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upstart writes:

Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter dodge questions on social media and national security:

Executives from four of the biggest social media companies testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee Wednesday, defending their platforms and their respective safety, privacy and moderation failures in recent years.

Congress managed to drag in a relatively fresh set of product-focused executives this time around, including TikTok COO Vanessa Pappas, who testified for the first time before lawmakers, and longtime Meta executive Chris Cox. The hearing was convened to explore social media's impact on national security broadly and touched on topics ranging from domestic extremism and misinformation to CSAM and China.

Committee Chair Sen. Gary Peters pressed each company to disclose the number of employees they have working full-time on trust and safety and each company in turn refused to answer — even though they received the question prior to the hearing. Twitter General Manager of Consumer and Revenue Jay Sullivan chipped in the only numerical response, noting that the company has 2,200 people working on trust and safety "across Twitter," though it wasn't clear if those employees also did other kinds of work.

It's no secret that social media moderation is patchy, reactive and uneven, largely because these companies refuse to invest more deeply in the teams that protect people on their platforms. "We've been trying to get this information for a long time," Peters said. "This is why we get so frustrated."

upstart writes:

Team led by Japanese researchers reveals best way to put crying baby to sleep:

The evidence-based soothing strategy was derived from experiments carried out in Japan and Italy, which were analyzed and published in the journal Current Biology on Tuesday.

[Senior author Kumi] Kuroda and colleagues wanted to explore this further in humans, and to compare the effect against other comforting behaviors such as rocking in one spot.

They recruited 21 mother-baby pairs aged 0-7 months, and tested them under four conditions: carrying while moving, held still by their sitting mothers, lying in a still crib, or lying in a rocking cot.

Crying decreased and heart rates slowed within 30 seconds when infants were transported. There was a similar effect when they were rocked, but not when held motionless.

[...] This suggested that, contrary to assumptions, maternal holding was insufficient to calm a child, and the transport response was an important factor.

Next, they looked at the impact of carrying infants for five minutes, finding that the activity put 46 percent of them to sleep, and an additional 18 percent fell asleep in the minute after.

This showed that not only did carrying stop crying, it also promoted sleep.

But there was a wrinkle: when infants were put to bed, more than one-third became alert within 20 seconds.

hubie writes:

The well-tempered tweet: Least hate tweets at 15-18 °C (59-65°F) across the USA:

Temperatures above or below a feel-good window of 12-21 degrees Celsius (54-70 °F) are linked to a marked rise in aggressive online behaviour across the USA, a new study finds. Analysing billions of tweets posted on the social media platform Twitter in the USA, researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found hate speech increasing across climate zones, income groups and belief systems for temperatures too hot or too cold. This indicates limits to adaptation to extreme temperatures, and sheds light on a yet underestimated societal impact of climate change: conflict in the digital sphere with implications for both societal cohesion and mental health.

[...] Across the USA, the authors found low levels of hate tweets in a 'feel-good window' of 12-21°C (54-70 °F); the minimum of hate tweets is reached for temperatures between 15 and 18°C (59-65°F) . Temperatures hotter and colder are linked to increases in hate tweets. The precise feel-good temperature window varies a little across climate zones, depending on what temperatures are common. Temperatures above 30°C, or 86 degrees Fahrenheit, are however consistently linked to strong increases in online hate across all climate zones and socioeconomic differences such as income, religious beliefs or political preferences.

Journal Reference:
Annika Stechemesser, Anders Levermann, Leonie Wenz. Temperature impacts on hate speech online: evidence from four billion tweets [open]. (2022) The Lancet Planetary Health. DOI: 10.1016/PIIS2542-5196(22)00173-5

Original Submission

MostCynical writes:

Science News and the Guardian are reporting a story from Nature

Five patients are now in remission after a successful trial of a treatment for Lupus using CAR T cell therapy.

That treatment, called CAR-T cell therapy, seems to have reset the patients' immune systems, sending their autoimmune disease into remission, researchers report September 15 in Nature Medicine. It's not yet clear how long the relief will last or whether the therapy will work for all patients.

Even so, the results could be "revolutionary," says immunologist Linrong Lu of the Shanghai Immune Therapy Institute at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.

CAR-T cell therapy has been used for various types of cancer, but it's still in testing for autoimmune diseases

In the new study, all five participants went into remission without needing additional drugs beyond the genetically engineered CAR-T cells. The target of those engineered cells — immune cells key for fighting off infections — returned a few months after being wiped out. Some of those cells are primed to attack viruses and bacteria but not the study participants' healthy cells.

Journal References:
1.) Andreas Mackensen, Fabian Müller, Dimitrios Mougiakakos, et al. Anti-CD19 CAR T cell therapy for refractory systemic lupus erythematosus Nature Medicine. Published online September 15, 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41591-022-02017-5.

2.) Dimitrios Mougiakakos, Gerhard Krönke, Simon Völkl, et al. CD19-targeted CAR T cells in refractory systemic lupus erythematosus. New England Journal of Medicine. Vol. 385, August 5, 2021, p. 567. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2107725.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Settlement sees HP compensating some customers in Europe with $1.35 million fund:

HP continues to pay for abruptly blocking third-party ink from its printers. The company has agreed to pay compensation to additional customers impacted by HPs use of DRM to prevent third-party ink and toner from working in its printers. The settlement pertaining to customers in Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Portugal comes after the company already agreed to a settlement in the US and was fined in Italy.

HP printer owners were annoyed, to say the least, in 2016 when HP introduced Dynamic Security, a firmware update that prevented ink and toner cartridges lacking an HP chip from working in HP printers. Customers who already owned these printers suddenly faced error messages preventing them from printing with cartridges that were fully functioning before. At the time, HP claimed that the move was about helping customers avoid counterfeit and subpar ink and protecting HP's IP. However, it largely felt like a business tactic aimed at protecting one of HP's biggest profit drivers at the time, which was tied to a declining industry.

[...] Euroconsumers noted that while it alleged that "consumers were not properly informed that Dynamic Security would cause printers to reject certain non-HP replacement ink cartridges," the settlement isn't "an acknowledgment of any fault or wrongdoing by HP nor as an acknowledgment by Euroconsumers of the groundlessness of its claims."

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Scientists sent a satellite to space to test Einstein's weak-equivalence principle with extreme precision:

In 1916, Albert Einstein dared to declare that Isaac Newton was wrong. No, he said, gravity is not a mysterious force emanating from Earth. 

[...] And while the genius mathematician referred to this perplexing notion as his theory of general relativity, a title that stuck, his peers called it "totally impractical and absurd," a title that didn't. Against all odds, Einstein's mind-numbing idea has yet to falter. Its premises remain true on both the smallest of scales and the incomprehensibly large. Experts have attempted to poke holes in them again, and again and again, but general relativity always prevails. 

And on Wednesday, thanks to an ambitious satellite experiment, scientists announced that, yet again, general relativity has proven itself to be a fundamental truth of our universe. The team conducted what it calls the "most precise test" of one of general relativity's key aspects, named the weak-equivalence principle, with a mission dubbed Microscope. 

[...] The weak-equivalence principle is a weird one.

It pretty much says all objects in a gravitational field must fall in the same way when no other force is acting on them -- I'm talking external interference like wind, a person kicking the object, another object bumping into it, you get the idea. 

[...] The Microscope project sent a satellite into Earth's orbit that contained two objects: a platinum alloy and titanium alloy. "The selection was based on technology considerations," Rodrigues said, such as whether the materials were easy and feasible to make in a lab. 

upstart writes:

The method, which works in conjunction with a deep-learning AI, identifies materials by their texture:

A new x-ray technique that works alongside a deep-learning algorithm to detect explosives in luggage could eventually catch potentially deadly tumors in humans.

[...] While standard x-ray machines hit objects with a uniform field of x-rays, the team scanned the bags using a custom-built machine containing masks—sheets of metal with holes punched into them, which separate the beams into an array of smaller beamlets.

As the beamlets passed through the bag and its contents, they were scattered at angles as small as a microradian (around one 20,000th as big as a degree).The scattering was analyzed by AI trained to recognize the texture of specific materials from a particular pattern of angle changes.

The AI is exceptionally good at picking up these materials even when they're hidden inside other objects, says lead author Sandro Olivo, from the UCL Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering. "Even if we hide a small quantity of explosive somewhere, because there will be a little bit of texture in the middle of many other things, the algorithm will find it."

upstart writes:

systemd's mkosi-initrd Talked Up As Better Alternative To Current Initrd Handling--Phoronix:

Red Hat engineer and systemd developer Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek presented on Monday at the Linux Plumbers Conference on a new design for inital RAM disks (initrd) making use of the new systemd mkosi-initrd project.

The mkosi-initrd approach paired with systemd system extensions is a fundamental shift from expecting initrd images to be built locally on user systems to something that can be done by distribution vendors with their build system. This can allow for better QA, embracing various modern security features, and more manageable initrd assets. Zbigniew summed up his LPC 2022 talk as:

Distributions ship signed kernels, but initrds are generally built locally. Each machine gets a "unique" initrd, which means they cannot be signed by the distro, the QA process is hard, and development of features for the initrd duplicates work done elsewhere.

Systemd has gained "system extensions" (sysexts, runtime additions to the root file system), and "credentials" (secure storage of secrets bound to a TPM). Together, those features can be used to provide signed initrds built by the distro, like the kernel. Sysexts and credentials provide a mechanism for local extensibility: kernel-commandline configuration, secrets for authentication during emergency logins, additional functionality to be included in the initrd, e.g. an sshd server, other tweaks and customizations.

Mkosi-initrd is a project to build such initrds directly from distribution rpms (with support for dm-verity, signatures, sysexts). We think that such an approach will be more maintainable than the current approaches using dracut/mkinitcpio/mkinitramfs. (It also assumes we use systemd to the full extent in the initrd.)

See the talk or go look at the PDF slides.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

How an enormous project attempted to map the sky without computers:

Recently, the European Space Agency released the third installment of data from the Gaia satellite, a public catalog that provides the positions and velocities of over a billion stars. This is our most recent attempt to answer some of the most long-standing questions in astronomy: How are stars (and nebulae) spread out across the sky? How many of them are there, how far away are they, and how bright are they? Do they change in position or brightness? Are there new classes of objects that are unknown to science?

For centuries, astronomers have tried to answer these questions, and that work has been laborious and time-consuming. It wasn't always easy to record what you could see in your telescope lens—if you were lucky enough to have a telescope at all.

Now imagine the emergence of a new technique that, for its time, offered some of the benefits of the technology that enabled the Gaia catalogs. It could automatically and impartially record what you see, and anyone could use it.

That technique was photography.

This article tells the story of how photography changed astronomy and how hundreds of astronomers formed the first international scientific collaboration to create the Carte du Ciel (literally, "Map of the Sky"), a complete photographic survey of the sky. That collaboration resulted in a century-long struggle to process thousands of photographic plates taken over decades, with the positions of millions of stars measured by hand to make the largest catalog of the night sky.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Arduino IDE:

The new major release of the Arduino IDE is faster and even more powerful. In addition to a more modern editor and a more responsive interface it features autocompletion, code navigation, and even a live debugger. The Arduino IDE 2.0 features a new sidebar, making the most commonly used tools more accessible.

Tutorials and guides for the Arduino IDE 2.0 can be found here.

If you haven't already given the new IDE 2.0 a try, here are just a few of the key features...

• Autocomplete during sketch editing

• Dark Mode

• Never lose a sketch keeping them safely at Arduino Cloud

• Serial Plotter

• In-app updates

There is lots more information in the quoted link. [JR] If you are an Arduino user, or any other single board computer, what do you use them for? Care to share some of your stories?

Original Submission

NotSanguine writes:

TechCrunch is publishing what appears to be an adaptation of a company PR release from a company called Solar Foods.

Solar Foods is growing bacteria to be used as a protein source which can replace traditional sources like meat, fish and soybeans, thus reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture/food production.

From the TechCrunch hagiographic take:

Fermentation has a long, rich history in food production, from beer and wine to yogurt and cheese, leavened bread and coffee, miso and tempeh, sauerkraut and kimchi, to name just a few of the tasty things we can consume thanks to a chemical process thought to date back to the Neolithic period.
[...]
The industrial biotech startup is working on bringing a novel protein to market — one it says will offer a nutritious, sustainable alternative to animal-derived proteins. The product, a single-cell protein it's branding Solein, is essentially an edible bacteria; a single-cell microbe grown using gas fermentation. Or, put another way, they're harvesting edible calories from hydrogen-oxyidizing microbes.
[...]
The production of Solein requires just a handful of 'ingredients': Air, water and energy (electricity) — which means there's no need for vast tracts of agricultural land to be given out to making this future foodstuff. It could be produced in factories located in remote areas or inside cities and urban centers.

Nor indeed are other foods needed to feed it to create an adequate yield, as is the case with rearing livestock for human consumption.

I guess if it's cheap enough, it's not a bad idea. Much less waste than this site's namesake I'd reckon.

What say you, Soylentils? Is a bacteria-based burger in your future? Should there be?

Original Submission

Everyone Cares About Splatoon 3 More Than You Think

upstart writes:

Everyone Cares About Splatoon 3 More Than You Think:

Splatoon 3 hasn't just climbed to the top of the charts, it's absolutely demolishing them, at least in Japan. Nintendo announced the latest sequel in its party shooter series has already sold over 3 million copies in just three days there, making Splatoon 3's launch bigger than The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Pokémon Sword and Shield, and any other Switch game you can think of.

"[D]omestic sales of the Splatoon 3 game for the Nintendo Switch system have surpassed 3.45 million units in the first three days since its launch on September 9, 2022," Nintendo wrote in a press release today. To put that number in perspective, it's more than the combined launch sales of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Pokémon Legends: Arceus in Japan.

We don't have U.S. sales numbers for the game yet, but initial indications point to Splatoon 3 being one of the biggest Switch games ever. And it's not because it's some massive evolution of the series either. I played it a fair bit over the weekend, and in many ways it feels like the sort of iterative improvement you'd expect for an online shooter, taking the lessons learned from Splatoon 2 and making a more refined and robust sequel.

Splatoon 3's First Splatfest is Set for Sept. 23

upstart writes:

Splatoon 3's First Splatfest Is Set for Sept. 23:

The first Splatoon 3 Splatfest event is happening next weekend, Nintendo announced during its September Nintendo Direct presentation.

The competition kicks off at 5 p.m. PT on Sept. 23 and runs for 48 hours, concluding at 5 p.m. PT on Sept. 25. This time around, the game asks what you'd rather take with you to a deserted island: gear, grub or fun?

This marks the first Splatfest since Splatoon 3 launched earlier this month, but Nintendo held a prelaunch demo Splatfest back in August. That event asked players to choose between rock, paper and scissors, with Team Rock ultimately emerging victorious.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

upstart writes:

Climate change may make pandemics like COVID-19 much more common:

The likelihood of an extreme epidemic, or one similar to COVID-19, will increase threefold in the coming decades, according to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers used data from epidemics from the past 400 years, specifically death rates, length of previous epidemics and the rate of new infectious diseases. Their calculation is a sophisticated prediction based on known risks and can be a useful guide for policy makers and public health officials.

They also found that the probability of a person experiencing a pandemic like COVID-19 in one's lifetime is around 38%. The researchers said this could double in years to come.

[...] Zoonotic diseases are caused by germs that spread between animals and people. Animals can carry viruses and bacteria that humans can encounter directly, through contact, or indirectly, through things like soil or water supply, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"As you make that interface between humans and the natural world smaller, we just come in more contact with those things and climate enhances the ability for viruses to infect us more easily," said Pan. He said our risk for any zoonotic or emerging viral infections is going to rise over time.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/MGLRU-LPC-2022

Hopefully being mainlined next cycle with Linux 6.1 is the Multi-Gen LRU, or better known as MGLRU, as a superior alternative to the kernel's existing page reclamation code. Assuming it lands for Linux 6.1 as the last complete kernel cycle of 2022, this would make it one of the most exciting innovations to make it into the kernel this year.

MGLRU benchmarks continue to look very promising across a wide variety of workloads and a diverse spectrum of hardware. From Chrome OS and Android up through desktops/workstations and even servers, MGLRU is able to often deliver better performance due to being less taxing than the existing page reclamation code that has also been acknowledged as often making poor eviction choices.

Jesse Barnes‎ and Rom Lemarchand, both of Google, presented yesterday at Linux Plumbers Conference 2022 (LPC2022) on the latest MGLRU happenings. They reiterated the expectation that MGLRU should make it to mainline with Linux 6.1, there are numerous kernel downstreams and backports already using the code in production, and benchmarks continue to look promising.

[...] As for the MGLRU prospects for Linux 6.1, Andrew Morton commented that he'd like to move the MGLRU patches to his "mm-stable" branch later this week. Though he has expressed some concern over the level of code review and that code commenting could be improved upon. He's hoping though that things will get pushed along. We'll see when the Linux 6.1 merge window opens up in October if MGLRU is ready for mainline.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

New Research Exposes the Pervasive Practice of Fake Online Product Reviews:

Can you really trust that online product review before you make a purchase decision? New research has found that the practice of faking online product reviews may be more pervasive than you think.

According to researchers, a wide array of product marketers actually purchases fake online reviews through an online marketplace found through social media. As a result, marketers receive many reviews and high-average ratings on e-commerce sites that include Amazon, Walmart and Wayfair, among others.

[...] Here's how it works: Sellers post in private online groups to promote their products. They then pay customers to purchase certain products and leave positive reviews. These social media groups exist for a number of online retailers.

[...] To conduct their research, the study authors built a sample of approximately 1,500 products that were observed soliciting fake reviews over a nine-month period. The researchers found that the types of products involved represented many categories. They then tracked the outcomes of these products before and after the buying of fake reviews, and were able to document how the platform, in this case Amazon, regulates fake reviews.

"For the products in our research observed buying fake reviews, roughly half of their reviews were eventually deleted, but the deletions occurred with an average lag of over 100 days, allowing sellers to benefit from the short-term boost in ratings, reviews and sales," says Proserpio. "Almost none of the sellers purchasing fake reviews were well-known brands. This is consistent with other research that has shown online reviews are more effective and more critical to smaller, lesser-known brands."

Journal Reference:
Sherry He, Brett Hollenbeck, Davide Proserpio, The Market for Fake Reviews, Market Sci, 2022. DOI: 10.1287/mksc.2022.1353

Original Submission