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owl writes:

http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-april-fools-joke-that-might-have.html

Everyone should pull one great practical joke in their lifetimes. This one was mine, and I think it's past the statute of limitations. The story is true. Only the names are redacted to protect the guilty.

My first job out of college was a database programmer, even though my undergraduate degree had nothing to do with computers and my current profession still mostly doesn't. The reason was that the University I worked for couldn't afford competitive wages, but they did offer various fringe benefits, and they were willing to train someone who at least had decent working knowledge. I, as a newly minted graduate of the august University of California system, had decent working knowledge at least of BSD/386 and SunOS, but more importantly also had the glowing recommendation of my predecessor who was being promoted into a new position. I was hired, which was their first mistake.

Original Submission

aliks writes:

According to journalism.co.uk an Ethics Box added to a news article aims to explain the editorial thinking behind key decisions on the news story. The aim being to counter increasing mistrust amongst youth who are skeptical of journalism in general.
https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/schibsted-delivers-on-what-young-audiences-want-transparency-on-editorial-decisions/s2/a1228276/

Does anyone still believe journalism is not just bought and sold to the highest bidder? (Present company excepted!!)

The Guardian newspaper thinks so:
"Outlets seek fresh strategies as UK poll shows 'news avoidance' on the rise": Negative content and distrust among reasons given by audiences as industry works on how to keep them engaged. Less than half (47%) of those asked about their news consumption said they viewed television news programmes regularly or had done so in the last week, according to a new Opinium poll. The figure fell to 29% for radio news and 26% for news websites.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/apr/01/outlets-seek-fresh-strategies-as-uk-poll-shows-news-avoidance-on-the-rise

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Uncrewed Spectrum test rocket's failure seconds after blast-off said to have produced extensive data nonetheless:

A test rocket intended to kickstart satellite launches from Europe fell to the ground and exploded less than a minute after takeoff from Norway on Sunday, in what the German startup Isar Aerospace had described as an initial test.

The Spectrum started smoking from its sides and crashed back to Earth in a powerful explosion just after its launch from from the Andøya spaceport in the Arctic. Images were broadcast live on YouTube.

The uncrewed rocket was billed as the first attempt at an orbital flight to originate from Europe, where several countries, including Sweden and Britain, have said they want a share of the growing market for commercial space missions.

Isar Aerospace, which had warned the initial launch could end prematurely, said the test produced extensive data that its team could learn from.

[...] The Spectrum is designed for small- and medium-sized satellites weighing up to one metric tonne, although it did not carry a payload on its maiden voyage from the spaceport in Norway.

The mission was intended to collect data on Isar Aerospace's launch vehicle in a first integrated test of all its systems, the Bavarian company said last week.

The company, headquartered in Munich, had previously said it would consider a 30-second flight a success. While not intended to reach orbit on its first mission, the test marked the first commercial orbital flight from a launchpad on the European continent, excluding Russia.

European countries have long relied on paying for launches from Russian space stations but the relationship has broken down since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

[...] Last year, a report by Mario Draghi, a former European Central Bank president and former prime minister of Italy, recommended Europe could boost its economic growth by recognising space as a key sector. Independent access to space is also increasingly seen as a geopolitical and security issue.

[...] Several destinations around Europe have been marked for spaceport projects, including the British Shetland Islands, the Portuguese Azores, and Esrange in Sweden. Coastal areas near stretches of open water are considered ideal spots for launch sites, as rockets do not have to fly over heavily populated land areas.

Britain has had mixed success as a launch destination. Virgin Orbit, the satellite launch company founded by Richard Branson, filed for bankruptcy in 2023 after its inaugural flight from Cornwall – with a rocket strapped to a Boeing 747 – ended in failure.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Honeybees aren't native to the United States, but they play a big role in food production.

Honeybees, which serve a crucial role in food production, have been dying in staggering numbers in the United States.

U.S. commercial beekeepers saw colony losses averaging 62% over the past winter, according to a survey released last month from honeybee research nonprofit Project Apis m. The survey was based on data that included more than two-thirds of commercially raised honeybees in the U.S.

"Something real bad is going on this year," Scott McArt, associate entomology professor at Cornell University, told The Guardian.

Last week, entomologists at Washington State University forecast that total honeybee losses this year could reach up to 70%. Over the past decade, annual losses have typically been between 40 and 50%, but the numbers have been "increasing steadily" as time goes on, the report said.

Until about two decades ago, beekeepers would typically lose only 10-20% of their bees over the winter months, according to The Guardian.

Climate change, urban sprawl and widespread weed killing were all cited as factors in bee decline by Project Apis m.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is also studying whether bee-killing viruses or parasites could be contributing to the devastating losses, while Cornell researchers are looking into the impact of pesticides. The Guardian noted that Cornell had to step in to assist with that research after President Donald Trump's administration made staffing cuts at the USDA.

Honey bees are not native to the U.S., but they play a big part in commercial agriculture. The flying insects pollinate more than 130 types of fruits, nuts and vegetables, making them responsible for $15 billion worth of U.S. crops each year, according to the USDA.

Commercial Blake Shook told CBS News he fears for the future of agriculture.

"If this is a multi-year thing, it'll change the way we consume food in the United States," he said.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

FuguIta is an OpenBSD live CD featuring portable workplace, low hardware requirements, additional software, and partial support for Japanese. This live CD is intended to be as close as possible to the default OpenBSD when installed on a hard disk. - quote source

On February 20, 2025, they celebrated their 20th Anniversary of the public release:

To be precise, it dates back to the release of its predecessor, CD-OpenBSD.

Initially, it was just an experimental project to create an OpenBSD system that could boot from a CD. I never imagined it would last this long.

Now, FuguIta supports three CPU architectures: i386, amd64, and arm64.
It can also be installed and used on a variety of media, including DVDs, USB memory sticks, SD cards, hard disks, and SSDs.

Its use cases have also expanded. While it was originally intended as a way to "try OpenBSD," it is now used not only as a daily PC environment but also as a dedicated machine for servers, routers, and IoT devices.

As a result, FuguIta is now used for various purposes in different countries around the world.

This is all thanks to the continued support of many people over the years:
        • Users who downloaded and used FuguIta
        • Those who provided valuable feedback, including reviews, questions, and feature requests
        • Community members who offered mirror servers and technical support

When I first released CD-OpenBSD 20 years ago, there were many similar OpenBSD-based live systems. However, most of them have ceased development over time, and now FuguIta is likely the only one remaining.

I will continue to develop and release FuguIta for as long as possible.
Thank you for your continued support!

Original Submission

hubie writes:

CJR study shows AI search services misinform users and ignore publisher exclusion requests:

A new study from Columbia Journalism Review's Tow Center for Digital Journalism finds serious accuracy issues with generative AI models used for news searches. The researchers tested eight AI-driven search tools by providing direct excerpts from real news articles and asking the models to identify each article's original headline, publisher, publication date, and URL. They discovered that the AI models incorrectly cited sources in more than 60 percent of these queries, raising significant concerns about their reliability in correctly attributing news content.

Researchers Klaudia Jaźwińska and Aisvarya Chandrasekar noted in their report that roughly 1 in 4 Americans now use AI models as alternatives to traditional search engines. Given that these models struggle significantly when specifically asked to attribute news sources, this raises broader questions about their general reliability.

Citation error rates varied notably among the tested platforms. Perplexity provided incorrect information in 37 percent of the queries tested, whereas ChatGPT Search incorrectly identified 67 percent (134 out of 200) of articles queried. Grok 3 demonstrated the highest error rate, at 94 percent. In total, researchers ran 1,600 queries across the eight different generative search tools.

The study highlighted a common trend among these AI models: rather than declining to respond when they lacked reliable information, the models frequently provided plausible-sounding but incorrect or speculative answers—known technically as confabulations. The researchers emphasized that this behavior was consistent across all tested models, not limited to just one tool.

Surprisingly, premium paid versions of these AI search tools fared even worse in certain respects. Perplexity Pro ($20/month) and Grok 3's premium service ($40/month) confidently delivered incorrect responses more often than their free counterparts. Though these premium models correctly answered a higher number of prompts, their reluctance to decline uncertain responses drove higher overall error rates.

[...] Mark Howard, chief operating officer at Time magazine, expressed concern to CJR about ensuring transparency and control over how Time's content appears via AI-generated searches. Despite these issues, Howard sees room for improvement in future iterations, stating, "Today is the worst that the product will ever be," citing substantial investments and engineering efforts aimed at improving these tools.

However, Howard also did some user shaming, suggesting it's the user's fault if they aren't skeptical of free AI tools' accuracy: "If anybody as a consumer is right now believing that any of these free products are going to be 100 percent accurate, then shame on them."

AI Search Has a Citation Problem

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-03-reveals-tool-tropical-fish-species.html

Scientists have debunked the belief that using tools is unique to mammals and birds, after documenting tropical fish that smash shellfish against rocks to open and eat the meat, in a fascinating new study published in the journal Coral Reefs on 26 March 2025.

Dr. Juliette Tariel-Adam from the School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University led a project tracking tool use in multiple species of wrasses—a colorful reef fish.

The study logs fish deliberately picking up hard-shelled prey like crabs and mollusks, smashing them against hard surfaces like rocks to access the meal inside.

"Tool use is typically associated with humans, but this behavior is proof that fish are far cleverer than they get credit for," says Dr. Tariel-Adam.
Tool use by a yellowhead wrasse in South Caicos Island . Credit: Macquarie University

Researchers from Australia, Brazil and Caicos Islands have provided the first evidence of anvil use in several species of Halichoeres wrasses, suggest the behavior is far more common than previously thought.

Wrasses use hard surfaces, also called 'anvils,' to crack open hard-shelled prey such as crabs and mollusks. Through a citizen science initiative Fish Tool Use, researchers gathered 16 new observations across five species of Halichoeres wrasses.

These findings mark the first evidence of anvil use for three species and the first video evidence for the other two, and extend the known range of anvil use to the western Atlantic.

More information: Juliette Tariel-Adam et al, Tool use by New World Halichoeres wrasses, Coral Reefs (2025). DOI: 10.1007/s00338-025-02633-w

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

The massive changes in US research brought about by the new administration of President Donald Trump are causing many scientists in the country to rethink their lives and careers. More than 1,200 scientists who responded to a Nature poll — three-quarters of the total respondents — are considering leaving the United States following the disruptions prompted by Trump. Europe and Canada were among the top choices for relocation.

Nature asked readers whether these changes were causing them to consider leaving the United States. Responses were solicited earlier this month on the journal's website, on social media and in the Nature Briefing e-mail newsletter. Roughly 1,650 people completed the survey.

Many respondents were looking to move to countries where they already had collaborators, friends, family or familiarity with the language. "Anywhere that supports science," wrote one respondent. Some who had moved to the United States for work planned to return to their country of origin.

Nature.Com

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Microsoft's killing script used to avoid Microsoft Account in Windows 11:

Microsoft has removed the 'BypassNRO.cmd' script from Windows 11 preview builds, which allowed users to bypass the requirement to use a Microsoft Account when installing the operating system.

This change was introduced in the latest Windows 11 Insider Dev preview build, which means it will likely be coming to production builds.

"We're removing the bypassnro.cmd script from the build to enhance security and user experience of Windows 11," reads the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5516 release notes.

"This change ensures that all users exit setup with internet connectivity and a Microsoft Account."

Since the release of Windows 11, Microsoft has made it hard to use the operating system with a local account, instead forcing users to log in with a Microsoft Account.

Microsoft says this is done to make using the company's ecosystem of cloud-based features and services easier, such as using your account to store BitLocker recovery keys.

[...] However, many users do not want to use a Microsoft Account, thinking it reduces their privacy and allows Microsoft to monitor their activities.

A popular method to bypass a Microsoft Account during setup is to use a script named 'C:\windows\system32\oobe\BypassNRO.cmd.' When run during Windows 11 setup, it creates a Registry value that removes the requirement to connect to the Internet during setup, which allows you to set up the operating system with a local account instead.

[...] While Microsoft is now removing this script, they have not yet removed the BypassNRO Registry value. This means you can manually enter the following commands to achieve the same functionality as the now-removed script.

reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t
REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
shutdown /r /t 0

If you feel comfortable modifying the Windows Registry, you can create the BypassNRO manually using Regedit, which can be launched from the Shift+F10 command prompt.

Unfortunately, it would not be surprising to see Microsoft remove the functionality of this Registry value in the future, making this technique no longer work.

Original Submission

Long ago (but not all that long) The Internet Oracle (aka Usenet Oracle, fam. "Orrie") was a popular source of humor and entertainment. For a sample,

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:
> My lawyer was trying to defend me for when I beat up my pal Edward
> "Skinny" Porkmann. And I heard him say it, right there in court, he
> said, Hipso fatso." I think he meant ME, and what kind of a lawyer is
> he if he insults me right in front of the judge? He claims he said ipso
> facto but that's no excuse because it was still a insult. Yes, I am
> fat, but does he have to say it out loud?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:
} Ahhh, supplicant, you don't know how lucky you are to have such a
} lawyer. Let him do his job, for goodness sake.
}
} A little-known 17th century federal law called the Weighty Clams Act
} (named after Alfred Weighty, the little-known 17th century senator from
} Kentucky) makes it a crime to speculate on another person's vital
} statistics, including but not limited to, height, weight, and blood
} pressure. This was to combat the influx of carnival hucksters who were
} stealing business from the physicians by out-guessing them at these
} important measures. The newly-formed AMA lobbied for these protections,
} arguing that only trained professionals in the latest medical and hair
} cutting technologies should be allowed to guess at a patient's
} conditions.
}
} Your lawyer was telegraphing a subtle but effective message to Edward's
} lawyer: ease up or prepare for a malpractice suit.
}
} You owe the Oracle a plate of steamed vegetables.

Archives at https://internetoracle.org/digests.cgi

What are your memories of a more light-hearted internet? 'xkcd' is still with us but other cartoons have gone from the internet and elsewhere (e.g. dilbert disappeared a year or two back, the syndication of Calvin and Hobbes finished in 1995). My own favourite was bash.org (but that didn't always go as I expected - as one my first stories on SN shows: "Janrinok - FOR TRAINING ONLY - do not release!"). Ooops!

Today we have progressed(?) to sites that display thousands of memes. Some of them are genuinely funny and required a degree of skill to create whereas others are little more than copies of somebody else's idea. Personally, I detest the majority of the TikTok videos that I encounter which often are nothing more than a platform for an 'influencer' to appear to be more important than they actually are. However, within the last few days there have been a couple of comments on this site that have had me laughing.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Nordic countries were early adopters of digital payments. Now, electronic banking is seen as a potential threat to national security:

In 2018 a former deputy governor of Sweden's central bank predicted that by 2025 the country would probably be cashless.

Seven years on, that prediction has turned out to be pretty much true. Just one in 10 purchases are made with cash, and card is the most common form of payment, followed by the Swedish mobile payment system Swish, launched by six banks in 2012 and now ubiquitous. Other mobile phone payment services are also growing quickly.

In fact, according to the central bank's annual payments report, published this month, Sweden and Norway have the lowest amount of cash in circulation, as a percentage of GDP, in the world.

But in the context of today, with war in Europe, unpredictability in the US and the fear of Russian hybrid attacks almost a part of daily life in Sweden, life without cash is not proving the utopia that perhaps it once promised to be.

Such is the perceived severity of the situation that the authorities are trying to encourage citizens to keep and use cash in the name of civil defence. In November, the defence ministry sent every home a brochure entitled If Crisis or War Comes, advising people to use cash regularly and keep a minimum of a week's supply in various denominations to "strengthen preparedness".

[...] Sweden is not the only Nordic country backpedalling on plans for a cashless society. Last year Norway, which has a popular equivalent to Swish called Vipps MobilePay, brought in legislation that means retailers can be fined or sanctioned if they will not accept cash. The government has also recommended that citizens "keep some cash on hand due to the vulnerabilities of digital payment solutions to cyber-attacks".

Norway's former justice and emergencies minister Emilie Mehl put it in clear terms: "If no one pays with cash and no one accepts cash, cash will no longer be a real emergency solution once the crisis is upon us."

Ultimately, when it comes to emergency planning, the world's two most cashless societies are still banking on cash.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

After Trump's decree: fight for US funding for Tor, F-Droid and Let's Encrypt:

The Open Technology Fund (OTF) has filed a lawsuit in the US District Court in Washington D.C. against the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) and the Office of Management and Budget. In its lawsuit, the OTF is seeking a preliminary injunction to have the USAGM release the withheld funding. US President Donald Trump had previously issued a decree largely restricting the USAGM under the current legal situation. The OTF uses its funds to support the certification authority Let's Encrypt and the anonymization network Tor, among others.

In its application, the OTF argues that the termination of the grant by the USAGM is unlawful, as the provision of the funding has already been decided by Congress. As part of this decision, a total amount of 43.5 million US dollars has been earmarked for 2025, which accounts for 98 percent of the OTF's funding. The USAGM oversees the financial and programmatic activities of the OTF and makes payments to the non-profit organization. The OTF had requested and not received a payment of around 650,000 US dollars for operating costs in March.

Kari Lake, executive CEO of USAGM and special advisor to the Trump administration, described the US agency in a statement as a "huge rot and burden on the American taxpayer" that also poses a national security risk. OTF Chairman Zack Cooper, on the other hand, argued that his organization is the most efficient and effective tool against censorship and influence peddling. An end to OTF projects "would weaken America's national security and keep millions of people around the world trapped behind authoritarian information firewalls", Cooper said.

Overall, the US government invests a lot of money in open source software. Last year, Let's Encrypt received around 800,000 US dollars in funding from the OTF, the Tor network received almost 500,000 US dollars and the open-source Android app store F-Droid received 396,000 US dollars. In total, the organization currently supports around 50 projects, including the development of the free VPN client OpenVPN. According to its information, the OTF has published around 2,500 patches for open-source software and the organization promotes VPNs for around 45 million people in countries with censorship. OTF President Cunningham sees the lawsuit as the only way to ensure the continued existence of these projects.

[I do wish this was an April Fools joke - but it is dated late last week so I guess not... --JR]

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Five years ago, when the COVID pandemic forced all non-essential workers to stay home, American families were swiftly forced to reorganize themselves.

Suddenly, they had no childcare, no school, and no support system to help them navigate an unprecedented moment in their lifetimes. But just as unexpectedly, parents and caregivers whose jobs could be performed remotely had something relatively novel: the ability to work from home.

For many mothers who could take advantage of remote work, it was a burden and blessing that ultimately became indispensable. Once their kids went back to daycare or school, the flexibility of working from home often meant they could better juggle the many demands on their time, including the disproportionate amount of housework they perform compared to their male partners.

"There was a massive amount of efficiencies that happened in terms of managing lives during the pandemic, ironically," says Susan MacKenty Brady, CEO of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership.

Now, some business leaders, and even the president of the United States, are determined to roll back workplace flexibility.

In January, President Donald Trump declared that government employees would be required to return to their workplace. Last month, in a company town hall, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimond offered a profanity-laced explanation for why his employees had to work five days a week in-person again. Amazon and AT&T, among other companies, have also called employees back to the office.

Proponents say working in person full-time will boost productivity, but experts say that women will pay a unique price.

[...] Reporting back to the office full-time doesn't mean that home and community responsibilities suddenly disappear. There are still kids who need to be promptly picked up from after-school care, dogs that need walking, errands that must be run, doctors' appointments that can't be missed, and so on.

Whereas mothers (and fathers) could previously use time spent commuting on some of these tasks, now they're back in their cars or riding public transportation. When flexibility vanishes, MacKenty Brady says the answer is often to buy more childcare. That only puts additional pressure on households to earn more to afford care while also creating fresh tension for mothers who feel spread thin.

MacKenty Brady says it's rare to hear corporate leaders publicly acknowledge these pressures, even as their insistence on in-person work could actually diminish productivity and engagement by increasing stress and exhaustion.

[...] MacKenty Brady says that despite the emphasis on getting back to the office full-time, offering flexible work options is a no-brainer, because women are essential to the American workforce. In other words, alienating them is no strategy for a company's financial success.

Original Submission

aliks writes:

In the spirit of making a submission a week - I had a look at the front page of phys.org

The article:

https://phys.org/news/2025-03-class-zwitterionic-phospholipids-mrna-delivery.html

immediately caught my eye. Are we letting the biochemists get ahead of cyber geeks in the battle for the wierdest jargon?

We must fight back! Although zwitterions do have a bit of history behind them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwitterion

Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA early galaxy discovery shines light on 'Cosmic Dark Ages':

A new discovery by NASA's flagship James Webb Space Telescope has pushed forward the confirmed end date of the so-called "Cosmic Dark Ages" by some 270 million years.

In their study, an international team of researchers led by astrophysicist Joris Witstok of the University of Cambridge in England, analyzed the distant galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1-LA.

It is so far away that the light from it takes some 13.4 billion years to reach us, meaning we see it as it was just 330 million years after the big bang.

And from JADES-GS-z13-1-LA the team detected a signal of "reionization," the process through which the first stars made the universe once again transparent to light.

"We report the discovery of one of the most distant galaxies known to date," Witstok told Newsweek. "Unlike any other similarly distant galaxy, it shows a very clear, telltale signature that implies the galaxy contains a remarkably powerful source of extreme ultraviolet radiation.

"This also suggests it has made an unexpectedly early start to cosmic reionization, the process where neutral gas in between early galaxies is heated into a plasma by energetic radiation from stars and black holes forming in the first galaxies."

In the wake of the big bang, the universe gradually cooled down from its original, ultra-hot state, eventually allowing—around the universe's 380,000th birthday—free protons and electrons to combine into a fog mainly made up of neutral hydrogen atoms.

Because of this, even when the first stars formed, some 13.7 billion years ago, their light was quickly extinguished by the gas cloud. It is because of this (and the few other sources of light at the time) that this period is called the Cosmic Dark Ages.

Over time, sufficiently energetic ultraviolet radiation from the first stars and galaxies increasingly split the neutral hydrogen atoms back into electrons and protons—that is, "reionizing" them.

"The emergence of these first stars marks the end of the "Dark Ages" in cosmic history, a period characterized by the absence of discrete sources of light," NASA explains on its website.