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Unixnut writes:

After 5 years of development by dangerousprototypes, a new version of Bus Pirate has been released for sale. An open source universal bus interfacing device, the previous versions have proven themselves useful for reverse engineering, debugging, restoring bricked devices and flashing the libreboot open source bios on your machines.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/03/producing-more-but-understanding-less-the-risks-of-ai-for-scientific-research/

Last month, we witnessed the viral sensation of several egregiously bad AI-generated figures published in a peer-reviewed article in Frontiers, a reputable scientific journal. Scientists on social media expressed equal parts shock and ridicule at the images, one of which featured a rat with grotesquely large and bizarre genitals.

As Ars Senior Health Reporter Beth Mole reported, looking closer only revealed more flaws, including the labels "dissilced," "Stemm cells," "iollotte sserotgomar," and "dck." Figure 2 was less graphic but equally mangled, rife with nonsense text and baffling images. Ditto for Figure 3, a collage of small circular images densely annotated with gibberish.

[...] While the proliferation of errors is a valid concern, especially in the early days of AI tools like ChatGPT, two researchers argue in a new perspective published in the journal Nature that AI also poses potential long-term epistemic risks to the practice of science.

Molly Crockett is a psychologist at Princeton University who routinely collaborates with researchers from other disciplines in her research into how people learn and make decisions in social situations. Her co-author, Lisa Messeri, is an anthropologist at Yale University whose research focuses on science and technology studies (STS), analyzing the norms and consequences of scientific and technological communities as they forge new fields of knowledge and invention—like AI.

[...] The paper's tagline is "producing more while understanding less," and that is the central message the pair hopes to convey. "The goal of scientific knowledge is to understand the world and all of its complexity, diversity, and expansiveness," Messeri told Ars. "Our concern is that even though we might be writing more and more papers, because they are constrained by what AI can and can't do, in the end, we're really only asking questions and producing a lot of papers that are within AI's capabilities."

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-03-bumblebees-scientists-advanced-social-skills.html

In a groundbreaking discovery, bumblebees have been shown to possess a previously unseen level of cognitive sophistication. A new study, published in Nature, reveals that these fuzzy pollinators can learn complex, multi-step tasks through social interaction, even if they cannot figure them out on their own. This challenges the long-held belief that such advanced social learning is unique to humans, and even hints at the presence of key elements of cumulative culture in these insects.

Led by Dr. Alice Bridges and Professor Lars Chittka , the research team designed a two-step puzzle box requiring bumblebees to perform two distinct actions in sequence to access a sweet reward at the end. Training bees to do this was no easy task, and bees had to be helped along by the addition of an extra reward along the way. This temporary reward was eventually taken away, and bees subsequently had to open the whole box before getting their treat.

Surprisingly, while individual bees struggled to solve the puzzle when starting from scratch, those allowed to observe a trained "demonstrator" bee readily learned the entire sequence—even the first step—while only getting a reward at the end.

This study demonstrates that bumblebees possess a level of social learning previously thought to be exclusive to humans. They can share and acquire behaviors that are beyond their individual cognitive capabilities: an ability thought to underpin the expansive, complex nature of human culture, and one previously thought to be exclusive to us.

Dr. Bridges says, "This is an extremely difficult task for bees. They had to learn two steps to get the reward, with the first behavior in the sequence being unrewarded. We initially needed to train demonstrator bees with a temporary reward included there, highlighting the complexity."

"Yet, other bees learned the whole sequence from social observation of these trained bees, even without ever experiencing the first step's reward. But when we let other bees attempt to open the box without a trained bee to demonstrate the solution, they didn't manage to open any at all."

More information: Alice Bridges, Bumblebees socially learn behaviour too complex to innovate alone, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07126-4. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07126-4

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Multiple sites are reporting that the former Twitter (now called X but not that X) executives who were apparently stiffed on severance pay are now suing Elon Musk over the missing severance pay.

Former top executives of Twitter sued Elon Musk on Monday saying he has failed to pay them nearly $130 million after the billionaire took over the social media company and dismissed them.

"Musk doesn't pay his bills, believes the rules don't apply to him, and uses his wealth and power to run roughshod over anyone who disagrees with him," they said in the lawsuit filed in a California federal court.

'Musk vowed a lifetime of revenge': Ex-Twitter execs sue Musk for unpaid severance

The big picture: The former executives claim in the complaint that he fired them soon after he led the takeover of the company now known as X "without reason, then made up fake cause and appointed employees of his various companies to uphold his decision."

• "Musk's refusal to pay Plaintiffs their benefits is part of a larger pattern of refusing to pay Twitter's former employees the benefits and other compensation they are due," alleges the complaint, filed in federal court in San Francisco.

Elon Musk sued by former Twitter executives over severance payments

Parag Agrawal sues Elon Musk: Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and three other ex-executives have suited company boss Elon Musk for $128 million in unpaid severance payments alleging that the billionaire showed "special ire" towards them by publicly vowing to withhold their severance payments of around $200 million. This happened after Elon Musk took over the social media platform in a $44 billion deal in 2022 after which they were ousted from the company, as per the lawsuit filed.

Why is ex-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal suing Elon Musk?

Elon Musk fired a lot of people after he took over Twitter, but the first ones to go were several of its top executives. Now former CEO Parag Agrawal, former CFO Ned Segal, former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, and former general counsel Sean Edgett are suing Musk and the company now known as X, saying they're owed more than $128 million in severance payments, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Fired Twitter execs are suing Elon Musk for over $128 million

Apparently some of the evidence against Musk comes from the biography he recently published.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-02-butterflies-mimic-flight-behavior-predators.html

Researchers have shown that inedible species of butterfly that mimic each others' color patterns have also evolved similar flight behaviors to warn predators and avoid being eaten.

It is well known that many inedible species of butterfly have evolved near identical color patterns, which act as warning signals to predators so the butterflies avoid being eaten.

Researchers have now shown that these butterflies have not only evolved similar color patterns, but that they have also evolved similar flight behaviors, which together make a more effective warning signal to predators. The article is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Using high-speed video footage to record the flight of wild butterflies in South America, researchers at the University of York measured the wing beat frequency and wing angles of 351 butterflies, representing 38 species each belonging to one of 10 distinct color pattern mimicry groups.

Using this dataset they investigated how the flight patterns of butterflies are related to factors such as habitat, wing shape, temperature and which color pattern mimicry group the butterfly belongs to see which elements most heavily affected flight behavior.

Although the species habitat and wing shape were expected to have the greatest influence on flight behavior, the researchers found that in fact the biggest determinant of flight behavior was the color pattern mimicry group a butterfly belonged to.

This means that distantly-related butterflies belonging to the same color pattern mimicry group have more similar flight behavior than closely-related species that display different warning coloration. To a predator, the butterflies would not only look the same through their color patterns, but would also move in the same way.

Journal Reference:
Page, Edward et al, Pervasive mimicry in flight behavior among aposematic butterflies, PNAS (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2300886121

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/

HOUSTON—Steve Altemus beamed with pride on Tuesday morning as he led me into Mission Control for the Odysseus lander, which is currently operating on the Moon and returning valuable scientific data to Earth. A team of about a dozen operators sat behind consoles, attempting to reset a visual processing unit onboard the lunar lander, one of their last, best chances to deploy a small camera that would snap a photo of Odysseus in action.

"I just wanted you to see the team," he said.
[...]
"You can say whatever you want to say," Altemus said. "But from my perspective, this is an absolute success of a mission. Holy crap. The things that you go through to fly to the Moon. The learning, just every step of the way, is tremendous."
[...]
As has been previously reported, Intuitive Machines discovered that the range finders on Odysseus were inoperable a couple of hours before it was due to attempt to land on the Moon last Thursday. This was later revealed to be due to the failure to install a pencil-sized pin and a wire harness that enabled the laser to be turned on and off.
[...]
the last accurate altitude reading the lander received came when it was 15 kilometers above the lunar surface—and still more than 12 minutes from touchdown.
[...]
By comparing imagery data frame by frame, the flight computer could determine how fast it was moving relative to the lunar surface. Knowing its initial velocity and altitude prior to initiating powered descent and using data from the inertial measurement unit (IMU) on board Odysseus, it could get a rough idea of altitude.
[...]
Unfortunately, as it neared the lunar surface, the lander believed it was about 100 meters higher relative to the Moon than it actually was.

hubie writes:

In a blind taste test 25% reduced-sugar chocolates made with oat flour were rated equally, and in some cases preferred, to regular chocolate:

The secret to making delicious chocolate with less added sugar is oat flour, according to a new study by Penn State researchers. In a blind taste test, recently published in the Journal of Food Science, 25% reduced-sugar chocolates made with oat flour were rated equally, and in some cases preferred, to regular chocolate. The findings provide a new option for decreasing chocolate's sugar content while maintaining its texture and flavor.

"We were able to show that there is a range in which you can manage a sizable reduction in added sugar and people won't notice and don't care, in terms of liking," said John Hayes, professor of food science at Penn State and corresponding author on the study. "We're never going to make chocolate healthy, because it's an indulgence, but we can successfully take out some of the sugar for consumers who are trying to reduce their intake of added sugars."

Hayes explained that chocolate is about half sugar by weight, with the rest being fat and cocoa solids, so reducing the amount of sugar by any amount can drastically alter the texture and flavor profile of the chocolate.

"The function of sugar in chocolate is both sweetness and bulking, so if we take that sugar out, we have to put something else in that will do the job just as well, or consumers will notice," said Gregory Ziegler, distinguished professor of food science at Penn State and co-author on the study.

[...] "Our results suggest we can cut back 25% of added sugar to chocolate, effectively reducing the total sugar by 13.5%, if we substitute oat flour," said Kai Kai Ma, a doctoral candidate in food science at Penn State and co-author on the paper. "That addition of oat flour is unlikely to meaningfully impact consumer acceptability, which is great news."

[...] "I'm a big believer in meeting consumers where they are," Hayes said. "We've tried for 40 years to tell people to eat less sugar and it doesn't work because people want to eat what they want to eat. So instead of making people feel guilty, we need to meet people where they are and figure out how to make food better while still preserving the pleasure from food."

Journal Reference:
Kai Kai Ma, Gregory R. Ziegler, John E. Hayes, Sugar reduction in chocolate compound by replacement
with flours containing small insoluble starch granules, J. Food Sci. 2024;1–10. DOI: 10.1111/1750-3841.16923

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/spain-tells-sam-altman-worldcoin-to-shut-down-its-eyeball-scanning-orbs/

Spain has moved to block Sam Altman's cryptocurrency project Worldcoin, the latest blow to a venture that has raised controversy in multiple countries by collecting customers' personal data using an eyeball-scanning "orb."

The AEPD, Spain's data protection regulator, has demanded that Worldcoin immediately ceases collecting personal information in the country via the scans and that it stops using data it has already gathered.

The regulator announced on Wednesday that it had taken the "precautionary measure" at the start of the week and had given Worldcoin 72 hours to demonstrate its compliance with the order.

[...] Worldcoin has registered 4 million users, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Investors poured roughly $250 million into the company, including venture capital groups Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures, internet entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and, prior to the collapse of his FTX empire, Sam Bankman-Fried.

The project attracted media attention and prompted a handful of consumer complaints in Spain as queues began to grow at the stands in shopping centers where Worldcoin is offering cryptocurrency in exchange for eyeball scans.

[...] "I want to send a message to young people. I understand that it can be very tempting to get €70 or €80 that sorts you out for the weekend," España Martí said, but "giving away personal data in exchange for these derisory amounts of money is a short, medium and long-term risk."

Previously on SoylentNews:
Ready for Your Eye Scan? Worldcoin Launches—but Not Quite Worldwide - 20230726

Original Submission

So, just a follow up. According to matt, we got around $2,000 USD right now in the PBC overnight, and there are still more payments processing. I paid the Linode bill this morning. So, funding problem: solved. We should be set for the foreseeable future as far as money goes!

Seriously guys, you stepped up, and I am thankful. Since I'm here, a quick update on what's going on: Right now, we're mostly just waiting for paperwork to go through as far as handing the site to a newly-created, not-for-profit. It's slow work and I'm not directly involved, but I've seen that there has been a fair number of articles on the subject so I'm pretty happy that everyone is aware of what's going on.

I could write more, but I think I'm going to keep this short and sweet for now. Once I have a final total, I'll post it.

- N

Addition: We have been asked if people can donate anonymously without having an account. The answer is "Yes". Click the subscription link and then make a gift subscription to another account (It defaults to NCommander but you can choose any account). Pay via stripe using an anonymous username.

owl writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/oregon-oks-right-to-repair-bill-that-bans-the-blocking-of-aftermarket-parts/

Oregon has joined the small but growing list of states that have passed right-to-repair legislation. Oregon's bill stands out for a provision that would prevent companies from requiring that official parts be unlocked with encrypted software checks before they will fully function.

Bill SB 1596 passed Oregon's House by a 42 to 13 margin. Gov. Tina Kotek has five days to sign the bill into law. Consumer groups and right-to-repair advocates praised the bill as "the best bill yet," while the bill's chief sponsor, state Sen. Janeen Sollman (D), pointed to potential waste reductions and an improved second-hand market for closing a digital divide.

"Oregon improves on Right to Repair laws in California, Minnesota and New York by making sure that consumers have the choice of buying new parts, used parts, or third-party parts for the gadgets and gizmos," said Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org, in a statement.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

New anaconda species said to be largest ever found during filming of Will Smith docuseries:

A giant anaconda species thought to be the largest in the world has been captured deep in the Amazon of Ecuador by a team of scientists from The University of Queensland.

The group of scientists, led by professor Bryan Fry, uncovered the nearly 10-million-year-old species with help from the Indigenous Huaorani people while filming "Pole to Pole with Will Smith," a National Geographic series streaming on Disney+ and hosted by the Oscar winner.

"The size of these magnificent creatures was incredible," Fry said in a news release. "One female anaconda we encountered measured an astounding 6.3 meters (20.8 feet) long."

The invitation by Huaorani Chief Penti Baihua to enter the Baihuaeri Huaorani Territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon was "one of only a handful granted since the tribe's first contact in 1958," Fry told USA TODAY. "Our team received a rare invitation − to explore the region and collect samples from a population of anacondas."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

I used generative AI to turn my story into a comic:

I wonder how much actual, published short stories (think aimed at 4-year olds) would match the generated stories' images' match?

After more than a year in development, Lore Machine is now available to the public for the first time. For $10 a month, you can upload 100,000 words of text (up to 30,000 words at a time) and generate 80 images for short stories, scripts, podcast transcripts, and more. There are price points for power users too, including an enterprise plan costing $160 a month that covers 2.24 million words and 1,792 images. The illustrations come in a range of preset styles, from manga to watercolor to pulp '80s TV show.

Zac Ryder, founder of creative agency Modern Arts, has been using an early-access version of the tool since Lore Machine founder Thobey Campion first showed him what it could do. Ryder sent over a script for a short film, and Campion used Lore Machine to turn it into a 16-page graphic novel overnight.

"I remember Thobey sharing his screen. All of us were just completely floored," says Ryder. "It wasn't so much the image generation aspect of it. It was the level of the storytelling. From the flow of the narrative to the emotion of the characters, it was spot on right out of the gate."

canopic jug writes:

Linuxiac has noticed that desktop GNU/Linux has surpassed 4% global market share. This is notable for two reasons. First, it is notable because the move from 3% to 4% took months and not years. Second, there are so many barriers to getting Linux on the desktop that this is a substantial change.

Linux has surpassed a 4% share in the desktop operating system market as of the end of February 2024. According to the latest data from StatCounter, a leading web traffic analysis tool, Linux’s market share has reached 4.03%.

At first glance, the number might seem modest, but it represents a significant leap. Let’s break it down. It took Linux 30 years to secure a 3% share of desktop operating systems, a milestone reached last June.

Impressively, the open-source operating system has surged by an additional 1% in the last eight months.

Linux (and sometimes GNU/Linux) dominates fully in all other areas: servers, routers, various embedded devices (cars, televisions, lawn mowers, etc), mobile phones, interplanetary satellites, and supercomputers. The desktop is the last remaining market, albeit a highly symbolic one. As usual, it is way too early to speculate about "year of the Linux desktop". However, when one can (once again) walk into a big box store and buy a GNU/Linux system off the shelf, that market can be considered won over.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-exposure-kinds-music-brain-rhythm.html

When listening to music, the human brain appears to be biased toward hearing and producing rhythms composed of simple integer ratios—for example, a series of four beats separated by equal time intervals (forming a 1:1:1 ratio).

However, the favored ratios can vary greatly between different societies, according to a large-scale study led by researchers at MIT and the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics and carried out in 15 countries. The study included 39 groups of participants, many of whom came from societies whose traditional music contains distinctive patterns of rhythm not found in Western music.

"Our study provides the clearest evidence yet for some degree of universality in music perception and cognition, in the sense that every single group of participants that was tested exhibits biases for integer ratios. It also provides a glimpse of the variation that can occur across cultures, which can be quite substantial," says Nori Jacoby, the study's lead author and a former MIT postdoc, who is now a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany.

The brain's bias toward simple integer ratios may have evolved as a natural error-correction system that makes it easier to maintain a consistent body of music, which human societies often use to transmit information.

"When people produce music, they often make small mistakes. Our results are consistent with the idea that our mental representation is somewhat robust to those mistakes, but it is robust in a way that pushes us toward our preexisting ideas of the structures that should be found in music," says Josh McDermott, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines.

[...] To measure how people perceive rhythm, the researchers devised a task in which they played a randomly generated series of four beats and then asked the listener to tap back what they heard. The rhythm produced by the listener is then played back to the listener, and they tap it back again. Over several iterations, the tapped sequences became dominated by the listener's internal biases, also known as priors.

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-03-fusion-reaction-weaknesses-strengths.html

In the Japanese art of Kintsugi, an artist takes the broken shards of a bowl and fuses them back together with gold to make a final product more beautiful than the original.

That idea is inspiring a new approach to managing plasma, the super-hot state of matter, for use as a power source. Scientists are using the imperfections in magnetic fields that confine a reaction to improve and enhance the plasma in an approach outlined in a paper in the journal Nature Communications.

"This approach allows you to maintain a high-performance plasma, controlling instabilities in the core and the edge of the plasma simultaneously. That simultaneous control is particularly important and difficult to do. That's what makes this work special," said Joseph Snipes of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). He is PPPL's deputy head of the Tokamak Experimental Science Department and was a co-author of the paper.

PPPL Physicist Seong-Moo Yang led the research team, which spans various institutions in the U.S. and South Korea. Yang says this is the first time any research team has validated a systematic approach to tailoring magnetic field imperfections to make the plasma suitable for use as a power source. These magnetic field imperfections are known as error fields.

[...] Error fields are typically caused by minuscule defects in the magnetic coils of the device that holds the plasma, which is called a tokamak. Until now, error fields were only seen as a nuisance because even a very small error field could cause a plasma disruption that halts fusion reactions and can damage the walls of a fusion vessel. Consequently, fusion researchers have spent considerable time and effort meticulously finding ways to correct error fields.

[...] This study demonstrates that adjusting the error fields can simultaneously stabilize both the core and the edge of the plasma. By carefully controlling the magnetic fields produced by the tokamak's coils, the researchers could suppress edge instabilities, also known as edge localized modes (ELMs), without causing disruptions or a substantial loss of confinement.

More information: SeongMoo Yang et al, Tailoring tokamak error fields to control plasma instabilities and transport, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45454-1

Original Submission