looorg writes:https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/26/23889956/microsoft-next-generation-nuclear-energy-smr-job-hiringMicrosoft wants to become a nuclear power. Their need for power to power their AI and other things is now so great that they want to run their own nuclear reactors.
An Anonymous Coward writes:The loss of dark skies is so painful, astronomers coined a new term for it: 'Noctalgia', a feature of the modern age.Most of our light pollution comes from sources on the ground, but satellites don't just spoil deep-space astronomical observations when they cross a telescope's field of view; they also scatter and reflect sunlight from their solar arrays. The abundance of satellites is causing the overall brightness of the sky to increase all around the globe. Some researchers have estimated that, on average, our darkest night skies, located in the most remote regions of the world, are 10% brighter than they were a half century ago.Humans are ineffably impacted. How can someone who has never seen a clear night sky know what they are missing? It's like someone without gonads or genital nerves trying to understand orgasm.Many animal species are suffering as well. What good are night-adapted senses in nocturnal species if the night sky isn't much darker than the daytime sky? Researchers have identified several species whose circadian rhythms are getting thrown off, making them vulnerable to predation (or, the reverse: the inability to effectively locate prey).Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
The BBC reports that Lego won't be making blocks from recycled drink bottles after all, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66910573 It appears they did a full depth study over the last two years,
looorg writes:https://neuralink.com/blog/first-clinical-trial-open-for-recruitment/Neuralink are looking for a few test subjects that have either ALS or are quadriplegics to test their wireless brain human interface. A device that will control a computer keyboard with only the users mind. Also they want to test out how good their robot is at surgery but that is perhaps less appealing.
Alex "Sandy" Pentland[1] is somewhere near the top of the AI pantheon these days, here's his most recent talk, "Engineering Ecosystems with AI", given online on Friday 15 Sept., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m8EsEmZPYQ at the MIT Mobility Forum. In the intro it is mentioned that this was a dry run for Pentland's upcoming keynote to the U. S. National Academy of Sciences. From the YT summary,
Signal Preps its Encryption Engine for the Quantum Doomsday Inevitabilityupstart writes:Signal preps its encryption engine for the quantum doomsday inevitability:
sweettea writes:The All Systems Go! conference happened last week in Berlin, devoted to systemd / container / image-building topics. Several cool talks focused on immutable distributions: their usages and virtues, particularly NixOS. NixOS is the foremost immutable, reproducable, and atomically upgradable Linux distribution, and a powerful building block for building easily deployable services.Andreas Herrmann, the first Bazel community expert, talked about the value of a reproducible build of your software and the merits of using an immutable distribution like Nix to make your builds better. Xe Iaso's talk on writing your own NixOS modules for your own build dependencies to ensure your software is reproducable. Lots more talks, but mostly systemd-related: check out the list of talks and the recordings!
NotSanguine writes:The University of Michigan issued a press release concerning new research on the growth (or lack thereof) of large-scale structures in the universe.From the press release:
Meeting Announcement: The next meeting of the SoylentNews governance committee is scheduled for Friday, September 22nd, 2023 at 20:30 UTC (1:30pm PDT, 4:30pm EDT) in #governance on SoylentNews IRC. Logs of the meeting will be available afterwards for review, and minutes will be published when available.The agenda for the upcoming meeting will also be published when available. Minutes and agenda, and other governance committee information are to be found on the SoylentNews Wiki at: https://wiki.staging.soylentnews.org/wiki/GovernanceYou, the community, are always welcome to observe and participate, and you're invited to the meeting.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
Sometime back I posted about Motor Trend (and prior hot rod magazines) converting their long time '57 Chevy project car to electric power. Now they have a followup article with lessons learned at https://www.motortrend.com/features/ev-conversion-classic-cars/ (had some trouble loading that page, found a copy at, https://archive.ph/l1o6H ).Their title is,
I *just* realized that an editor on SoylentNews, janrinok (AKA JR), has very recently attained a huge milestone on our site:8,000 stories!I can speak from personal experience that this represents a HUGE sacrifice of time and energy.He showed me the ropes in how to post a story.(There is FAR MORE than meets the eye to be an editor!)There was also the fact that in the early years of SoylentNews, he was simultaneously taking care of his severely ill wife.(She, sadly, passes away a few short years ago.)He endured some exceedingly heart-wrenching periods doing this.I have witnessed him posting stories even though he was beyond the point of exhaustion.So much so that his doctors *demanded* that he stop *everything* and take a break for many months.So it may not appear to be a huge milestone, please take my word for it. It is!Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
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