SoylentNews

owl writes:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/future-interoperability-not-big-tech-2021-review

2021 was not a good year for Big Tech: a flaming cocktail of moderation failings, privacy breaches, leaked nefarious plans, illegal collusion and tone-deaf, arrogant pronouncements stoked public anger and fired up the political will to do something about the unaccountable power and reckless self-interest of the tech giants.

We've been here before. EFF's been fighting tech abuses for 30 years, and we're used to real tech problems giving rise to nonsensical legal "solutions," that don't address the problem - or make it worse. There's been some of that (okay, there's been a lot of that).

But this year, something new happened: lawmakers, technologists, public interest groups, and regulators around the world converged on an idea we're very fond of around here: interoperability.

There's a burgeoning, global understanding that the internet doesn't have to be five giant websites, each filled with text from the other four. Sure, tech platforms have "network effects" on their side - meaning that the more they grow, the more useful they are. Every iPhone app is a reason to buy an iPhone; every person who buys an iPhone is a reason to create a new iPhone app. Likewise, every Facebook user is a reason to join Facebook (in order to socialize with them) and every time someone joins Facebook, they become a reason for more people to join.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Analysis: A pandemic-scarred year [2021]ends in darkness -- but with hope on the horizon:

The year [2021] dawned in a blaze of hope that new, effective Covid-19 vaccines -- free and available to all -- would deliver the country from the worst public health emergency in 100 years, in which 350,000 Americans had already died. The promise of a new President, Joe Biden, to shut down the virus rang in the nation's ears after his predecessor had lied about Covid-19's severity, botched the government response and prized his political goals over its health.

But the year ends in a dark place. Hospitals are flooded with Covid-19 patients, the transportation network is seizing up, and a new coronavirus variant -- Omicron -- is finding even the most careful citizens.

[...] "I think that right now we're in the public health crisis of our lifetimes," Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, told CNN on Thursday.

It won't be a pandemic forever. Here's what could be next:

upstart writes:

Research Shows Intermittent Fasting Works for Weight Loss:

Intermittent fasting can produce clinically significant weight loss as well as improve metabolic health in individuals with obesity, according to a new study review led by University of Illinois Chicago researchers.

"We noted that intermittent fasting is not better than regular dieting; both produce the same amount of weight loss and similar changes in blood pressure, cholesterol, and inflammation," said Krista Varady, professor of nutrition at the UIC College of Applied Health Sciences and author of "Cardiometabolic Benefits of Intermittent Fasting."

According to the analysis published in the Annual Review of Nutrition, all forms of fasting reviewed produced mild to moderate weight loss, 1%-8% from baseline weight, which represents results that are similar to that of more traditional, calorie-restrictive diets. Intermittent fasting regimens may also benefit health by decreasing blood pressure and insulin resistance, and in some cases, cholesterol and triglyceride levels are also lowered. Other health benefits, such as improved appetite regulation and positive changes in the gut microbiome, have also been demonstrated.

The review looked at over 25 research studies involving three types of intermittent fasting:

upstart writes:

Massive ~2.3k Patch Series Would Improve Linux Build Times 50~80% & Fix "Dependency Hell":

Longtime Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar posted a massive set of patches today: 2,297 patches that have been in the works since late 2020 and completely rework the Linux kernel's header file hierarchy. The goal of this "fast kernel headers" effort is to speed up kernel build times and also clean=up[sic] a lot of things in the proces[sic] to address the "dependency hell".

This massive set of patches touches most of the Linux kernel code-base as it reworks the header file handling for the kernel builds. But the end result is faster Linux kernel compilations both for clean builds and incremental builds.

Molnar wrote in the patch cover letter, "As most kernel developers know, there's around ~10,000 main .h headers in the Linux kernel, in the include/ and arch/*/include/ hierarchies. Over the last 30+ years they have grown into a complicated & painful set of cross-dependencies we are affectionately calling 'Dependency Hell'."

According to Ingo's figures, there could be as many as 78% more kernel builds per hour with the "Fast Kernel Headers" enabled kernel than the current stock kernel. A 50~80% improvement in the absolute kernel build performance on supported architectures is possible.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

U.S. officials ask AT&T, Verizon to delay 5G wireless over aviation safety concerns:

WASHINGTON, Dec 31 (Reuters) - U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday asked AT&T (T.N) and Verizon Communications (VZ.N) to delay the planned Jan. 5 introduction of new 5G wireless service over aviation safety concerns.

In a letter Friday seen by Reuters, Buttigieg and FAA Administrator Steve Dickson asked AT&T Chief Executive John Stankey and Verizon Chief Executive Hans Vestberg for a delay of no more than two weeks as part of a "proposal as a near-term solution for advancing the co-existence of 5G deployment in the C-Band and safe flight operations."

The aviation industry and FAA have raised concerns about potential interference of 5G with sensitive aircraft electronics like radio altimeters that could disrupt flights.

"We ask that your companies continue to pause introducing commercial C-Band service for an additional short period of no more than two weeks beyond the currently scheduled deployment date of January 5," the letter says.

IDC Estimates Global Desktop Shipments Rose 7% YoY in 2021 After Dropping Sharply in 2020

owl and upstart write

IDC estimates global desktop shipments rose 7% YoY in 2021 after dropping sharply in 2020, as some remote workers who started on laptops switched to desktops:

The bulky machines have long been losing their cachet, as sleeker, hipper, more mobile devices such as laptops and smartphones came to dominate the gadget market. Early on, the pandemic seemed likely to extend that trend, as people fled offices and schools and rushed to buy laptops for their temporary "remote" circumstances. Desktop PC sales plunged.

This year, though, desktop demand has jumped, as some employees returned to the office, and others cemented their work-from-home setups. Desktop shipments world-wide are expected to be up about 7% this year after dropping sharply during the first year of the pandemic, according to International Data Corp. Computer companies such as Dell Technologies Inc. DELL 0.52% and HP Inc. HPQ +0.42% say they have seen an uptick in global shipments, which had declined over preceding years.

"For many of those people working from home, they might have been OK with a laptop before. But they really want something that will be a large display, so that they're really productive," said Alex Cho, HP's president of personal systems. "They want a great keyboard and a mouse, dual displays."

Laptop demand also has remained hot, though annual shipment growth reported by IDC this year is expected to ease to 15% from the 29% surge in the first year of the pandemic.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

upstart writes:

James Webb Space Telescope unfurls massive sunshield in major deployment milestone:

One of the James Webb Space Telescope's most nail-biting deployment steps is safely in the books.

The $10 billion observatory unfurled its huge sunshield on Friday (Dec. 31), carefully unfolding the five-layer structure by sequentially deploying two booms.

[...] The sunshield is one of the most crucial and complicated features of Webb, which launched on Dec. 25 to seek out faint heat signals from the early universe. Detecting such signals requires that Webb keep its instruments and optics extremely cold, and the sunshield will help it do just that by reflecting and radiating away solar energy.

The shiny silver shield measures 69.5 feet long by 46.5 feet wide (21.2 by 14.2 meters) when fully deployed — far too large to fit inside the protective payload fairing of any currently operational rocket. So it was designed to launch in a highly compact configuration and then unfold once Webb got to space.

That deployment is an elaborate, multistep process with many different potential failure points that could sink the entire mission.

upstart writes:

France Has Ordered Clearview AI To Delete Its Facial Recognition Data:

Facial recognition company Clearview AI has been hit with another order by a country's watchdog agency to delete the personal data of its citizens, the latest in a global rebuke by privacy regulators around the world.

On Thursday, France's Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés (CNIL) said Clearview had breached Europe's overarching data protection law, known as GDPR. It gave the company two months to delete the personal information it had collected and stop "unlawful processing" of the data.

The order comes after similar decisions from the UK and Australia in recent weeks. Clearview has built its business by scraping people's photos from the web and social media and indexing them in a vast facial recognition database.

The crackdown follows a series of BuzzFeed News investigations revealing widespread and sometimes unsanctioned use of the company's facial recognition software around the world. In August, BuzzFeed News reported that France's Ministry of the Interior is listed as having run more than 400 searches on Clearview, according to the facial recognition company's internal data. Despite the records, a spokesperson for the agency at the time said it had no information on Clearview.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Busting cat-color myths: Your orange tabby isn't dumber than its feline pals:

The recent viral fame of an orange tabby cat named Jorts led to debates about whether Jorts was less intelligent than other cats simply because he has orange fur. Some said it was unfair and prejudicial to judge the feline based on its appearance.

But is there really a medically known tie between cat fur color and personality or intelligence? People think so, but science doesn't, Zarah Hedge, chief medical officer at the San Diego Humane Society, told me.

[...] "While there could be some genetic components associated with coat color that also impact personality, there is little scientific evidence demonstrating this to be the case in domestic cats," said Hedge, who has five cats of various colors.

The idea that fur color dictates personality isn't as crazy as it sounds. Some studies do show associations between coat color in other mammals and their behavior -- silver foxes, for one. But that hasn't been proven in domestic cats. And cat fur color can vary even within the same breed. The common domestic shorthair cat comes in many fur colors, so really, the stereotypes are often comparing apples to apples.

upstart writes:

Bank accidentally deposits $176 million into people's accounts on Christmas Day:

Thousands of people received a surprise gift on Christmas Day this year when European bank Santander accidentally deposited £ 130 million (US $ 176 million) in 75,000 transactions. their salaries doubled while the vendors got more than they expected.

Bank accounts operated by competing banks. "We regret that due to a technical problem, some payments from our corporate customers were incorrectly duplicated in the accounts of the recipients," a Santander spokesman told CNBC.

[...] "It ruined my vacation time thinking I accidentally paid hundreds of thousands. I thought I did something wrong, "a payroll manager reportedly told the BBC.

Just me and that I would get in trouble at work. The payroll manager added that Santander had not disclosed how companies should explain the second payment to employees, nor provided any information on the reimbursement, according to the report.

Original Submission

What skills do you have and take for granted but can recommend somebody give a try? Not everybody here is a greybeard with decades of experience behind them. What do you wish you had mastered earlier on in your own careers? Here are some that others have suggested:

How to Add Safe Mode to the Boot Menu in Windows 11

upstart writes:

How to add Safe Mode to the boot menu in Windows 11:

While Microsoft Windows 11 may be the latest and greatest version of the operating system, it is still subject to boot failures. To troubleshoot a Windows PC that won't boot properly, many users start with Safe Mode, which eliminates the loading of extraneous apps, systems and drivers. It is a tried-and-true troubleshooting method.

However, if you have a particularly problematic PC that just won't boot properly, you may want to improve your troubleshooting chances by adding Safe Mode to your list of booting choices. This would be less frustrating than trying to remember to request Safe Mode for each PC restart. Using the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) Editor, we can change the default settings to add Safe Mode to our list of Windows 11 booting options.

From Start to Finish: What Can You Do With a Linux Server?

upstart writes:

From start to finish: What can you do with a Linux server?:

An operating system that can do what Linux can is sure to be complex, and it has a steep learning curve. Luckily, lots of support is available to guide you.

The [...] "From start to finish" series explores the various things you can do with a Linux server. Better yet, it explains these concepts in detail, from beginning to end, without skipping any steps. Penned by our very own Linux expert, Jack Wallen, these resources are invaluable to getting the most out of the operating system.

How to Set Up a Git Repository in Minutes on Linux

upstart writes:

How to set up a Git repository in minutes on Linux:

Sometimes you just need to deploy a quick Git repository so you can collaborate on a project, back up your code or house your files on a remote machine. When you feel like doing that, you don't want to have to spend an hour or so deploying a server and setting it up ... especially when you already have everything you need at your fingertips.

I'm going to show you how you can quickly deploy a Git repository using just git and ssh. You should be able to spin this up in less than five minutes (two, if you type fast).

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2  Original Submission #3 

upstart writes:

Flexible tentaclelike robotic manipulators inspired by nature:

Traditional robots can have difficulty grasping and manipulating soft objects if their manipulators are not flexible in the way elephant trunks, octopus tentacles, or human fingers can be.

The soft manipulators are based on pneu-nets, which are pneumatically actuated elastomeric structures.

These structures have a tentaclelike shape and consist of a series of connected internal chambers which can be inflated pneumatically, blowing them up like a balloon. One side of the tentacle is highly flexible while the other is stiffer. Increasing air pressure to the chambers causes the structure to bend toward the stiff side.

Journal Reference:
Chengru Jiang, Dong Wang, Baowen Zhao, et al. Modeling and inverse design of bio-inspired multi-segment pneu-net soft manipulators for 3D trajectory motion, Applied Physics Reviews (DOI: 10.1063/5.0054468)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Ski Lift Design Does The Impossible | Hackaday:

Tis The Season, for those who are so inclined, to loft themselves to the top of a steep snow-covered hill and then go downhill, really fast. And if something gets in their way, turn. Whether they be on skis, a snowboard, or some other means, getting down usually involves using gravity. Getting up, on the other hand, usually involves a ski lift. And in the video by [kalsan15] after the break, we learn how technology has stepped in to make even the most inaccessible slopes just a lift ride away.

[The YouTube video is only 8m19s long; it clearly defines the problem... and the solution! --ed.]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

2022 is 'Soylent Green' year. Here's why you shouldn't worry.:

If you know the 1973 movie Soylent Green at all, it's likely for the arresting last line. "Soylent Green is people," lead actor Charlton Heston bellows as he is carried away on a stretcher, simultaneously becoming a meme and summing up the plot so thoroughly that there's little need to catch the rest of the film. (Soylent Green is a hot new food product in this starving overpopulated future New York; Heston's detective character discovers it is not made from plankton as the manufacturer claims.)

Less well known is the year Soylent Green is set in: 2022. That's right, we've reached the point when Hollywood told us that millions of New Yorkers would be fighting each other over protein bars made from the finest processed human. Presuming that a fad for cannibalism doesn't arrive with the next NYC fashion week, we can safely say that humanity has successfully avoided the threat of the movie's main premise. (Instead we're grappling with the threat of the Omicron variant, which itself sounds like a Charlton Heston movie.)

Does this mean Soylent Green got nothing right about our 21st century world? Not so fast. As with Blade Runner and its setting, the Los Angeles of 2019, the movie's predictive power is a mixed bag.

[...] WRONG: Soylent Green. RIGHT: Soylent. Soylent green is mint chocolate, it turns out.

[...] WRONG: Starvation. RIGHT: Ocean acidification.

[...] WRONG: Dump trucks for protesters. RIGHT: Global warming.

[...] WRONG: Mass euthanasia. RIGHT: Mass numbing.

[...] Soylent Green is available to buy or rent on Apple TV, Google Play, Amazon Prime, and YouTube TV.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

White House commits to ISS extension

The Biden administration formally supports extending operations of the International Space Station through the end of the decade, an announcement that is neither surprising nor addresses how to get all the station's partners, notably Russia, to agree on the station's future.

In a statement published on NASA's ISS blog Dec. 31, NASA said the White House agreed to extend operations of the ISS through 2030. Federal law, last revised in 2015 with the enactment of the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, made it U.S. policy to operate the station through at least 2024.

[...] The White House's decision is alone not sufficient to continue ISS operations through the end of the decade. NASA said it would work with the station's partners — Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia — "to enable continuation of the groundbreaking research being conducted in this unique orbiting laboratory through the rest of this decade."

One partner has already signaled its willingness to continue the ISS. "I welcome this announcement & will submit a proposal to Member States for @esa to continue until 2030, as well," tweeted Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, shortly after NASA published its statement.

A bigger challenge, though, will be keeping Russia in the ISS partnership. Russian officials have expressed doubts about both the technical ability of the ISS to operate through the end of the decade given problems with the Russian segment of the station as well as a desire to develop a Russian national space station.

Also at The Verge.

Original Submission