I *just* realized that an editor on SoylentNews, janrinok (AKA JR), has very recently attained a huge milestone on our site:

8,000 stories!

I can speak from personal experience that this represents a HUGE sacrifice of time and energy. He showed me the ropes in how to post a story. (There is FAR MORE than meets the eye to be an editor!) There was also the fact that in the early years of SoylentNews, he was simultaneously taking care of his severely ill wife. (She, sadly, passes away a few short years ago.) He endured some exceedingly heart-wrenching periods doing this. I have witnessed him posting stories even though he was beyond the point of exhaustion. So much so that his doctors *demanded* that he stop *everything* and take a break for many months.

So it may not appear to be a huge milestone, please take my word for it. It is!

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

If you're a Linux enthusiast, you've likely come across terms like "immutable distribution", "OS3", or "image-based operating system". These concepts have been gaining traction in the Linux community, sparking curiosity about their significance. In this article, we'll delve into the world of immutable distributions, exploring how they work, their advantages, potential drawbacks, and whether they truly represent the future of the Linux desktop.

An immutable Linux distribution is a unique breed of operating system designed to be read-only and resistant to easy modification once installed. The fundamental idea behind these distributions is to restrict user and superuser access to system files and directories, ensuring that most changes are temporary and erased upon reboot. This approach has earned them the moniker "immutable."

When updates are applied to the system, they don't modify the existing installation. Instead, they create a new system image that becomes the active one upon the next reboot. While this might initially seem limiting, immutable distributions implement workarounds to ensure users can still customize their computing environment.

Immutable distributions offer robust security benefits. Since users and third-party programs can't readily modify the core system, the risk of viruses, Trojans, ransomware, and other malware compromising system files and directories is significantly reduced. Even if an attacker gains access to the system, their ability to write or modify system components is limited.

Immutable distributions are highly reliable. Users are less likely to accidentally break their systems or encounter issues caused by third-party software modifications. Unlike conventional distributions, there's no risk of running into dependency conflicts or unintentionally destructive commands.

Maintenance is streamlined with immutable distributions. Updates are only applied after a reboot, eliminating the risk of breaking the system while it's running. This approach also minimizes the chances of encountering dependency-related problems during updates.

One significant challenge with immutable distributions is installing applications, as traditional package management systems typically require write access to the system. Immutable distributions address this issue using various methods:

Many immutable distributions embrace universal packaging formats like Flatpaks, Snaps, and AppImages. These formats don't need full system access and bring their dependencies, making them ideal for installation on immutable systems.

Some distributions allow users to install packages in a dedicated layer separate from the immutable base system. These layered packages persist across reboots and are included in the updated system image, providing a way to install drivers, libraries, and applications not available as universal packages.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/unity-promises-changes-to-install-fee-plans-as-developer-fallout-continues/

After nearly a week of protracted developer anger over a newly announced runtime fee of up to $0.20 per game install, Unity says it will be "making changes" to that policy and will share a further update "in a couple of days."

In a late Sunday social media post, Unity offered apologies for the "confusion and angst" caused by the sudden announcement of the policy last Tuesday. "We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy," the post reads. "Thank you for your honest and critical feedback."

[...] "Publishers can no longer trust that the deals they make with Unity developers won't worsen over time," Zeboyd Digital Entertainment's Robert Boyd said in a statement that sums up similar feelings being expressed publicly by many developers.

[...] "If they make line 1 of their EULA one that guarantees we can continue to use current and past versions of Unity under those terms, maybe with a provision that they can scale the sub fee within some reasonable bounds—that's better than trust," indie developer Tom Francis wrote in a blog post about the complicated legal terms underlying the whole situation.

[...] Caves of Qud developer Brian Bucklew memorably documented his marathon porting work from Unity to Godot over the weekend, though the situation for the retro-styled 2D roguelike might not be representative of more complex porting efforts.

[...] Earlier this year, about a week after Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast faced widespread criticism for changes to its longstanding Open Gaming License, the company tried to partially walk back those changes with a draft that kept many of the most controversial points. A week later, the company fully backed off and promised the original license would "remain untouched."

Previously:
Developer Dis-Unity - 20230915

chromas writes:

Digital Trends:

A gorgeous new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a dramatic sight created by the outbursts of energy coming from a very young star. Called a Herbig-Haro object, this particular example is named HH 211 and shows the effects of huge jets of gas that are thrown out by the star and which collide with clouds of dust and gas to create stunning shapes.

The image was taken in the infrared wavelength in which Webb operates, which is ideal for observing hot objects like new stars without the view being blocked by dust, which is opaque in the visible light wavelength. The observations were made using Webb's NIRCam instrument.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/09/a-phone-call-to-helpdesk-was-likely-all-it-took-to-hack-mgm/

A cyber criminal gang proficient in impersonation and malware has been identified as the likely culprit for an attack that paralized networks at US casino operator MGM Resorts International.

The group, which security researchers call "Scattered Spider," uses fraudulent phone calls to employees and help desks to "phish" for login credentials. It has targeted MGM and dozens of other Western companies with the aim of extracting ransom payments, according to two people familiar with the situation.

The operator of hotel casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, including the Bellagio, Aria, Cosmopolitan, and Excalibur, preemptively shut down large parts of its internal networks after discovering the breach on Sunday, one of the people said.

The effort to contain the hackers caused chaos. Slot machines stopped working, electronic transfers of winnings slowed down, and key cards for thousands of hotel rooms no longer functioned. MGM did not respond to a request for comment.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

On August 23 the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully landed a spacecraft on the moon's south pole, a location that has always been of particular interest to scientists due to the unique conditions created by the planet's extremities.

The moon rover, Chandrayaan-3, which recently completed its 14-day mission, made history by landing on the lunar south pole. Dr. Laura McKemmish, an astrochemist from UNSW Sydney, explains the significance of the mission and what the future holds for lunar exploration.

"This is the first landing of India on the moon, and it will make India the fourth country ever to land on the moon," says Dr. McKemmish. "The ability of our global civilization to go into space exploration is really, really crucial to enable humankind as a global community to explore elsewhere in the universe."

Interest in the southern pole of the moon stems primarily from the fact that scientists have been aware of the presence of frozen water there, and locating water is a large part of Chandrayaan-3's mission. "Identifying frozen bodies of water on the moon is a really important gateway for further space discovery in our solar system."

Following a failed mission to land on the moon in 2019, India joined the US, China and the Soviet Union as only the fourth country to reach this milestone.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/09/ai-hype-reaches-coca-cola-with-new-y3000-flavor-co-created-with-ai/

Coca-Cola has taken a fizzy leap into the future of AI hype with the release of Coca‑Cola Y3000 Zero Sugar, a "limited-edition" beverage reportedly co-created with artificial intelligence. Its futuristic name evokes flavor in the year 3000 (still 977 years away), but its marketing relies on AI-generated imagery from 2023—courtesy of the controversial image synthesis model Stable Diffusion.

Stable Diffusion, a technology that is mentioned by name when launching the "Coca-Cola Y3000 AI Cam" mobile app, gained its ability to generate images by scraping hundreds of millions of copyrighted works found on the Internet without copyright-holder permission and is currently the subject of litigation related to copyright infringement.
[...]
Coca-Cola says that the zero-sugar version of the new AI-augmented soda will be available for a limited time in "select markets" including the United States, Canada, China, Europe, and Africa. Thirsty futuristic folks in the US, Canada, and Mexico will also be able to buy an "original taste version" of Coca‑Cola Y3000 soon.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In a controversial bid to expose supposed bias in a top journal, a US climate expert shocked fellow scientists by revealing he tailored a wildfire study to emphasize global warming.

While supporters applauded Patrick T. Brown for flagging what he called a one-sided climate "narrative" in academic publishing, his move surprised at least one of his co-authors—and angered the editors of leading journal Nature.

"I left out the full truth to get my climate change paper published," read the headline to an article signed by Brown in the news site The Free Press on September 5.

He said he deliberately focused on the impact from higher temperatures on wildfire risk in a study in the journal, excluding other factors such as land management.

"I just got published in Nature because I stuck to a narrative I knew the editors would like," the article read. "That's not the way science should work."

One of the named co-authors of the study, Steven J. Davis, a professor in the earth system science department at the University of California, Irvine, told AFP Brown's comments took him "by surprise".

"Patrick may have made decisions that he thought would help the paper be published, but we don't know whether a different paper would have been rejected," he said in an email.

"I don't think he has much evidence to support his strong claims that editors and reviewers are biased."

[...] "It is unfortunate, but not surprising, that Patrick felt like he had to be a willing participant in oversimplifying his work to have a career in science. In that long run, that is not a service to him, the field, or humanity."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://hackaday.com/2023/09/11/cheap-lcd-uses-usb-serial/

Browsing the Asian marketplaces online is always an experience. Sometimes, you see things at ridiculously low prices. Other times, you see things and wonder who is buying them and why — a shrimp pillow? But sometimes, you see something that probably could have a more useful purpose than the proposed use case.

That's the case with the glut of "smart displays" you can find at very low prices.
[...]
Like a lot of this cheap stuff, these screens are sold under a variety of names, and apparently, there are some subtle differences. Two of the main makers of these screens are Turing and XuanFang, although you rarely see those names in the online listings. As you might expect, though, someone has reverse-engineered the protocol, and there is Python software that will replace the stock Windows software the devices use.
[...]
We are still tempted to reflash the CH552 to convert it to use a normal serial port. If you decide to give it a go, you'll need to figure out programming.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Israeli software maker Insanet has reportedly developed a commercial product called Sherlock that can infect devices via online adverts to snoop on targets and collect data about them for the biz's clients.

This is according to an investigation by Haaretz, which this week claimed the spyware system had been sold to a country that is not a democracy.

The newspaper's report, we're told, marks the first time details of Insanet and its surveillanceware have been made public. Furthermore, Sherlock is capable of drilling its way into Microsoft Windows, Google Android, and Apple iOS devices, according to cited marketing bumf.

[...] To market its snoopware, Insanet reportedly teamed up with Candiru, an Israel-based spyware maker that has been sanctioned in the US, to offer Sherlock along with Candiru's spyware – an infection of Sherlock will apparently set a client back six million euros ($6.7 million, £5.2 million), mind you.

[...] The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Director of Activism Jason Kelley said Insanet's use of advertising technology to infect devices and spy on clients' targets makes it especially worrisome. Dodgy online ads don't just provide a potential vehicle for delivering malware, such as via carefully crafted images or JavaScript in the ads that exploit vulnerabilities in browsers and OSes, they can be used to go after specific groups of people – such as those who are interested in open source code, or who frequently travel to Asia – that someone might be interested in snooping on.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

California has become the third US state to pass a right-to-repair bill for consumer electronics. After a unanimous vote in favor, Sacramento lawmakers expect Governor Gavin Newsom to sign the bill into law.

Senate Bill 244 (SB-244) contains more consumer protections than similar laws passed in New York and Minnesota. It stipulates that for electronics costing between $50 and $100, manufacturers must provide consumers and independent repair shops with replacement parts and repair manuals for three years after the initial manufacture date. That timespan extends to seven years for devices costing over $100. Although the law goes into effect on July 1, 2024, it applies retroactively to products manufactured after July 1, 2021.

The law mainly applies to devices like phones, tablets, laptops, and other general-purpose appliances, but not alarm systems or video game consoles. Although manufacturers extracted fewer concessions in California than Minnesota or New York, a few significant ones remain.

First, the bill doesn't require companies to provide instructions for bypassing security measures, which can often prove a significant obstacle to independent repairs. John Deere is notorious for using software locks to force users to spend extra money on first-party maintenance and replacements.

Another caveat to the California bill is that independent repair vendors must disclose when they use refurbished replacement parts or originate components from third-party makers. This condition could affect how companies handle issues such as official repairs or warranties.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/the-spectacular-downfall-of-a-common-useless-cold-medicine/

After spending decades on pharmacy shelves, the leading nasal decongestant in over-the-counter cold and allergy medicines has met its downfall.

Advisers for the Food and Drug Administration this week voted unanimously, 16 to 0, that oral doses of phenylephrine—found in brand-name products like Sudafed PE, Benadryl Allergy Plus Congestion, Mucinex Sinus-Max, and Nyquil Severe Cold & Flu—are not effective at treating a stuffy nose.

The vote was years in the making. In 2007, amid doubts, FDA advisers called for more studies. With the data that has trickled in since then, the agency's own scientists conducted a careful review and came to the firm conclusion that oral phenylephrine "is not effective as a nasal decongestant."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/09/private-ai-summit-with-senate-titans-of-tech-garners-controversy/

On Wednesday, US Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) hosted an "AI Insight Forum" in the Senate's office building about potential AI regulation. Attendees included billionaires and modern-day industry titans such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and Jensen Huang of Nvidia. But this heavily corporate guest list—with 14 out of 22 being CEOs—had some scratching their heads.

"This is the room you pull together when your staffers want pictures with tech industry AI celebrities. It's not the room you'd assemble when you want to better understand what AI is, how (and for whom) it functions, and what to do about it," wrote Signal President Meredith Whittaker on X.

upstart writes:

Tech Industry Leaders Endorse Regulating Artificial Intelligence at Rare Summit in Washington:

The nation's biggest technology executives on Wednesday loosely endorsed the idea of government regulations for artificial intelligence at an unusual closed-door meeting in the U.S. Senate. But there is little consensus on what regulation would look like, and the political path for legislation is difficult.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who organized the private forum on Capitol Hill as part of a push to legislate artificial intelligence, said he asked everyone in the room — including almost two dozen tech executives, advocates and skeptics — whether government should have a role in the oversight of artificial intelligence, and "every single person raised their hands, even though they had diverse views," he said.

Among the ideas discussed was whether there should be an independent agency to oversee certain aspects of the rapidly-developing technology, how companies could be more transparent and how the United States can stay ahead of China and other countries.

"The key point was really that it's important for us to have a referee," said Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and X, during a break in the daylong forum. "It was a very civilized discussion, actually, among some of the smartest people in the world."

Schumer will not necessarily take the tech executives' advice as he works with colleagues on the politically difficult task of ensuring some oversight of the burgeoning sector. But he invited them to the meeting in hopes that they would give senators some realistic direction for meaningful regulation.

Congress should do what it can to maximize AI's benefits and minimize the negatives, Schumer said, "whether that's enshrining bias, or the loss of jobs, or even the kind of doomsday scenarios that were mentioned in the room. And only government can be there to put in guardrails."

Other executives attending the meeting were Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Musk said the meeting "might go down in history as being very important for the future of civilization."

First, though, lawmakers have to agree on whether to regulate, and how.

Congress has a lackluster track record when it comes to regulating new technology, and the industry has grown mostly unchecked by government in the past several decades. Many lawmakers point to the failure to pass any legislation surrounding social media, such as for stricter privacy standards.

coolgopher writes:

As reported in New Atlas and many other places, the 2023 Ig Nobel winners have been announced.

The Ig Nobel Prize celebrates the most trivial and ridiculous things our best and brightest have studied. The 2023 award winners are now world-class experts that have advanced mankind's knowledge on big questions. Questions like "how much do horny anchovies influence ocean water mixing?" Or "if a group of people stand in the street looking upward, does the size of the group influence how many unrelated passers-by also decide to look up?" Or that old chestnut, "do we need toilets that analyze our excreta and identify us by taking photos of our anuses?"

Just a couple of examples to raise the level of excitement...

Medicine Prize: Christine Pham, Bobak Hedayati, Kiana Hashemi, Ella Csuka, Tiana Mamaghani, Margit Juhasz, Jamie Wikenheiser, and Natasha Mesinkovska, for using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person's two nostrils. Don't miss their riveting work "The Quantification and Measurement of Nasal Hairs in a Cadaveric Population."

Education Prize: Katy Tam, Cyanea Poon, Victoria Hui, Wijnand van Tilburg, Christy Wong, Vivian Kwong, Gigi Yuen, and Christian Chan, for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students. If anything could be more exciting than boredom, it's surely their paper, "Boredom Begets Boredom: An Experience Sampling Study on the Impact of Teacher Boredom on Student Boredom and Motivation."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Mistranslation Of Newton's First Law Discovered After Nearly 300 Years:

For hundreds of years, we have been told what Newton's First Law of Motion supposedly says, but recently a paper published in Philosophy of Science (preprint) by [Daniel Hoek] argues that it is based on a mistranslation of the original Latin text. As noted by [Stephanie Pappas] in Scientific American, this would seem to be a rather academic matter as Newton's Laws of Motion have been superseded by General Relativity and other theories developed over the intervening centuries. Yet even today Newton's theories are highly relevant, as they provide very accessible approximations for predicting phenomena on Earth.

Similarly, we owe it to scientific and historical accuracy to address such matters, all of which seem to come down to an awkward translation of Isaac Newton's original Latin text in the 1726 third edition to English by Andrew Motte in 1729. This English translation is what ended up defining for countless generations what Newton's Laws of Motion said, along with the other chapters in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

In 1999 a new translation (Cohen-Whitman translation) was published by a team of translators, which contains a number of notable departures from the 1729 translation. Most notable herein is the change of the original (Motte) translation:

Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impress'd thereon.

to the following in the Cohen-Whitman translation:

Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by the forces impressed.

This more correct translation of the Latin nisi quatenus has significant implications for the law's effects, as while Newton's version does not require force-free bodies, the weak reading introduced by Motte's translation incites exactly the kind of debate which has been seen over the centuries about why the First Law even exists, when in this translated form it automatically follows from the Second Law, rendering it redundant.

Original Submission