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AnonTechie writes:

Do you feel it? The sense that this civilization has run out of creative juice. That we've reached the cliff edge of the Enlightenment.

That big ideas are dead, killed off by the technocrats of the ruling class. If an idea is proposed that doesn't grow the economy, does it really exist as a thought?

This sense struck me hard recently reading BBC Focus, a popular science magazine. One of the articles was about a team of university researchers in California using AI to predict hit pop songs.

Professor Paul Zack said: "Streaming services can readily identify new songs that are likely to be hits for people's playlists more efficiently, making the streaming services jobs easier and delighting listeners."

There is so much of this going about. Click on any science tab at any of the big media outlets and there'll be a story about a research "breakthrough" that crushes the soul. Here's a ground-breaking study from the news today about how smiling makes you more attractive.

[...] We are being fed trivia and bullshit about delighting listeners and smiling while the ecological foundations of our world are being destroyed. What happened to the great sense of inquiry that I've read used to exist in the world? It wasn't so long ago that people would spend years writing history-changing theses articulating political, economic, and social models to cast off subjugation and injustice, secure new material conditions and propel humanity forward.

Let's call this bullshit research, the sibling of those bullshit jobs made famous by David Graeber.

[...] They questioned the current approach to academic research "in the context of the approaching climate apocalypse. What is the point of all this in the face of wildfires, superstorm, and megadrought ?"

They were too polite to say it, but the gist of their critique was: stop focusing on bullshit research. Seize the spirit of the Enlightenment. Start focusing on big, transformative ideas before we lose everything.

[Source]: OK Doomer

Do you feel the same ?

Original Submission

hubie writes:

The color changes reflect significant shifts in essential marine ecosystems:

The ocean's color has changed significantly over the last 20 years, and the global trend is likely a consequence of human-induced climate change, report scientists at MIT, the National Oceanography Center in the U.K., and elsewhere.

In a study appearing today in Nature, the team writes that they have detected changes in ocean color over the past two decades that cannot be explained by natural, year-to-year variability alone. These color shifts, though subtle to the human eye, have occurred over 56 percent of the world's oceans — an expanse that is larger than the total land area on Earth.

In particular, the researchers found that tropical ocean regions near the equator have become steadily greener over time. The shift in ocean color indicates that ecosystems within the surface ocean must also be changing, as the color of the ocean is a literal reflection of the organisms and materials in its waters.

[...] "I've been running simulations that have been telling me for years that these changes in ocean color are going to happen," says study co-author Stephanie Dutkiewicz, senior research scientist in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the Center for Global Change Science. "To actually see it happening for real is not surprising, but frightening. And these changes are consistent with man-induced changes to our climate."

[...] "The color of the oceans has changed," Dutkiewicz says. "And we can't say how. But we can say that changes in color reflect changes in plankton communities, that will impact everything that feeds on plankton. It will also change how much the ocean will take up carbon, because different types of plankton have different abilities to do that. So, we hope people take this seriously. It's not only models that are predicting these changes will happen. We can now see it happening, and the ocean is changing."

Journal Reference:
Cael, B.B., Bisson, K., Boss, E. et al. Global climate-change trends detected in indicators of ocean ecology. Nature 619, 551–554 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06321-z

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/10/1960s-style-aero-testing-with-an-old-school-mustang-restomod/

To Shelby Mustang fans, the Original Venice Crew (OVC) is the stuff of legends. This was the actual team that designed and built the original GT350s, Cobras, Daytona Coupes, and GT40s that introduced Carroll Shelby's name to the masses. Today, OVC builds modern Mustang recreations so accurate that one was approved for last year's Le Mans Classic, which celebrated 100 years of the world's most famous endurance race.

But OVC also offers updated versions of those classics, bringing to life ideas that bounced around the shop back in the day but that Shelby never built in series production. Want a 1965 GT350 with independent rear suspension? OVC can do that, after dialing in a design that Ford originally believed would be too expensive as a replacement for the first-gen Mustang's solid rear axle.

These projects don't quite fit under the "restomod" umbrella, instead falling more along the lines of the ideas that OVC founder and boss Jim Marietta remembers from his days back at 1042 Princeton Drive. Think fender flares cut by hand rather than being machined or updated fiberglass front fascias to provide additional airflow.
[...]
In the 1960s, aerodynamicists struggled with a big gap between common sense design and today's highly refined computational fluid dynamics modeling. LaViolette arrived at Willow Springs fresh off working on the aero packages for some of Shelby American's forthcoming 2024 and '25 Mustangs and told me he looked forward to seeing how the classic methods worked in comparison.

"Back in the day, it was one of those things where everybody looked at it and went, 'Why would you do that? The air comes in from the front!'" he laughed before climbing into the driver's seat. "So what we're here today to do is put wool tufts on the car and we're gonna do it old-school and we're gonna see which way the wool flows, see if it starts sucking into the scoop at the back."
[...]
"It works perfect," he says. "Works just like everybody thought it would... A lot of this is fly by the pants. 'Well, let's try this, try that. OK, how does it seal? You have to move this a little bit, shift it around, do a little bit of different seal rubber.'"

"It's what you call American engineering," he chuckles. "What nobody seems to do anymore these days."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/10/behind-the-scenes-of-unitys-rushed-out-install-fee-program/

It's been over a month now since Unity partially backtracked on its controversial proposed "pay per install" fee structure, a trust-destroying saga that seems to have contributed to the retirement of Unity CEO John Riccitiello. Now, a new report highlights some of the internal divisions over the "rushed-out" policy introduction and provides new insight into what may have been motivating the company to even attempt such a plan.

Business-focused site MobileGamer.biz cites multiple "sources from inside Unity and across the mobile games business" in reporting that Unity received some significant pushback from senior-level managers before rolling out its initial fee-restructuring plans. "Half of the people in that meeting said that this model is too complicated, it's not going to be well-received, and we should talk to people before we do this," one anonymous source told the site. "It felt very rushed. We had this meeting and were told it was happening, but we were not told a date. And then before we knew it, it was out there."

After the negative reaction to that initial plan, Unity reportedly considered a modification that would take up to 4 percent of revenue from the largest Unity publishers—slightly under the 5 percent charged by the Unreal Engine. The final policy knocked that cap down to 2.5 percent only after the extent of the backlash became clear.
[...]
Despite bringing in over $1.8 billion in revenue in the 12 months ending in June 2023, Unity was nearly a billion dollars away from profitability during that same period, thanks in large part to a wave of expensive acquisitions. The perilous financial situation was reflected in Unity's tumultuous stock price, which grew from a 2020 IPO price of $68 a share to a peak of nearly $200 a share in late 2021, only to tumble to $37 a share by the beginning of September.

Previously:
Unity CEO John Riccitiello is Retiring, Effective Immediately 20231011
Unity Dev Group Dissolves After 13 Years Over "Completely Eroded" Company Trust 20230927
Unity Makes Major Changes to Controversial Install-Fee Program 20230925
EU Game Devs Ask Regulators to Look at Unity's "Anti-Competitive" Bundling 20230923
Unity Promises "Changes" to Install Fee Plans as Developer Fallout Continues 20230918
Developer Dis-Unity 20230915

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

An international team of interdisciplinary researchers has successfully created a method for better 3D modeling of complex cancers. The University of Waterloo-based team combined cutting-edge bioprinting techniques with synthetic structures or microfluidic chips. The method will help lab researchers more accurately understand heterogeneous tumors: tumors with more than one kind of cancer cell, often dispersed in unpredictable patterns.

Traditionally, medical practitioners would biopsy a patient's tumor, extract cells, and then grow them in flat petri dishes in a lab. "For 50 years, this was how biologists understood tumors," said Nafiseh Moghimi, an applied mathematics post-doctoral researcher and the lead author of the study. "But a decade ago, repeated treatment failures in human trials made scientists realize that a 2D model does not capture the real tumor structure inside the body."

The team's research addresses this problem by creating a 3D model that not only reflects the complexity of a tumor but also simulates its surrounding environment.

[...] First, the team created polymer "microfluidic chips": tiny structures etched with channels that mimic blood flow and other fluids surrounding a patient's tumor.

Next, the team grew multiple types of cancer cells and suspended these cell cultures in their own customized bioink: a cocktail of gelatin, alginate, and other nutrients designed to keep the cells cultures alive.

Finally, they used an extrusion bioprinter—a device that resembles a 3D printer but for organic material—to layer the different types of cancer cells onto the prepared microfluidic chips.

The result is a living, three-dimensional model of complex cancers that scientists can then use to test different modes of treatment, such as various chemotherapy drugs.

[...] The 3D-printed tumor models exemplify how new technology enables faster, less expensive and less painful treatments for serious conditions like late-stage breast cancer.

Journal Reference:
Moghimi, N., Hosseini, S.A., Dalan, A.B. et al. Controlled tumor heterogeneity in a co-culture system by 3D bio-printed tumor-on-chip model. Sci Rep 13, 13648 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40680-x

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

New research from Asana shows that although UK workers are open to the opportunities that AI can bring to the workplace, a disconnect exists between organizational plans for the technology and the current employee experience.

The data is derived from a survey of 2,741 UK workers, carried out by Asana’s Work Innovation Lab, a think tank that carries out research to help businesses meet the demands of the evolving workplace.

According to the findings, AI’s role in helping companies meet objectives is recognized by workers, with 49% of surveyed employees confident that AI will help their companies reach their objectives more effectively than traditional methods of working.

With 40% of workers stating their organizations are currently experiencing high levels of burnout, 92% of those surveyed said they want AI to be used to enhance parts of their job. Notably, 61% of respondents approve of AI being used for development and training. Employees also highlighted AI usage for customer service interactions, decision making processes, and hiring processes, which had approval rates of 50%, 32%, and 26%, respectively.

However, there is a clear disconnect between what employees would like to see AI used for in the workplace and how it is currently being deployed.

[...] Instead of asking ourselves how AI will change our work, we should be asking ourselves how we as humans can positively shape that change, said Rebecca Hinds, head of the Work Innovation Lab, at a roundtable event last week.

“AI holds enormous power because of its complexity and sophistication, but in order to harness the promise and the potential of AI in our workplace we need to adopt a deeply human approach,” Hinds said. “Decades of research show that the implementation of new technology fails in most cases not because the technology isn’t efficient, but because humans naturally resist change.”

When it comes to making a success of AI in the workplace, Hinds said the organizations need to prioritize change management, upskilling and reskilling, and experimentation and allow their workers to commit time to familiarize themselves with these news tools.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Boeing says it can't make money with fixed-price contracts

"Rest assured we haven't signed any fixed-price development contracts, nor intend to."

Boeing released its third-quarter results on Wednesday [ . . . . ] amid these improving results, Boeing's financials continued to be dragged down by its Defense, Space & Security division. This division, which includes missile production for the military and space activities such as satellites and the Starliner spacecraft, lost $1.7 billion during the first three quarters of this year.

[ . . . . ] Boeing's chief executive, David Calhoun, and chief financial officer, Brian West, expressed disappointment in these results from the defense and space division. [ . . . . ] the pair pinned the blame for performance by its defense and space division, referred to internally as BDS, on fixed-price contracts. As the BDS division seeks a return to profitability, West said Boeing will not be using fixed-price contracts anymore.

[ . . . . ] Boeing has also been struggling with fixed-price contracts in programs to build aircraft for the military, such as the KC-46 Pegasus aerial refueling aircraft, and NASA, with the Starliner crewed spacecraft.

[ . . . . ] Boeing has been developing Starliner for more than a decade and is running six years behind its original goal of flying crew to the International Space Station for NASA in 2017. The company also has fallen more than three years behind SpaceX

[ . . . . ] As it has sought to compete with SpaceX on a purely fixed-price contract for crew transport, Boeing has reported more than $1 billion in losses to date and still has yet to fly its first astronaut mission.

Clearly cost-plus contracts accomplish exactly what they were intended to and must be continued.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/california-suspends-cruises-robotaxis-after-pedestrian-was-critically-injured/

Less than three months after the California Public Utilities Commission approved robotaxi-service Cruise's plan to provide around-the-clock driverless rides to passengers in San Francisco, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has shut down Cruise's driverless operations in the state.

Yesterday, the California DMV suspended Cruise's permits for autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing "effective immediately" over pedestrian safety concerns.
[...]
The suspension followed two notable accidents involving Cruise's robotaxis. In August, one person was injured after a Cruise vehicle crashed into a fire truck, CNBC reported. And earlier this month, a pedestrian using a crosswalk was found in critical condition after a driver of another vehicle struck the pedestrian and threw her into the path of an oncoming Cruise robotaxi.

This hit-and-run incident is still being investigated. According to Cruise, its autonomous vehicle (AV) detected the collision and stopped on top of the pedestrian, then veered off the road, dragging the pedestrian about 20 feet. When the AV finally stopped, it appeared to pin the pedestrian's leg beneath a tire while videos showed the pedestrian was screaming for help.

A few weeks after the October incident, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched a probe into Cruise, examining whether Cruise had taken enough precautions to keep pedestrians safe, Reuters reported.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

When given the choice to learn how their actions will affect someone else, 40% of people will choose ignorance, often in order to have an excuse to act selfishly:

"Examples of such willful ignorance abound in everyday life, such as when consumers ignore information about the problematic origins of the products they buy," said lead author Linh Vu, MS, a doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

"We wanted to know just how prevalent and how harmful willful ignorance is, as well as why people engage in it."

[...] Across the studies, the researchers found that when given an option, 40% of people chose not to learn the consequences of their actions. That willful ignorance was correlated with less altruism: People were 15.6 percentage points more likely to be generous to someone else when they were told the consequences of their choice compared with when they were allowed to remain ignorant.

The researchers hypothesized that one reason for willful ignorance might be that some people behave altruistically because they want to maintain a positive self-image of being an altruistic person. In those cases, willful ignorance can allow them to maintain that self-image without having to act in an altruistic way.

[...] "While most people are willing to do the right thing when they are fully informed of the consequences of their actions, this willingness is not always because people care for others.

"A part of the reasons why people act altruistically is due to societal pressures as well as their desire to view themselves in a good light. Since being righteous is often costly, demanding people to give up their time, money and effort, ignorance offers an easy way out."

Original Research: Open access.
"Ignorance by Choice: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Underlying Motives of Willful Ignorance and Its Consequences" by Shaul Shalvi et al. Psychological Bulletin

Original Submission

New Tool Lets Artists Fight AI Image Bots by Hiding Corrupt Data in Plain Sight

upstart writes:

A team at the University of Chicago created Nightshade to protect ideas and content:

From Hollywood strikes to digital portraits, AI's potential to steal creatives' work and how to stop it has dominated the tech conversation in 2023. The latest effort to protect artists and their creations is Nightshade, a tool allowing artists to add undetectable pixels into their work that could corrupt an AI's training data, the MIT Technology Review reports. Nightshade's creation comes as major companies like OpenAI and Meta face lawsuits for copyright infringement and stealing personal works without compensation.

[...] Nightshade essentially works as a poison, altering how a machine-learning model produces content and what that finished product looks like. For example, it could make an AI system interpret a prompt for a handbag as a toaster or show an image of a cat instead of the requested dog (the same goes for similar prompts like puppy or wolf).

Nightshade follows Zhao and his team's August release of a tool called Glaze, which also subtly alters a work of art's pixels but it makes AI systems detect the initial image as entirely different than it is. An artist who wants to protect their work can upload it to Glaze and opt in to using Nightshade.

Damaging technology like Nightshade could go a long way towards encouraging AI's major players to request and compensate artists' work properly (it seems like a better alternative to having your system rewired). Companies looking to remove the poison would likely need to locate every piece of corrupt data, a challenging task. Zhao cautions that some individuals might attempt to use the tool for evil purposes but that any real damage would require thousands of corrupted works.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

"Right to repair" advocates probably couldn't have imagined that Apple would be one of the biggest names on their side a mere five years ago. But that's precisely what's happening here: The tech giant has officially came out in support of having federal right to repair regulations at an event hosted by the Biden administration. Apple VP Brian Naumann proclaimed at the event that the company "supports a uniform federal law that balances repairability with product integrity, data security, usability, and physical safety." He also said that the company intends to "honor California's new repair provisions across the United States" even though national regulations have yet to be established.

Apple has a lengthy history of opposing attempts at passing right to repair rules. The company once said that Nebraska was bound to become a "mecca for hackers" when a bill was introduced in the state. It changed its tune in the past few years, however, and started selling parts and tools to consumers, as well as offering them access to repair guides so they could fix their iPhones and Macs on their own. Apple also backed Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman's right to repair bill in California in August before Governor Gavin Newsom signed it into law.

[...] In addition to promising to honor California's right to repair provisions across the nation, Naumann also talked about what an ideal federal law should have. "We believe that a uniform federal repair law should do the following: Maintain privacy, data and device security features which help to thwart theft; Ensure transparency for consumers about the type of parts used in a repair; Apply prospectively, to allow manufacturers to focus on building new products that can comply with the proposals; And finally, create a strong national standard that benefits consumers across the US and reduces the confusion created by potentially conflicting state approaches," he said.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Millions of Americans and their doctors are in the dark when it comes to early cognitive decline, according to new research from the University of Southern California. A study out this week suggests that most general physicians vastly under-diagnose mild cognitive impairment among their patients, following another recent study from the same authors which found that millions of Medicare patients with the condition slip through the cracks. The researchers say this diagnostic gap is worrying, given the importance of recognizing and treating mild cognitive impairment before it becomes more serious.

It’s well established that mild cognitive impairment is under-diagnosed in older people, but the researchers say theirs is some of the first work to quantify the current size of the problem.

“It’s a very different conversation to have when we can point to these numbers,” senior study author Soeren Mattke, director of the Brain Health Observatory at USC’s Center for Economic and Social Research, told Gizmodo over the phone.

In the latest study, published Tuesday in The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease, the team looked at Medicare administrative data collected from over 200,000 primary care clinicians and 50,000 practices between 2017 to 2019. They found that doctors and practices failed to diagnose about 92% of expected mild cognitive impairment cases on average; they also estimated that only 0.1% of physicians accurately diagnosed it as often as they should, based on expected rates.

In the previous paper, published this July in the journal Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy, the authors examined the medical records of over 40 million Americans over 65 enrolled in Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans between 2015 to 2019.

Based on other research, about 8 million of these Americans should have mild cognitive impairment, defined as noticeable memory loss or cognitive decline that doesn’t yet impede a person’s everyday activities. But although the rate did slightly improve over time, only a small portion of Medicare patients actually received a mild cognitive impairment diagnosis during the study period, amounting to about 8% of expected cases.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

About a month ago, pristine samples from an asteroid landed on Earth while enclosed within a tight capsule. The sample canister was designed to keep the main chunk of the asteroid safe during its journey through space, but now teams at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) are struggling to open it to get at the space rocks.

For the past week, the curation team for the OSIRIS-REx mission has been having a hard time opening the TAGSAM head, a round sampler head at the end of an articulated arm on the spacecraft that was used to grab the sample from the asteroid. The TAGSAM head (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) is where the bulk of the asteroid sample is, and it is therefore being carefully handled by members of the team through a specialized glovebox under the flow of nitrogen to prevent contamination.

“After multiple attempts at removal, the team discovered two of the 35 fasteners on the TAGSAM head could not be removed with the current tools approved for use in the OSIRIS-REx glovebox,” NASA wrote in a blog post on Friday. “The team has been working to develop and implement new approaches to extract the material inside the head, while continuing to keep the sample safe and pristine.”

When the aluminum lid to the sample canister was first removed, the mission team found black dust and debris on the avionics deck of the canister. On October 11, NASA revealed the first look at the samples collected from the outside of the TAGSAM head while adding that it still hasn’t opened the sample canister yet. “The only problem is a great problem and that’s we’ve found a lot more sample than we’re anticipating before even getting into the TAGSAM,” Francis McCubbin, curator at NASA’s JSC, said during a live event.

Massive lawsuit against Meta

quietus writes:

"At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being. That's just not true."

Mark Zuckerberg, on his own facebook page, October 2021, as quoted by Reuters.

Despite years of discussions, US Congress hasn't been able to pass new online protections for children.

This Tuesday, 42 US states took matters in their own hands, and sued Meta [Platforms] and its Instagram unit. An important factor in the decision to go to court was the US Congress testimony of a Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen (testimony 1, 2 (pdf), hearing (context)).

According to the federal lawsuit (pdf here), Meta

• created a business model focused on maximizing young users' time on its platforms,
• employs harmful and psychologically manipulative platform features while misleading the public about the safety of those features,
• published reports showing misleadingly low rates of user harms, and
• in spite of the overwhelming evidence linking its platforms to young user harms, refuses to address those harms while continuing to conceal and downplay its platforms' adverse effects.

While much of the complaint includes information conditionally under seal as part of the investigation by the attorneys general, publicly available sources — including evidence disclosed by former Meta employees — also detail Meta's efforts to attract young users and make its platforms addictive to children and teens. For example, the Wall Street Journal published an internal Facebook document in 2021 that said the following about young users: "They are a valuable but untapped audience."

Freeman writes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreamorris/2023/10/23/testing-a-time-jumping-multiverse-killing-consciousness-spawning-theory-of-reality/

"This retroactive idea. It has to be that," says Nobel Prize-winning mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, reflecting on a problem about the building blocks of reality that has dogged physics for nearly a century. "Any sensible physicist wouldn't be perturbed by this," he adds. "However, I'm not a sensible physicist."

If Penrose isn't a sensible physicist it's because the laws of physics aren't making sense, at least not on the subatomic level where the smallest things in the universe play by different rules than everything we see around us. He has reason to believe this disconnect involves a fissure that divides two different kinds of reality. He also has reason to believe that the physical process that bridges these realities will unlock answers to the physics of consciousness: the mystery of our own existence.

Penrose's contributions to math and physics are significant. He's proposed a theory of sequential universes that existed before the big bang, traces of which seem to be penetrating ours. He collaborated with Stephen Hawking on the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems, identifying points in the universe, singularities, where the gravitational forces are so intense that spacetime itself breaks down catastrophically.[...]

For decades, Penrose has been working with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff on a theory of consciousness called Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR).

[...] Penrose demurs. He politely but unequivocally waves off the idea that a conscious observer collapses wave functions by looking at them. Likewise, he dismisses the view that a conscious observer spins off near infinite universes with a glance. "That's making consciousness do the job of collapsing the wave function without having a theory of consciousness," says Penrose. "I'm turning it around and I'm saying whatever consciousness is, for quite different reasons, I think it does depend on the collapse of the wave function. On that physical process."