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upstart writes:Boeing has informed its employees of uncertainty in future SLS contracts:

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[Rescheduled to keep it visible--JR]IntroductionFor most people the holiday season is over. There are a few who have their winter holidays booked as we still have a few months of the skiing season to go yet, but I don't think that this affects any of our staff! So I offer a belated 'Happy New Year' and wish you all the very best for 2025.Volunteers for the BoardSlightly less than 12 months ago I asked for volunteers to serve on the Board of SoylentNews and fortunately some people stepped forward and took on the 3 key roles (Chairman, Treasurer and Secretary). They have each contributed to the setting up of the site and getting us where we are today. However, they will soon be wanting to stand down from their current posts. The concept of the site is that the governance is provided by the community and that posts should be rotated occasionally. We are again seeking volunteers to assume one of the current positions. The roles are important, they are the most important posts on the site because without them there can be no site, but I don't think that they are particularly arduous. They are not roles that require a daily or even a weekly input. They maintain an overview of the site and they have an independent decision-making role in future site operations.Volunteers for the posts should remember that they must be prepared to sign site legal business documents and therefore cannot maintain perfect anonymity. On the site we have not given any additional information other than their nicknames and user ids. Nevertheless, somewhere in the masses of paperwork and records that the US demands and maintains their names and contact details are recorded.If you wish to volunteer for a post then you should have an account in good standing i.e. not banned or created within the last few months, and with a reasonable level of karma. Please volunteer either here in the comments or directly via email to admin@soylentnews.org. If you have volunteered for a post previously then it does not preclude you from volunteering again. If you have questions regarding a role then please raise them here. If appropriate, I will ask the person currently in that post to reply so that you get the information direct from 'the horses mouth'.Once we have a volunteer or volunteers for a post we will hold an election for the community to approve and select a person for a post. This will be done openly and everyone with an active account created before the date and time that this Meta is published will have a single vote. The reason for this restriction is to prevent a mass of new accounts attempting to unfairly influence the outcome of the vote. The current Board will make the final decision on who is chosen.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

upstart writes:Intel has already received $2.2B in federal grants for chip production:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

fliptop writes:It might be the first time this type of stealer has cracked iPhones:

owl writes:https://chiraaggohel.com/posts/llms-eda/

fliptop writes:Messaging app said it had 'high confidence' some users were targeted and 'possibly compromised' by Paragon Solutions spyware:

looorg writes:https://torrentfreak.com/meta-torrented-over-81-tb-of-data-through-annas-archive-despite-few-seeders-250206/Facebook/Meta torrented over 81+TB of books/data to feed their models. Odd that the law isn't pounding on their door or they have some kind of strikes to get disconnected from the internet. Zuck likes his torrents and pirated books ...

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-encryption-backdoor-uk/ [Paywalled]"Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post."The British government's undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies. Its application would mark a significant defeat for tech companies in their decades-long battle to avoid being wielded as government tools against their users, the people said, speaking under the condition of anonymity to discuss legally and politically sensitive issues."From the BBC:

owl writes:http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/

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owl writes:https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-radiation-belts-detected-around-earth-after-epic-solar-storm

upstart writes:This year will decide if Horizon Worlds "will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure," according to a Meta executive:

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digitalaudiorock writes:For what is apparently the fifth time in recent years, changes to the Cloudflare browser integrity check are blocking the Palemoon browser as well as other non-mainstream browsers from any sites that use it. Every time this has happened before it's taken at least two weeks for them to address it. This one has gone on for a week and Cloudflare has yet to even acknowledge it. Here's the original post on the Palemoon forum:https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=32045The following post was then made on the Cloudflare community forum. Oddly, the thread was apparently closed because forum users flagged it as spam. It's pretty clear that these were pro-Cloudflare trolls on the forum that Cloudflare themselves is apparently OK with...likely because they troll on Cloudflare's side:https://community.cloudflare.com/t/access-denied-to-pale-moon-desktop-browser/764330This was later started on Hacker News:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42953508It's bad enough that many sites get coded so as to only work on mainstream browsers. However it's a much bigger issue when a company that's becoming the gateway to the web does so. In addition to the countless things that are wrong with this, I also agree with this post from user "Deadgye" on the Palemoon forum, making a case for false advertising on their part:https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=32045&start=100#p259382The cynic in me wonders if every time I get blocked from a site, I might be doing a $blocked_bots++ to some statistics Clouldflare may brag about.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

TheReaperD writes:News of mass immigration arrests has swept across the US over the past couple of weeks. Reports from Massachusetts to Idaho have described agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) spreading through communities and rounding people up. Quick Google searches for Ice operations, raids and arrests return a deluge of government press releases. Headlines include "ICE arrests 85 during 4-day Colorado operation", "New Orleans focuses targeted operations on 123 criminal noncitizens", and in Wisconsin, "ICE arrests 83 criminal aliens".But The Guardian took a closer look at these Ice reports tells a different story.All the archived Ice press releases soaring to the top of Google search results were marked with the same timestamp and read: "Updated: 01/24/2025".So, it looks like rather than actually doing any immigration raids, they're simply changing the timestamps on [some] raids dating back to 2008 to claim credit again for raids they did long [ago]. Once again, hype over substance.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes:Piecing together the puzzle of the world's earliest datable rune stone:

upstart writes:Deepfake videos are getting shockingly good:

Freeman, and an Anonymous Coward submitted the same story:As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders:

upstart writes:Russia VPN Crackdown Revelation - VPN Sites Hide Their IP Addresses:

AnonTechie writes:

Frosty Piss writes:https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/04/google-removes-pledge-to-not-use-ai-for-weapons-from-website/

upstart writes:Warmer, More Crowded Cities Bring Out the Rats:

day of the dalek writes:Eagles or Chiefs? Who's your pick to win the Super Bowl?Anyone can make a guess, but can we predict the winner with some skill? At first glance, the Eagles were 14-3 during the regular season, but the Chiefs had a slightly better record at 15-2. Therefore, we should pick the Chiefs, right? As college football commentator Lee Corso would say, not so fast, my friend.A game like chess has no luck at all. You might say you got lucky if your opponent made a poor decision, but that's really just human error. When I make a move like to castle kingside, that move always happens in the exact same way, with no luck involved. In football, however, there's a lot of random chance. A gust of wind might blow a field goal wide right, or a receiver might slip on a slick field and miss an otherwise easy pass. Or the officials might miss a call due to their own human error. Research shows that there's a lot of luck in football, and it doesn't always even out over a 16 or 17 game season. If we want to predict the outcome of future games skillfully, we need a way to distinguish lucky teams from good teams.The most accurate prediction systems rely heavily on margin of victory instead of a team's won-loss record. If the quarterback throws a pass to a wide open receiver, but the receiver slips on a slick field and doesn't catch the pass, it might prevent the team from scoring a touchdown on that drive. Luck might cost the team a touchdown, but it's a lot less likely for bad luck to cost that team two or three touchdowns. When teams win or lose games by larger margins, they're more insulated from the effects of luck. A team that wins a lot of close games might well be getting lucky, but a team that's blowing out their opponents is probably just a really good team. Strength of schedule also matters. If a team is winning a lot of blowout games but against lesser competition, they're probably not as good as their record or margins of victory might suggest.Another factor is the pace of play. A team that plays quickly is going to run more plays during a game, and that will also result in more scoring. A good team that plays quickly will probably win by larger margins, but a bad team with a rapid tempo is going to lose by larger margins. Many good prediction systems also take this into account, as well as that teams also tend to perform slightly better when they're at home than on the road.During the regular season, the Chiefs outscored their opponents by a total of 59 points, but the Eagles had a much larger scoring margin of 160 points. But what about their schedules?Two of the best rating systems are ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI) and Jeff Sagarin's ratings. FPI shows that the Chiefs played the 20th toughest schedule, compared to the Eagles with the 23rd strongest schedule. Sagarin also has the Chiefs' schedule at #20, but the Eagles at #30. According to Sagarin, the average Chiefs opponent was 0.97 points tougher than the average Eagles opponent. Over the course of the season, this is worth about 16.49 points. If the Eagles played the same schedule as the Chiefs, we would expect the Chiefs to have a scoring margin of 75.49 points. That's a little better, but still not nearly as good as the Eagles.The advanced metrics generally agree that the Eagles are the better team. If we subtract their FPI ratings, we would expect the Eagles to be favored by 2.1 points. Sagarin's ratings suggest Eagles by 4.08. On paper, the advanced metrics say the Eagles have a small edge over the Chiefs. But those predictions are actually the mean (or very close to it) of a statistical distribution of possible outcomes. FPI favors the Eagles by 2.1, but gives them a 56.1% chance of winning. Although we can predict football games with some skill, this is why we still have to play the games.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes:Google offering 'voluntary exit' for employees working on Pixel, Android:

taylorvich writes:https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/22

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upstart writes:Giant Study Questions Link Between Autism and Maternal Health:

hubie writes:Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads:

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fliptop writes:Automakers Tesla and BMW have launched a major lawsuit against the European Commission over tariffs imposed on electric vehicles imported from China:

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taylorvich writes:https://newatlas.com/technology/artificial-gills-unlock-long-range-underwater-robots/

upstart writes:Are we all aliens? NASA's returned asteroid samples hold the ingredients of life from a watery world:

An Anonymous Coward writes:The Fediverse - including Mastodon, Pixelfed, and others - is experiencing explosive exponential growth with over 700,000 new users, and 100,000,000 posts in January.Pixelfed alone is growing 100k users per WEEK now, has gone 10x in a month.Mastodon servers are welcoming influxes, and new servers are standing up at a rapid pace, with new active daily users up 200k in Jan, about +25%, and posts up by a similar +30% to 16 million/month.Tumblr is planning to federate.Forum software NodeBB has officially launched their 4.0 version, which includes ActivityPub support.https://fediversereport.com/fediverse-report-101/

upstart writes:US to deploy molten salt reactors to turn wastewater into freshwater:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/how-does-deepseek-r1-really-fare-against-openais-best-reasoning-models/

upstart writes:Glitch that casts a silence spell on some PCs has no workaround, but Microsoft promises a solution is coming:

A 2015 article in The Atlantic describes the problem of antibiotic resistance and some of its causes (alternative link):

owl writes:http://www.nablaman.com/relay/about.php

canopic jug writes:The site The Nerd Reich has an analysis of the seeming chaos being inflicted upon the US from within at the moment. Specifically, Elon Musk's attempt to destroy the United States government is a methodical execution of the "network state" blueprint, not random chaos.

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/how-one-youtuber-is-trying-to-poison-the-ai-bots-stealing-her-content/

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

fliptop writes:President Donald Trump said Monday night thatMicrosoft was in contention to buy TikTok, having previously said that he is eager to forge a deal that would "save" the popular video app from a ban: