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Snotnose writes:The House Ban On DJI Drones Is Mindless Anticompetitive Fear Mongering

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tekk writes:The 2024 Old Computer Challenge has been announced. The challenge started 4 years ago with the challenge to use a computer with 1 core at a max of 1 GHz and 512MB of RAM for a week and grew a small community surrounding them with 34 entrants for 2023. This year's theme, however, is no theme at all. The announcement post includes suggestions however there's no set of official rules this time around.Anyone interested in participating can take a look at Headcrash's OCC Site to look at previous years' entries and find instructions for how to get listed this year.Personally I'm planning on running a classic Clamshell Mac with OS9 as my daily driver :)Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

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owl writes:https://gizmodo.com/detect-aliens-warp-drive-collapse-gravitational-waves-1851550746

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-69145409

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Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/eu-says-apple-violated-app-developers-rights-could-be-fined-10-of-revenue/

Last Post writes:Climate models are numerical simulations of the climate system, which are used to for predicting climate change from emissions scenarios and many other applications. Let's take a closer look at how they work.Why do we need climate models?The climate system and its components like the atmosphere and hydrosphere are driven by many processes that interact with each other to produce the climate we observe. We understand some of these processes very well, such as many atmospheric circulations that drive the weather. Others like the role of aerosols and deep ocean circulations are more uncertain. Even when individual processes are well understood, the interaction between these processes makes the system more complex and produces emergent properties like feedbacks and tipping points. We can't rely on simple extrapolation to generate accurate predictions, which is why we need models to simulate the dynamics of the climate system. Global climate models simulate the entire planet at a coarse resolution. Regional climate models simulate smaller areas at a higher resolution, relying on global climate models for their initial and lateral boundary conditions (the edges of the domain).How do climate models work?A climate model is a combination of several components, each of which typically simulates one aspect of the climate system such as the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, or biosphere. These components are coupled together, meaning that what happens in one component of the climate system affects all of the other components. The most advanced climate models are large software tools that use parallel computing to run across hundreds or thousands of processors. Climate models are a close cousin of the models we use for weather forecasting and even use a lot of the same source code.The atmospheric component of the model, for example, has a fluid dynamics simulation at its core. The model numerically integrates a set of primitive equations such as the Navier-Stokes equation, the first law of thermodynamics, the continuity equation, the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, and the equation of state. Global climate models generally assume the atmosphere is in hydrostatic balance at all times, but that is not necessarily the case for regional models. Hydrostatic balance means that the force of gravity completely balances with the upward pressure gradient force, meaning that the air never accelerates upward or downward, which does occur in some instances like inside thunderstorms.Not all atmospheric processes can be described by these equations, and we also need to predict things like aerosols (particulates suspended in the atmosphere), radiation (incoming solar radiation, and heat radiated upward), microphysics (e.g., cloud dropets. rain drops, ice crystals, etc...), and deep convection like thunderstorms (in models with coarse resolutions) to accurately simulate the atmosphere. Instead, these processes are parameterized to simulate their effects as accurately as possible in the absence of governing equations.The atmospheric simulations are generally more complex and run at a higher resolution for weather models than in climate models. However, weather models do not simulate the oceans, land surface, or the biosphere with the same level of complexity because it's not necessary to get accurate forecasts. For example, the deep oceans don't change enough on weather time scales to impact the forecast, but they do change in important ways on climate time scales. A weather model also probably isn't going to directly simulate how temperature and precipitation affect the type of vegetation growing in a particular location, or if there's just bare soil. Instead, a weather model might have data sets for land use and land cover during the summer and winter, use the appropriate data depending on the time of year being simulated, and then use that information to estimate things like albedo and evapotranspiration.The main difference between climate models and weather models is that weather models are solving an initial condition problem whereas climate modeling is a boundary condition problem. Weather is highly sensitive to the initial state of the atmosphere, meaning that small changes in the atmosphere at the current time might result in large differences a week from now. Climate models depend on factors that occur and are predictable on much longer time scales like greenhouse gas concentrations, land use and land cover, and the temperature and salinity of the deep ocean. Climate models are also not concerned with accurately predicting the weather at a specific point in time, only its statistical moments like the mean and standard deviation over a period of time. We intuitively understand that these statistical moments are predictable on far longer time scales, which is why you could confidently insist that I'm wrong if I claimed that there would be heavy snow in Miami, Florida on June 20, 2050.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

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Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/06/in-first-person-john-romero-reflects-on-over-three-decades-as-the-doom-guy/

https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/jun/25/julian-assange-plea-deal-with-us-free-to-return-australia

upstart writes:As Apple enters the AI race, it's also looking for help from partners:

owl writes:http://www.righto.com/2024/06/montreal-mifare-ultralight-nfc.html

upstart writes:Using stalkerware is creepy, unethical, potentially illegal, and puts your data and that of your loved ones in danger:

owl writes:https://salvagedcircuitry.com/2000a-nand-recovery.html

canopic jug writes:Dr Andy Farnell at The Cyber Show writes about the effects of the "splinternet" and division in standards in general on overall computing security. He sees the Internet, as it was less than ten years ago, as an ideal, but one which has been intentionally divided and made captive. While governments talk out of one side of their mouth about cybersecurity they are rushing breathlessly to actually make systems and services less secure or outright insecure.

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canopic jug writes:Doug Muir, at his blog Crooked Timber, discusses a paper about symbiotic fungal networks loaning glucose to seedlings and saplings. Of note, fungi do not produce glucose themselves, so they are extracting and storing it. The fungi connect to new seedlings and help them get started by feeding the roots micronutrients, which for some of them compensates for sunlight which they can't yet reach. Then after some time, the network cuts off the supply. If the sapling dies, the network rots it. If the sapling survives, the network extracts and caches nutrients from it.

hubie writes:A Fermat's Library featured paper of the week chosen a month or so ago was Richard Wexelblat's 1981 paper, The Consequences of One's First Programming Language. The abstract of which says:

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owl writes:https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/20/systemd_2561_data_wipe_fix/

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An Anonymous Coward writes:Biden to ban U.S. sales of Kaspersky software over ties to Russia, source says --https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/20/biden-to-ban-us-sales-of-kaspersky-software-over-ties-to-russia.html

owl writes:https://austinhenley.com/blog/bignum1.html

mcgrew writes:Of course, you can't delete their site without going to prison. This is about deleting an account.You probably saw the S/N article Adobe and Meta Drive the Visual Digital Arts in Deeper Enshit[ment] where it was shown that Meta is changing its policy next week, allowing itself to legally steal your copyrighted content to train its AI (for those under a rock, "Artificial Intelligence").You probably also know that I'm a writer since about 1997. I am also a former visual art and design student with dozens of images, if not hundreds. As I have posted stories here at S/N, and slashdot (years ago, I left when S/N was started), I also posted at Facebook for about five years or so; my daughter convinced me that I could popularize my books there.In my last book, Voyage to Madness about a trip to Proxima Centauri via Einstein's time warp (real science, no fantasy), there are no human visual artists, poets, or writers. It's all produced by computers. I do not want to be a contributor to that future! So when I first got word of this latest evil from Meta, I posted there that I was deleting my account and where to look for my writing. I set last night as the date, and then forgot until this morning after my coffee.Even sober and full of coffee, It was extremely difficult and frustrating. Meta made getting out of their data prison extremely difficult. Harder than Wolfenstein and unlike it, no fun at all.First, I suspect that there's a robots.txt file in the directory that holds the file that actually explains, very poorly, how to delete an account, because I of course googled to see how to do it. It was a facebook.com file, but very outdated. There is no possible way I found using it to actually delete.Even after logging into Farsebook and looking for a help file there, it was obvious that they don't want anyone to leave. I wish I would have written this as I was deleting the account, I could have given step by step instructions; even following their flawed program (i.e., list of steps, for you non-programmers) they leave out much needed information and force you to guess.It took over an hour. But I encourage all of you with Meta accounts to fight this evil. Maybe we CAN delete facebook! If you see me there with the same photo that was posted, please let me know so I can sue them. I don't need the money, I just want to destroy Meta. If it happens, unlikely as that is, I'll donate the winnings to S/N.I may open another account just to poison their stupid "intelligent" computer.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

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owl writes:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c722gne7qngoArchive Link: https://archive.is/4eOAc

Car dealers can't sell cars due to living in today's worldSnotnose writes:Hope you didn't want to buy a car in the near future

AnonTechie writes:[Source]: Popular Mechanics

Signal, MEPs Urge EU Council To Drop Encryption-Eroding LawArthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Note: Comments are enabled for everyone including Anonymous Cowards and should be on-topic. However, if you abuse this privilege do not be surprised or complain if your comments are deleted.This came to my attention on IRC; it was published yesterday. It should not surprise anyone, nor is it a unique occurrence. Most sites on the internet nowadays are suffering from the same problem. But I find it hard to understand how anyone can benefit from personal attacks, or by forcing sites to make unwanted decisions about how they operate.https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/06/new-blog-moderation-policy.htmlSchneier writes:

DannyB writes:Human missions to Mars in serious doubt after discovery made on effects to astronaut's bodies

An Anonymous Coward writes:Tech Review is running a story about comedians who were asked to use "AI" to write jokes. https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/17/1093740/what-happened-when-20-comedians-got-ai-to-write-their-routines/ The results were mixed at best:

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Geoff Clare writes:On 14 June 2024 IEEE and The Open Group published the first major revision of POSIX.1 since 2008. It is simultaneously IEEE 1003.1-2024 and The Open Group Base Specifications, Issue 8. The latter will form, together with a soon to be published update to XCurses, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 5. The new standard will also be published by ISO as a revision to 9945:2009 in the not too distant future.The revision adds the following 102 new functions (mostly from C17):_Forkaligned_allocat_quick_exitatomic_compare_exchange_strongatomic_compare_exchange_strong_explicitatomic_compare_exchange_weakatomic_compare_exchange_weak_explicitatomic_exchangeatomic_exchange_explicitatomic_fetch_addatomic_fetch_add_explicitatomic_fetch_andatomic_fetch_and_explicitatomic_fetch_oratomic_fetch_or_explicitatomic_fetch_subatomic_fetch_sub_explicitatomic_fetch_xoratomic_fetch_xor_explicitatomic_flag_clearatomic_flag_clear_explicitatomic_flag_test_and_setatomic_flag_test_and_set_explicitatomic_initatomic_is_lock_freeatomic_loadatomic_load_explicitatomic_signal_fenceatomic_storeatomic_store_explicitatomic_thread_fencebind_textdomain_codesetbindtextdomainc16rtombc32rtombcall_oncecnd_broadcastcnd_destroycnd_initcnd_signalcnd_timedwaitcnd_waitdcgettextdcgettext_ldcngettextdcngettext_ldgettextdgettext_ldladdrdngettextdngettext_lgetentropygetlocalename_lgetresgidgetresuidgettextgettext_lmbrtoc16mbrtoc32memmemmtx_destroymtx_initmtx_lockmtx_timedlockmtx_trylockmtx_unlockngettextngettext_lposix_closeposix_devctlposix_getdentsppollpthread_cond_clockwaitpthread_mutex_clocklockpthread_rwlock_clockrdlockpthread_rwlock_clockwrlockqsort_rquick_exitreallocarraysem_clockwaitsetresgidsetresuidsig2strstr2sigstrlcatstrlcpytextdomainthrd_createthrd_currentthrd_detachthrd_equalthrd_exitthrd_jointhrd_sleepthrd_yieldtimespec_gettss_createtss_deletetss_gettss_setwcslcatwcslcpyand the following new utilities:gettext

owl writes:https://www.fastcompany.com/91128052/history-of-cd-roms-encarta-myst

upstart writes:MSU researchers discover honeybees can detect lung cancer:

canopic jug writes:cURL (established 1998) is one of the most widely used pieces of software in the world, especially if the development library libcurl is included. As has become tradition, the founder and lead developer Daniel Stenberg has published a detailed analysis of the annual cURL survey.

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upstart writes:A study of medieval warrior monks at Zorita de los Canes castle revealed their high-society diet and violent deaths, including the unexpected discovery of a female warrior among them:

Microsoft and Chinaanubi writes:It looks like Chinese routers aren't the only things that come loaded with bonus software...https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/microsoft-vows-fix-security-gaps-china-hackers-government-emails-rcna156995NBC news reports:Microsoft's president told Congress on Thursday his company accepted responsibility for major security failures that let China-linked hackers penetrate federal government computer networks, but defended his company's presence in China.Brad Smith struck a humble tone in his testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee and promised that the giant tech firm would fix security gaps in its products, which are widely used across federal agencies.----------------------------------------------------Somehow, I think it's so ironic that my own government is such a fan of security, yet, by enforced ignorance, the very things that they implement give only the illusion of security. No one knows if there's a backdoor or not, and who can verify?Gone are the days just a homebrew CRC16 digester, knowledge of exact file length, and a list of files to check, would tell me with almost absolute certainty if my system files had been monkeyed with. If so, which ones? And what did they do? ( File compare... FC.EXE to known good backup copies of the critical files stored on another floppy )"We acknowledge that we can and must do better"An Anonymous Coward writes:https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/13/tech/microsoft-president-congress-cybersecurity-failures/

looorg writes:News consumption is down. The reasons appear to be multiple from that the readers don't trust the sources anymore, disinformation, journalistic agendas, AI (fake-) news or that news in general are just downers and sad to read.

Inescapable Conclusion: USC Researchers Prove Earth's Core is Losing Speedmrpg (and 2 more Anonymous Cowards) write:Inescapable Conclusion: USC Researchers Prove Earth's Core Is Losing Speed:

c0lo writes:AdobeJune 8 - Adobe users are furious about the company's terms of service change to help it train AI

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