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upstart writes:

Companies are still hiring savvy Linux and open source staffers:

There might be lots of news stories about job losses in tech right now but research suggests there are still plenty of openings in open source and Linux to go around.

As Hillary Carter, SVP of research and communications at the Linux Foundation, said in her keynote speech at Open Source Summit North America in Vancouver, Canada: "In spite of what the headlines are saying, the facts are 57% of organizations are adding workers this year."

[...] Other research also points to brighter signs in tech employment trends. CompTIA's recent analysis of the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data suggests the tech unemployment rate climbed by just 2.3% in April. In fact, more organizations plan to increase their technical staff levels rather than decrease.

The demand for skilled tech talent remains strong, particularly in fast-developing areas, such as cloud and containers, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence and machine learning.

So, what do these all areas of technology have in common? The answer is they're all heavily dependent on open source and Linux technologies.

[...] In their search for the right people, many companies are also looking to certification and pre-employment testing to verify candidate skills. So, while you might think certifications are pointless, research suggests 80% of HR professionals rely on certifications to make hiring decisions.

Looking further ahead, it appears that taking specific technical classes and getting certified is a really smart move to help you land your next tech job. Interestingly, a college degree is no longer seen as such a huge benefit. Businesses responding to the Linux Foundation's research felt upskilling (91%) and certifications (77%) are more important than a university education (58%) when it comes to addressing technology needs.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

US fishing policy is boosting fish populations, not constraining most fisheries, finds research:

Commercial fishing employs 1.2 million Americans and generates more than $165 billion annually. Yet warming waters are threatening fish populations and disrupting fisheries around the world—a challenge set to worsen as climate change advances.

Despite the importance of sustaining fisheries, the reauthorization of the cornerstone policy protecting them in the United States—the Magnuson-Stevens Act—has been stalled in Congress for a decade. The holdup? Some blame the policy for being too stringent and leading to what they call "underfishing," while others argue the policy is not doing enough to rebuild depleted fish populations. Others go so far as to argue that fish populations would have rebounded without any policy.

A pair of studies finds these concerns to be largely unsubstantiated. In analyzing the policy's impact on fish populations, fishing, and industry revenue, they find that it is working essentially as it should. It is rebuilding fish populations, and in most cases it is not unduly holding back fishers from making their catch.

[...] In their study published in Science, Frank, Oremus and their other co-authors first examine the assertion of critics of U.S. fishing policy that it is too stringent and unnecessarily leaving too many fish in the water. They find that the main reason about half of the fish stocks considered "underfished" in this way is due to pure economics.

Fishers are not harvesting the fish because there is not enough demand for them. Other healthy fish stocks are being left in the water because they could not be profitably caught without also catching other fish species that are depleted. Just four fish species make up the majority of the revenue of those "underfished." And, of those, the majority of the revenue came from just one species: the walleye pollock, the catch of which is not constrained by our federal fisheries law.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/05/openai-peeks-into-the-black-box-of-neural-networks-with-new-research/

On Tuesday, OpenAI published a new research paper detailing a technique that uses its GPT-4 language model to write explanations for the behavior of neurons in its older GPT-2 model, albeit imperfectly. It's a step forward for "interpretability," which is a field of AI that seeks to explain why neural networks create the outputs they do.
[...]
In the first sentence of OpenAI's paper, the authors write, "Language models have become more capable and more widely deployed, but we do not understand how they work."

For outsiders, that likely sounds like a stunning admission from a company that not only depends on revenue from LLMs but also hopes to accelerate them to beyond-human levels of reasoning ability.

But this property of "not knowing" exactly how a neural network's individual neurons work together to produce its outputs has a well-known name: the black box. You feed the network inputs (like a question), and you get outputs (like an answer), but whatever happens in between (inside the "black box") is a mystery.

My thoughts were always that you didn't get to look into the black box of goodies. As opposed to no one even knows how this magic things works. As the kids say, YOLO, because "hold my beer" is old fashioned?

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Study reveals that some coping strategies only make the problem worse:

Five billion people spend almost half of their waking hours online. According to a new study from Aalto University, browser clutter is a serious problem for one in four of them. The results will be presented on April 27 at CHI 2023, the leading conference for human-computer interaction research.

'We began exploring which challenges make users feel overwhelmed when browsing the internet. We also mapped the behaviors that cause the clutter and how users react to the stress,' says Associate Professor and Head of Department Janne Lindqvist.

Browsing habits play a major role in cluttering up a browser. Using interviews and an online survey, the researchers found that clutter-related stress goes up when users keep a large number of tabs and browser windows open, as well as because of interactive elements like ads and pop-up windows.

Multitasking adds to the problem, and it gets worse if users are hesitant to close tabs or are dealing with complex tasks. Clutter also accumulates when users have tabs open related to different online activities – for example, if they're managing a travel reservation in one tab and chatting with friends or colleagues in another.

[...] The study found that many users react to stress by trying to change either their behavior or their attitude towards the clutter. Only the former, problem-focused solutions, proved helpful in solving the issue. An example solution would be to consciously minimize clutter by deciding on an upper limit to the number of tabs you have open.

upstart writes:

San Francisco airport will monitor plane waste for COVID-19 variants:

International travelers can now contribute valuable data to COVID-19 surveillance efforts in the United States from above the clouds.

San Francisco International Airport has launched a new program to test airplane wastewater for variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, the airport announced May 9. The program is the first in the country to continuously monitor sewage from airplanes, after previous studies demonstrated the potential value of this work.

Airplane wastewater is a key source for COVID-19 surveillance because international travelers frequently bring new variants into the country, experts say. As fewer people get their noses swabbed in health care facilities, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is looking for new ways to keep tabs on how the coronavirus mutates. Searching for genetic material in airplane bathroom waste can help fill that data gap — and even provide early warnings for future health crises.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

300,000-year-old snapshot: Oldest human footprints from Germany found:

In a study published today in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, an international research team led by scientists from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment presents the earliest human footprints known from Germany. The tracks were discovered in the roughly 300,000-year-old Schöningen Paleolithic site complex in Lower Saxony. The footprints, presumably from Homo heidelbergensis, are surrounded by several animal tracks—collectively, they present a picture of the ecosystem at that time.

[...] The various tracks at Schöningen offer a snapshot of a family's daily life and may provide information about the behavior and social composition of hominin groups as well as spatial interactions and coexistence with elephant herds and other, smaller mammals, according to the study. "Based on the tracks, including those of children and juveniles, this was probably a family outing rather than a group of adult hunters," says the archaeologist and expert on fossil footprints.

In addition to the human tracks, the team analyzed a series of elephant tracks attributable to the extinct species Palaeoloxodon antiquus—an elephant with straight tusks that was the largest land animal at the time and whose adult bulls reached a body weight of up to 13 tons.

Journal Reference:
Flavio Altamura, Jens Lehmann, Bárbara Rodríguez-Álvarez, et al. Fossil footprints at the late lower Paleolithic site of Schöningen (Germany): A new line of research to reconstruct animal and hominin paleoecology , Quaternary Science Reviews (DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.108094)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Mediterranean diet's cellular effects revealed:

People who follow the Mediterranean diet—rich in fats from olive oil and nuts—tend to live longer, healthier lives than others who chow down primarily on fast food, meat and dairy. But it hasn't been clear on a cellular level exactly why the diet is so beneficial.

Now researchers led by the Stanford School of Medicine have found one of the first cellular connections between healthy fats—known as monounsaturated fatty acids—and lifespan in laboratory worms. The finding hints at a complex relationship between diet, fats and longevity.

"Fats are generally thought to be detrimental to health," said professor of genetics Anne Brunet, Ph.D. "But some studies have shown that specific types of fats, or lipids, can be beneficial."

The researchers learned that one of the fats in the Mediterranean diet, oleic acid, increases the number of two key cellular structures, or organelles, and protects cellular membranes from damage by a chemical reaction called oxidation. This protective effect has a big payoff: Worms fed food rich in oleic acid lived about 35% longer than those consigned to standard worm rations, the researchers found.

Journal Reference:
Papsdorf, Katharina, Miklas, Jason W., Hosseini, Amir, et al. Lipid droplets and peroxisomes are co-regulated to drive lifespan extension in response to mono-unsaturated fatty acids [open], Nature Cell Biology (DOI: 10.1038/s41556-023-01136-6)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Fighting cancer with light, and a drug that self-assembles into nanoparticles:

Chemotherapy that does not harm the body, but effectively fights cancer cells: that is the goal of chemist Sylvestre Bonnet and his team. During his Ph.D. research, chemist Xuequan Zhou brought that goal a little closer. He developed molecules that, upon injection into the bloodstream, self-assemble into nanoparticles that accumulate in the tumor. Targeted irradiation with visible light then attacks the tumor. The research has now been published in Nature Chemistry.

"Conventional anti-cancer drugs often do not differentiate enough between good and bad cells," Bonnet explains. "They kill them both." The researchers have come up with a solution to this problem: nanoparticles that target the tumor and only become active under the influence of visible light. "This anticancer phototherapy allows doctors to treat a specific part of the body without damaging the rest. It is already in use in several hospitals." Molecules that form nanoparticles by themselves

Until now, chemists had to first attach the chemotherapy drugs to nanoparticles in the lab. Doctors then administered them by injection into the patient's bloodstream. Conjugation to the nanoparticles helped the chemotherapy find the tumor. Zhou's drug works slightly differently. "The lab work is no longer necessary," he says. "You can administer the molecules directly. Once in the blood, nanoparticles then form all by themselves."

Journal Reference:
Zhou, Xue-Quan, Wang, Peiyuan, Ramu, Vadde, et al. In vivo metallophilic self-assembly of a light-activated anticancer drug [open], Nature Chemistry (DOI: 10.1038/s41557-023-01199-w)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Meteorologists targeted in climate misinfo surge:

Once trusted faces on the news, meteorologists now brave threats, insults and slander online from conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers who accuse them of faking or even fixing the weather.

Users on Twitter and other social media falsely accused Spain's weather agency of engineering a drought, Australia's of doctoring its thermometers and France's of exaggerating global warming through misplaced weather stations.

"The coronavirus is no longer a trend. Conspiracy theorists and deniers who used to talk about that are now spreading disinformation about climate change," Alexandre Lopez-Borrull, lecturer in Information and Communication Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia, told AFP.

[...] "In this context people feel alienated and end up listening to people they never listened to before, with messages appealing directly to the emotions."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

With revenues crashing, Samsung will make fewer DRAM chips to try and save the day:

While Nvidia decided to adopt an insane price policy for its latest generation of gaming GPUs, market conditions for other hardware components have never been better for consumers. Memory chips for SSD drives and DRAM memory modules are very affordable right now, and manufacturers are struggling to adapt their businesses to this new trend.

Being one of the largest DRAM chip manufacturers in the world, Samsung is experiencing a rather critical moment in its recent history. The company's revenues suffered a -18% year-over-year drop in the first quarter of 2023, while profits have essentially evaporated with the worst result recorded for the past 14 years (-95%).

Global DRAM and SSD prices are expected to become even cheaper in the coming months, which will clearly affect any rebound effort put in place by manufacturers. Samsung recently said that it was preparing to cut back on chip production, and now we know the cut will likely be a significant one.

The Korean giant is seemingly expected to decrease its chip manufacturing output for DDR4 memory modules, a move that will last for 3 to 6 months (two quarters) at least. Samsung's total wafer input will be reduced by 5-7%, which will likely have further negative consequences on an already struggling market.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/meaningful-harm-from-ai-necessary-before-regulation-says-microsoft-exec/

As lawmakers worldwide attempt to understand how to regulate rapidly advancing AI technologies, Microsoft chief economist Michael Schwarz told attendees of the World Economic Forum Growth Summit today that "we shouldn't regulate AI until we see some meaningful harm that is actually happening, not imaginary scenarios."

The comments came about 45 minutes into a panel called "Growth Hotspots: Harnessing the Generative AI Revolution." Reacting, another featured speaker, CNN anchor Zain Asher, stopped Schwarz to ask, "Wait, we should wait until we see harm before we regulate it?"
[...]
Lawmakers are racing to draft AI regulations that acknowledge harm but don't threaten AI progress. Last year, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned Congress that lawmakers should exercise "great caution" when drafting AI policy solutions. The FTC regards harms as instances where "AI tools can be inaccurate, biased, and discriminatory by design and incentivize relying on increasingly invasive forms of commercial surveillance." More recently, the White House released a blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, describing some outcomes of AI use as "deeply harmful," but "not inevitable."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Fact: Earth's colossal ice sheets are melting:

Pay attention to Greenland.

The land's colossal ice sheet — around three times the size of Texas — is melting some 270 billion tons(opens in a new tab) of ice into the sea each year as Earth warms. And the inevitable sea level rise could be worse than scientists calculated: Researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine (UCI) found that warmer ocean water is seeping underneath and amplifying melting of Greenland's mighty Petermann Glacier, which ends in a great ice tongue floating over the sea. The scientists recently published their research in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The glacier lies in northern Greenland, a realm of the high Arctic. But that frigid location can no longer protect it. Scientists found the glacier is vulnerable to the incessantly warming seas. It's another whammy for melting Greenland, which is melting from above (warmer air) and below (warmer water).

Until 2015, satellite observations showed Petermann, a major ice outflow on Greenland, was in solid shape. Not anymore.

"Something changed during the last decade. Petermann was supposed to be a place where the ice was still stable," Enrico Ciraci, a NASA postdoctoral fellow and an Earth system scientist at UCI, told Mashable.

Ice loss is now ramping up.

upstart writes:

Goodbye to Roblox on Linux with their new anti-cheat and Wine blocking:

You might have seen recently that I covered the upcoming updates for Roblox*, and now it's here blocking Wine with their new anti-cheat. This means you won't be able to play it on Linux any more, at all, unless you find some sort of special workaround.

Previously the roll-out of this update was being tested only with some users. Now though it's here for everyone giving a 64 bit client and introducing their Hyperion anti-cheat software which they are intentionally blocking Wine with. Naturally plenty of Roblox fans on Linux are upset by this, asking their team for updates on what their plans are.

In a fresh statement on their official developer forum one of their staff said this, in reply to users asking about updates in regards to Linux support:

Hi - thanks for the question. I definitely get where you're coming from, and as you point out, you deserve a clear, good-faith answer. Unfortunately that answer is essentially "no."

[...] Again, I'm personally sorry to have to say this. Way back in 2000 I had a few patches accepted into the kernel, and I led the port of Roblox game servers from Windows to Linux several years ago. From a technical and philosophical perspective, it would be a wonderful thing to do. But our first responsibility is to our overall community, and the opportunity cost of supporting a Linux client is far, far too high to justify.

They're clearly not going to be releasing a Native Linux build, which I think most people probably already knew, but at least previously they repeatedly said that Wine was a "priority" to support but now it doesn't sound as likely going by the above.

What is Roblox? Roblox is an app that allows users to play a wide variety of games, create games, and chat with others online. It combines gaming, social media, and social commerce. Billing itself as the “ultimate virtual universe,” Roblox experiences are places where users can socialize, build their own spaces, and even earn and spend virtual money.

Apparently, it is very "popular with kids".

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/05/pharma-company-behind-shkrelis-infamous-4000-price-hike-files-for-bankruptcy/

The pharmaceutical company behind Martin Shkreli's infamous 4,000 percent price hike—now known as Vyera Pharmaceuticals—filed for bankruptcy this week and plans to sell its assets to pay off millions in debts.

In court documents filed Wednesday, Vyera's chief restructuring officer, Lawrence Perkins, largely blamed Shkreli for dooming the company and its affiliates.
[...]
Shkreli founded Vyera in 2014 under the name Turing Pharmaceuticals. His focus was to acquire sole-source drugs that treat life-threatening conditions in small populations of patients—and then dramatically jack up the price. In August 2015, he did just that, buying the rights to the decades-old anti-parasitic drug Daraprim for $55 million and abruptly raising the price from $17.60 per tablet to $750, a more than 4,000 percent increase.
[...]
Shkreli's influence wasn't shaken until January 2020, when the Federal Trade Commission and several state attorneys general sued Shkreli and the company—then called Vyera—for allegedly violating antitrust laws. Soon after, Vyera appointed a new board and management to purge ties to Shkreli. Vyera later settled the FTC's lawsuit, while Shkreli insisted on going to trial, where he lost, was banned from the pharmaceutical industry for life, and ordered to pay roughly $65 million in disgorgement. He is appealing the ruling.

Meanwhile, Vyera never reversed Shkreli's price hike.

Previously:
Cost of Daraprim Medication Raised by Over 50 Times 20150922
Stories mentioning Shkreli on Soylentnews 21+ stories (Famous/infamous, same dif, right?)

Related:
Martin Shkreli Launches Blockchain-Based Drug Discovery Platform 20220726
FTC: Shkreli May Have Violated Lifetime Pharma Ban, Should be Held in Contempt 20230125
Shkreli Tells Judge His Drug Discovery Software is Not for Discovering Drugs 20230215

Original Submission

upstart writes:

To compete with American rivals, Eutelsat's Eva Berneke first has to navigate Russia's war in Ukraine, Brexit politics, and jamming attacks by Iran:

Eva Berneke describes her first year at the helm of the world's third-largest satellite company as a "whirlwind." That's an understatement. Since she took over the top job at Eutelsat in January 2022, the Danish CEO has become a direct competitor to Elon Musk, been accused by the Ukrainian government of aiding Russian propaganda, and found herself in the thick of bitter Brexit politics—and that's before you even mention the Iranian sabotage attempt.

[...] Undaunted, Berneke responded by initiating her own shake-up. In July, the company announced plans to merge with struggling British satellite provider OneWeb. As part of the deal, Eutelsat absorbed OneWeb's constellation of 648 low-orbit satellites. At just 1,200 km above Earth, the OneWeb fleet delivers faster internet speeds than Eutelsat's geostationary satellites, which sit 35,000 km above the planet's surface.

[...] The OneWeb-Eutelsat merger has been touted as Europe's entry into the space race. It is the only company currently competing with Musk's Starlink in the low-orbit market. But to claim its title as a European space giant, Eutelsat first has to navigate messy post-Brexit politics. Both France's Eutelsat and Britain's OneWeb were part-owned by their respective governments, and the two countries will continue to own stakes in the new business.

Berneke admits Brexit has brought challenges. "But there's been a willingness on both sides to reach across the Channel to try and find a good way of collaborating," she says. If Europe wants a homegrown satellite giant, Britain and France will have to resolve their differences. "[OneWeb's fleet] is going to be one of the only non-US-based constellations for a while," she says.