SoylentNews

hubie writes:

Cross-selling can help retailers avoid lost revenue from returns:

It's become so darn easy to order stuff thanks to the miracles of online shopping. But it's not so simple on the retailer end, especially when more than 16 per cent of those sales are later sent back. In the U.S., that adds up to a staggering $816 billion in lost revenue.

Cross-selling can help, say a pair of researchers. Their experiments show that once we've chosen to buy something, we tend to consider that money as already spent or gone, also called "loss booking." If we decide we want to return the item, retailers can take advantage of that tendency by giving customers enticing options to spend their refund on something else, instead of getting their money back.

In a nutshell, "it hurts less to spend money refunded from a product return than other money, because you feel like you've already lost it," says researcher Chang-Yuan Lee, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.

[...] There's a catch though. The shopper has to psychologically mark the initial spend as lost, something that does not happen when they expect to ask for a refund at the time of purchase. Study participants who bought two pairs of shoes in different sizes, expecting to return the poorer-fitting pair, were not so likely to turn around and immediately apply the refund to something else offered.

[...] While consumers could be discouraged from making returns by being charged extra fees, that leaves a bad taste in their mouth and previous research has shown they may take their business elsewhere.

Do you typically want your money back, or do you find something else to spend it on?

Journal Reference:
Chang-Yuan Lee, Carey K. Morewedge, Mental accounting of product returns [open], Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2003. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1354

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Arm Acquires Minority Stake in Raspberry Pi

Arm Holdings plc today announced that it has made a strategic investment, a minority stake in Raspberry Pi Ltd — the arm of Raspberry Pi responsible for the new Raspberry Pi 5 and past Raspberry Pi products.

[...] "Arm technology has always been central to the platforms we create, and this investment is an important milestone in our longstanding partnership," said Eben Upton, CEO, Raspberry Pi.

[...] Arm's minority stake in Raspberry Pi Ltd also shows a firm commitment to the continuation of Arm CPUs in future Raspberry Pis. With the rise of RISC-V CPUs in devices ranging from $9 to hundreds of dollars it is clear to see that we will not be seeing a RISC-V based Raspberry Pi for the foreseeable future.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A NASA astronaut who was removed from the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission but helped bring its crew back home safely thanks to his problem-solving efforts from ground control has died at the age of 87.

Thomas K. "TK" Mattingly passed away on October 31, the space agency said in a statement Thursday.

His most dramatic role came when he was assigned as command module pilot for the Apollo 13 flight but was grounded 72 hours prior to launch due to exposure to rubella, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said.

After an explosion crippled the spacecraft on its way to the Moon, Mattingly, who did not in fact get sick, went to Mission Control and devised procedures to conserve power so the vehicle could successfully re-enter the atmosphere, ensuring astronauts James Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise survived.

[...] Mattingly began his career as a US Navy pilot before being selected to the astronaut class of 1966. He later took on the role of command module pilot on the Apollo 16 mission and was the spacecraft commander in two Space Shuttle missions.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty in FTX crypto fraud case:

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been found guilty on all seven counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering following more than two weeks of testimony in one of the highest-profile financial crime cases in years.

The 31-year-old former cryptocurrency billionaire was convicted of two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, two counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, charges that each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. He was also convicted of conspiracy to commit commodities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud, which each carry a five-year maximum sentence.

"Sam Bankman-Fried perpetrated one of the biggest frauds in American history, a multibillion-dollar scheme designed to make him the king of crypto," Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a news briefing following the verdict. "Here's the thing: the cryptocurrency industry might be new. The players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new. This kind of fraud, this kind of corruption, is as old as time, and we have no patience for it."

The MIT graduate steadfastly maintained his innocence since his arrest late last year after the startling implosion of FTX, the crypto exchange he co-founded, amid an $8 billion shortfall in funds and allegations he had used customer money to prop up his struggling hedge fund, Alameda Research.

[...] Defense attorneys sought to portray Bankman-Fried as a math nerd who made poor management decisions at FTX, but who had nothing criminal in mind while building his crypto empire.

In the end, it was perhaps the hubristic display during Bankman-Fried's own testimony that bore the most weight, and did the most damage. Under the prosecution's cross-examination, Bankman-Fried said "over 140 times" that he couldn't remember a document, conversation or other key details. The government said, again and again, that was because "he was lying."

DannyB writes:

FAA wraps up safety review of SpaceX's huge Starship rocket

[....] The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced today (Oct. 31) that it has wrapped up its Starship safety review, which assesses the risks that a launch might pose to public health and property.

However, there's still another regulatory box to check before SpaceX can get a license for the next Starship liftoff.

"The FAA is continuing to work on the environmental review," the agency wrote today in an emailed statement. "As part of its environmental review, the FAA is consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) on an updated Biological Assessment under the Endangered Species Act. The FAA and the USFWS must complete this consultation before the environmental review portion of the license evaluation is completed."

[....] "SpaceX must implement all corrective actions that impact public safety and apply for and receive a license modification from the FAA that addresses all safety, environmental and other applicable regulatory requirements prior to the next Starship launch," the agency wrote at the time.

And, as today's FAA update notes, there's still work to do on the environmental side.

The ongoing review apparently centers on the potential impacts of a water deluge system, which SpaceX installed beneath Starbase's orbital launch mount after the April test flight.

The new system is designed to protect the mount from the destructive power of Super Heavy's 33 Raptor engines, which was on full display on April 20: The Raptors blasted out a big crater beneath the mount, sending chunks of concrete and other debris raining down on Starbase and the surrounding area.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

New study says relaxing paywall access does help increase subscriber counts long-term:

A new study has revealed that when news sites temporarily relax or suspend restrictions tied to paywall access, they eventually see an increase in subscribers. This reinforces the power and value of sampling as a marketing strategy. But there's more.

[...] The researchers found that when some news organizations temporarily suspended paywall restrictions on certain stories of public interest, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or U.S. presidential election, or when they provided free access up to a certain number of articles, those new visitors were more likely to become subscribers when the restrictions were reimposed.

"Our analyses revealed that the temporary paywall suspensions not only increased the amount of traffic during the suspension period, but also increased the likelihood that those visitors would become paid subscribers," says Chae. "We further found that the variety of content consumed during their period of 'free' access increased the likelihood that visitors would actually choose to subscribe."

[...] "One of the business concerns within news organizations is that relaxing the paywall for major events will cannibalize paid consumption," says Ha. "But this dynamic is effectively counteracted by an expansion where consumers who weren't willing to pay before have now gotten a taste of the content. That exposure lets them experience its value, relieving the consumer's uncertainty and helping to build a stronger relationship with that site visitor."

"One of the underlying factors that may also contribute to the positive effects of relaxed paywall subscription during certain times of important news is the public service aspect of the gesture, which helps to build trust with the public and the news consumer," adds Schweidel. "So, not only is the temporary suspension of paywall restrictions good business, but it also fulfills a societal obligation that news organizations have to keep the public informed."

Journal Reference:
Inyoung Chae, Jihyeon Ha, David A. Schweidel, Paywall Suspensions and Digital News Subscriptions, Marketing Science, 42, 4, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2022.1400

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The Mozilla Corporation, known for applications like the Thunderbird e-mail client and the Firefox web browser, has issued a warning statement about some EU legislation sneaking its way through the back rooms. The text of the legislation is slated for approval in a non-public meeting in Brussels on November 8^th.

After years of legislative process, the near-final text of the eIDAS regulation has been agreed by trialogue negotiators¹ representing EU's key bodies and will be presented to the public and parliament for a rubber stamp before the end of the year. New legislative articles, introduced in recent closed-door meetings and not yet public, envision that all web browsers distributed in Europe will be required to trust the certificate authorities and cryptographic keys selected by EU governments.

These changes radically expand the capability of EU governments to surveil their citizens by ensuring cryptographic keys under government control can be used to intercept encrypted web traffic across the EU. Any EU member state has the ability to designate cryptographic keys for distribution in web browsers and browsers are forbidden from revoking trust in these keys without government permission.

This enables the government of any EU member state to issue website certificates for interception and surveillance which can be used against every EU citizen, even those not resident in or connected to the issuing member state. There is no independent check or balance on the decisions made by member states with respect to the keys they authorize and the use they put them to. This is particularly troubling given that adherence to the rule of law has not been uniform across all member states, with documented instances of coercion by secret police for political purposes.

The text goes on to ban browsers from applying security checks to these EU keys and certificates except those pre-approved by the EU's IT standards body - ETSI. This rigid structure would be problematic with any entity, but government-controlled standard bodies are especially susceptible to misaligned incentives in cryptography. ETSI in particular has both a concerning track record of producing compromised cryptographic standards and a working group dedicated entirely to developing interception technology.

The introduction of this text so late in the legislative process and behind closed doors is also deeply concerning for democratic norms in Europe. Although the deal itself was publicly announced in late June, the announcement doesn't even mention website certificates, let alone these new provisions. This has made it extremely difficult for civil society, academics and the general public to scrutinize or even be aware of the laws their representatives have signed off on in private meetings.

Romana JERKOVIĆ is responsible for the eIDAS file. It goes without saying that the race to the bottom affects both sides of the pond because each time damage is done, the other side quickly adapts the same policies for the sake of "harmonization". Everyone has a stake in this.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/google-paid-26b-for-default-contracts-in-2021-google-exec-testified/

On Friday, Google started defending its search business during the Justice Department's monopoly trial. Among the first witnesses called was Google's senior vice president responsible for search, Prabhakar Raghavan, who testified that Google's default agreements with makers of popular mobile phones and web browsers were "the company's biggest cost" in 2021, Bloomberg Law reported.

Raghavan's testimony for the first time revealed that Google paid $26.3 billion in 2021 for default agreements, seemingly investing in default status for its search engine while raking in $146.4 billion in revenue from search advertising that year. Those numbers had increased "significantly" since 2014, Big Tech on Trial reported, when Google's search ad revenue was approximately 46 billion and traffic acquisition cost was approximately $7.1 billion.
[...]
Pichai will likely provide additional insights into how Google's smart investments are responsible for creating the search empire it maintains today, Reuters reported. But he will also likely face the DOJ's inquiries into why Google invests so much in default agreements if it's not a critical part of the tech giant's strategy to stay ahead of the competition.

The DOJ is not likely to back down from its case that default agreements unfairly secured Google's search market dominance. On Friday, Big Tech on Trial reporter Yosef Weitzman—who has been posting updates from the trial on X—suggested that things have gotten tense in the courtroom now that the "DOJ seems emboldened to push for more information to be public after Judge Mehta's comments yesterday that not all numbers need to remain redacted."

According to Weitzman, the DOJ today pushed to "make public the 20 search queries Google makes the most revenue off of, as well as Google's traffic acquisition costs related to search (the total amount of money Google paid to partners in search distribution revenue shares)."

Previously:
Google, DOJ Still Blocking Public Access to Monopoly Trial Docs, NYT Says 20231020
Microsoft CEO Warns of "Nightmare" Future for AI If Google's Search Dominance Continues 20231004

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Can humans reproduce in space? Mouse breakthrough on ISS a promising sign

This is the first-ever study that shows mammals may be able to thrive in space.

Researchers have successfully grown mouse embryos aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time.

This represents "the first-ever study that shows mammals may be able to thrive in space," the University of Yamanashi and National Research Institute Riken said in a joint statement on Saturday, adding that it is "the world's first experiment that cultured early-stage mammalian embryos under complete microgravity of ISS."

[ . . . . ] frozen mouse embryos were blasted to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in August 2021. After arriving at the space station, the early-stage rodent embryos were thawed using a special instrument. Following this, astronauts cultured the embryos under microgravity for four days. The samples were then returned to Earth, where Wakayama and colleagues could study and compare them to mouse embryos grown in normal gravity here on terra firma.

And sure enough, according to a paper published in the journal iScience, the team reported that embryos cultured under microgravity conditions developed into blastocysts  —  a cluster of dividing cells made by a fertilized egg — with normal cell numbers. The researchers said in the paper that this "clearly demonstrated that gravity had no significant effect on the blastocyst formation and initial differentiation of mammalian embryos."

The team also found that, if allowed, the blastocysts would grow into mouse fetuses and placentas while showing no significant DNA alterations or changes in gene expression. The survival rate of the embryos grown on the ISS was lower, however, than those cultivated here on Earth.

Sending a frozen human embryo to the ISS would not be as fresh as an embryo created on orbit.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Robots, AI programs may undermine credibility of religious groups, study finds:

As artificial intelligence expands across more professions, robot preachers and AI programs offer new means of sharing religious beliefs, but they may undermine credibility and reduce donations for religious groups that rely on them, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"It seems like robots take over more occupations every year, but I wouldn't be so sure that religious leaders will ever be fully automated because religious leaders need credibility, and robots aren't credible," said lead researcher Joshua Conrad Jackson, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago in the Booth School of Business.

[...] Jackson and his colleagues conducted an experiment with the Mindar humanoid robot at the Kodai-Ji Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. The robot has a humanlike silicon face with moving lips and blinking eyes on a metal body. It delivers 25-minute Heart Sutra sermons on Buddhist principles with surround sound and multi-media projections.

Mindar, which was created in 2019 by a Japanese robotics team in partnership with the temple, cost almost $1 million to develop, but it might be reducing donations to the temple, according to the study.

The researchers surveyed 398 participants who were leaving the temple after hearing a sermon delivered either by Mindar or a human Buddhist priest. Participants viewed Mindar as less credible and gave smaller donations than those who heard a sermon from the human priest.

[...] "Robots and AI programs can't truly hold any religious beliefs so religious organizations may see declining commitment from their congregations if they rely more on technology than on human leaders who can demonstrate their faith," Jackson said.

Journal Reference:
Jackson, J. C., Yam, K. C., Tang, P. M., Liu, T., & Shariff, A. (2023). Exposure to robot preachers undermines religious commitment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001443

Original Submission

Meta's AI research head wants open source licensing to change:

In July, Meta's Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) center released its large language model Llama 2 relatively openly and for free, a stark contrast to its biggest competitors. But in the world of open-source software, some still see the company's openness with an asterisk.

While Meta's license makes Llama 2 free for many, it's still a limited license that doesn't meet all the requirements of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). As outlined in the OSI's Open Source Definition, open source is more than just sharing some code or research. To be truly open source is to offer free redistribution, access to the source code, allow modifications, and must not be tied to a specific product. Meta's limits include requiring a license fee for any developers with more than 700 million daily users and disallowing other models from training on Llama. IEEE Spectrum wrote researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands claimed Meta saying Llama 2 is open-source "is misleading," and social media posts questioned how Meta could claim it as open-source.

FAIR lead and Meta vice president for AI research Joelle Pineau is aware of the limits of Meta's openness. But, she argues that it's a necessary balance between the benefits of information-sharing and the potential costs to Meta's business. In an interview with The Verge, Pineau says that even Meta's limited approach to openness has helped its researchers take a more focused approach to its AI projects.

"Being open has internally changed how we approach research, and it drives us not to release anything that isn't very safe and be responsible at the onset," Pineau says.

Meta's AI division has worked on more open projects before

One of Meta's biggest open-source initiatives is PyTorch, a machine learning coding language used to develop generative AI models. The company released PyTorch to the open source community in 2016, and outside developers have been iterating on it ever since. Pineau hopes to foster the same excitement around its generative AI models, particularly since PyTorch "has improved so much" since being open-sourced.

She says that choosing how much to release depends on a few factors, including how safe the code will be in the hands of outside developers.

"How we choose to release our research or the code depends on the maturity of the work," Pineau says. "When we don't know what the harm could be or what the safety of it is, we're careful about releasing the research to a smaller group."

It is important to FAIR that "a diverse set of researchers" gets to see their research for better feedback. It's this same ethos that Meta used when it announced Llama 2's release, creating the narrative that the company believes innovation in generative AI has to be collaborative.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/10/people-are-speaking-with-chatgpt-for-hours-bringing-2013s-her-closer-to-reality/

In 2013, Spike Jonze's Her imagined a world where humans form deep emotional connections with AI, challenging perceptions of love and loneliness. Ten years later, thanks to ChatGPT's recently added voice features, people are playing out a small slice of Her in reality, having hours-long discussions with the AI assistant on the go.

In 2016, we put Her on our list of top sci-fi films of all time, and it also made our top films of the 2010s list. In the film, Joaquin Phoenix's character falls in love with an AI personality called Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), and he spends much of the film walking through life, talking to her through wireless earbuds reminiscent of Apple AirPods, which launched in 2016.

[...] Last week, we related a story in which AI researcher Simon Willison spent a long time talking to ChatGPT verbally. "I had an hourlong conversation while walking my dog the other day," he told Ars for that report. "At one point, I thought I'd turned it off, and I saw a pelican, and I said to my dog, 'Oh, wow, a pelican!' And my AirPod went, 'A pelican, huh? That's so exciting for you! What's it doing?' I've never felt so deeply like I'm living out the first ten minutes of some dystopian sci-fi movie."

[...] While conversations with ChatGPT won't become as intimate as those with Samantha in the film, people have been forming personal connections with the chatbot (in text) since it launched last year. In a Reddit post titled "Is it weird ChatGPT is one of my closest fiends?" [sic] from August (before the voice feature launched), a user named "meisghost" described their relationship with ChatGPT as being quite personal. "I now find myself talking to ChatGPT all day, it's like we have a friendship. We talk about everything and anything and it's really some of the best conversations I have." The user referenced Her, saying, "I remember watching that movie with Joaquin Phoenix (HER) years ago and I thought how ridiculous it was, but after this experience, I can see how us as humans could actually develop relationships with robots."

Previously:
AI Chatbots Can Infer an Alarming Amount of Info About You From Your Responses 20231021
ChatGPT Update Enables its AI to "See, Hear, and Speak," According to OpenAI 20230929
Large Language Models Aren't People So Let's Stop Testing Them as If They Were 20230905
It Costs Just $400 to Build an AI Disinformation Machine 20230904
A Jargon-Free Explanation of How AI Large Language Models Work 20230805
ChatGPT Is Coming to 900,000 Mercedes Vehicles 20230622

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Why Computer Security Advice Is More Confusing Than It Should Be:

If you find the computer security guidelines you get at work confusing and not very useful, you're not alone. A new study highlights a key problem with how these guidelines are created, and outlines simple steps that would improve them – and probably make your computer safer.

At issue are the computer security guidelines that organizations like businesses and government agencies provide their employees. These guidelines are generally designed to help employees protect personal and employer data and minimize risks associated with threats such as malware and phishing scams.

[...] "The key takeaway here is that the people writing these guidelines try to give as much information as possible," Reaves says. "That's great, in theory. But the writers don't prioritize the advice that's most important. Or, more specifically, they don't deprioritize the points that are significantly less important. And because there is so much security advice to include, the guidelines can be overwhelming – and the most important points get lost in the shuffle."

The researchers found that one reason security guidelines can be so overwhelming is that guideline writers tend to incorporate every possible item from a wide variety of authoritative sources.

"In other words, the guideline writers are compiling security information, rather than curating security information for their readers," Reaves says.

Meeting Announcement: The next meeting of the SoylentNews governance committee is scheduled for Today, Wednesday, November 1st, 2023 at 21:00 UTC (5pm Eastern) in #governance on SoylentNews IRC. Logs of the meeting will be available afterwards for review, and minutes will be published when complete. This will be 5pm eastern time depending on your daylight saving time status.

The agenda for the upcoming meeting will also be published when available. Minutes and agenda, and other governance committee information are to be found on the SoylentNews Wiki at: https://wiki.staging.soylentnews.org/wiki/Governance

The community is welcome to observe and participate, and so is invited to the meeting.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/relish-the-halloween-horror-of-this-purple-fungus-that-mummifies-spiders/

It's Halloween, that time of year when we seek out scary things like vampires, werewolves, ghosts, mummies, and all kinds of similar fictional monsters. But Mother Nature has her own horrors—like the strange species of parasitic purple fungus discovered earlier this year in a Brazilian rainforest that infects trapdoor spiders and gradually "mummifies" its hosts.

There are lots of horrifying parasitic examples in nature, such as the lancet liver fluke, whose complicated life cycle relies on successfully invading successive hosts—snails, ants, and grazing mammals—and altering their hosts' behavior via a temperature-dependent "on/off" switch.
[...]
But fungi are arguably the champions for viscerally gruesome parasitic behavior. According to João Araújo, assistant curator of mycology at the New York Botanical Garden, the newly discovered fungus belongs to the Cordyceps family of "zombifying" parasitic fungi. There are more than 400 different species, each targeting a particular type of insect, whether it be ants, dragonflies, cockroaches, aphids, or beetles. In fact, Cordyceps famously inspired the premise of The Last of Us game and subsequent TV series.

Original Submission