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Freeman writes:

quietus writes:If you still want your Mao memorabilia, you better hurry down to Tiananmen Square, Beijing, while you still have the chance.In China, the State Council is somewhat comparable to the Cabinet. Headed by the Prime Minister and consisting of the heads of the various Ministries (Defense, Commerce, Education, Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Justice, Civil Affairs, State Security, Public Security and so on), it handles the day-to-day running of the country while formulating economic policy.Its operational procedures are described in a document, conveniently titled "Working Procedures for the State Council". On March 18, an updated version of that document was published, and it has a couple of changes.First off, the State Council now has to "report any major decisions, major events and important situations" to the Central Committee "in a timely manner." Previous edition sentences like "administration according to law, seeking truth from facts, democracy, openness, pragmatism and integrity" have been scrapped, as has the requirement for the State Council "to correct illegal or inappropriate administrative actions", or to "guide and supervise" the bureaucracy. In other words, its wings have been seriously clipped.Secondly, any and all references to Marxism/Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, the thought of Deng Xiaoping and the ideologies of former presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao are now verboten. Only references to Xi Jinping Thought are allowed, as that is "the essence of Chinese culture and the spirit of the times".To drive the point home, the Central Committee of the CCP launched another nationwide disciplinary campaign among its 96 million members.This round will check them for loyalty to supreme leader Xi Jinping, weeding out "black sheep" and "two-faced" officials.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/03/judge-finds-google-destroyed-evidence-and-repeatedly-gave-false-info-to-court/

upstart writes:AI image generator Midjourney has stopped free trials of its software:

upstart writes:Your victim status won't last long if your response is nonexistent:

upstart writes:Tech giants want to build massive, "hyperscale" data centers in the Netherlands, but a popular political movement wants them stopped:

upstart writes:Isar Aerospace recently secured $165 million in funding to gear up for the inaugural launch of its Spectrum rocket:

upstart writes:Food safety authorities in the US and Singapore have already approved synthetic meat and the EU is also expected to:

upstart writes:A rare 'ultramassive' black hole, 30 billion times the mass of the Sun, is lurking in the cosmos:

upstart writes:Netflix has been releasing mobile video games since 2021, but this would be the company's first attempt at TV-based video games:

upstart writes:New research into aspirin might one day lead to safer painkillers or even new cancer treatments:

An Anonymous Coward writes:gCaptcha is the leading rival for quality captcha services against Google's renowned and universally despised recaptcha. When Google increased the price for recaptcha competing services took off taking what Google started from to improve the experience significantly. Some experiences with smiling dogs and cloudy horses were deemed to take this too far but these experiments showed that there are improvements to be made in the captcha game.With hackers out to solve any captcha programmatically captcha services need to stay one step ahead. The slider method was found to be easily bypassed. Rotating puzzle pieces is harder to solve but involves more user interaction and has moving parts in the code that can break.Recently hCaptcha has introduce a test that challenges the user to click on the center of an owl's head. This is an improvement over selecting a type of ball from a grid of 9 or going through the excruciating experience Google inflicts on users. There must be a better way to prove that the person viewing the web page is a human and not a bot. How about it, Soylentils? What's your best idea for a captcha system given the state of the systems we have today?[Ed's Comment: Bonus points if you can suggest a system that does not rely on graphics (not everyone uses the latest browsers or even anything more than a simple line of text) to access some sites - our own included. We have the need for a robust captcha system for people creating accounts in order to reduce the number of fake accounts being created by a bot.]Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes:Stop Blaming the End User for Security Risk:

NotSanguine writes:Ars Technica is reporting that Twitter has convinced a judge to issue a subpoena to Github, requiring them to provide all personal details in their possession of a user called "FreeSpeechEnthusiast".

upstart writes:TSMC may not expand in US if double taxation rule continues:

upstart writes:Newly Declassified Government Report Suggests Havana Syndrome Might Be Caused by an Energy Weapon:

upstart writes:DRAM got cheaper and prices will continue to fall:

fliptop writes:Jenny Blessing and Ross Anderson have evaluated the security of systems designed to allow the various Internet messaging platforms to interoperate with each other:

upstart writes:Seattle-area county plans 'world leading' sustainable aviation fuel R&D center:

Liquid Salts Bring Pushbutton Lenses Into Focusupstart writes:First-ever piezoelectric liquids could spark new technologies in optics and hydraulics:

upstart writes:If you believe, they'll put 4G internet on the moon:

fliptop writes:Disney appears to be the latest company to pull back the metaverse, as CEO Bob Iger reverses more decisions from his predecessor:

fliptop writes:Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist who has been called "the godfather of artificial intelligence", says it is "not inconceivable" that AI may develop to the point where it poses a threat to humanity:

upstart writes:A close look at one of TRAPPIST-1's planets shows it's bare and baking:

upstart writes:State governments might be inadvertently helping Chinese-owned app in data collection:

upstart writes:With new detection, officials warn of spring and summer transmission risks:

upstart writes:Mental sovereignty, says author Nita Farahany, is no longer a given:

Europol Warns ChatGPT is Already Helping Criminalsupstart writes:There is no honor among chatbots:

upstart writes:Valve is ending Steam support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1:

upstart writes:Cultured meat firm resurrects woolly mammoth in lab-grown meatball:

upstart writes:U.S. Rolls Out Strict Rules for Commercial Spyware Use, Amidst Rash of Hacks:

upstart writes:ChatGPT gets "eyes and ears" with plugins that can interface AI with the world:

hubie writes:Brain activity imaging coupled with computer vision reveals how neuron populations in different individuals synchronize during social interactions:

upstart writes:Microplastics are messing with the microbiomes of seabirds:

upstart writes:GitHub publishes RSA SSH host keys by mistake, issues update:

guest reader writes:Experts acknowledge the apparent technical achievement of the research but highlight the ethical issues raised by being able to choose the sex of an offspring:

upstart writes:Microsoft to fix Windows 11 'aCropalypse' privacy failure:

fliptop writes:[R]esearchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created soft robots that can seamlessly shift from walking to swimming, for example, or crawling to rolling:

guest reader writes:Microsoft Research has issued a 154-page report entitled Sparks of Artificial Intelligence: Early Experiments With GPT-4:

Preliminary Court Setback for Libraries and Digital Lendingcanopic jug writes:The Internet Archive has published a post about their ongoing fight in the lower courts over Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), specifically from the case Hachette v Internet Archive. This potentially affects all libraries with digital resources and the Internet Archive will appeal the court's decision.

Freeman writes:https://www.techspot.com/news/98047-youtube-channel-linustechtips-terminated-after-hacked-show-crypto.html

upstart writes:Automakers are pushing subscriptions, but consumer interest just isn't there:

upstart writes:Arm is tired of seeing device makers bring in billions while it makes millions:

upstart writes:In its bid to catch up with Starlink, the company plans to build as many as four satellites a day:

guest reader writes:Julia and Kokkos perform comparably with C/OpenMP on CPUs, while Julia implementations are competitive with CUDA and HIP on GPUs:

upstart writes:Beijing's Made in China drive fueled by Washington's export crackdowns:

upstart writes:The uncrewed capsule will fly again:

guest reader writes:Security researchers find bugs, big and small, in every industrial box probed:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/journalist-plugs-in-unknown-usb-drive-mailed-to-him-it-exploded-in-his-face/

hubie writes:A new study has identified several characteristics typical of music associated with sleep, such as being quieter and slower than other music: