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janrinok writes:https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/southeast-us-has-hit-the-roof-of-cdcs-respiratory-illness-level-scale/

Well, the time is coming, I'm going to be livestreaming on YouTube starting at 2PM ET to try to re-habitate the infrastructure, and get ready for steps going forward. I'm going to be streaming this as part of an ongoing charity stream, and VTubing, as show of solidary with others who get harassed because they choose to use an avatar than not. I'll talk more about this at the start, and then we're going to do what we can to try and at least make the situation "less bad". Current goals is to try and at least get the machines to more up-to-date software, rebuild the nginx web frontend, and determine a long term plan for handling emailHope to see you all there,~ NRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/amazon-unveils-smaller-delivery-drone-that-can-fly-in-rain/#ftag=CAD590a51e

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So, quick update here. The site was down for most of the night because the database cluster shot itself in the head. I had restarted a machine to install updates, and this caused the backend cluster to entire to entirely loose its mind. Unfortunately, I didn't have a manual dump of the database made, just a VM snapshot, since, well, I wasn't tinkering with it directly. I've mostly been trying to patch things to the point that I can sleep, and leaving things down like IRC and email which need to be seriously overhauled before they can go back up.As far as damages go, it looks like we lost 10 or so days of messages, which uh, sucks for multiple reasons. We're currently on ##soylentnews on Libera.Chat while I pull bits of the site out of the flames, but I'm at the point that if I don't sleep, I will make things worse. Corruption in the production database is very much not what I wanted, and we're very much in limp mode for the moment. I'm going to let staff handle IRC and comments while I sleep, and then I'll post another update when I'm awake.See you in a few hours~ NCommanderRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

I've been going through all the backend boxes to determine the state of things, and found more than a few servers that needed to be immediately shutdown simply due to their state. This includes the IRC and mailservers at the moment. I'm going to be using this weekend to rebuild things as I go, but for the moment, I'm only keeping the web frontends online as necessary. For the time being, we'll be using ##soylentnews on Libera.Chat until I can rebuild all services. Email for account registeration/password reset/etc. will be down until Saturday or Sunday at the earliestI'll keep you all up to date as I work on this ...~ NCommanderRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes:Raspberry Pi Shortages Could Last Another Year:

upstart writes:Estimates of global sea level rise from large ice flows might be much too low:

canopic jug writes:Twitter appears to still be imploding further each day. While a yet unpublished but large number of Twitter accounts are either bots or abandoned, many of the others are now looking for a way out. Those leaving or just backing off a little still seek to maintain their social control media fix and explore options. As a result, the Fediverse has suddenly caught the general public's attention for better or worse. There are many articles about the Fediverse and what it is like. In particular Mastodon has gotten a lot of attention.Here are some samples:Twitter users jump to Mastodon - but what is it?The social network says it now has over 655,000 users - with over 230,000 having joined in the last week. Mastodon: All You Need To Know About Platform Emerging As Twitter's AlternativeThese servers are themed according to location, city or interest - like UK, social, technology etc - according to the BBC. However, users can interact with freely with others.It works similar to Twitter, which means that users can tag other users, share media and even follow other accounts. Independent servers is the only distinguishing feature between the two microblogging platforms.Half a million users move to decentralized alternative Mastodon following Elon Musk Twitter grabAmid uncertainty and criticism following Elon Musk's takeover of social media giant Twitter, nearly half a million users have flocked to Mastodon, a decentralized alternative.Mastodon, created by the German-based non-profit Mastodon gGmbH in 2016, is an open-source network of thousands of servers that act as individual social media platforms.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

takyon writes:AMD's Epyc Genoa server chips have been officially launched (press releae). They include up to 96 "Zen 4" cores, and 192 threads when using a full complement of twelve 8-core chiplets. L2 cache per core is doubled to 1 MiB, and AVX-512 instructions are supported. The CPUs support 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes (112 available, 16 reserved) and 12-channel DDR5 memory with 2 DIMMs per channel. This allows for up to 6 TB of memory (12 TB for dual-socket) when using 256 GB modules. Genoa also supports Compute Express Link (CXL).Performance claims vary, but in one benchmark (SPECrate 2017 INT_Base), 48-core Genoa models are 20-28% faster than the previous-generation 64-core EPYC 7763, while the 96-core EPYC 9654 is almost twice as fast.Intel has launched Xeon MAX CPUs (Sapphire Rapids HBM) with up to 56 cores and 64 GB of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2e) on package. This is a different approach from AMD's 3D stacking of L3 cache in Milan-X Epyc CPUs. It also allows the CPUs to be used without any DDR5 memory:Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/the-sign-in-menu-is-the-latest-frontier-for-microsoft-ads-in-windows-11/

It's been a long while since I wrote one of these, and well, to say things are depressing is very much an understatement. It's been over eight years since we first went online, and the world has literally changed several times over. Presidential elections, a global pandemic, war in Europe, and well, we've been here through it all. It's a testament to our staying power that SN has remained online through it all, as a volunteer and community driven project.That's not to say it's all been good news though ...About two years ago, I de-facto resigned from the project after internal conflicts, and SoylentNews has slowly been rotting to death. To say the state of the backend is bad is very much an understatement. I found the SN emails were on spam blocklists, and well, I won't even talk about the state of the software ATM. It's holding together mostly out of the sheer amount of overengineering, and good intentions. The last major overhaul was I did when the site was migrated to rehash 7 years ago ... yeah it's been awhile ...At this point, I think we need to talk about where we're going, because its either going to be long slow painful death, an execution, or an attempted comeback tour. This is your host NCommander, and today, we're going to look towards the future ...Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes:IBM unveils its 433 qubit Osprey quantum computer:

hubie writes:Hitting the snooze button? You're far from alone, study shows:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/nasas-artemis-i-rocket-just-endured-hours-of-hurricane-like-wind-gusts/

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/ftx-on-brink-of-collapse-after-binance-abandons-rescue/

upstart writes:Cygnus cargo ship arrive at space station after solar array trouble – Spaceflight Now:

It's been a long while since I wrote one of these, and well, to say things are depressing is very much an understatement. It's been over eight years since we first went online, and the world has literally changed several times over. Presidential elections, a global pandemic, war in Europe, and well, we've been here through it all. It's a testament to our staying power that SN has remained online through it all, as a volunteer and community driven project.That's not to say it's all been good news though ...About two years ago, I de-facto resigned from the project after internal conflicts, and SoylentNews has slowly been rotting to death. To say the state of the backend is bad is very much an understatement. I found the SN emails were on spam blocklists, and well, I won't even talk about the state of the software ATM. It's holding together mostly out of the sheer amount of overengineering, and good intentions. The last major overhaul was I did when the site was migrated to rehash 7 years ago ... yeah it's been awhile ...At this point, I think we need to talk about where we're going, because its either going to be long slow painful death, an execution, or an attempted comeback tour. This is your host NCommander, and today, we're going to look towards the future ...Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes:Chipmakers are slowing down products to dodge US China ban:

upstart writes:Robin Banks phishing service reemerges on Russian platform:

upstart writes:Meta to cut 11,000 jobs globally, with Irish workers affected:

upstart writes:Scientists say COVID changed the way sysadmins work:

Redditor Discovers Legendary 1956 Computer in Grandparents' BasementFreeman writes:Redditor discovers legendary 1956 computer in grandparents' basement:

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upstart writes:The largest sharks ever seem to have left their young in an unsupervised daycare:

upstart writes:The RTX 4080 could launch with up to 40% less stock than the RTX 4090:

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upstart writes:Crowdsourced cell phone data could keep bridges safe and strong:

upstart writes:The Fibonacci Numbers Hiding in Strange Spaces:

upstart writes:UK government is scanning British internet space for zero-day threats:

upstart writes:Nearly $2bn (£1.75bn) has been spent on virtual land in the past 12 months, as people and companies race to get a foothold in the metaverse:

upstart writes:It was the fourth uncontrolled re-entry for China's Long March 5B:

upstart writes:NASA maps 50 methane 'super-emitters' using ISS dust sensor:

upstart writes:Chemists have long conceptualized tiny machines that could fabricate drugs, plastics, and other polymers that are hard to build with bigger tools:

An Anonymous Coward writes:New evidence from an international research team suggests that there may be liquid water under Mars' south polar ice cap:

fliptop writes:One of the largest operators of roadside travel centers has invested in startup Kodiak Robotics:

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Ometecuhtli writes:https://reason.com/2022/11/04/this-court-case-could-make-it-a-crime-to-be-a-journalist-in-texas/It has been five years since police in Laredo, Texas, mocked and jeered at Priscilla Villarreal, a local journalist often critical of cops, as she stood in the Webb County Jail while they booked her on felony charges. Her crime: asking the government questions.That may seem like a relatively obvious violation of the First Amendment. Yet perhaps more fraught is that, after all this time, the federal courts have still not been able to reach a consensus on that question. Over the years, judges in the 5th Circuit have ping-ponged back and forth over whether jailing a journalist for doing journalism does, in fact, plainly infringe on her free speech rights. [...][...] At the core of Villarreal's misfortune is a Texas law that allows the state to prosecute someone who obtains nonpublic information from a government official if he or she does so "with intent to obtain a benefit." Villarreal operates her popular news-sharing operation on Facebook, where her page, Lagordiloca News, has amassed 200,000 followers as of this writing.So to jail Villarreal, police alleged that she ran afoul of that law when she retrieved information from Laredo Police Department Officer Barbara Goodman and proceeded to publish those two aforementioned stories, because she potentially benefited by gaining more Facebook followers. Missing from that analysis is that every journalist, reporter, or media pundit has an "intent to benefit" when she or he publishes a story, whether it is to attract viewers, readers, or subscribers. Soliciting information from government officials—who, as Villarreal's case exemplifies, sometimes feed reporters information—is called a "scoop," and it's not new.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

hubie writes:Astrophysicists say that cosmic inflation can in principle be ruled out in an assumption-free way:

upstart writes:Lab-grown blood given to people in world-first clinical trial:

upstart writes:The social media giant said the "privacy policy" was "based on a demonstrated need to do their job":

Twitter Slashes Nearly Half its Workforce as Musk Admits 'Massive Drop' in Revenueupstart writes:Twitter slashes nearly half its workforce as Musk admits 'massive drop' in revenue:

upstart writes:Ghost Particles Crashing Into Antarctica Could Change Astronomy Forever:

upstart writes:Police should be banned from using it in public spaces, the researchers say:

upstart writes:The test tunnel that hosted student competitions in 2018 and 2019 has been removed and replaced with parking spots for SpaceX:

upstart writes:Opinion | Science Has a Nasty Photoshopping Problem:

mrpg writes:https://phys.org/news/2022-11-oldest-planetary-debris-galaxy.html

upstart writes:We have covered similar stories recently also involving the Python repository but I have chosen this one because it goes into considerable detail to explain exactly how the malware works and the tricks that the writers had to employ in an effort to avoid detection. I will admit that I would have missed some of them! See the linked source for all the dirty details.Phylum Discovers Dozens More PyPI Packages Attempting to Deliver W4SP Stealer in Ongoing Supply-Chain Attack:

upstart writes:Level responds to lock picker opening its $330 Apple Store lock in seconds: