SoylentNews

hubie writes:

A new computer model uses publicly available data to predict crime accurately in eight U.S. cities:

Advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence have sparked interest from governments that would like to use these tools for predictive policing to deter crime. Early efforts at crime prediction have been controversial, however, because they do not account for systemic biases in police enforcement and its complex relationship with crime and society.

Data and social scientists from the University of Chicago have developed a new algorithm that forecasts crime by learning patterns in time and geographic locations from public data on violent and property crimes. The model can predict future crimes one week in advance with about 90% accuracy.

In a separate model, the research team also studied the police response to crime by analyzing the number of arrests following incidents and comparing those rates among neighborhoods with different socioeconomic status. They saw that crime in wealthier areas resulted in more arrests, while arrests in disadvantaged neighborhoods dropped. Crime in poor neighborhoods didn't lead to more arrests, however, suggesting bias in police response and enforcement.

[...] The new model isolates crime by looking at the time and spatial coordinates of discrete events and detecting patterns to predict future events. It divides the city into spatial tiles roughly 1,000 feet across and predicts crime within these areas instead of relying on traditional neighborhood or political boundaries, which are also subject to bias. The model performed just as well with data from seven other U.S. cities: Atlanta, Austin, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, and San Francisco.

This strikes me as something more useful for determining where to improve crime prevention strategies (better lighting, etc.) than it is for catching perps in action.

Journal Reference:
Rotaru, V., Huang, Y., Li, T. et al. Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a signature of enforcement bias in US cities. Nat Hum Behav (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01372-0

This AI Algorithm Supposedly Predicts Big City Crime Before it Happens. Is That a Good Idea?

looorg also made a submission on the same software but using a different sources:

Claims to predict future crimes a week in advance with 90% accuracy. So much for free will and all that ...

https://www.fastcompany.com/90766642/this-ai-algorithm-supposedly-predicts-big-city-crime-before-it-happens-is-that-a-good-idea

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Alder Lake-Powered Linux Laptop Arrives With 14 Hours of Battery Life

System76, the Colorado-based Linux laptop, desktop, and server specialist, has announced a new highly portable laptop with an Intel Alder Lake processor inside. The new Lemur Pro is a "lighter than Air" 14-inch form factor laptop with excellent battery life and attractions such as open firmware (powered by Coreboot) and a 180-degree hinge. In addition, buyers can choose to go with Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS pre-installed.

Coreboot, known initially as LinuxBIOS, is significant as it is an open-source BIOS implementation embraced by Linux users. It is lightweight, flexible, and feature-rich. Sadly, not many modern laptops or desktop PCs support Coreboot, but it seems to have gained momentum in recent times. We reported on Coreboot being made available for MSI Z690-A WiFi motherboards in April. More recently, in a demonstration of Coreboot's flexibility for tinkerers, we reported on a port of Doom being released as a Coreboot payload.

Now if only emacs could be a Coreboot payload, you could run the rich set of applications written in emacs lisp.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

'Yu-Gi-Oh!' manga creator Kazuki Takahashi found dead at sea:

Kazuki Takahashi, the creator of the "Yu-Gi-Oh!" manga comic and trading card game, has died, apparently while snorkeling in southwestern Japan, the coast guard said Friday.

The body of Takahashi, 60, was found Wednesday floating about 330 yards off the coast of Okinawa, by a person running a marine leisure business, according to an official at the Naha Coast Guard Nago station.

The coast guard and the fire department went by boat and watercraft and found the body, face down and wearing a snorkeling mask. He may have been dead for a day or two, according to the coast guard official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because their job did not allow them to be quoted by name.

The body showed signs of being attacked by a marine creature, possibly sharks, but the cause of death was still under investigation, the official said.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Accused of 'unfair' practices, Apple faces App Store court battle in UK:

Depending how you look at it, Apple is gaining a fresh opportunity to explain why the charges it levies at the App Store are fair, or regulators are getting the chance to decide what the future shape of online business will be by defining what constitutes an acceptable profit margin in digital sales.

In either case, these decisions set precedents which can, presumably, be applied against other forms of business and retail. After all, if regulators define acceptable profit margins for one line of business, then they must adopt a consistent approach that can be applied across all industries. Right now, Apple seems to believe that for most transactions, the fair figure is zero or 15%, with those with the broadest shoulders paying more to support others.

What's happening is that the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal has decided to permit a Collective Proceedings Order (CPO, basically equivalent to a class action) to go to trial.

The action was brought in May 2021 by Dr. Rachael Kent, a lecturer in Digital Economy and Society Education at King's College, London. It argues that Apple is engaged in unfair business practices by forcing developers to use its own payment systems and taking up to 30% commission. If the case succeeds, approximately 19.6 million UK customers who have purchased apps from the App Store will get a share of up to £1.5 billion compensation. More information concerning the background to this case is available at the UK Apple App Store Claim site.

fliptop writes:

Places like Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter are swimming in data, but their problem is that a lot of it is untrustworthy and shilled. But you don't need to use all the data. Toss big data happily, anything suspicious at all, false positives galore accidentally marking new accounts or borderline accounts as shills when deciding what to input to the recommender algorithms. Who cares if you do?

Lately I've been thinking about recommender algorithms and how they go wrong. I keep hitting examples of people arguing that we should ban the fewest accounts possible when thinking about what accounts are used by recommender systems. Why? Or why not the opposite? What's wrong with using the fewest accounts you can without degrading the perceived quality of the recommendations?

The reason this matters is that recommender systems these days are struggling with shilling. Companies are playing whack-a-mole with bad actors who just create new accounts or find new shills every time they're whacked because it's so profitable -- like free advertising -- to create fake crowds that manipulate the algorithms. Propagandists and scammers are loving it and winning. It's easy and lucrative for them.

So what's wrong with taking the opposite strategy, only using the most reliable accounts? As a thought experiment, let's say you rank order accounts by your confidence they are human, independent, not shilling, and trustworthy. Then go down the list of accounts, using their behavior data until the recommendations stop improving at a noticeable level (being careful about cold start and the long tail). Then stop. Don't use the rest. Why not do that? It'd vastly increase costs for adversaries. And it wouldn't change the perceived quality of recommendations because you've made sure it wouldn't.

Previously:
Amazon Still Hasn't Fixed Its Problem with Bait-and-Switch Reviews
Amazon's Top UK Reviewers Appear to Profit From Fake 5-Star Posts

Original Submission

upstart writes:

According to genetic tests conducted by academics at the University of Queensland, drinking a daily latte or long black does not raise the risk of pregnancy:

Genetic analysis of coffee drinking behavior by Drs. Gunn-Helen Moen, Daniel Hwang, and Caroline Brito Nunes from the University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience revealed that limited coffee consumption during pregnancy did not increase the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, or premature birth.

"Current World Health Organisation guidelines say pregnant women should drink less than 300mg of caffeine or two to three cups per day," Dr. Moen said.

"But that's based on observational studies where it's difficult to separate coffee drinking from other risk factors like smoking, alcohol, or poor diet. We wanted to find out if coffee alone really does increase the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, and the research shows this isn't the case."

Dr. Hwang said coffee-drinking behavior is partly due to genetics, with a specific set of genetic variants affecting how much coffee we drink.

"We showed that these genetic variants not only affect coffee consumption in the general population but also in pregnant women," he said.

[...] The researchers emphasize the study only looked at certain adverse pregnancy outcomes, and it is possible caffeine consumption could affect other important aspects of fetal development.

"For that reason, we don't recommend a high intake during pregnancy, but a low or moderate consumption of coffee," Dr. Moen said.

Journal Reference:
Brito Nunes, Caroline, Huang, Peiyuan, Wang, Geng, et al. Mendelian randomization study of maternal coffee consumption and its influence on birthweight, stillbirth, miscarriage, gestational age and pre-term birth [open], International Journal of Epidemiology, 2022. (DOI: 10.1093/ije/dyac121)

Original Submission

hubie writes:

An ongoing study reveals the multiple ways people now seek information about genetic relatives:

People conceived by sperm and egg donation, as well as their parents and donors, are making use of commercial genetic DNA testing in a variety of ways little considered in earlier reports, according to the interim results of a qualitative study presented here at ESHRE's 38th annual meeting in Milan. The widespread availability of commercial DNA databanks 'is transforming how people involved in donor conception seek information about genetic relatives', said the study's first author Dr Lucy Frith, Reader in Bioethics at the University of Manchester, UK.

With the emerging availability of commercial genetic testing and the possibility of tracking family history via a saliva sample matched against a database of DNA sequences, it has been noted that the 'anonymity' of sperm and egg donors whose gametes have been used in donor conception can no longer be guaranteed.(1) Similarly, donor-conceived children whose parents have not told them of their origins could be exposed to the possibility of accidental and potentially distressing revelations. [...]

The many ways in which commercial consumer genetic testing services are now being used to gather donor information - as illustrated by this study – have huge implications. Donor-conceived people can use these services to conduct a DNA test to search for their genetic parent; recipient parents can test the child to identify the donor and any other half-siblings; and donors themselves can also take a DNA test to search for the offspring of their donations. And crucially for the implications of these possibilities, the donor (or the donor-conceived child) need not be in a database to be identified – as a close genetic relative may be in the database and thereby traceable.

These developments, said Dr Frith, have been rapid and seemingly irrevocable, even in the fast-moving world of fertility. They have also meant that the fertility sector itself is now suddenly faced with a new responsibility to ensure that both gamete recipients and donors are aware of the wide-ranging possibilities of identification and that those who are unexpectedly exposed to that risk have access to adequate support and counselling.

If you made an anonymous donation many years ago, would you want to be contacted?

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

The new law goes into effect Thursday:

Posting "online insults" will be punishable by up to a year in prison time in Japan starting Thursday, when a new law passed earlier this summer will go into effect.

People convicted of online insults can also be fined up to 300,000 yen (just over $2,200). Previously, the punishment was fewer than 30 days in prison and up to 10,000 yen ($75).

The law will be reexamined in three years to determine if it's impacting freedom of expression — a concern raised by critics of the bill. Proponents said it was necessary to slow cyberbullying in the country.

The issue of online harassment has gained prominence in the past few years, with growing calls for anti-cyberbullying laws after the death of professional wrestler and reality television star Hana Kimura:

Kimura, 22, who was known for her role in the Netflix show "Terrace House," died by suicide in 2020. The news triggered grief and shock nationwide, with many pointing to online abuse she had received from social media users in the months leading up to her death.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/youtube-flags-horror-video-as-for-kids-wont-let-creator-change-rating/

Google's wonderful content moderation bots are at it again. After previously doing things like including suicide instructions in a children's video, and the whole Elsagate problem, YouTube is now flagging a horror video as "for kids." Worst of all, this is against the creator's wishes. The video was previously flagged as for ages 18 and up, and YouTube decided it was for kids and won't let the creator restore its content rating.

The video in question is from horror series Local58TV. The creator, Kris Straub, checked his account over the weekend to find that his not-for-kids content has been spotted by YouTube's content moderation AI, and automatically marked for kids.

[Ed's Comment: AC Friendly withdrawn. You can blame you-know-who for the spamming]

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Thriving in a Series of Sudden Global Chills That Killed Competitors:

Many of us know the conventional theory of how the dinosaurs died 66 million years ago: in Earth's fiery collision with a meteorite, and a following global winter as dust and debris choked the atmosphere. But there was a previous extinction, far more mysterious and less discussed: the one 202 million years ago, which killed off the big reptiles who up until then ruled the planet, and apparently cleared the way for dinosaurs to take over. What caused the so-called Triassic-Jurassic Extinction, and why did dinosaurs thrive when other creatures died?

We know that the world was generally hot and steamy during the Triassic Period, which preceded the extinction, and during the following Jurassic, which kicked off the age of dinosaurs. However, a new study turns the idea of heat-loving dinosaurs on its head: It presents the first physical evidence that Triassic dinosaur species—then a minor group largely relegated to the polar regions—regularly endured freezing conditions there. [...]

"Dinosaurs were there during the Triassic under the radar all the time," said Paul Olsen, a geologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and lead author of the study. "The key to their eventual dominance was very simple. They were fundamentally cold-adapted animals. When it got cold everywhere, they were ready, and other animals weren't."

[...] How did they do it? Evidence has been building since the 1990s that many if not all non-avian dinosaurs including tyrannosaurs had primitive feathers. If not for flight, some coverings could have used for mating display purposes, but the researchers say their main purpose was insulation. There is also good evidence that, unlike the cold-blooded reptiles, many dinosaurs possessed warm-blooded, high-metabolism systems. Both qualities would have helped dinosaurs in chilly conditions.

[...] The findings defy the conventional imagery of dinosaurs, but some prominent specialists say they are convinced. "There is a stereotype that dinosaurs always lived in lush tropical jungles, but this new research shows that the higher latitudes would have been freezing and even covered in ice during parts of the year," said Stephen Brusatte, a professor of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh. "Dinosaurs living at high latitudes just so happened to already have winter coats [while] many of their Triassic competitors died out."

Journal Reference:
Paul Olsen, Jingeng Sha, Yanan Fang, et al., Arctic ice and the ecological rise of the dinosaurs [open], Sci Adv, 8, 26, 2022. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo6342

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Good News Everyone!

Systemd Creator Lands At Microsoft

Yesterday's surprise was that Lennart Poettering quietly had left Red Hat following a decade and a half there leading PulseAudio among other projects and ultimately going on to start systemd that has fundamentally reshaped modern Linux distributions. It turns out he had joined Microsoft and continuing his work on systemd.

After yesterday's article about Lennart no longer being at Red Hat, I began receiving tips that the systemd creator had some time back quietly joined Microsoft along with various public comments on Twitter and other mediums by individuals suggesting he joined the Redmond company... At first I thought they were jokes or just snarky remarks, but after a day of following up with folks, it actually turns out not to be a joke.

The prominent open-source developer responsible for several prominent projects joined Microsoft and continuing his focus on systemd development.

[Ed's Comment: AC Friendly withdrawn. You can blame you-know-who for the spamming]

upstart writes:

Motorless sailplane for exploring Mars soars like albatross:

The huge success of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity has proven it's possible to explore other planets from the air, and researchers are working on a variety of flying craft concepts for future planetary missions. To fill in our knowledge of Mars between rovers on the surface and orbiters in space, researchers from the University of Arizona have proposed an experimental sailplane that operates without a motor and that could sail through the Martian air for days at a time.

"You have this really important, critical piece in this planetary boundary layer, like in the first few kilometers above the ground," said Alexandre Kling, a research scientist in NASA's Mars Climate Modeling Center, in a statement. "This is where all the exchanges between the surface and atmosphere happen. This is where the dust is picked up and sent into the atmosphere, where trace gases are mixed, where the modulation of large-scale winds by mountain-valley flows happen. And we just don't have very much data about it."

The idea is to fill this gap with a wind-powered sailplane that could glide through the air when there is enough wind, and also use a technique called dynamic soaring when the vertical wind isn't strong enough to keep it in the air. Similar to the way birds like albatrosses can soar on extremely long journeys, the technique takes advantage of the way higher altitudes tend to have stronger winds, allowing a craft to continue flying by changing both direction and altitude as required.

A big problem I see is that once it lands, it can't get back up into the sky.

Journal Reference:
by Adrien Bouskela, Alexandre Kling, Tristan Schuler, et al., Mars Exploration Using Sailplanes, Aerospace 2022, 9(6), 306; DOI: 10.3390/aerospace9060306

[Ed's Comment: AC Friendly withdrawn. You can blame you-know-who for the spamming]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Shinzo Abe, Japan's former prime minister, shot and hospitalized

Japanese former prime minister Shinzo Abe was shot on Friday while campaigning in the city of Nara, a government spokesman said, with public broadcaster NHK saying he appeared to have been shot from behind by a man with a shotgun.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said he did not know Abe's condition. Kyodo news agency and NHK said Abe, 67, appeared to be in a state of cardiac arrest when taken to hospital.

See also: Former Japan PM Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody
Live Updates: Shinzo Abe Is Unconscious After Apparently Being Shot

NHK, citing the police, said a suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, 42, had been taken into custody. He was a Nara resident, the report said. Images shared on social media showed a man being tackled after the shooting.

Boris Johnson Agrees to Resign as Prime Minister

Boris Johnson said on Thursday that he would step down as Britain's prime minister, after a wholesale rebellion of his cabinet, a wave of government resignations and a devastating loss of party support prompted by his handling of the the latest scandal that has engulfed his leadership.

Mr. Johnson said he would stay on in his post until the Conservative Party chooses a new leader, which could take several months. He said he expected the timetable for his departure and the selection of a successor to be decided on Monday by a committee of senior Conservative lawmakers.

"It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader," Mr. Johnson said in remarks outside Downing Street. "The process of choosing that new leader should begin now."

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/killing-people-technology-made-car-120013196.html

In the late 1980s, the U.S. Army turned to outside experts to study how pilots of Apache attack helicopters were responding to the torrent of information streaming into the cockpit on digital screens and analog displays. The verdict: not well.

The cognitive overload caused by all that information was degrading performance and raising the risk of crashes, the researchers determined. Pilots were forced to do too many things at once, with too many bells and whistles demanding their attention. Over the next decade, the Army overhauled its Apache fleet, redesigning cockpits to help operators maintain focus.

Cognitive psychologist David Strayer was among those called in to help the Army with its Apache problem. Since then, he has watched as civilian cars and trucks have filled up to an even greater extent with the same sorts of digital interfaces that trained pilots with honed reflexes found so overwhelming — touch screens, interactive maps, nested menus, not to mention ubiquitous smartphones. In his lab at the University of Utah, he's been documenting the deadly consequences.

[...] When companies do talk about distracted driving, they tend to frame it as a problem with cellphones. Their solution: Integrate the same functionality and more into dashboard interfaces and voice-recognition systems.

upstart writes:

Found: The 'holy grail of catalysis'—turning methane into methanol under ambient conditions using light:

An international team of researchers, led by scientists at the University of Manchester, has developed a fast and economical method of converting methane, or natural gas, into liquid methanol at ambient temperature and pressure. The method takes place under continuous flow over a photo-catalytic material using visible light to drive the conversion.

[...] Industry has long sought an economical and efficient way to convert methane into methanol, a highly marketable and versatile feedstock used to make a variety of consumer and industrial products. This would not only help reduce methane emissions, but it would also provide an economic incentive to do so.

Methanol is a more versatile carbon source than methane and is a readily transportable liquid. It can be used to make thousands of products such as solvents, antifreeze and acrylic plastics; synthetic fabrics and fibers; adhesives, paint and plywood; and chemical agents used in pharmaceuticals and agrichemicals. The conversion of methane into a high-value fuel such as methanol is also becoming more attractive as petroleum reserves dwindle.

[...] By eliminating the need for high temperatures or pressures, and using the energy from sunlight to drive the photo-oxidation process, the new conversion method could substantially lower equipment and operating costs. The higher speed of the process and its ability to convert methane to methanol with no undesirable byproducts will facilitate the development of in-line processing that minimizes costs.

Explanatory video

Journal Reference:
An, Bing, Li, Zhe, Wang, Zi, et al. Direct photo-oxidation of methane to methanol over a mono-iron hydroxyl site, Nature Materials, 2022. (DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01279-1)

[Ed's Comment: AC Friendly withdrawn. You can blame you-know-who for the spamming]

Original Submission