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taylorvich writes:

https://newatlas.com/biology/dolphin-sense-electric-fields/

Already equipped with an impressive sonar system, new research reveals that dolphins have an extra ability that evolves as they mature in the space where their baby whiskers once were. The super sense may help them navigate and find hidden food sources.

Dolphins' sonar ability, known as echolocation, is fairly legendary in the animal kingdom. This ability is so accurate that the mammals, which are technically whales, can use it to distinguish between a golf ball and a ping-pong ball underwater based on the densities of the two objects. But that's not where the creatures' impressive abilities end.

They also have eyes that allow them to see in two directions at once; skin that secretes an antibacterial gel to ward off parasites and barnacles; they can get enough thrust to reach 30 mph; and they turn off half their brains at a time in order to get rest. A 2019 study also revealed that they have super immune systems that grant them protection from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Now, a new study out of the University of Rostock (UR) in Germany adds another impressive skill to the dolphin's roster of powers: the ability to sense weak electric fields.

Two UR researchers took a closer look at the small pits that are left behind after young bottlenose dolphins shed the thin whiskers they are born with. They realized that the pits looked like the same structures that allow sharks to detect electrical fields and designed a study to see if they functioned the same way for the dolphins.

They first trained two dolphins at the Nuremberg Zoo to rest their jaws on a metal bar submerged in a pool. Then, they trained them to swim away whenever they sensed an electrical current being produced just above their snouts. One dolphin was able to sense signals down to those measuring just 5.5 microvolts/cm, while the other was even more sensitive, picking on a current measuring 2.4 microvolts/cm. One microvolt is equal to one millionth of a volt.

Journal Reference:
Kathryn Knight, Bottlenose dolphins' electric super sense could help them navigate the globe, J Exp Biol (2023) 226 (22): jeb246907 https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.246907

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Standards nerd and technology enthusiast, Terence Eden, has published a South Up, Aotearoa Centred, Equal-Earth Projection Map which has the south end up and uses the Equal Earth projection to ensure proportional land-mass size. In other words, the globe has been rotated to 150° and created in a multi-stage process mostly using R. The borders are from Natural Earth, the country names from OpenStreetMap, and flags from Twemoji.

Country Names

Natural Earth only provides country names in English ☹ - but it also provides 2 character ISO codes. So I grabbed the country codes and names from OpenStreetMap and merged them into the data set using R.

The Code

This produces the country borders and names onto an SVG.

Manual placement

I used Boxy to edit the SVG and place all names in roughly the right place.

Conversion

Inkscape was used to open the resultant SVG at 72dpi. I then used Gimp to autocrop, canvas expanded to 16000x9000, and saved as an uncompressed PNG.

The Emoji wouldn't import to either Gimp or Inkscape. So I viewed the file in Firefox and then printed it to a PDF. That PDF was cropped using pdfcrop` and then imported to Gimp.

[...]

He has published the map as public domain, CC0, and sells ready print editions.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://newatlas.com/science/fungi-boost-crop-yield/

In what is a hugely promising sign for securing and boosting food production, a large-scale field study has demonstrated how treating farmland soil with mycorrhizal fungi can improve crop yields of maize by 40%, without the use of any additional fertilizers or pesticides.

In the Swiss study, researchers mixed Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) into soil, prior to sowing, at 800 trial plots on 54 maize farms.

This fungi occurs naturally in healthy soil and penetrates the roots of plants to form tree-like structures (arbuscules). When they branch out, they increase the plant's root surface area and therefore bolster nutrient uptake.

"On a quarter of the plots, the mycorrhizal fungi enabled up to 40% better yields," said the study's co-lead, Marcel van der Heijden, a soil ecologist at the University of Zurich and at agricultural research center Asgroscope. "That's huge."

Investigating why a third showed little increase or even a decrease in yield, the researchers found that healthy soil produced the same (or, in some instances, lower) yields.

"We discovered that the inoculation functioned best when there were lots of fungal pathogens already in the soil," said co-first author Stefanie Lutz from Agroscope.

The fungi are thought to provide a first line of defense for the soil, warding off plant-attacking pathogens that can greatly reduce crop yields. As a result, yields could be maintained in fields with pathogens that would have experienced losses without the fungi, while the beneficial effect of the fungi on yields was lower in fields without pathogen contamination. As beneficial organisms, they also help the plants take on nutrients from the soil.

Journal Reference:
Lutz, S., Bodenhausen, N., Hess, J. et al. Soil microbiome indicators can predict crop growth response to large-scale inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Nat Microbiol 8, 2277–2289 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-023-01520-w

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The site Switch On Business analyzed Microsoft's LinkedIn employee profiles for Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft itself, IBM, Tesla, Oracle, Netflix, Nvidia, Salesforce, Adobe, Intel, and Uber. From that subset of employees they highlighted those who currently work in each tech giant and previously worked for one of the others. That provided for an estimate of the number and percentage of employees who have moved from one of these companies to another:

KEY FINDINGS

• Some 26.51% of Meta employees have worked at another tech giant — the highest proportion of any tech giant workforce.
• However, Google has attracted the most talent {sic} by volume: 38,316 (24.15%) of their current staff came via other tech giants.
• IBM headhunts the least, with just 2.28% of the current workforce having previously worked for another tech giant.

Statistical compensation to account also for those that know better than to fill out a Microsoft LinkedIn profile was not done. The report also mistakes all transfers as benefiting the target institution, which is quite often not the situation. For example, over 12,000 Microsoft employees now currently work inside the advertising and data giant Google. IBM seems it might be doing the most careful vetting of potential employees.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Jen-Hsun Huang doubts that the U.S. could live without chips from elsewhere.

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, believes it might take the U.S. up to two decades to become self-reliant in chip manufacturing. This statement comes from the head of the company that has historically relied on chip production in Taiwan, and significant efforts by the U.S. and Europe to localize the crucial industry. However, the chip industry is clearly expanding in America at a rate unseen in decades, so he might be too skeptical. 

"We are somewhere between a decade and two decades away from supply chain independence," said Jensen Huang, speaking at the New York Times's DealBook conference in New York, reports Bloomberg. "It is not a really practical thing for a decade or two."

[...] Huang noted that Nvidia's products rely on plenty of components that come from different parts of the world, and he does not see all of them produced in the U.S. any time soon. Therefore, his assessments highlight the company's current reliance on international supply chains and the complexity and extent of the global chip industry. 

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/11/sam-altman-officially-back-as-openai-ceo-we-didnt-lose-a-single-employee/

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced that Sam Altman has officially returned to the ChatGPT-maker as CEO—accompanied by Mira Murati as CTO and Greg Brockman as president—resuming their roles from before the shocking firing of Altman that threw the company into turmoil two weeks ago. Altman says the company did not lose a single employee or customer throughout the crisis.

"I have never been more excited about the future. I am extremely grateful for everyone's hard work in an unclear and unprecedented situation, and I believe our resilience and spirit set us apart in the industry," wrote Altman in an official OpenAI news release. "I feel so, so good about our probability of success for achieving our mission."

Previously:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Purged, President Brockman Quits, but Maybe They'll All Come Back After All - 20231119

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A report from Canalys forecasts that the nearly two-year-long decline in PC shipments will finally end in Q4 of this year, flipping to a projected 5% growth. More growth is also projected to arrive next year, which will supposedly see 8% higher PC shipments than in 2023. Canalys expects the surging interest in AI and the arrival of ARM-equipped PCs to fuel this growth.

[...] A key assumption of this forecast is that new AI software and hardware will re-spark consumer interest in PCs. Canalys predicts that AI-powered PCs will account for 19% of all PCs shipped in 2024, a figure that includes M-series Macs and presumably PCs equipped with Ryzen 7000 or some of Intel's latest CPUs like Meteor Lake.

PCs with ARM chips are also expected to play an important role in the recovery of the PC market. Although Apple's M CPUs use the ARM architecture, Canalys pointed out Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite CPU as the primary driver of growth for ARM-based PCs. The firm previously predicted ARM chips would grab 30% share of the PC market by 2026.

Of course, the health of the global economy is perhaps the biggest factor in whether consumers buy PCs. The decline of shipments in 2022 and 2023 was precipitated largely on potential buyers being more frugal with their money. The report only touches on this and merely mentions there is "an improving macroeconomic environment." Assuming this recovery of the economy persists into 2024, then it could carry the PC market along.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

NASA is addressing an issue with a Hubble Space Telescope gyroscope that prompted the observatory to enter safe mode on November 23. Science operations have been suspended as a result, but the space agency doesn’t seem too worried.

[...] NASA is not sounding any kind of serious alarm on the matter, saying Hubble’s instruments remain stable and the telescope is in overall good health. The space telescope has a history of stressing out its operations team, but it’s managed to bounce back each time. The telescope experienced similar safe mode events in 2008, 2018, and 2019. Most recently, Hubble overcame a major computer glitch in June 2021 and another software issue earlier that year.

[...] The team at NASA is currently running tests to better understand the issue and develop possible solutions. If necessary, the spacecraft can be reconfigured to operate with just one gyroscope. This flexibility stems from the installation of six new gyroscopes during Hubble’s fifth and final space shuttle servicing mission in 2009. Out of these, three remain operational, including the one currently exhibiting fluctuations. While Hubble operates most efficiently using three gyroscopes, it can continue its scientific observations with only one if required.

NASA anticipates that the telescope will not only recover from this setback but also continue to work in tandem with other observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope. This collaboration is expected to extend throughout this decade and possibly into the next, ensuring Hubble’s ongoing contribution to our understanding of the cosmos.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/11/hackers-spent-2-years-looting-secrets-of-chipmaker-nxp-before-being-detected/

A prolific espionage hacking group with ties to China spent over two years looting the corporate network of NXP, the Netherlands-based chipmaker whose silicon powers security-sensitive components found in smartphones, smartcards, and electric vehicles, a news outlet has reported.

The intrusion, by a group tracked under names including "Chimera" and "G0114," lasted from late 2017 to the beginning of 2020, according to Netherlands national news outlet NRC Handelsblad, which cited "several sources" familiar with the incident.
[...]
NRC cited a report published (and later deleted) by security firm Fox-IT, titled Abusing Cloud Services to Fly Under the Radar. It documented Chimera using cloud services from companies including Microsoft and Dropbox to receive data stolen from the networks of semiconductor makers, including one in Europe that was hit in "early Q4 2017." Some of the intrusions lasted as long as three years before coming to light. NRC said the unidentified victim was NXP.
[...]
NXP did not alert customers or shareholders to the intrusion, other than a brief reference in a 2019 annual report.
[...]
Some security researchers said it was surprising that NXP officials didn't inform customers of the two-year intrusion by threat actors, often abbreviated as TAs.

"NXP chips are in a lot of products," Jake Williams, a former hacker for the National Security Agency, wrote on Mastodon. "It's likely the TA knows of specific flaws reported to NXP that can be leveraged to exploit devices the chips are embedded in, and that's assuming they didn't implement backdoors themselves. Over 2.5 years (at least), that's not unrealistic."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

If you've got an old Google account that you have not used for a couple of years then it could soon be deleted:

The tech giant is going to be getting rid of them, starting from Friday, under its inactive account policy.

The company said it would take a phased approach, starting with accounts that "were created and never used again".

Simply signing into an account or sending an email should be enough to keep it active.

Google said the change was because of security reasons, highlighting that forgotten and unused accounts are more likely to be compromised.

A Google account gives users access to most Google products, such as email service Gmail and video sharing site YouTube, using the same username and password.

In a blog post in May, the tech giant said the reason old accounts are more vulnerable is because they tend to rely on old or re-used passwords and largely have not had two-factor authentication set up.

Once an account has been abused, it can be used for anything from identity theft to malicious content and spam.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Every Bitcoin transaction uses, on average, enough water to fill "a back yard swimming pool", a new study suggests:

That's around six million times more than is used in a typical credit card swipe, Alex de Vries of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, calculates.

The figure is due to the water used to power and cool the millions of computers worldwide Bitcoin relies on.

It comes as many regions struggle with fresh water shortages.

[...] In total, bitcoin consumed nearly 1,600 billion litres - also known as gigalitres (GL) - of water in 2021, the study, published in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability, suggests.

It says the 2023 figure could be more than 2,200 GL.

The main reason Bitcoin uses so much water is because it relies on an enormous amount of computing power, which in turn needs huge amounts of electricity.

[...] Mr de Vries argues that Bitcoin does not need to use this much water - singling out the power hungry process at its heart, which is known as "Bitcoin mining."

[...] This method is known as "proof of work". But a change to the way Bitcoin works could cut the electricity use and hence water consumption dramatically.

The major cryptocurrency Ethereum did this in Sep 2022, moving to a system called "proof of stake", reducing its power-use by more than 99% in the process.

That may not be straightforward though, according to Prof James Davenport, of the University of Bath.

"[It was] only possible because the management of Ethereum is significantly more centralised than that of Bitcoin," he told the BBC.

Nonetheless, others say the findings of this research are worrying.

Dr Larisa Yarovaya, associate professor of finance at the University of Southampton, she said the use of freshwater for Bitcoin mining, particularly in regions already grappling with water scarcity, "should be a cause for concern among regulators and the public".

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Modern day parenting pressures and expectations are leading to the death knell for children enjoying spontaneous play:

Whilst parents have always felt some responsibility for their children's development, the heightened intensity of parenting in recent years now means parents are expected to spend more time exhaustively watching, noticing and responding to their children's desires and behaviours.

This, the research suggests, is leaving less time for children to play independently where they learn for themselves the risks and dangers of outdoor play.

[...] "Until around the 1990s, parents were not expected to endlessly entertain and monitor their children in the same way they are today, so children had greater freedom to play independently," explained the study's author Dr John Day. "But since those children have become parents themselves, society has changed so there is a heightened feeling of responsibility for their children's development.

"One aspect of the problem is increased fears around stranger danger and more traffic on the roads which means opportunities for children to be physically active through spontaneous play have become limited."

So, today's youngsters are spending less time playing together away from adult care and more time under parental supervision and participating in structured health-focused physical activity settings such as holiday clubs.

[...] Growing concerns around child health meant many parents born after the late 1960s, who started parenting in the early 1990s, felt as though they should intervene to make sure their children were active, which restricted the possibility for more spontaneous forms of play.

"Society today positions parents as the sole engineers in their children's development which represents an unrealistic burden that brings with it unjust pressure and expectation," added Dr Day.To help address this trend, Dr Day says there needs to be a culture shift where health policy makers ensure children are encouraged to learn about the risks of physically active play, independent of adult supervision."Parenting is no longer simply an aspect of who someone is but a role one is expected to extensively perform. Parents and their children are trapped together in this scenario and so we need policymakers to recognise this and work with parents and children to change this for future generations," he said.

Journal Reference:
John Day, The intensification of parenting and generational fracturing of spontaneous physical activity from childhood play in the United Kingdom, Sociology of Health & Illness, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13701

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Tim O'Reilly, Mariana Mazzucato, and Ilan Strauss have three working papers focusing on Amazon's ability to extract unusual profits from its customers nowadays:

The papers are:

• Algorithmic Attention Rents: A theory of digital platform market power
• Amazon's Algorithmic Rents: The economics of information on Amazon
• Behind the Clicks: Can Amazon allocate user attention as it pleases?

The core idea in all three is that Amazon has become the default place to shop online for many. So, when Amazon changes their site in ways that make Amazon higher profits but hurt consumers, it takes work for people to figure that out and shop elsewhere.

The papers criticize the common assumption that people will quickly switch to shopping elsewhere if the Amazon customer experience deteriorates. Realistically, people are busy. People have imperfect information, limited time, and it is effortful to find another place to shop. At least up to some limit, people may tolerate a familiar but substantially deteroriated experience for some time.

[...] I think one model of customer attrition is that every time customers notice a bad experience, they have some probability of using Amazon less in the future. The more bad experiences they have, the faster the damage to long-term revenue. Under this model, even the level of ads Amazon has now is causing slow damage to Amazon. Amazon execs may not notice because the damage is over long periods of time and hard to attribute directly back to the poor quality search results, but the damage is there. This is the model I've seen used by some others, such as Google Research in their "Focus on the Long-term" paper.

Another model might be that consumers are captured by dominant companies such as Amazon and will not pay the costs to switch until they hit some threshold. That is, most customers will refuse to try alternatives until it is completely obvious that it is worth the effort. This assumes that Amazon can exploit customers for a very long time, and that customers will not stop using Amazon no matter what they do. There is some extreme where that breaks, but only at the threshold, not before.

The difference between these two models matters a lot. If Amazon is experiencing substantial but slow costs from what they are doing right now, there's much more hope for them changing their behavior on their own than if Amazon is experiencing no costs from their bad behavior unless regulators impose costs externally. The solutions you get in the two scenarios are likely to be different.

Related:

• Amazon And Meta To Stop Using Third-Party Data From Rivals
• Amazon's Smart Speakers Collecting Kids Data May Lead to Government Lawsuit
• Amazon Offering Customers $2 Per Month for Letting the Company Monitor the Traffic on Their Phone

Original Submission

Rich writes:

The Sovereign Tech Fund (https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/), a subsidiary of Germany's Ministry for Economic affairs, will issue a one million dollar grant to the GNOME foundation (https://www.gnome.org/). Most reports are in German, but OMGUbuntu has a summary at https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/11/gnome-sovereign-tech-fund. The foundation already has supported several open source infrastructure projects, from FORTRAN to cURL, but this is the first time that it directly supports the Linux desktop.

This grant acknowledges GNOME a part of critical infrastructure and therefore worthy of this public support. Most of the spent money will go into improving accessibility, but some points also address security and the general software infrastructure.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is getting tough on website design, insisting that opting out of cookies must be as simple as opting in.

At question are advertising cookies, where users should be able to "Accept All" advertising cookies or reject them. Users will still see adverts regardless of their selection, but rejecting advertising cookies means ads must not be tailored to the person browsing.

However, the ICO noted that: "Some websites do not give users fair choices over whether or not to be tracked for personalized advertising." This is despite guidance issued in August regarding harmful designs that can trick users into giving up more personal information than intended.

A few months on, the ICO has upped the ante. It has now given 30 days' notice to companies running many of the UK's most visited sites that they must comply with data protection regulations or face enforcement action.

[...] The ICO calls out cookie consent banners as a clear example of often harmful design. Its guidance says: "A website's cookie banner should make it as easy to reject non-essential cookies as it is to accept them.

"Users should be able to make an informed choice on whether they want to give consent for their personal information to be used, for example, to profile them for targeted advertising."

[...] Cookie consent remains a hot topic for UK and EU lawmakers alike. The EU, for example, has a relatively clear stance on cookie consent – users should be offered a clear and unambiguous choice: yes or no. The ICO requires a similar approach.

However, the waters were muddied somewhat in 2022 by proposals to adopt an opt-out system in the UK.

Original Submission