fair. Some of these will have no meaningful influence on governments. In the most democratic countries, such as Britain, elections will decide the next government or cause a substantial change in policy. In Russia, one of the least democratic, the vote is very unlikely to weaken Vladimir Putin's grip on power. For countries in between, such as India or the United States, elections still matter, and may even be free and fair. But other aspects of democracy, such as participation or governance, have weaknesses. Some places, such as Brazil and Turkey, will not hold general elections in 2024 but have local or municipal elections in which the whole country will participate. Similarly, the European Union's 27 member states will elect the bloc's next parliament. More people will vote in 2024 than in any previous year. But this great march to the ballot box does not necessarily mean an explosion of democracy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: YouTube is branching out into games -- at least for its paid subscribers. The platform is giving Premium users access to a set of online games that can be directly played on either the mobile app or desktop app. Known as "Playables," the company first debuted the experimental feature to select users in September. As noted by Droid-Life, YouTube sent a notification last week to Premium subscribers informing them of Playables and allowing them to try it out. Those who opt in will be able to play a total of 37 mini-games that effectively live inside YouTube -- there's no need to download or install them. The selection of games isn't too challenging or "out there" -- they include crowd-pleasers like Angry Birds Showdown, Brain Out, Daily Solitaire, The Daily Crossword, and a number of arcade games. And they may not be here to stay. YouTube Premium's notification stated that the games would be available until March 28th, 2024. For now, Premium members can find the full library of games under the "Playables" section in the Explore tab.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Richard Speed reports via The Register: A jury has sided with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) against Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) over the theft of source code and documentation. A total of $210 million was this week awarded. According to the verdict [PDF], a Texas jury agreed that TCS had "willfully and maliciously" misappropriated both source and confidential documentation by "improper means," awarding CSC $140 million in damages, with another $70 million tacked on for TCS's "unjust enrichment." The complaint [PDF] was filed in April 2019 regarding CSC's VANTAGE-ONE and CyberLife software platforms. CSC had licensed these software platforms to Transamerica Corporation, a life insurance holding company, to whom Tata -- used here to collectively refer to Tata Consultancy Services Limited and Tata America International Corporation -- began providing maintenance services. In 2014, CSC and Transamerica signed off on a Third-Party Access Addendum that would allow Tata to alter CSC's software, but only for the benefit of its customer -- Transamerica. All was well until 2016, when Transamerica decided it needed to refresh its software. CSC and Tata both put in bids. CSC lost, and Tata won with its own software platform called BaNCS. The circumstances got sticky at this point, not least because Tata hired more than 2,000 Transamerica employees. CSC alleged that these former employees had access to its code and documents, and forwarded them on to the Tata BaNCS development team. The situation escalated in 2019, when a CSC employee was accidentally copied in on an email between Tata and Transamerica showing that Tata was accessing confidential information, according to CSC. The company then began legal proceedings. Documents and motions have been exchanged in the years since as Tata sought to get the case thrown out while CSC's claims were upheld. Eventually, it went to a jury trial, which found for CSC.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A team of researchers at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology has developed a prototype cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) microscope that, despite being significantly cheaper than high-end machines, has successfully solved protein structures with near-atomic resolution. The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Science Magazine reports: [MB physicist Chris Russo] wants a manufacturer to commercialize his team's design, which he believes could be built and sold for $500,000. That's within reach of a new hire's startup package, or one of the regular equipment grants offered by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or National Science Foundation, says Bridget Carragher, founding technical director of the Chan Zuckerberg Imaging Institute. "It would be a marvelous machine," she says. "Everyone who wants to do structural biology could do it." [...] One of the team's key insights was that the electron beam does not need the energies typically used in high-end cryo-EM microscopes. Levels of 100 kiloelectronvolts (KeV) -- one-third as high -- suffice to reveal molecular structure, and they reduce costs by eliminating the need for a regulated gas, sulfur hexafluoride, to snuff out sparks. The team also saw room for improvement in the system of lenses that focuses the electrons and the detector that captures them after they probe the sample. With the resulting prototype, the LMB group determined the structure of 11 diverse proteins. One was the iron-storing protein apoferritin, which has become a benchmark for cryo-EM resolution records. The LMB researchers mapped it at 2.6 angstroms -- 2.6 times the diameter of a hydrogen atom. That's not as high as the record cryo-EM resolution of 1.2 angstroms, but plenty good enough to make an atomic model, Russo says. And the process was fast. Because the microscope sat in the same lab as the freezing stage, the team could quickly check that its samples were good enough, rather than waiting weeks for results from a high-end machine. "Every single structure was done in less than a day," Russo says. Thermo Fisher Scientific, which makes a top-end machine, says it is already expanding the cryo-EM market. In 2020, it began to sell a lower cost option, called Tundra, that operates at 100 KeV. "I would say that there are universities that probably never believed they could own cryo-EM that now have the tools," says Trisha Rice, a vice president who heads the company's cryo-EM business. Indeed, Rajan's university just ordered one for $1.5 million. Russo says Tundra is a step in the right direction, but his team's innovations could make cryo-EM even cheaper. For example, he says, Tundra dials back the energy on a simplified version of the costly electron source used in top-end microscopes, whereas the electron gun on the LMB prototype was designed for 100 KeV from scratch. But he understands that commercializing his team's design would require large investments by potential manufacturers. "We're talking to all of them," Russo says. "But at the end of the day, it's up to them."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta purposefully engineered its platforms to addict children and knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint. The complaint is a key part of a lawsuit filed against Meta by the attorneys general of 33 states in late October and was originally redacted. It alleges the social media company knew -- but never disclosed -- it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts. The large number of underage users was an "open secret" at the company, the suit alleges, citing internal company documents. In one example, the lawsuit cites an internal email thread in which employees discuss why a 12-year-old girl's four accounts were not deleted following complaints from the girl's mother stating her daughter was 12 years old and requesting the accounts to be taken down. The employees concluded that "the accounts were ignored" in part because representatives of Meta "couldn't tell for sure the user was underage." The complaint said that in 2021, Meta received over 402,000 reports of under-13 users on Instagram but that 164,000 -- far fewer than half of the reported accounts -- were "disabled for potentially being under the age of 13" that year. The complaint noted that at times Meta has a backlog of up to 2.5m accounts of younger children awaiting action. The complaint alleges this and other incidents violate the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act, which requires that social media companies provide notice and get parental consent before collecting data from children. The lawsuit also focuses on longstanding assertions that Meta knowingly created products that were addictive and harmful to children, brought into sharp focus by whistleblower Frances Haugen, who revealed that internal studies showed platforms like Instagram led children to anorexia-related content. Haugen also stated the company intentionally targets children under the age of 18. Company documents cited in the complaint described several Meta officials acknowledging the company designed its products to exploit shortcomings in youthful psychology, including a May 2020 internal presentation called "teen fundamentals" which highlighted certain vulnerabilities of the young brain that could be exploited by product development. The presentation discussed teen brains' relative immaturity, and teenagers' tendency to be driven by "emotion, the intrigue of novelty and reward" and asked how these asked how these characteristics could "manifest ... in product usage." [...] One Facebook safety executive alluded to the possibility that cracking down on younger users might hurt the company's business in a 2019 email. But a year later, the same executive expressed frustration that while Facebook readily studied the usage of underage users for business reasons, it didn't show the same enthusiasm for ways to identify younger kids and remove them from its platforms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samantha Cole reports via 404 Media: The founder of a software developer conference has been accused of creating fake female speakers to bolster diversity numbers -- and some speakers are dropping out, with the event just nine days away. Devternity is an online conference for developers that's invite-only for speakers. In the past, it reportedly drew hundreds of attendees both when it was in-person in Latvia and even more after it moved online. Eduard Sizovs founded the event in 2015. Engineer Gergely Orosz tweeted on Thursday that he'd discovered fake speakers listed on the Devternity site. Two women -- Anna Boyko, listed as a staff engineer at Coinbase, and Natalie Stadler, a "software craftswoman" at Coinbase -- were included on the site as speakers but appear to not exist in real life. Neither have an online presence beyond the Devternity website itself. Orosz found archived versions of the Devternity site where Boyko and Stadler were listed; Stadler's listing was up for years, according to archives from 2021. Sizovs responded to these claims in a 916-word tweet, admitting that he'd made at least one fake speaker, Stadler, in the process of building the Devternity site and then left her up. He said that the profile was "auto-generated, with a random title, random Twitter handle, random picture," and that while he noticed it was still on the site, he delayed taking it off because it wasn't a "quick fix" and that "it's better to have that demo persona while I am searching for the replacement speakers," he wrote. In his tweet, Sizovs did not elaborate on why he believed this was "better." Sizovs wrote that after this year's upcoming conference "achieved a worse-than-expected level of diversity of speakers," author and programmer Sandi Metz, "Software Craftswoman, Tech Influencer @ Instagram" Julia Kirsina, and head of developer relations at Amazon Web Services Kristine Howard were the only three women he was able to bring on as speakers. But two of the three dropped out, he said [...].Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A series of arrests that began in late August and continued into last week has sparked concerns that a relatively rare 'Scene' crackdown targeting the top of the so-called 'Piracy Pyramid' may be underway in the Nordic region. TorrentFreak reports: In a statement last week, Denmark's National Unit for Special Crime (NSK) announced that as part of a long-running investigation, a man was arrested on November 22 and then charged with copyright infringement offenses. NSK said its officers searched the home of a 47-year-old man in South Zealand (Sydsjaelland) and seized IT equipment in connection with illegal file-sharing and "copyright infringement of a particularly serious nature." "The case is about an organized network that has illegally shared extremely large quantities of films and TV series via file sharing services," said NSK Police Commissioner Anders-Emil Nohr Kelbaek. While noting that NSK had no further information to offer at this time, Kelbaek said he was pleased that NSK had arrested another suspect believed to have played a 'significant role' in the unnamed network. Last week's arrest was only the latest in a series of arrests carried out as part of the same long-running NSK investigation into the illegal distribution of movies and TV shows. In late August, NSK arrested four people on suspicion of sharing "extremely large quantities" of movies and TV shows. NSK raided addresses in South-West Jutland, North Zealand and Bornholmand. A 43-year old was arrested at the last location, but it's claimed he lives elsewhere. In common with last week's arrest, all were charged on suspicion of "particularly serious" copyright infringement offenses. In an almost identical statement to that issued last week, Commissioner Anders-Emil Nohr Kelbaek said the case was about "an organized network that shares extremely large amounts of data, presumably in the form of films and series." TorrentFreak sources report concerns that last week's arrest may be linked to Scene groups. Terminology used by NSK doesn't instantly rule that out and does seem to suggest something potentially more significant than other arrests over the past few years. According to NSK, the August arrests took place on August 28, 2023. Using information in Scene release databases we looked for Danish Scene groups and/or groups that were releasing Denmark-focused content before that date but then made no releases afterward; while that wouldn't provide conclusive proof that a group had been targeted, the method has proven useful in the past. While activity late August suggests nothing especially out of the ordinary, activity since the arrest last week stands in contrast. TF is informed that some groups may have gone dark simply out of an abundance of caution. It's also possible that the groups have nothing to release. Furthermore, there are many other global groups with no obvious links to Danish content or Denmark that also stopped releasing on November 21. The reasons for this are unknown but holidays in the United States may play a role.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer be available to purchase as a magazine. "Cathy Hebert, the communications director for PopSci owner Recurrent Ventures, says the outlet needs to 'evolve' beyond its magazine product, which published its first all-digital issue in 2021," reports The Verge. From the report: PopSci, which covers a whole range of stories related to the fields of science, technology, and nature, published its first issue in 1872. Things have changed a lot over the years, with the magazine switching to a quarterly publication schedule in 2018 and doing away with the physical copies altogether after 2020. In a post on LinkedIn, former PopSci editor Purbita Saha commented on the magazine's discontinuation, stating she's "frustrated, incensed, and appalled that the owners shut down a pioneering publication that's adapted to 151 years worth of changes in the space of a five-minute Zoom call." "PopSci is a phenomenal brand, and as consumer trends shift it's important we prioritize investment in new formats," Herbert tells The Verge. "We believe that the content strategy has to evolve beyond the digital magazine product. A combination of its news team, along with commerce, video, and other initiatives, will produce content that naturally aligns with PopSci's mission." PopSci will continue to offer articles on its website, along with its PopSci Plus subscription, which offers access to exclusive content and the magazine's archive.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, Stability AI released Stable Video Diffusion, a new free AI research tool that can turn any still image into a short video -- with mixed results. It's an open-weights preview of two AI models that use a technique called image-to-video, and it can run locally on a machine with an Nvidia GPU. [...] Right now, Stable Video Diffusion consists of two models: one that can produce image-to-video synthesis at 14 frames of length (called "SVD"), and another that generates 25 frames (called "SVD-XT"). They can operate at varying speeds from 3 to 30 frames per second, and they output short (typically 2-4 second-long) MP4 video clips at 576x1024 resolution. In our local testing, a 14-frame generation took about 30 minutes to create on an Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics card, but users can experiment with running the models much faster on the cloud through services like Hugging Face and Replicate (some of which you may need to pay for). In our experiments, the generated animation typically keeps a portion of the scene static and adds panning and zooming effects or animates smoke or fire. People depicted in photos often do not move, although we did get one Getty image of Steve Wozniak to slightly come to life. Given these limitations, Stability emphasizes that the model is still early and is intended for research only. "While we eagerly update our models with the latest advancements and work to incorporate your feedback," the company writes on its website, "this model is not intended for real-world or commercial applications at this stage. Your insights and feedback on safety and quality are important to refining this model for its eventual release." Notably, but perhaps unsurprisingly, the Stable Video Diffusion research paper (PDF) does not reveal the source of the models' training datasets, only saying that the research team used "a large video dataset comprising roughly 600 million samples" that they curated into the Large Video Dataset (LVD), which consists of 580 million annotated video clips that span 212 years of content in duration.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Simon Sharwood reports via The Register: Amazon Web Services has announced the WorkSpaces Thin Client -- a device dedicated to connecting to its WorkSpaces desktop-as-a service offering and based on Amazon's own "Fire Cube" smart TV box. The $195 machine has the same hardware as the Fire Cube: the eight-core Arm-powered Amlogic POP1-G SoC, plus 2GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 10/100 ethernet, and a single USB-A 2.0 port. Bluetooth is included to connect other peripherals. A second HDMI output can be added by acquiring an $85 hub that also offers four more USB ports. Like the Fire TV Cube, the Thin Client also runs a modified cut of Android. But there the similarities end. AWS created custom firmware and ripped out anything remotely related to running a consumer device, replacing it with software designed solely to create a secure connection between the device and desktops running in the Amazonian cloud. Amazon Business -- the B2B version of Jeff Bezos's digital souk -- will ship the device to your door, and charge it to your AWS bill. At least if you are in the USA. Europe will get the Thin Client in early 2024, and it'll eventually migrate elsewhere. AWS decided to base the box on the Fire Cube because, according to a corporate blog post, AWS customers expressed a desire for cheaper and easier-to-maintain client devices. As AWS execs searched for a well-priced box, they considered the Fire TV Cube, found it fit the bill and noted it was already being made at scale. Keeping things in-house made sense, too. And so we find ourselves with AWS taking on established thin client providers. The cloudy concern is also keen to have a crack at the thick wedge of the enterprise PC market: call centers, payment processing centers, and other environments with lots of users and high staff turnover due to factors like seasonal demand for workers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After acquiring VMware for $69 billion, Broadcom is eliminating several positions at the virtualization technology company. Business Insider reports: Employees whose positions were eliminated received an email on Monday, viewed by Business Insider, that read: "Broadcom recently completed its acquisition of VMware. As part of integration planning, and following an organizational needs assessment, we identified go-forward roles that will be required within the combined company. We regret to inform you that your position is being eliminated and your employment will be terminated." "We would like to thank you for your dedication and service. We want to make this transition as smooth as possible, including offering you a generous severance package and providing you a non-working paid notice period," the email continued. Currently, it's unclear exactly how many employees will be affected by the cuts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [L]ast week, researchers at Blackwing Intelligence published an extensive document showing how they had managed to work around some of the most popular fingerprint sensors used in Windows PCs. Security researchers Jesse D'Aguanno and Timo Teras write that, with varying degrees of reverse-engineering and using some external hardware, they were able to fool the Goodix fingerprint sensor in a Dell Inspiron 15, the Synaptic sensor in a Lenovo ThinkPad T14, and the ELAN sensor in one of Microsoft's own Surface Pro Type Covers. These are just three laptop models from the wide universe of PCs, but one of these three companies usually does make the fingerprint sensor in every laptop we've reviewed in the last few years. It's likely that most Windows PCs with fingerprint readers will be vulnerable to similar exploits. Blackwing's post on the vulnerability is also a good overview of exactly how fingerprint sensors in a modern PC work. Most Windows Hello-compatible fingerprint readers use "match on chip" sensors, meaning that the sensor has its own processors and storage that perform all fingerprint scanning and matching independently without relying on the host PC's hardware. This ensures that fingerprint data can't be accessed or extracted if the host PC is compromised. If you're familiar with Apple's terminology, this is basically the way its Secure Enclave is set up. Communication between the fingerprint sensor and the rest of the system is supposed to be handled by the Secure Device Connection Protocol (SCDP). This is a Microsoft-developed protocol that is meant to verify that fingerprint sensors are trustworthy and uncompromised, and to encrypt traffic between the fingerprint sensor and the rest of the PC. Each fingerprint sensor was ultimately defeated by a different weakness. The Dell laptop's Goodix fingerprint sensor implemented SCDP properly in Windows but used no such protections in Linux. Connecting the fingerprint sensor to a Raspberry Pi 4, the team was able to exploit the Linux support plus "poor code quality" to enroll a new fingerprint that would allow entry into a Windows account. As for the Synaptic and ELAN fingerprint readers used by Lenovo and Microsoft (respectively), the main issue is that both sensors supported SCDP but that it wasn't actually enabled. Synaptic's touchpad used a custom TLS implementation for communication that the Blackwing team was able to exploit, while the Surface fingerprint reader used cleartext communication over USB for communication. "In fact, any USB device can claim to be the ELAN sensor (by spoofing its VID/PID) and simply claim that an authorized user is logging in," wrote D'Aguanno and Teras."Though all of these exploits ultimately require physical access to a device and an attacker who is determined to break into your specific laptop, the wide variety of possible exploits means that there's no single fix that can address all of these issues, even if laptop manufacturers are motivated to implement them," concludes Ars. Blackwing recommends all Windows Hello fingerprint sensors enable SCDP, the protocol Microsoft developed to try to prevent this exploit. PC makers should also "have a qualified expert third party audit [their] implementation" to improve code quality and security.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russia has added the spokesman of U.S. technology company Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to a wanted list, according to an online database maintained by the country's interior ministry. From a report: Russian state agency Tass and independent news outlet Mediazona first reported that Meta communications director Andy Stone was included on the list Sunday, weeks after Russian authorities in October classified Meta as a "terrorist and extremist" organization, opening the way for possible criminal proceedings against Russian residents using its platforms. The interior ministry's database doesn't give details of the case against Stone, stating only that he is wanted on criminal charges. According to Mediazona, an independent news website that covers Russia's opposition and prison system, Stone was put on the wanted list in February 2022, but authorities made no related statements at the time and no news media reported on the matter until this week. In March this year, Russia's federal Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation into Meta.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rooting out manipulation should not depend on dedicated amateurs who take personal legal risks for the greater good. From a story on Financial Times: As the Oxford university psychologist Dorothy Bishop has written, we only know about the ones who get caught. In her view, our "relaxed attitude" to the scientific fraud epidemic is a "disaster-in-waiting." The microbiologist Elisabeth Bik, a data sleuth who specialises in spotting suspect images, might argue the disaster is already here: her Patreon-funded work has resulted in over a thousand retractions and almost as many corrections. That work has been mostly done in Bik's spare time, amid hostility and threats of lawsuits. Instead of this ad hoc vigilantism, Bishop argues, there should be a proper police force, with an army of scientists specifically trained, perhaps through a masters degree, to protect research integrity. It is a fine idea, if publishers and institutions can be persuaded to employ them (Spandidos, a biomedical publisher, has an in-house anti-fraud team). It could help to scupper the rise of the "paper mill," an estimated $1bn industry in which unscrupulous researchers can buy authorship on fake papers destined for peer-reviewed journals. China plays an outsize role in this nefarious practice, set up to feed a globally competitive "publish or perish" culture that rates academics according to how often they are published and cited. Peer reviewers, mostly unpaid, don't always spot the scam. And as the sheer volume of science piles up -- an estimated 3.7mn papers from China alone in 2021 -- the chances of being rumbled dwindle. Some researchers have been caught on social media asking to opportunistically add their names to existing papers, presumably in return for cash.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A modern-day rush prospecting frenzy for lithium, a crucial battery metal, is unfolding across remote Western Australian deserts. The arid outback that previously supplied gold, nickel and iron now hosts fierce competition between miners racing to stake claims on lithium resources needed for the global green energy transition. Lithium giants U.S.'s Albemarle and Chile's SQM have sparred with Australian billionaires Gina Rinehart and Chris Ellison over contested acquisitions of unproven explorers there. With demand surging, the harsh outback has become the modern El Dorado as pioneers and corporations scramble to tap into lithium, the "white gold," before rivals beat them to the punch. The deal frenzy has also come at a time when the lithium price has crashed as much as 70% compared with highs seen last year, as expectations of electric vehicle demand in key markets such as China have been lowered, Financial Times adds. The report adds: Western Australia already supplies about half of the world's raw lithium and is seen as a stable place to invest compared with parts of Africa, where there has been political instability, and Chile, where the state has moved to take control of lithium projects. Local expectations are high. A report by Australia's chief economist said lithium product exports should exceed A$20bn in the year to June 2023, up from A$5bn in the previous year. The report added that by 2028, the value of lithium exports should exceed those of coal, a staple of Australia's economy for decades. Australia has ambitions to step up its efforts to refine spodumene to keep more of the value onshore rather than shipping all of its resources to China, which has a commanding share of the refining process.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has grabbed the crown of biggest delivery business in the U.S., surpassing both UPS and FedEx in parcel volumes. From a report: The Seattle e-commerce giant delivered more packages to U.S. homes in 2022 than UPS, after eclipsing FedEx in 2020, and it is on track to widen the gap this year, according to internal Amazon data and people familiar with the matter. The U.S. Postal Service is still the biggest parcel service by volume; it handles hundreds of millions of packages for all three companies. A decade ago Amazon was a major customer for UPS and FedEx, and some executives from the incumbents and analysts mocked the notion that it could someday supplant them. Amazon's outsize growth combined with strategy shifts at FedEx and UPS have changed the balance. Before Thanksgiving this year, Amazon had already delivered more than 4.8 billion packages in the U.S., and its internal projections predict that it will deliver around 5.9 billion by the end of the year, according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Last year Amazon shipped 5.2 billion packages. Amazon's figures include only packages that Amazon shipped from beginning to end. UPS and FedEx include packages they hand off to the postal service for final delivery in their tallies. UPS has said that its domestic volume this year is unlikely to exceed last year's 5.3 billion, which includes packages delivered to customers through the postal service. In the first nine months this year, UPS handled around 3.4 billion parcels domestically.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United States, Britain and more than a dozen other countries on Sunday unveiled what a senior U.S. official described as the first detailed international agreement on how to keep AI safe from rogue actors, pushing for companies to create AI systems that are "secure by design." From a report: In a 20-page document unveiled Sunday, the 18 countries agreed that companies designing and using AI need to develop and deploy it in a way that keeps customers and the wider public safe from misuse. The agreement is non-binding and carries mostly general recommendations such as monitoring AI systems for abuse, protecting data from tampering and vetting software suppliers. Still, the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly, said it was important that so many countries put their names to the idea that AI systems needed to put safety first. "This is the first time that we have seen an affirmation that these capabilities should not just be about cool features and how quickly we can get them to market or how we can compete to drive down costs," Easterly told Reuters, saying the guidelines represent "an agreement that the most important thing that needs to be done at the design phase is security."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Drive users are reporting files mysteriously disappearing from the service, with some posters on the company's support forums claiming six or more months of work have unceremoniously vanished. From a report: The issue has been rumbling for a few days, with one user logging into Google Drive and finding things as they were in May 2023. According to the poster, almost everything saved since then has gone, and attempts at recovery failed. Others chimed in with similar experiences, and one claimed that six months of business data had gone AWOL. There is little information regarding what has happened; some users reported that synchronization had simply stopped working, so the cloud storage was out of date. Others could get some of their information back by fiddling with cached files, although the limited advice on offer for the affected was to leave things well alone until engineers come up with a solution. A message purporting to be from Google support also advised not to make changes to the root/data folder while engineers investigate the issue. Some users speculated that it might be related to accounts being spontaneously dropped. We've asked Google for its thoughts and will update should the search giant respond.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fast Company published some thoughts about porch piracy from Rohan Shah, the cofounder of the shipment-insurance platform Extend:In New York City, where as many as 90,000 packages are stolen every day, the Department of Transportation has launched a pilot program, LockerNYC, in which consumers can collect their online purchases at various storefront or sidewalk locations. Amazon Locker has 900 locations across the U.S. and recently launched Amazon Key, allowing consumers to throw privacy to the wind and give delivery persons access to their homes and cars. Amazon also has pick up kiosks at Whole Foods and Kohl's and The U.S. Postal Service has set up after-hours pick-up locations in many states. All of that said, for consumers who simply wanted convenient, free two-day shipping, the time spent driving and waiting in line for a package doesn't seem like the best fix, nor a differentiated digital experience. AI to the rescue... This year, the fastest path to progress is simply reinventing shipping protection for the digital era and AI can do that at scale, for pennies on the dollar... My company, Extend, for example, leverages AI to process 98% of shipping claims in 90 seconds, with a replacement product shipped to the customer the same day... The new approach is a type of no-fault insurance, which the consumer purchases at checkout for around 2% of the purchase price. For a $200 pair of shoes, the cost to protect against shipping issues would be just $4.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"On a typical day 1,300 planes take off and land at Heathrow Airport, and keeping that going requires around 20 million litres of jet fuel every day," reports the BBC. "That's the equivalent of filling up your car around 400,000 times. "But, when it comes to fuel, airports around the world are having to have a major rethink..."To be of any use to the aviation industry, hydrogen needs to be in its liquid form, which involves chilling it to minus 253C. Handling a liquid at that kind of temperature is immensely challenging. Given the chance, liquid hydrogen will "boil-off" and escape as a gas - potentially becoming a hazard. So tanks, pipes and hoses all have to be extra-insulated to keep the liquid cold. France's Air Liquide has a lot of experience in this area. For around 50 years it has been supplying cryogenic hydrogen to the Ariane rockets of the European Space Agency (ESA)... Over the past three years, in partnership with Airbus and France's biggest airport operator, Group ADP, Air Liquide has been investigating the potential of hydrogen in the aviation business. It is also part of the H2Fly consortium which this summer successfully flew an aircraft using liquid hydrogen. For Air Liquide, it was an opportunity to test systems for fuelling a hydrogen aircraft... However, installing the equipment needed to store and distribute hydrogen at airports will not be cheap. The consultancy Bain & Company estimates it could cost as much as a billion dollars per airport. One start-up, Universal Hydrogen, says it has a solution... The company has developed special tanks to hold liquid hydrogen (UH calls them modules), which can then be trucked to the airport. The modules are designed to slot straight into the aircraft, where they can be plugged into the propulsion system. No need for pipes, hoses and pumps. The modules are extremely well insulated and can keep the hydrogen in its liquid form for four days. Two modules would hold 360kg of hydrogen and would be able to fly an aircraft 500 miles, plus an extra 45 minutes of flight time in reserve.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Hill published this warning from an Information Sciences assistant professor:Since 1980, more than 40,000 scientific publications have been retracted. They either contained errors, were based on outdated knowledge or were outright frauds... Yet these zombie publications continue to be cited and used, unwittingly, to support new arguments. Why? Almost always it's because nobody noticed they had been retracted... Just by citing a zombie publication, new research becomes infected: A single unreliable citation can threaten the reliability of the research that cites it, and that infection can cascade, spreading across hundreds of papers. A 2019 paper on childhood cancer, for example, cites 51 different retracted papers, making its research likely impossible to salvage. For the scientific record to be a record of the best available knowledge, we need to take a knowledge maintenance perspective on the scholarly literature... And we need to build on that knowledge, not on the errors and fraud... Slow science, living articles and reducing the pressure to publish are among the interventions that could help. We need a healthy, trustworthy ecosystem that rewards effort, not just results... Individuals and organizations that do the work of science must ensure that the work doesn't end at publication. Sometimes, it is just the beginning.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's census bureau looked at how many people relocated into each state from another state, compared to the total number of people making a move in that state. The state with the lowest "inmigration" ratio? California. From 2021 through 2022, "California's inmigration rate was 11.1% last year..." reports SFGate. "For comparison, nearby Oregon had a inmigration rate of 21%." But the census bureau cautions that California - America's most populous state - "also had a relatively large base of movers overall" - over 4 million - which could help explain its low ratio in several statistics. SFGate reports:California's outmigration rate - defined as the "number of people moving out of a state as a share of that state's total number of movers" - was also below the national migration average. Texas had the country's lowest outmigration rate, at 11.7%, according to the Census Bureau's analysis. California and Texas are America's two most populous states. (The total population of California is 39 million - roughly 11.7% of America's population - while Texas has another 30 million. Oregon's population is just 4,240,137.) Interestingly, most people moving to California arrived from... Texas. (44,279). At the same time, 102,422 people moved from California to Texas, with another 74,157 moving from California to Arizona. New York state also lost 91,201 people to Florida, and another 75,103 people to New Jersey.The second-highest number of people (31,225) who moved from a different state to California came from New York... According to the San Francisco Chronicle, California saw a net loss of 340,000 residents between 2021 and 2022, with most of the people who left heading to Florida or Arizona.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI employed by the U.S. military "has piloted pint-sized surveillance drones in special operations forces' missions and helped Ukraine in its war against Russia," reports the Associated Press. But that's the beginning. AI also "tracks soldiers' fitness, predicts when Air Force planes need maintenance and helps keep tabs on rivals in space."Now, the Pentagon is intent on fielding multiple thousands of relatively inexpensive, expendable AI-enabled autonomous vehicles by 2026 to keep pace with China. The ambitious initiative - dubbed Replicator - seeks to "galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of U.S. military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap, and many," Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said in August. While its funding is uncertain and details vague, Replicator is expected to accelerate hard decisions on what AI tech is mature and trustworthy enough to deploy - including on weaponized systems.' There is little dispute among scientists, industry experts and Pentagon officials that the U.S. will within the next few years have fully autonomous lethal weapons. And though officials insist humans will always be in control, experts say advances in data-processing speed and machine-to-machine communications will inevitably relegate people to supervisory roles. That's especially true if, as expected, lethal weapons are deployed en masse in drone swarms. Many countries are working on them - and neither China, Russia, Iran, India or Pakistan have signed a U.S.-initiated pledge to use military AI responsibly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Government-funded investment accounts for children could be on the horizon," writes CNBC, "and if tech investor Brad Gerstner has his way, corporate America will match the funds..." Gerstner been working with lawmakers to promote a legislative program known as Invest America that would create an investing account seeded with $1,000 for each child that's born in the U.S., but it's still too early in the process to publicly name supporters. He's aiming, however, to have legislation passed before the next presidential election. At the same time, he's working with corporate America to encourage businesses to offer matching funds to help employees further their savings. "The vision is simple - that corporations would include an Invest America match of $1,000 into the Invest America account of children of their employees," Gerstner, founder and chief executive of Altimeter Capital, said in an email. "We have talked with companies ranging from Zillow to Dell to Uber and, subject to details, the response has been overwhelmingly positive," he said. Rich Barton, co-founder and chief executive of Zillow, said it's a "no-brainer" for his company to fully support and match the type of program Gerstner is proposing. "A 401(k)-style investment account from birth seems like a great way to tackle the growing divide around financial literacy and wealth," he said in an email. "It is a small investment to help parents achieve more peace of mind." Representatives for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Michael Dell and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, other companies Gerstner cited in a recent CNBC interview as being receptive to his pitch, did not respond to email requests for comment... Certainly, there can be tangible - and intangible - benefits to companies that participated in a matching program. For instance, the government would have to provide tax incentives to companies that would presumably function similarly to how deductions are handled for 401(k) contributions, said Jeffrey Sharp, executive vice president at HUB International, a global insurance broker that provides employee benefits, and other products and services. Someone with $1,000 in her account at birth could expect a balance of about $107,000 by age 67, provided the portfolio grew at an annualized rate of 7%, according to CNBC Make It's compounding interest calculator. With a company match, a $2,000 investment could grow to around $215,000, under the same conditions. The outcome could be even more beneficial if parents contribute additional funds. The article also hedges that companies "would have to consider the advisability of paying for this type of benefit that not all employees could take advantage of. They might decide, for instance, they'd be better off upping their 401(k) match so more employees could benefit." But "I think we have a historic moment right now to get everybody into the game of capitalism," Gerstner says in an interview, noting it would cost just $3.7 billion to fund 50 million accounts -- "less than 1/100th of 1% of the national budget" -- and that he hopes to see the legislation introduced next year "in the spring."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader sysadminafterdark writes:Released on November 26, 2020, PHP 8 brought many optimizations and powerful features to the language.Fast forward to today, and PHP 8 is getting the boot in favor of 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 with 8.4 in development. This leaves some websites at risk of breaking and potential security issues. Hearing of this news, I upgraded my own blog and wrote an article on how to add the Remi repository and update. I run Enterprise Linux (The best distro out there) so if you are standing up new boxes, just keep in mind the PHP in the repo is deprecated.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Several of your films have explored artificial intelligence," Rolling Stone pointed out to 85-year-old Ridley Scott, before asking: "Does AI worry you?"Ridley Scott: I always thought the world would end up being run by two corporations, and I think we're headed in that direction. Tyrell Corp in Blade Runner probably owned 45-50% of the world, and one of his playthings was creating replication through DNA. Tyrell thinks he's god and in the first Blade Runner has made a Nexus female. And the Nexus female will have a limited lifespan because AI will get dangerous. We have to lock down AI. And I don't know how you're gonna lock it down. They have these discussions in the government, "How are we gonna lock down AI?" Are you fucking kidding? You're never gonna lock it down. Once it's out, it's out. If I'm designing AI, I'm going to design a computer whose first job is to design another computer that's cleverer than the first one. And when they get together, then you're in trouble, because then it can take over the whole electrical-monetary system in the world and switch it off. That's your first disaster. It's a technical hydrogen bomb. Think about what that would mean? Rolling Stone: I wanted to ask you about what effect you think AI will have on Hollywood as it was a big sticking point in the writers' strike, in particular. One fear is that studios will plug a book into AI, have it crap out an "adaptation," and then pay actual screenwriters day rates to punch it up. Ridley Scott: Yeah. They really have to not allow this, and I don't know how you can control it. Another AI expert said, "We are way over-panicking. Of course, I have a computer that can defeat a chess master in an hour because we can feed him every conceivable move from data, and it'll process 1,900 conceivable moves on what the person will do next in seconds, and the guy is in trouble." There's something non-creative about data. You're gonna get a painting created by a computer, but I like to believe - and I'm saying this without confidence - it won't work with anything particularly special that requires emotion or soul. With that said, I'm still worried about it. The article also looks back more than 40 years, to when Ridley Scott was going to direct Dune in between filming Alien and Blade Runner. Scott says he had "a really good screenplay, had all the sets to go" - but the producer had wanted to save money by filiming it in Mexico City, and Scott "didn't love" the idea of spending a year there.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's long-standing Advanced Research Projects Agency (or ARPA) developing the foundational technologies for the internet. This week its energy division announced $42 million for projects enabling a "more secure and reliable" energy grid, "allowing it to utilize more solar, wind, and other clean energy." But specifically, they funded 15 projects across 11 states to improve the reliability, resiliency, and flexibility of the grid "through the next-generation semiconductor technologies."Streamlining the coordinated operation of electricity supply and demand will improve operational efficiency, prevent unforeseen outages, allow faster recovery, minimize the impacts of natural disasters and climate-change fueled extreme weather events, and redcude grid operating costs and carbon intensity. Some highlights:The Georgia Institute of Technology will develop a novel semiconductor switching device to improve grid control, resilience, and reliability.Michigan's Great Lakes Crystal Technologies (will develop a diamond semiconductor transistor to support the control infrastructure needed for an energy grid with more distributed generation sources and more variable loadsLawrence Livermore National Laboratory will develop an optically-controlled semiconductor transistor to enable future grid control systems to accommodate higher voltage and current than state-of-the-art devices.California's Opcondys will develop a light-controlled grid protection device to suppress destructive, sudden transient surges on the grid caused by lightning or electromagnetic pulses.Albuquerque's Sandia National Laboratories will develop novel a solid-state surge arrester protecting the grid from very fast electromagnetic pulses that threaten grid reliability and performance.America's Secretary of Energy said the new investment "will support project teams across the country as they develop the innovative technologies we need to strengthen our grid security and bring reliable clean electricity to more families and businesses - all while combatting the climate crisis."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The cornerstone of the open-source philosophy is that the recipients of technology should have access to all its building blocks..." writes the European Organization for Nuclear Research, "in order to study it, modify it and redistribute it to others." This includes mechanical designs, schematics for electronics, and software code.Ever since releasing the World Wide Web software under an open-source model in 1994, CERN has continuously been a pioneer in this field, supporting open-source hardware (with the CERN Open Hardware Licence), open access (with the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics - SCOAP3) and open data (with the Open Data Portal for the LHC experiments). The CERN Open Data portal is a testimony to CERN's policy of Open Access and Open Data. The portal allows the LHC experiments to share their data with a double focus: for the scientific community, including researchers outside the CERN experimental teams, as well as citizen scientists, and for the purposes of training and education through specially curated resources. The first papers based on data from the CERN Open Data portal have been published. Several CERN technologies are being developed with open access in mind. Invenio is an open-source library management package, now benefiting from international contributions from collaborating institutes, typically used for digital libraries. Indico is another open-source tool developed at CERN for conference and event management and used by more than 200 sites worldwide, including the United Nations. INSPIRE, the High Energy Physics information system, is another example of open source software developed by CERN together with DESY, Fermilab and SLAC. And on Wednesday the European Organization for Nuclear Research launches its new Open Source Program Office "to help you with all issues relating to the release of your software and hardware designs."Sharing your work with collaborators in research and industry has many advantages, but it may also present some questions and challenges... The OSPO will support you, whether you are a member of the personnel or a user, to find the best solution by giving you access to a set of best practices, tools and recommendations. With representatives from all sectors at CERN, it brings together a broad range of expertise on open source practices... As well as supporting the CERN internal community, the OSPO will engage with external partners to strengthen CERN's role as a promoter of open source. Open source is a key pillar of open science. By promoting open source practices, the OSPO thus seeks to address one of CERN's core ambitions: sharing our knowledge with the world. Ultimately, the aim is to increase the reach of open source projects from CERN to maximise their benefits for the scientific community, industry and society at large. For Wednesday's launch event "We will host distinguished open source experts and advocates from Nvidia, the World Health Organization and the Open Source Hardware Association to discuss the impact and future of open source." There will be a live webcast of the event.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: In 2024, a new spacecraft will hurtle toward Jupiter in a bid to learn whether its moon Europa is capable of supporting life. The craft will carry more than high-tech sensors: It also will bear a poem and hundreds of thousands of human names. Yours could be one of them. NASA is asking people to submit their names ahead of the mission's October 2024 launch. Those submitted by the end of 2023 will go into space on the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which should enter Jupiter's orbit in 2030... They'll eventually be stenciled onto a dime-sized microchip in microscopic writing, then attached to a metal plate engraved with the poem that will accompany the craft. 700,000 names have been submitted so far - and they'll all be carried a distance of over 1.8 billion miles. They'll travel through space with a poem that ends by describing what we humans on earth are made of - including "a need to call out through the dark."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Maps has added "a fresh color scheme, including a different look for parks and city blocks," writes SFGate. "But it's the changes to the app's all-important road maps that are rankling online commentators..."Previously, highways and freeways were depicted in bright yellow, which stood out against a stark white grid. Now, the app shows every road in various shades of gray, with major thoroughfares like Interstate 80 and Highway 1 showing up darker and thicker than other roadways. Raynell Cooper, an employee at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, called the new look "cartographically disappointing" in a Monday post to X, formerly known as Twitter. He added, "major local roads and limited-access highways (freeways) are basically indistinguishable." TechRadar has a side-by-side comparison of the old and new color schemes, quoting one Reddit who says the new one is a bit harder to read quickly. "The toned down look is cute but not practical."And the Evening Standard shares more negative reactions, including one user who complained the new color scheme is "shockingly bad.""Hate it hate it hate it hate it. Yellow roads were so good, and everything was bright and cheery," states another person on Reddit. "Now it's depressing and the roads are hard to see when not fairly zoomed in, they just don't pop like the yellow did. One Reddit user offered another complaint. "I think the water is a fairly significant change, it's a much closer shade to the green of the land which makes it a little harder to differentiate at a quick glance." And another criticism came from a post on X. "15 years ago, I helped design Google Maps..." wrote designer Elizabeth Laraki. "Last week, the team dramatically changed the map's visual design. I don't love it."It feels colder, less accurate and less human. But more importantly, they missed a key opportunity to simplify and scale... Google Maps should have cleaned up the crud overlaying the map. So much stuff has accumulated on top of the map. Currently there are ~11 different elements obscuring it. Tech blogger John Gruber writes, "This is a very long way of saying that Google Maps's app design should be like Apple Maps."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's yet another technological revolution happening, reports the Los Angeles Times. Bowling alleys across America "are ditching traditional pinsetters - the machines that sweep away and reset pins - in favor of contraptions that employ string. "Think of the pins as marionettes with nylon cords attached to their heads. Those that fall are lifted out of the way, as if by levitation, then lowered back into place after each frame... European bowling alleys have used string pinsetters for decades because they require less energy and maintenance. "All you need is someone at the front counter to run back when the strings tangle."String pinsetters mean big savings, maybe salvation, for an industry losing customers to video games and other newfangled entertainment. That is why the U.S. Bowling Congress recently certified them for tournaments and league play. But there is delicate science at play here. Radius of gyration, coefficient of restitution and other obscure forces cause tethered pins to fly around differently than their free-fall counterparts. They don't even make the same noise. Faced with growing pushback, the bowling congress published new research this month claiming the disparity isn't nearly as great as people think. Using a giant mechanical arm, powered by hydraulics and air pressure, they rolled "thousands of test balls from every angle, with various speeds and spins, on string-equipped lanes," according to the article:They found a configuration that resulted in 7.1% fewer strikes and about 10 pins fewer per game as compared to bowling with traditional pinsetters... Officials subsequently enlisted 500 human bowlers for more testing and, this time, reported finding "no statistically significant difference." But hundreds of test participants commented that bowling on strings felt "off." The pins seemed less active, they said. There were occasional spares whereby one pin toppled another without making contact, simply by crossing strings. Nothing could be done about the muted sound. It's like hearing a drum roll - the ball charging down the lane - with no crashing cymbal at the end. Still, one Northern California bowling alley spent $1 million to install the technology, and believes it will save them money - partly by cutting their electric bill in half. "We had a full-time mechanic and were spending up to $3,000 a month on parts." The article also remembers that once upon a time, bowling alleys reset their pins using pinboys, "actual humans - mostly teenagers... scrambling around behind the lanes, gathering and resetting by hand," before they were replaced by machines after World War II.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times:AI that can generate text, images and other content could help improve state programs but also poses risks, according to a report released by the governor's office on Tuesday. Generative AI could help quickly translate government materials into multiple languages, analyze tax claims to detect fraud, summarize public comments and answer questions about state services. Still, deploying the technology, the analysis warned, also comes with concerns around data privacy, misinformation, equity and bias. "When used ethically and transparently, GenAI has the potential to dramatically improve service delivery outcomes and increase access to and utilization of government programs," the report stated... AI advancements could benefit California's economy. The state is home to 35 of the world's 50 top AI companies and data from Pitchfork says the GenAI market could reach $42.6 billion in 2023, the report said. Some of the risks outlined in the report include spreading false information, giving consumers dangerous medical advice and enabling the creation of harmful chemicals and nuclear weapons. Data breaches, privacy and bias are also top concerns along with whether AI will take away jobs. "Given these risks, the use of GenAI technology should always be evaluated to determine if this tool is necessary and beneficial to solve a problem compared to the status quo," the report said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times reports:Meta has received more than 1.1 million reports of users under the age of 13 on its Instagram platform since early 2019 yet it "disabled only a fraction" of those accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint against the company brought by the attorneys general of 33 states. Instead, the social media giant "routinely continued to collect" children's personal information, like their locations and email addresses, without parental permission, in violation of a federal children's privacy law, according to the court filing. Meta could face hundreds of millions of dollars, or more, in civil penalties should the states prove the allegations. "Within the company, Meta's actual knowledge that millions of Instagram users are under the age of 13 is an open secret that is routinely documented, rigorously analyzed and confirmed," the complaint said, "and zealously protected from disclosure to the public...." It also accused Meta executives of publicly stating in congressional testimony that the company's age-checking process was effective and that the company removed underage accounts when it learned of them - even as the executives knew there were millions of underage users on Instagram... The lawsuit argues that Meta elected not to build systems to effectively detect and exclude such underage users because it viewed children as a crucial demographic - the next generation of users - that the company needed to capture to assure continued growth. More from the Wall Street Journal:An internal 2020 Meta presentation shows that the company sought to engineer its products to capitalize on the parts of youth psychology that render teens "predisposed to impulse, peer pressure, and potentially harmful risky behavior," the filings show... "Teens are insatiable when it comes to 'feel good' dopamine effects," the Meta presentation shows, according to the unredacted filing, describing the company's existing product as already well-suited to providing the sort of stimuli that trigger the potent neurotransmitter. "And every time one of our teen users finds something unexpected their brains deliver them a dopamine hit...." "In December 2017, an Instagram employee indicated that Meta had a method to ascertain young users' ages but advised that 'you probably don't want to open this pandora's box' regarding age verification improvements," the states say in the suit. Some senior executives raised the possibility that cracking down on underage usage could hurt Meta's business... The states say Meta made little progress on automated detection systems or adequately staffing the team that reviewed user reports of underage activity. "Meta at times has a backlog of 2-2.5 million under-13 accounts awaiting action," according to the complaint... The unredacted material also includes allegations that Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg instructed his subordinates to give priority to boosting its platforms' usage above the well being of users... Zuckerberg also repeatedly dismissed warnings from senior company officials that its flagship social-media platforms were harming young users, according to unsealed allegations in a lawsuit filed by Massachusetts earlier this month... The complaint cites numerous other executives making public claims that were allegedly contradicted by internal documents. While Meta's head of global safety, Antigone Davis, told Congress that the company didn't consider profitability when designing products for teens, a 2018 internal email stated that product teams should keep in mind that "The lifetime value of a 13 y/o teen is roughly $270" when making product decisions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The abolition of third-party cookies will make it possible to protect privacy-related data such as what sites users visit and what pages they view from advertising companies," notes the Japan-based site Gigazine. And this month "Google has confirmed that it is on track to start disabling third-party cookies across its Chrome browser in a matter of weeks," writes TechRadar:An internal email published online sees Google software engineer Johann Hofmann share with colleagues the company's plan to switch off third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users from Q1 2024 - a plan that was shared months ago and that, surprisingly, remains on track, given the considerable pushbacks so far... Hofmann explains that Google is still awaiting a UK Competition and Markets Authority consultation in order to address any final concerns before "Privacy Sandbox" gets the go-ahead. The Register explores Google's "Privacy Sandbox" idea: Since 2019 - after it became clear that European data protection rules would require rethinking how online ads work - Google has been building a set of ostensibly privacy-preserving ad tech APIs known as the Privacy Sandbox... One element of the sandbox is the Topics API: that allows websites to ask Chrome directly what the user is interested in, based on their browser history, so that targeted ads can be shown. Thus, no need for any tracking cookies set by marketers following you around, though it means Chrome squealing on you unless you tell it not to... Peter Snyder, VP of privacy engineering at Brave Software, which makes the Brave browser, told The Register in an email that the cookie cutoff and Privacy Sandbox remains problematic as far as Brave is concerned. "Replacing third-party cookies with Privacy Sandbox won't change the fact that Google Chrome has the worst privacy protections of any major browser, and we're very concerned about their upcoming plans," he said. "Google's turtle-paced removal of third-party cookies comes along with a large number of other changes, which when taken together, seriously harm the progress other browsers are making towards a user-first, privacy-protecting Web. "Recent Google Chrome changes restrict the ability for users to modify, make private, and harden their Web experience (Manifest v3), broadcasting users' interests to websites they visit (Topics), dissolving privacy boundaries on the Web (Related Sites), offloading the battery-draining costs of ad auctions on users (FLEDGE/Protected Audience API), and reducing user control and Web transparency (Signed Exchange/WebBundles)," Snyder explained. "And this is only a small list of examples from a much longer list of harmful changes being shipped in Chrome." Snyder said Google has characterized the removal of third-party cookies as getting serious about privacy, but he argued the truth is the opposite. "Other browsers have shown that a more private, more user-serving Web is possible," he said. "Google removing third-party cookies should be more accurately understood as the smallest possible change it can make without harming Google's true priority: its own advertising business." The Register notes that other browser makers such as Apple, Brave, and Mozilla have already begun blocking third-party cookies by default, while Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge "provide that option, just not out of the box." EFF senior staff technologist Jacob Hoffman-Andrews told The Register that "When Google Chrome finishes the project on some unspecified date in the future, it will be a great day for privacy on the web. According to the announcement, the actual phased rollout is slated to begin in Q3 2024, with no stated deadline to reach 100 percent. Let's hope Google's advertising wing does not excessively delay these critical privacy improvements." TechRadar points out that after the initial testing period in 2024, Google will begin its phased rollout of the cookie replacement program - starting in June. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.