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AnonTechie writes:

Sometime last Tuesday, our IRC went offline. If you made any changes prior to that, could you please reverse them?In the meantime, we have a backup server that you might want to use:

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upstart writes:Ex-Twitter execs push for $200M severance as Elon Musk runs X into ground:

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upstart writes:How a subfield of physics led to breakthroughs in AI - and from there to this year's Nobel Prize:We covered the announcement of the Nobel Prize here. This article is to introduce the subject of Statistical Mechanics, for which you will need your thinking caps and an understanding of some serious mathematics. Follow the links for much more detail.

canopic jug writes:Charlie Stross, a science fiction writer based in Scotland, has written a post about different possible approaches to space colonization. He includes a discussion of several different models.

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upstart writes:Should I be more or less scared of the doctor?The products include a service that helps healthcare organizations build their own AI agents:

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canopic jug writes:Software developer and former computer science student Amit Patel has written a post about generating curved text for maps and other purposes.

upstart writes:The new text is timed to a new California law against false advertising:

Ward Christensen, inventer of XMODEM and co-inventer of the BBS, has diedSnotnose writes:Not much I can say, .Story here"

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upstart writes:Boeing Slashes 10% Of Workforce, CEO Warns "Hard To Overstate The Challenges We Face":

AnonTechie writes:[Source]: Time.com

upstart writes:Darpa Thinks Walls of Oysters Could Protect Shores Against Hurricanes:

canopic jug writes:Computer consultant J B Crawford, author of the Computers Are Bad newsletter, has posted an overview of commercial HF radio with a bit of background into the technology and some of its advantages and disadvantages:

looorg writes:For only $12 a month your Zoom AI avatar can take your place in all kinds of online meetings. It will use prompt suggestions and generate answers, it can recap and expand on conversations. What could possibly go wrong ...Is this when your AI avatar replaces you? After all $12 is a lot cheaper/lower then your monthly salary.I do wonder what happens at the meeting when everyone sends their AI avatar. Will there be a singularity recursion event?https://news.zoom.us/zoom-introduces-ai-companion-2-0/

upstart writes:31 million records containing email addresses and password hashes exposed:

upstart writes:There are open source projects and companies looking to help:

looorg writes:Who holds the copyright? Man, Machine or Software? Appeal in progress. Allen claim is that it took him over 100h of prompt-engineering to get the image just right.

Frosty Piss writes:https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/05/lego_ideas_turing_machine/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=articlehttps://ideas.lego.com/projects/10a3239f-4562-4d23-ba8e-f4fc94eef5c7A working Turing Machine was submitted to Lego Ideas, consisting of approximately 2,900 parts and a bucketload of extreme cleverness. The Lego builder first came across the concept a few years ago and, despite it being an abstract model, decided to attempt making one out of the plastic components of Lego Technic.Talking to El Reg, the submitter "The Bananaman" stated: "My first few ideas [on] how to do this would be very big and inefficient if they were ever [to be] built, but I usually stopped developing them very early. The first one that could possibly work was three years ago and I built a part of the tape with the symbol reader and a very bad unfinished prototype of the 'truth table' that would use a 32-speed gearbox instead of the 'searching' mechanism. Later I realized that the 'truth table' can be made way more easily (it was my fourth idea on how to build the table and it still had a dozen revisions later on), and I came up with using the registers which made everything easier. I started building the prototype last vacation, then took a break and I've finished it this vacation."There was also the challenge of fitting into the limits imposed by Lego Ideas. At the time of submission, this was 3,000 parts, and The Bananaman's contraption finally managed to come in at around 2,900. The limit has since been raised to 5,000 parts. Should it get to 10,000 supporters on the Lego Ideas site, it will go into Expert Review, where Lego's professionals will decide if it should be approved for production. The evaluation will depend on a range of criteria, including feasibility and strength of idea.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes:A new California law extends consumer privacy protection to brainwave data gathered by implants or wearable devices:

owl writes:https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/streaming-industry-has-unprecedented-surveillance-manipulation-capabilities/

Mozilla Faces Privacy Complaint for Enabling Tracking in Firefox Without User Consentupstart writes:Mozilla Faces Privacy Complaint for Enabling Tracking in Firefox Without User Consent:

AnonTechie writes:

owl writes:https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/dram-emfi.html#can-you-get-root-with-only-a-cigarette-lighter

Amazon plans to show more ads on Prime Video in 2025 to test how much viewers can handle. Even though some subscribers may not like ads, Amazon has not seen a big drop in customers since adding them. By adding more commercials and shoppable ads, Amazon is trying to see how much ads people will tolerate while watching their favorite shows.Amazon will "ramp up" Prime Video ads in 2025: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/amazon-prime-video-is-getting-more-ads-next-year/Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

Our resident anonymous Anonymous Coward has offered the following story with which to start your weekend:Motor Trend tells this quirky story about the Facebook boss, https://www.motortrend.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-porsche-cayenne-minivan-custom/

owl writes:https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/10/connected-car-failure-puts-kibosh-on-sale-of-3300-fisker-oceans/

looorg writes:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/nes-tetris-first-ever-rebirth-loops-past-level-255-and-back-to-zero/

Snotnose writes:Think the recent kerfluffle over deepfakes is something new? Guess again.

U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked HackFrom Schneier's BlogA cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. broadband providers, potentially accessing information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests.https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/10/china-possibly-hacking-us-lawful-access-backdoor.html

Snotnose writes:Your super secret airplane just crashed and everyone knows where. Now what?

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day of the dalek writes:NOAA has issued a rare G4 watch for a severe geomagnetic storm that is expected on October 10 and 11. G4 refers to NOAA's scale for the intensity of geomagnetic storms, which ranges from G1 to G5. Prior to the geomagnetic storm in May of this year that reached G5 intensity, the last G4 watch was issued in January of 2005.This watch was issued for a coronal mass ejection (CME) that occurred around 03 UTC on October 9 and is expected to reach Earth around 12-15 UTC on October 10. An article from the Washington Post states that the speed of the CME, around 2.5 million miles per hour, is the fastest that a CME has been ejected toward Earth during the current solar cycle. From my very limited understanding of space weather, it seems that faster CMEs generate higher ram pressures against Earth's magnetosphere and can result in more severe geomagnetic storms. The x-ray brightness of solar flares gets a lot of attention, and this was an X-class flare (the highest level on the classification scale), this was an X1.8 flare whereas flares have been observed at least up to X28. The high speed of the CME, however, seems to be a factor in the potential for a severe geomagnetic storm.One of the main questions that we can't answer until the CME gets to within about a million miles of Earth is the orientation of its magnetic field. If the CME's magnetic field is aligned in the same direction as Earth's, it will produce a less severe geomagnetic storm than if it's aligned in the opposite direction. An excellent resource for data about space weather and this CME is NOAA's space weather enthusiasts dashboard. There's a lot of data on that page that is useful if you're concerned about the possibility of viewing auroras or potential disruptions to the power grid, so hopefully some of the comments can explain a bit more about what it means. I don't know a whole lot about space weather, but I'll try to offer a cursory explanation of what I believe some of it means.The solar visible light shows where sunspots are currently observed, whereas the LASCO C3 images are observed from satellites can be used to see CMEs when they occur. A CME will appear like an explosion outward from the sun's corona. The data is input into a model called WSA-ENLIL, which predicts the density and radial velocity (outward from the sun) of solar wind plasma. A higher plasma density or a faster radial velocity should result in a stronger geomagnetic storm. This is also useful for estimating when a CME will reach Earth. I believe the GOES magnetometer data is used to measure how much the Earth's magnetic field is compressed or stretched and can identify the onset of geomagnetic storms. The ACE MAG and SWEPAM data are satellite-derived measurements of the solar wind. In addition to showing the plasma speed, temperature, and density, the Bz and Phi variables show the orientation of the magnetic field in the solar wind. If Bz is positive, it's a northward-oriented magnetic field. However, a negative Bz indicates a southward-oriented magnetic field, the opposite direction of Earth's magnetic field, and this can result in more severe geomagnetic storms. Basically, a strongly negative Bz around -10 or even -20 would be more favorable for a strong geomagnetic storm. The aurora forecast is a short-term forecast (~30 minutes to an hour) of the probability of auroral activity over a location, though auroras may be visible near the horizon in areas equatorward of what the forecast shows.There's a lot of data on NOAA's space weather dashboard that can be useful for anyone hoping to see the auroras. My understanding of space weather is very limited, so if anyone else has a better understanding of what the data means, please share the information in the comments. Although a G4 or even a G5 geomagnetic storm is possible, but there's still a lot of uncertainty until the CME gets very close to Earth.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes:Scientists simulated a nuclear explosion using x-ray pulses to push an asteroid-like rock away in space-like conditions:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/scotus-denial-ends-saga-of-shkrelis-infamous-5000-drug-price-scheme/

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