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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/app-founder-quits-google-says-company-doesnt-serve-users-anymore/

Here's some insight into what Google's problems are like lately, direct from an ex-employee. Praveen Seshadri, a founder whose company was acquired by Google, recently quit and dropped a scathing Medium post on his way out the door, detailing the problems he saw in his time at the company. Seshadri says Google is "trapped in a maze of approvals, launch processes, legal reviews, performance reviews, exec reviews," and other bureaucratic processes, and while the employees are capable, they "get very little done quarter over quarter, year over year."

Seshadri is the founder of AppSheet, a "no-code development platform" that he started in 2014. After several years of development, Seshadri's company was acquired by Google Cloud in 2020, and Seshadri spent the next three years turning the app into Google AppSheet. Seshadri left Google the second his "three year mandatory retention period" was up, saying, "I have left Google understanding how a once-great company has slowly ceased to function."

Seshadri outlines his big problems with the company:

The way I see it, Google has four core cultural problems. They are all the natural consequences of having a money-printing machine called "Ads" that has kept growing relentlessly every year, hiding all other sins.

(1) no mission, (2) no urgency, (3) delusions of exceptionalism, (4) mismanagement.

[...] The post says that "risk mitigation trumps everything else" at Google, echoing a 2021 New York Times article saying CEO Sundar Pichai built "a paralyzing bureaucracy" while running the company.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Hubble is investigating mysterious spokes in Saturn's rings:

Saturn is famous for its beautiful rings, but these rings have a strange feature: "spokes" which appear intermittently. These spots in the rings can be light or dark and can look like blobs or like lines stretching radially outward from the planet, and they appear in a regular cycle related to the planet's equinox. Now, the Hubble Space Telescope has the opportunity to study these oddities of the rings in more detail and researchers hope they can learn more about what causes these features.

The spokes were first noticed by the Cassini mission to Saturn in the 1980s, and since then they have been seen just before and after the equinox: the time at which day and night are of equal length across the planet because the sun is directly over the equator. On Earth, we experience two equinoxes each year, and the same is true for Saturn — but because Saturn is further out in its orbit and its year is much longer, its equinoxes occur just once every 15 Earth years.

[...] "Despite years of excellent observations by the Cassini mission, the precise beginning and duration of the spoke season is still unpredictable, rather like predicting the first storm during hurricane season," Simon explained.

[...] The current theory of the spokes' origin is that they are related to Saturn's magnetic field, as charged particles from the sun interact with it in a way that could charge particles within the rings, shifting these particles out of place with the rest of the ring structure. But astronomers need to do more research to be sure of this theory — and to find out whether similar spokes could occur on other planets with rings, such as Neptune or Jupiter.

"It's a fascinating magic trick of nature we only see on Saturn —for now at least," Simon said.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

AI automation throughout the drug development pipeline is opening up the possibility of faster, cheaper pharmaceuticals:

At 82 years old, with an aggressive form of blood cancer that six courses of chemotherapy had failed to eliminate, "Paul" appeared to be out of options. With each long and unpleasant round of treatment, his doctors had been working their way down a list of common cancer drugs, hoping to hit on something that would prove effective—and crossing them off one by one. The usual cancer killers were not doing their job.

With nothing to lose, Paul's doctors enrolled him in a trial set up by the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, where he lives. The university was testing a new matchmaking technology developed by a UK-based company called Exscientia that pairs individual patients with the precise drugs they need, taking into account the subtle biological differences between people.

[...] In effect, the researchers were doing what the doctors had done: trying different drugs to see what worked. But instead of putting a patient through multiple months-long courses of chemotherapy, they were testing dozens of treatments all at the same time.

The approach allowed the team to carry out an exhaustive search for the right drug. Some of the medicines didn't kill Paul's cancer cells. Others harmed his healthy cells. Paul was too frail to take the drug that came out on top. So he was given the runner-up in the matchmaking process: a cancer drug marketed by the pharma giant Johnson & Johnson that Paul's doctors had not tried because previous trials had suggested it was not effective at treating his type of cancer.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Big Tech lobbyist language made it verbatim into NY's hedged repair bill

When New York became the first state to pass a heavily modified right-to-repair bill late last year, it was apparent that lobbyists had succeeded in last-minute changes to the law's specifics. A new report from the online magazine Grist details the ways in which Gov. Kathy Hochul made changes identical to those proposed by a tech trade association.

In a report co-published with nonprofit newsroom The Markup, Maddie Stone writes that documents surrounding the drafting and debate over the bill show that many of the changes signed by Hochul were the same as those proposed by TechNet, which represents Apple, Google, Samsung, and other technology companies.
[...]
The bill passed with broad bipartisan support, but it was pared down to focus only on small electronics.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Documents show internal predictions were as good as contemporary science but executives publicly downplayed their significance:

The first systematic analysis of data from over a hundred ExxonMobil documents has shown that the company's scientists have accurately modelled global warming caused by fossil fuels since the late 1970s. However, company executives chose to publicly denigrate climate models, insist there was no scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, and claim the science was highly uncertain when their own scientists were telling them the opposite, the study's authors say. Their findings are likely to figure in court proceedings around the world as fossil fuel companies face increasing legal and political attacks for their role in climate change.

[...] 'Exxon leadership had specific, accurate, state-of the art scientific information, presented to them by their own scientists,' says Oreskes. 'And that science was consistent with what academic and government scientists were saying at the same time. Our findings highlight the stark hypocrisy of ExxonMobil [chief executives] Lee Raymond and Rex Tillerson, who for decades insisted on the high degree of 'uncertainty' in climate models, when, in fact, their own scientists had produced models that were not highly uncertain, and which, in hindsight, we can say were highly accurate.'

[...] Another new finding involves ExxonMobil's claim that the science was too uncertain to know when – or if – human-caused global warming might be measurable. In fact, ExxonMobil scientists in the early 1980s offered the date of 2000±5 years, which turned out to be correct, says Oreskes. 'The [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)] first declared man-made climate change to be 'discernible' in 1995 so they got that right, too.'

upstart writes:

Ransomware Attack Pushes City of Oakland Into State of Emergency:

The city of Oakland, California issued a local state of emergency late Tuesday as a result of the ongoing impact following a ransomware attack that first hit city IT systems on Wednesday, February 8.

According to an update, the city "continues to experience a network outage that has left several non-emergency systems including phone lines within the City of Oakland impacted or offline."

City officials say the declaration of a local state of emergency (PDF) allows Oakland to expedite the procurement of equipment and materials, activate emergency workers if needed, and issue orders on an expedited basis to help restore systems and bring services back online.

While voicemail and other non-emergency services were disrupted or taken offline, no critical or emergency services such as 911 and fire departments have been impacted.

[...] While some cities paid the ransom – including Florence City, Lake City, and Riviera Beach City – others chose not to pay, in some cases with disastrous results. The City of Atlanta, which refused to pay a $51,000 ransom, spent millions to recover the impacted systems.

[...] Cybercriminals earned significantly less from ransomware attacks in 2022 compared to 2021 as victims are increasingly refusing to pay ransom demands.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Senators Are Hopping Mad and Demanding Answers for the Crypto Collapse:

Lawmakers from opposing parties disagreed over who and what was truly to blame for a devastating crypto crash that left customers collectively burnout out of billions in losses during a Wednesday Senate Banking Committee hearing. While Democratic lawmakers and crypto skeptics warned of the dangers presented by a lack of meaningful oversight measures, Republicans pushed back, with some blaming part of the recent tumultuous chaos on the Securities and Exchange Commission's alleged failure to use regulatory powers already at its disposal.

[...] The lawmakers questioned three expert witnesses who held widely divergent views on cryptocurrency. Linda Jeng, the chief global regulatory officer and general counsel for major crypto advocacy group Crypto Council for Innovation, largely went to bat for the industry, while Duke Financial Economics Center Policy Director Lee Reiners and Vanderbilt University Law School Professor Yesha Yadav have spoken more critically about crypto companies.

In her testimony, Jeng, who testified under her personal capacity as an academic and researcher, tried to separate the broader crypto space from specific bad actors like FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried, and called for a light-handed, nuanced regulatory approach. Jeng said it was important for crypto firms to have clear rules of the road dictating what they can and can't do, but cautioned against overly aggressive restrictions. In addition to rules, Jeng said it was important for the U.S. to adopt a more coherent national strategy around crypto to avoid falling too far behind the E.U., U.K, and others.

"This is a key moment for our transition to a digital economy," Jeng said in her written testimony. "We are at a decision point where how we build our legal and regulatory foundation will determine our digital future for decades to come.

hubie writes:

Trees' tolerance, watered down:

Despite recent, torrential rains, most of Southern California remains in a drought. Accordingly, many residents plant trees prized for drought tolerance, but a new UC Riverside-led study shows these trees lose this tolerance once they're watered.

One goal of the study was to understand how artificial irrigation affects the trees' carbon and water use. To find out, the researchers examined 30 species of trees spread across Southern California's urban areas from the coast to the desert. They then compared those trees with the same species growing wild.

"We found that, particularly as you move toward the desert regions, the same species of urban trees use much more water than their natural counterparts, even trees considered drought tolerant," said study lead and former UC Riverside botany graduate student Peter Ibsen, currently with the U.S. Geological Survey.

[...] Drought tolerant trees often restrict their water use to protect themselves from drying out when temperatures rise. However, with the exception of ficus, the irrigated trees all increased their water intake.

"Generally, they're not conserving it," Ibsen said. "Given the extra water, they will use it all."

[...] In these and other ways, urban trees are so unique in their behaviors that they can be classified as having their own distinct ecology. "Urban forests are different than anything else on the planet, even though all the species are found elsewhere on the planet," Ibsen said.

upstart writes:

A Huge Lithium Discovery Just Changed The Stakes In EV Production - SlashGear:

Lithium is one of the most sought-after commodities on Earth right now thanks to its fundamental role in making batteries that power everything from smartphones and laptops to electric vehicles. Such is the race for lithium that it has become a topic of geopolitical tussle between countries that have natural reserves and their diplomatic allies. As of 2023, the majority of the world's lithium mining is concentrated in China, Australia, and Chile. However, a fresh geological discovery could very well change the game.

The Geological Survey of India has announced the discovery of "5.9 million tonnes inferred resources of lithium" in the Salal-Haimana region of India's northern union territory Jammu & Kashmir. Chile currently holds the largest lithium reserves in the world at around 9.2 million tonnes, followed by Australia, Argentina, and China. The recent discovery propels India straight to the second spot in terms of lithium reserves across the globe. India currently imports most of its lithium from China, which happens to be one of the biggest lithium-processing hotspots in the world courtesy of a massive electronics manufacturing industry and a cut-throat EV market.

[...] India is poised to shake up the lithium processing and battery production dynamics with its abundant natural reserves, but a geopolitical splash will take some time to happen. Two additional rounds of rigorous geological surveys are needed to narrow down potential mining hotspots. Once that is done, the development of proper mining infrastructure could take years, and the same goes for lithium battery manufacturing lines.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Professional and small-time broadcasters reported receiving malicious videos doxxing them in their own voice:

Sure, there's been a lot of attention being paid to deep fakes of celebrities and major public figures. Still, with the advent of free or cheap AI-based voice synthesization software, anybody who has had their audio uploaded to the internet runs the risk of being deepfaked.

Vice first reported that voice actors and other, ordinary folks are being targeted with online harassment and doxxing attacks using their own voice. Specifically, these attacks targeted people with YouTube channels, podcasts, or streams. Several of these doxxing attempts also hit voice actors, some of whom have been especially critical about AI-generated content in the past.

[...] A few of the reported posts explicitly said they were generated using tech available from ElevenLabs. The company's Voice Lab software lets users clone voices and then generate new audio based on a text prompt. Of course, this free program let users produce deep faked audio of prominent people like Joe Rogan and Justin Roiland saying sexist or racist epithets. After users reported examples of those deep fakes to the company, ElevenLabs announced they were making VoiceLab only available to users of the paid version and was introducing more identity verification for new accounts.

[...] Schalk said he believes that voice actor unions will soon need to get involved and steer the conversation for any major corporation thinking AI-created voice is a way to "replace actors for the sake of saving dollars."

Pollock said he has joined with other voice actors on Vocal Variants, a trade group representing voice actors and other performers trying to push back against AI-generated voices and promote work contracts that still allow actors the right to their voice. He and other voice actors said the next best thing for Their trade would be a law that codifies their right to their vocal likenesses.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The US Federal Trade Commission wants to ban non-compete agreements:

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently proposed a regulation banning employers from imposing non-compete "agreements" on their workers.

[...] The FTC summed up my feeling about non-compete clauses.

It called them "a widespread and often exploitative practice that suppresses wages, hampers innovation, and blocks entrepreneurs from starting new businesses." Thus, the Commission concluded, "By stopping this practice, the agency estimates that the new proposed rule could increase wages by nearly $300 billion per year and expand career opportunities for about 30 million Americans."

That, by the FTC's count, is one in five Americans. So it's not just tech or highly skilled jobs getting hit.

As the New York Times pointed out, it also includes sandwich makers, hair stylists, and summer camp counselors. So yes. Seriously, there are non-competes for teenagers working as counselors.

[...] Sure, there are reasonable exceptions. For example, if I leave your company, I have no problem agreeing that I won't reveal your secret sauce to a competitor or use it in my own business.

But the FTC isn't talking about getting rid of non-disclosure agreements (NDA)s — unless these NDAs are written so broadly that they act as de facto non-competes. That's a different and uglier story.

upstart writes:

Building Raspberry Pi clusters has never looked so good:

We've been tracking this project since mid 2021, and the time has been well spent. Ivan Kuleshov's Compute Blade is a thin PCB that packs a plethora of storage options for your Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (or compatible). Kuleshov's kickstarter has smashed its $522,209 funding goal, reaching $673,365 at the time of writing.

The Compute Blade is a rack-mountable carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, designed for high-density clusters. The PCB is packed with features, but your eye will be drawn to the red anodized aluminum heatsink which fits over the Compute Module 4 (or compatible), providing a passive means to keep the Pi cool. This could prove useful, should you wish to overclock.

[...] The Compute Blade's strength comes in numbers, more specifically "clusters". Given the small size and blade design of the units, they will easily slide into a blade server and as long as you've got plenty of Raspberry Pi's, you'll have a powerful Arm computing cluster.

With prices starting from $65 for a Compute Blade Basic, the version we have on the bench is the $107 Dev version, which has all the bells and whistles. If you like what you see, then head over to the kickstarter page to make your pledge. [...]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

An asteroid will just miss us in 2029. Scientists are making the most of a rare opportunity:

To be clear: The asteroid is not going to hit us.

There was a while there when it seemed like it could. Suffice to say those were heady days in the asteroid-tracking community. But as of March 2021, NASA has confirmed that there is absolutely zero chance the space rock known as 99942 Apophis will strike this planet for at least 100 years. So, phew. Cross that particular doomsday scenario off the list.

What remains true, however, is that on Friday, April 13, 2029, an asteroid wider than three football fields will pass closer to Earth than anything its size has come in recorded history.

An asteroid strike is a disaster; an asteroid flyby, an opportunity. And Apophis offers one of the best chances science has ever had to learn how the Earth came to be — and how we might one day prevent its destruction.

[...] "We've never seen something that large get that close," said Lance Benner, a principal scientist at JPL.

"Close," in the space world, is a relative term. At its nearest, Apophis will pass roughly 19,000 miles (31,000 kilometers) above Earth's surface. That's about one-10th the distance to the moon.

[...] From the ground, Apophis will resemble a star traversing the night sky, as bright as the constellation Cassiopeia and slower than a satellite. Though it may appear far away for those of us down here, it will in fact be near enough for NASA to reach out and touch it. OSIRIS-REx, a spacecraft currently ferrying home samples from the surface of an asteroid called Bennu, will rendezvous with Apophis in 2029. Shortly after April 13, the craft — by then renamed OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer, or OSIRIS-APEX — will steer toward the asteroid until it is drawn into its orbit, eventually getting close enough to collect a sample from its surface.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Seattle-area police use adhesive GPS trackers to catch fleeing suspects, prevent high-speed chases:

The Redmond Police Department implemented new GPS technology last month that has helped result in three arrests.

The technology, called StarChase, uses a high-powered air compressor mounted on a police car to fire a GPS tracker at the fleeing vehicle. The tracker, which is coated in an industrial-strength adhesive, sticks to the car and allows police to follow it until it stops, without the need for a high-speed chase.

Once the fleeing suspect has parked their car, officers then safely drive to that location to question and potentially arrest the suspect.

Redmond Police Chief Darrell Lowe described it as "a tactical tool that allows our officers to make an arrest while keeping our officers, the suspect and community members safe."

Officers assigned to patrol cars equipped with the trackers spend a full day getting trained on their use. Ongoing training will be provided as the program grows, said Redmond Police spokesperson Jill Green.

The technology is funded by a grant from the Washington Auto Theft Prevention Authority, which is a state board with representatives appointed by Gov. Jay Inlee from law enforcement and the insurance and auto industries.

[...] The 36 departments using the trackers reported apprehending more than 80% of the suspects whose vehicles they tagged. There were no reports of injuries, fatalities or property damage due to pursuits in those cases.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Opponents say laws preventing underage porn access are vague, pose privacy risks:

After decades of America fretting over minors potentially being overexposed to pornography online, several states are suddenly moving fast in 2023 to attempt to keep kids off porn sites by passing laws requiring age verification.

Last month, Louisiana became the first state to require an ID from residents to access pornography online. Since then, seven states have rushed to follow in Louisiana's footsteps. According to a tracker from Free Speech Coalition, Florida, Kansas, South Dakota, and West Virginia introduced similar laws, and laws in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Virginia are seemingly closest to passing. If passed, some of these laws could be enforced promptly, while some bills in states like Florida and Mississippi specify that they wouldn't take effect until July.

But not every state agrees that rushing to require age verification is the best solution. Today, a South Dakota committee voted to defer voting on its age verification bill until the last day of the legislative session. The bill's sponsor, Republican Jessica Castleberry, seemingly failed to persuade the committee of the urgency of passing the law, saying at the hearing that "this is not your daddy's Playboy. Extreme, degrading, and violent pornography is only one click away from our children." She told Ars that the bill was not passed because some state lawmakers were too "easily swayed by powerful lobbyists."

"It's a travesty that unfettered access to pornography by minors online will continue in South Dakota because of lobbyists protecting the interests of their clients, versus legislators who should be protecting our children," Castleberry told Ars. "The time to pass this bill was in the mid-1990s."

Lobbyists opposing the bill at the hearing represented telecommunications and newspaper associations. Although the South Dakota bill, like the Louisiana law, exempted news organizations, one lobbyist, Justin Smith, an attorney for the South Dakota Newspaper Association, argued that the law was too vague in how it defined harmful content and how it defined which commercial entities could be subjected to liabilities.