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fliptop writes:

One of the oldest distinctions in information access is between searching and browsing. Does a user initiate an information-seeking journey by typing keywords into a search box, or by browsing a category hierarchy?

Search vs. browse is a false dichotomy, since users employ both strategies to achieve highly overlapping goals. For example, a user looking for men's shoes on an ecommerce site can either type the query "mens shoes" into the search box or browse through the category hierarchy.

In fact, the strategies that users employ often depend as much on application design as on their personal preferences. A larger, more prominent search box encourages search, while a more prominent link to to view the category hierarchy encourages browse. Autocomplete design can have a big impact too — particularly the decision of whether or not to present category browse pages as autocomplete suggestions. Also, some applications redirect common keyword queries to browse pages.

So we should not assume that users set out to search vs. browse.

The author explains how it's important to focus on the user's intent while supporting their journey, concluding with:

One of the worse consequences of the sharp distinction between search and browse is that two different teams tend to be responsible for them — and sometimes those teams even compete for glory and resources. Remember: it's not about you or your organization. It's about helping users find what they are looking for. So make sure that your org structure, analytics, and other internal processes don't get in the way of helping your users achieve their goals — through search, browse, or both.

See also: How to Satisfy User intent for Search vs. Browse

Original Submission

In the early days of autonomous driving development, there was some press about researchers using the "trolley problem" (kill one person "on purpose" vs "do nothing" and kill many) to think about how robot cars should work. Now researchers at North Carolina State U have broken that big moral question down into smaller, more mundane pieces, in an attempt to see what ordinary human drivers think and do. Press release at: https://www.autonomousvehicleinternational.com/news/adas/ncsu-researchers-ditch-the-trolley-problem-to-help-autonomous-vehicles-make-moral-decisions.html and full paper at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-023-01813-y

... "The typical situation comprises a binary choice for a self-driving car between swerving left, hitting a lethal obstacle, or proceeding forward, hitting a pedestrian crossing the street. However, these trolley-like cases are unrealistic. Drivers have to make many more realistic moral decisions every day. Should I drive over the speed limit? Should I run a red light? Should I pull over for an ambulance?"
[...]
"For example, if someone is driving 20mph over the speed limit and runs a red light, then they may find themselves in a situation where they have to either swerve into traffic or get into a collision. There's currently very little data in the literature on how we make moral judgments about the decisions drivers make in everyday situations."

To address that lack of data, the researchers developed a series of experiments designed to collect data on how humans make moral judgments about decisions that people make in low-stakes traffic situations. The researchers created seven different driving scenarios, such as a parent who has to decide whether to violate a traffic signal while trying to get their child to school on time. Each scenario is programmed into a virtual reality environment, so that study participants engaged in the experiment have audiovisual information about what drivers are doing when they make decisions, rather than simply reading about the scenario.

For this work, the researchers built on something called the Agent Deed Consequence (ADC) model, which posits that people take three things into account when making a moral judgment: the agent, which is the character or intent of the person who is doing something; the deed, or what is being done; and the consequence, or the outcome that resulted from the deed.

Researchers created eight different versions of each traffic scenario, varying the combinations of agent, deed and consequence. For example, in one version of the scenario where a parent is trying to get the child to school, the parent is caring, brakes at a yellow light, and gets the child to school on time. In a second version, the parent is abusive, runs a red light, and causes an accident. The other six versions alter the nature of the parent (the agent), their decision at the traffic signal (the deed), and/or the outcome of their decision (the consequence).

To date they have done small pilot studies, next is a much larger study with thousands of human subjects.

Do we want robot cars to make the same routine decisions that some average human makes? I think it's a given that following some traffic rules (eg, speed limit) to the letter is likely to foul up traffic in many situations. How about in other situations?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

IBM releases first-ever 1,000-qubit quantum chip:

IBM has unveiled the first quantum computer with more than 1,000 qubits — the equivalent of the digital bits in an ordinary computer. But the company says it will now shift gears and focus on making its machines more error-resistant rather than larger.

For years, IBM has been following a quantum-computing road map that roughly doubled the number of qubits every year. The chip unveiled on 4 December, called Condor, has 1,121 superconducting qubits arranged in a honeycomb pattern. It follows on from its other record-setting, bird-named machines, including a 127-qubit chip in 2021 and a 433-qubit one last year.

Quantum computers promise to perform certain computations that are beyond the reach of classical computers. They will do so by exploiting uniquely quantum phenomena such as entanglement and superposition, which allow multiple qubits to exist in multiple collective states at once.

But these quantum states are also notoriously fickle, and prone to error. Physicists have tried to get around this by coaxing several physical qubits — each encoded in a superconducting circuit, say, or an individual ion — to work together to represent one qubit of information, or ‘logical qubit’.

As part of its new tack, the company also unveiled a chip called Heron that has 133 qubits, but with a record-low error rate, three times lower than that of its previous quantum processor.

mcgrew writes:

        I decided a few years ago that I was sick of standing in the snow at a gas station waiting for the person inside the building to finish selling that lottery ticket and turn the pump on so I can stand there some more babysitting it while it fills up and I freeze. The answer, of course, was to buy a car that didn't need gasoline, one I could plug into the house and go inside where it's warm.

        I'm not a rich man, I'm a pensioner who is still paying a mortgage, so I looked for an affordable EV. Used ones are almost nonexistent, and I found out why when I finally bought one: it has a ten year warranty. They haven't been making them much longer than that.

        I swore off new cars decades ago when my month old VW stranded me ninety miles from home with a bad alternator, but if you want an EV, new is your only choice. I kept seeing the Chevy Bolt advertised, but could never find one for sale at all. Then I found that they had stopped making them two years earlier.

        Why? Well, battery problems, they claimed. Why just the not so expensive one, $30,000? GM is still selling electric Cadillacs and Corvettes, why no cheap cars?

        I discovered after buying an EV that the only two advantages of a piston car to an electric one are the lack of infrastructure for long trips, and the high purchase price of the vehicle. Why high? Because only their flagship autos have electric motors, the ones that formerly had V8s.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

It was back in 2022 when Broadcom, known for designing and manufacturing semiconductor products, announced plans to buy cloud computing and virtualization technology company VMware in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at approximately $61 billion. The deal also sees Broadcom assuming VMware's $8 billion in debt.

Broadcom said it had completed the acquisition of VMware last November 22. As is often the case with mergers, one of the first actions being taken by Broadcom is to implement mass layoffs across the company it's just bought.

[...] If that isn't enough to anger VMware employees, those who aren't being fired have been given an ultimatum by Broadcom CEO Hock Tan: "If you live within 50 miles of an office, you get your butt in here," he said.

"Collaboration is important and a key part of sustaining a culture with your peers, with your colleagues," Tan added.

VMware has long been a remote-friendly company, a stark contrast to Broadcom, which is so anti-work-from-home that it ordered some employees back into the office in April 2020, despite California's stay-at-home orders.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/gmails-ai-powered-spam-detection-is-its-biggest-security-upgrade-in-years/

The latest post on the Google Security blog details a new upgrade to Gmail's spam filters that Google is calling "one of the largest defense upgrades in recent years." The upgrade comes in the form of a new text classification system called RETVec (Resilient & Efficient Text Vectorizer). Google says this can help understand "adversarial text manipulations"—these are emails full of special characters, emojis, typos, and other junk characters that previously were legible by humans but not easily understandable by machines. Previously, spam emails full of special characters made it through Gmail's defenses easily.

[...] Google says the efficiency here is a big deal. Alternative approaches that used a "fixed vocabulary size" or "lookup table" for homoglyphs made them very resource-intensive to run. Imagine a list of every possible spelling and misspelling of "congratulations" that swaps out one or more characters for numbers, math symbols, Cyrillic, Hebrew, or emojis and you have a nearly endless list. Google says RETVec is only 200k "instead of millions of parameters," so while Google's spam-filtering cloud is probably big enough to run anything, this is small enough that it could even run on a local device. RETVec is open source, and Google hopes it will rid the world of homoglyph attacks, so even your local comment section could be running it someday.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Spying has always been limited by the need for human labor. A.I. is going to change that:

Spying and surveillance are different but related things. If I hired a private detective to spy on you, that detective could hide a bug in your home or car, tap your phone, and listen to what you said. At the end, I would get a report of all the conversations you had and the contents of those conversations. If I hired that same private detective to put you under surveillance, I would get a different report: where you went, whom you talked to, what you purchased, what you did.

Before the internet, putting someone under surveillance was expensive and time-consuming. You had to manually follow someone around, noting where they went, whom they talked to, what they purchased, what they did, and what they read. That world is forever gone. Our phones track our locations. Credit cards track our purchases. Apps track whom we talk to, and e-readers know what we read. Computers collect data about what we're doing on them, and as both storage and processing have become cheaper, that data is increasingly saved and used. What was manual and individual has become bulk and mass. Surveillance has become the business model of the internet, and there's no reasonable way for us to opt out of it.

Spying is another matter. It has long been possible to tap someone's phone or put a bug in their home and/or car, but those things still require someone to listen to and make sense of the conversations. Yes, spyware companies like NSO Group help the government hack into people's phones, but someone still has to sort through all the conversations. And governments like China could censor social media posts based on particular words or phrases, but that was coarse and easy to bypass. Spying is limited by the need for human labor.

A.I. is about to change that.

[...] We could limit this capability. We could prohibit mass spying. We could pass strong data-privacy rules. But we haven't done anything to limit mass surveillance. Why would spying be any different?

Related:

• A Controversial US Surveillance Program is up tor Renewal. Critics are Speaking Out.
• Debunking the Myth of "Anonymous" Data
• EU-US Data Privacy Framework to Face Serious Legal Challenges, Experts Say

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/amazon-faces-trial-after-selling-bathroom-spycam-used-to-abuse-minor/

After a spy camera designed to look like a towel hook was purchased on Amazon and illegally used for months to capture photos of a minor in her private bathroom, Amazon was sued.

The plaintiff—a former Brazilian foreign exchange student then living in West Virginia—argued that Amazon had inspected the camera three times and its safety team had failed to prevent allegedly severe, foreseeable harms still affecting her today.

Amazon hoped the court would dismiss the suit, arguing that the platform wasn't responsible for the alleged criminal conduct harming the minor. But after nearly eight months deliberating, a judge recently largely denied the tech giant's motion to dismiss.

Amazon's biggest problem persuading the judge was seemingly the product descriptions that the platform approved. An amended complaint included a photo from Amazon's product listing that showed bathroom towels hanging on hooks that disguised the hidden camera. Text on that product image promoted the spy cams, boasting that they "won't attract attention" because each hook appears to be "a very ordinary hook."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

HP is squeezing more margin out of print customers, the result of a multi-year strategy to convert unprofitable business into something more lucrative, and says its subscription model is "locking" in people.

[...] "We absolutely see when you move a customer from that pure transactional model ... whether it's Instant Ink, plus adding on that paper, we sort of see a 20 percent uplift on the value of that customer because you're locking that person, committing to a longer-term relationship."

[...] By pre-pandemic 2019, HP had grown weary of third-party cartridge makers stealing its supplies business. It pledged to charge more upfront for certain printer hardware ("rebalance the system profitability, capturing more profit upfront").

HP also set in motion new subscriptions, and launched Smart Tank hardware filled with a pre-defined amount of ink/toner. These now account for 60 percent of total shipments.

Myers told the UBS Conference she was "really proud" that HP could "raise the range on our print margins" based on "bold moves and shifting models."

[...] An old industry factoid from 2003 was that HP ink cost seven times more than a bottle of 1985 Dom Perignon. HP isn't alone in these sorts of comparisons – Epson was called out by Which? a couple years back.

Something tells us that Myers' audience at the UBS gig might not view the cost of printing the same way as the rest of us.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Software engineer Miguel Grinberg is getting a jump on the new year and has already published the Flask Mega-Tutorial, 2024 Edition. As he introduces its 23 chapters,

Back in 2012, I decided to start this software development blog. Because I am a do-it-yourselfer at heart, instead of using Blogger or WordPress, I sat down and wrote my own blog engine, using a then little known web framework called Flask. I knew I wanted to code it in Python, and I first tried Django, which was the most popular Python web framework at the time. But unfortunately Django seemed too big and too structured for my needs. I've found that Flask gave me as much power, while being small, unopinionated and unobtrusive.

Writing my own blog engine was an awesome experience that left me with a lot of ideas for topics I wanted to blog about. Instead of writing individual articles about all these topics, I decided to write a long, overarching tutorial that Python beginners can use to learn web development. And just like that, the Flask Mega-Tutorial was born!

Previously:
(2023) Python 3.12: Faster, Leaner, More Future-proof
(2022) Top Programming Languages 2022 (According to IEEE)
(2019) Why I Chose Flask to Build sr.ht's Mini-Services

Original Submission

Meeting Announcement: The next meeting of the SoylentNews governance committee is scheduled for Tomorrow, Wednesday, December 6th, 2023 at 21:00 UTC (4pm Eastern) in #governance on SoylentNews IRC. Logs of the meeting will be available afterwards for review, and minutes will be published when complete.

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, welcome to observe and participate, is encouraged to attend the meeting.

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-genetic-year-old-shaman-burial-germany.html

The double burial of an adult woman and an infant, dating to about 7000–6800 BCE, discovered in 1934 during construction works at the spa gardens of Bad Dürrenberg, is regarded as one of the outstanding burial finds of the Mesolithic in Central Europe. Because of the unusual equipment with the woman, who was buried in a seated position, and her bodily anomalies, the burial is interpreted as that of a shaman.

Genetic research now reveals the relation of the woman and the child: the boy is not her son, but is a fourth- or fifth-degree relation. The phenotypic variants analyzed in the woman's genome inform us that she had a relatively dark skin complexion, dark, straight hair, and blue eyes.

The unusual equipment buried with the woman comprises flint artifacts and solid rock tools, but also bone and antler artifacts, a piece of red ochre, a number of animal bones including the shell of at least three terrapins and partly pierced animal teeth. Together with deer antlers and originally six partly pierced boar's tusks, these finds are probably head/body ornaments. Due to the grave goods and bodily anomalies of the woman, the burial is interpreted as that of a shaman.

[...] Subsequent excavations at the site as part of the preparations for the State Garden Exhibition 2024 brought not only new revelations about the deposition and positioning of the body to light, but also revealed a multitude of new finds, which could be clearly attributed to the burial. Besides the pierced animal teeth, remains of fauna, lithic artifacts and a large amount of human skeletal remains could also be recovered.

At the base of the skull, there is an anomaly at the edge of the great occipital hole, in the form of a small constriction. This area is the imprint of an abnormally developed blood vessel. The first cervical vertebra is incompletely formed due to a congenital growth defect and has only reached 40% of the arch. The rounded end of the vertebral arch corresponds to the previously observed defect at the large occipital hole.

[...] This can be caused intentionally by adopting a certain head posture. The consequences are unlikely to have been serious or hazardous to the person's health. However, it is conceivable that a nystagmus, i.e., an involuntary movement of the eyeballs, could be caused by the blockage of a blood vessel. This unusual feature might have been perceived as uncanny and when initiated on purpose may have reinforced or even justified her role as a shaman.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Physicists confirm 67-year-old prediction of massless, neutral composite particle:

In 1956, theoretical physicist David Pines predicted that electrons in a solid can do something strange. While they normally have a mass and an electric charge, Pines asserted that they can combine to form a composite particle that is massless, neutral, and does not interact with light. He called this particle a "demon." Since then, it has been speculated to play an important role in the behaviors of a wide variety of metals. Unfortunately, the same properties that make it interesting have allowed it to elude detection since its prediction.

Now, a team of researchers led by Peter Abbamonte, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, have finally found Pines' demon 67 years after it was predicted. As the researchers report in the journal Nature, they used a nonstandard experimental technique that directly excites a material's electronic modes, allowing them to see the demon's signature in the metal strontium ruthenate.

"Demons have been theoretically conjectured for a long time, but experimentalists never studied them," Abbamonte said. "In fact, we weren't even looking for it. But it turned out we were doing exactly the right thing, and we found it."

Journal Reference:
Husain, A.A., Huang, E.W., Mitrano, M. et al. Pines' demon observed as a 3D acoustic plasmon in Sr₂RuO₄. Nature 621, 66–70 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06318-8

Original Submission

Rosco P. Coltrane writes:

If you use any Simple Mobile Tools Android app (Simple Draw Pro, Simple Music Player, Simple Dialer, Simple SMS Messenger, Simple Voice Recorder, Simple Flashlight, Simple App Launcher, Simple Clock, Simple Launcher, Simple Camera or Simple Calendar Pro), you might want to consider uninstall it - particularly if you've installed it from the Google Play Store rather than from F-Droid.

The author, Tibor Kaputa has sold Simple Mobile Tools apps to well-know Israeli advertisement company ZipoApps. If you don't like ads or you fear ad-borne malware, Simple Mobile Tools apps aren't for your anymore.

Most users of the apps and contributors are dismayed. You can follow the Reddit threads dedicated to the issue here and here if you want to find ads-free open-source alternative apps. Of course, F-Droid builds will start flagging Simple Mobile Tools with the ads anti-feature flag - if the tools aren't dropped altogether - but the safest action if you rely on them is to disable updating the apps altogether, to keep the last independent versions installed.

It's a sad day for the open-source Android ecosystem, as Simple Mobile Tools apps are well-regarded and part of many people's everyday lives. Hopefully they will be forked and development will continue on the forked versions.

Thanks Tibor for your great work over the years. Too bad that you couldn't find any other way to cash out.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Agriculture, like other sectors of the economy, is a profit-driven business. Simple cultivation systems such as monocultures have therefore become firmly established, because they promise higher returns. However, they are more susceptible to diseases and parasites, which can cause total crop failure among other things.

Diversified cultivation practices such as mixed cropping and crop rotation offer a sustainable alternative. It has already been scientifically proven that they can be profitable, perhaps even more so than monocultures. But under what conditions will these diversified farming practices turn a profit? And how can they help to intensify agricultural systems in a sustainable way?

[...] To this end, lead author Hannah Kamau, a doctoral student and member of Assistant Professor Lisa Biber-Freudenberger's working group in the Innovation and Technology for Sustainable Futures Transdisciplinary Research Area at the University of Bonn, considered more than 2,000 locations all over the world that were found to have profitable diversified farming practices as well as socio-economic conditions that determine profitability: Population density, access to local markets, electricity supply, gross domestic product per capita and governance.

Hannah Kamau then predicted which other regions of the world had similar conditions as the observed locations of profitable diversified farming practices. Her predictions suggest that the Global North and parts of the Global South that are close to urban centers are particularly suitable for profitable diversified farming practices. "Developed infrastructure played a key role in forecasting suitable areas," she explains.