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- [khallow] Yet another weird Ad Council campaign
- [turgid] Multithreaded Atomic Operations
- [kolie] The Big Switch: DNS Migration Complete
- [mcgrew] Asimov on poker
- [day of the dalek] Does Betelgeuse Have a Companion Star?
- [quietus] Arts and Culture
- [Arthur T Knackerbracket] Elon Musk Built An Army Of Pro-Trump Extremists
- [NotSanguine] Election Fraud Conspiracy Theories Already Thriving Online
- [acid andy] Snottites for President 2024
- [DannyB] About semicolons
- [Subsentient] Koda - The Last Stand
- [Runaway1956] WTF is happening with FEMA?
- [lentilla] On Electric Vehicles, Their Batteries, and Solar Panels
- [fliptop] What do you spend on your hobbies?
- [deimios] On the hunt for a low brightness laptop.
Older Stuff
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June 19 -
June 18- Microsoft President to Congress: ‘We Accept Responsibility’ for Cybersecurity Failures (19)
- News Consumption is Down -- 2024 (51)
- Inescapable Conclusion: USC Researchers Prove Earth's Core is Losing Speed (15)
- Adobe and Meta Drive the Visual Digital Arts in Deeper Enshit (13)
- Scientists May Have Discovered The First Sign Of Autism: An Unusually Large Brain (41)
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June 17- AMD Confirms Ryzen AI 300 PCs Won't Feature Copilot+ Features At Launch (6)
- Invisible Invaders: How Microplastics Sneak Into Your Brain (16)
- FAA Investigating How Titanium Parts With Falsified Records Wound Up in Boeing and Airbus Planes (6)
- Tesla Must Face False Advertising Claims Around 'Full Self-Driving' In California (15)
- Site News Update (25)
- Molecules Derived From Sea Sponge Show Promising Effects In Cancer, Mitochondrial Function (6)
- World's First Risc-V Laptop Preloaded With Ubuntu (10)
-
June 16
Quick Links
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
For roughly 80 years, the United States has managed the threat of nuclear terrorism through nonproliferation treaties, agency programs, intelligence activities, international monitoring support and more, withstanding the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and 9/11.
[...] "The issue of nuclear terrorism remains very much a real one, there are enormous stakes involved and the risks are high, but the issue has been falling off the radar screen of the American public over the last 15 years, and the skill set of people involved in managing it is aging out," says Flynn, professor of political science and founding director of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern.
"We really need to keep our eye on the ball. It was quite timely for Congress to call for an assessment of this risk and provide recommendations for staying on top of this issue."
In the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress mandated the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Agency to work with the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to assess the current state of nuclear terrorism and nuclear weapons and materials and advise the government on how to handle such issues.
Flynn, an expert on national and homeland security, was appointed chair of the committee in 2022. The committee released its final report on Tuesday.
The report finds that a lot has changed since the issue of nuclear terrorism was forefront in Americans' minds following 9/11 and the buildup to the Iraq War.
"We had a war on terror after 9/11, but that didn't succeed in eliminating the terrorism threat," Flynn says. "Terrorism continues to morph."
The outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War, which occurred as the committee finalized its report, demonstrates this morphing of terrorism.
The involvement of Hezbollah as a proxy of Iran, and the involvement of Hamas—both groups are designated terrorist groups by the U.S. State Department—highlight a world where non-states and nuclear-seeking states collaborate in warfare, Flynn says.
"The designation between non-state vs. state actors is blurry," Flynn says. "The assessment reveals we have to be focused on where those two things may overlap."
Also "blurring" is the line between domestic terrorism and international terrorism, Flynn says.
"Particularly when you look on the far right, international terror groups are recruiting Americans into these organizations, and Americans are reaching out to extremist organizations that have terrorism elements," Flynn says.
The nuclear world continues to morph as well.
There are now eight countries that have announced successful nuclear detonations: The United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Israel is also generally considered to have nuclear weapons but has never announced it.
But as opposed to the two rival nuclear superpowers—Russia and the United States—that existed during the Cold War, a "triad" now exists, with China added to the rivalry.
"It's hard to reach arms control agreements as a two-way relationship," Flynn says. "It's almost impossible to do as a triad."
Moreover, although Russia and the United States were rivals throughout the latter half of the 20th century, Flynn says they shared the goal of limiting the supply of nuclear weapons. The demand for nuclear weapons, however, and nuclear material for civil purposes, has continued to grow. Simultaneously, there are far fewer means for managing that growth.
"We're in a world right now where most of the control of the programs in place to manage supply and control of nuclear weapons are basically unraveling," Flynn says.
Again, recent events highlight this changing dynamic.
[...] Finally, there is the question of how the United States would react to a nuclear explosion or if a so-called "dirty bomb" were detonated on the US homeland.
In an era of "fake news" and general distrust of government, would anyone even listen to local or national leaders should they warn about and try to direct civilians on what to do during a nuclear event?
"In the current context, post-COVID, there is so little trust in federal government messaging that there is the concern that managing the incident and getting life-saving information to the public is going to be enormously challenging," Flynn says.
Moreover, it is the local municipality that will be providing the first responders to a nuclear incident. How many of them are prepared?
"The country relies on local capability to manage response to emergencies, and if it's a nuclear terrorist attack there's a lot to worry about," Flynn says.
So for all these reasons—each of which has a chapter in the report—the United States has a lot of challenges.
But Flynn notes there is some hope.
"One of the big messages is as a nation we have invested a lot of effort into managing this risk over the years, and that has been—knock on wood here—a reason a nuclear incident hasn't happened," Flynn says. "Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater—we've got a lot of capability, let's stay on top of it."
How can we do so?
The committee does not provide a specific budget figure, but recommends that Congress provide continued and increased funding for nuclear-deterrent activities.
The report also recommends better coordination among the various government agencies—for example, beyond the Department of Defense, Flynn mentions the Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Energy, and more—that each contribute to protecting the United States from a nuclear incident.
Finally, the report recommends that these agencies adopt new technology and tools to mitigate the nuclear terrorism threat.
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- 924 words in story
- 11 comments
from the bacon-topped-ice-cream-sounds-like-a-winner! dept.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c722gne7qngo
Archive Link: https://archive.is/4eOAc
McDonald's is removing artificial intelligence (AI) powered ordering technology from its drive-through restaurants in the US, after customers shared its comical mishaps online.
A trial of the system, which was developed by IBM and uses voice recognition software to process orders, was announced in 2019.
It has not proved entirely reliable, however, resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars worth of chicken nuggets.
McDonald's told franchisees it would remove the tech from the more than 100 restaurants it has been testing it in by the end of July, as first reported by trade publication Restaurant Business, external.
[...] "After thoughtful review, McDonald's has decided to end our current global partnership with IBM on AOT [Automated Order Taking] beyond this year," the restaurant chain said in a statement.
However, it added it remained confident the tech would still be "part of its restaurants' future."
"We will continue to evaluate long-term, scalable solutions that will help us make an informed decision on a future voice ordering solution by the end of the year," the statement said.
/me now has visions of interacting with just about any telephone voice recognition assistant ever....
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Car dealers can't sell cars due to living in today's world
Hope you didn't want to buy a car in the near future
Car dealership software-as-a-service provider CDK Global was hit by a massive cyberattack causing the company to shut down its systems and leaving clients unable to operate their business normally.
CDK Global provides clients in the auto industry a SaaS platform that handles all aspects of a car dealership's operation, including CRM, financing, payroll, support and service, inventory, and back office operations.
Brad Holton, CEO of Proton Dealership IT, a cybersecurity and IT services firm for car dealerships, told BleepingComputer that the attack caused CDK to take its two data centers offline at approximately 2 AM last night.
Employees at multiple car dealerships have also told BleepingComputer that CDK has not shared much information other than to send an email warning that they suffered a cyber incident.
Anyone wanna take bets they're running Microsoft stuff?
Why Americans aren't buying more EVs
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Clint and Rachel Wells had reasons to consider buying an electric vehicle when it came to replacing one of their cars. But they had even more reasons to stick with petrol.
The couple live in Normal, Illinois, which has enjoyed an economic boost from the electric vehicle assembly plant opened there by upstart electric-car maker Rivian. EVs are a step forward from “using dead dinosaurs” to power cars, Clint Wells says, and he wants to support that.
But the couple decided to “get what was affordable”—in their case, a petrol-engined Honda Accord costing $19,000 after trade-in.
An EV priced at $25,000 would have been tempting, but only five new electric models costing less than $40,000 have come on to the US market in 2024. The hometown champion’s focus on luxury vehicles—its cheapest model is currently the $69,000 R1T—made it a non-starter.
“It’s just not accessible to us at this point in our life,” Rachel Wells says.
The Wells are among the millions of Americans opting to continue buying combustion-engine cars over electric vehicles, despite [the] President's ambitious target of having EVs make up half of all new cars sold in the US by 2030. Last year, the proportion was 9.5 percent.
High sticker prices for cars on the forecourt, and high interest rates that are pushing up monthly lease payments, have combined with concerns over driving range and charging infrastructure to chill buyers’ enthusiasm—even among those who consider themselves green.
While EV technology is still improving and the popularity of electric cars is still increasing, sales growth has slowed. Many carmakers are rethinking manufacturing plans, cutting the numbers of EVs they had planned to produce for the US market in favor of combustion-engined and hybrid cars.
[...] The idea is to allow the US to develop its own supply chains, but analysts say such protectionism will result in higher EV prices for US consumers in the meantime. That could stall sales and result in the US remaining behind China and Europe in adoption of EVs, putting at risk not only the Biden administration’s targets but also the global uptake of EVs. The World Resources Institute says between 75 and 95 percent of new passenger vehicles sold by 2030 need to be electric if Paris agreement goals are to be met.
“There is no question that this slows down EV adoption in the US,” says Everett Eissenstat, a former senior US Trade Representative official who served both Republican and Democratic administrations.
“We are just not producing the EVs the consumers want at a price point they want.”
Tax credits of up to $7,500 are available to buyers of electric cars. But the full amount is only available on cars that are made in the US with critical minerals and battery components also largely sourced in the US.
That means few cars qualify for the maximum credit. Two years on from the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act [...] there are only 12 models that can actually score buyers the full $7,500.
The act also offered hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies and other incentives to companies building a domestic clean energy industry. The automotive sector has been one of the beneficiaries of that largesse.
[...] Van Jackson, [...] a senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, says electric cars still need to fall in price if the market is to grow substantially.
“How do you bring workers along and increase their wages, and have a growth market for these products, given how expensive they are?” he asks. “I’m an upper-middle-class person and I cannot afford an EV.”
He is skeptical about whether shutting the world’s dominant producer of EVs and related componentry out of the US market will reduce the price of the cars and encourage uptake.
“The tariffs are buying time,” he says. “But towards no particular end.”
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[Source]: Popular Mechanics
Time has puzzled scientists for many decades. Does it meaningfully exist apart from our experience of it as everything moves toward the disintegration of entropy along its irrefutable arrow? You can't put the "spilled milk" of the weirdness of time back in the jug.
Could the observable universe be exclusively composed of layered, mutually entangled systems?
The passage of time puzzles quantum physicists, who seek to fit it into a cohesive model.
One wild theory posits that time visibly passes because we're entangled with ... well ... everything.
In new research published in the American Physical Society's peer-reviewed journal Physical Review A, scientists from Italy (led by Alessandro Coppo) try to translate one theory of time into real life—or, at least, closer to it. The theory is called Page and Wootters mechanism, and Coppo has studied it for years. It's a quantum mechanics idea that dates back to 1983.
Journal Reference:
Tiago Martinelli, Diogo O. Soares-Pinto. Quantifying quantum reference frames in composed systems: Local, global, and mutual asymmetries, Physical Review A (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.99.042124)
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Signal, MEPs Urge EU Council To Drop Encryption-Eroding Law
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
On Thursday, the EU Council is scheduled to vote on a legislative proposal that would attempt to protect children online by disallowing confidential communication.
[...] Known to detractors as Chat Control, the proposal seeks to prevent the online dissemination of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) by requiring internet service providers to scan digital communication – private chats, emails, social media messages, and photos – for unlawful content.
The proposal [PDF], recognizing the difficulty of explicitly outlawing encryption, calls for "client-side scanning" or "upload moderation" – analyzing content on people's mobile devices and computers for certain wrongdoing before it gets encrypted and transmitted.
The idea is that algorithms running locally on people's devices will reliably recognize CSAM (and whatever else is deemed sufficiently awful), block it, and/or report it to authorities. This act of automatically policing and reporting people's stuff before it's even had a chance to be securely transferred rather undermines the point of encryption in the first place.
Europe's planned "regulation laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse" is not the only legislative proposal that contemplates client-side scanning as a way to front-run the application of encryption. The US Earn-It Act imagines something similar.
In the UK, the Online Safety Act of 2023 includes a content scanning requirement, though with the government's acknowledgement that enforcement isn't presently feasible. While it does allow telecoms regulator Ofcom to require online platforms to adopt an "accredited technology" to identify unlawful content, there is currently no such technology and it's unclear how accreditation would work.
With the EU proposal vote approaching, opponents of the plan have renewed their calls to shelve the pre-crime surveillance regime.
In an open letter [PDF] on Monday, Meredith Whittaker, CEO of Signal, which threatened to withdraw its app from the UK if the Online Safety Act disallowed encryption, reiterated why the EU client-side scanning plan is unworkable and dangerous.
"There is no way to implement such proposals in the context of end-to-end encrypted communications without fundamentally undermining encryption and creating a dangerous vulnerability in core infrastructure that would have global implications well beyond Europe," wrote Whittaker.
European countries continue to play rhetorical games. They’ve come back to the table with the same idea under a new label
"Instead of accepting this fundamental mathematical reality, some European countries continue to play rhetorical games.
[...] Threema said if it isn't allowed to offer encryption, it will leave the EU.
And on Tuesday, 37 Members of Parliament signed an open letter to the Council of Europe urging legislators to reject Chat Control.
"We explicitly warn that the obligation to systematically scan encrypted communication, whether called 'upload-moderation' or 'client-side scanning,' would not only break secure end-to-end encryption, but will to a high probability also not withstand the case law of the European Court of Justice," the MEPs said. "Rather, such an attack would be in complete contrast to the European commitment to secure communication and digital privacy, as well as human rights in the digital space." ®
EU Chat Control Law Proposes Scanning Your Messages — Even Encrypted Ones
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
[...] The proposed solution is to leave messages wide open for scanning — but somehow without compromising the layer of privacy offered by end-to-end encryption. It suggests that the new moderation system could accomplish this by scanning the contents of your messages before apps like Signal, WhatsApp, and Messenger encrypt them.
In response, Signal president Meredith Whittaker says the app will stop functioning in the EU if the rules become law, as the proposal “fundamentally undermines encryption,” regardless of whether it’s scanned before encryption or not. “We can call it a backdoor, a front door, or ‘upload moderation,’” Whittaker writes. “But whatever we call it, each one of these approaches creates a vulnerability that can be exploited by hackers and hostile nation states, removing the protection of unbreakable math and putting in its place a high-value vulnerability.”
Several organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy & Technology, and Mozilla, have also signed a joint statement urging the EU to reject proposals that scan user content.
Privacy advocates aren’t the only ones raising alarm bells about the proposal. This week, dozens of Parliament members wrote to the EU Council to express their opposition to the proposal. Patrick Breyer, a German member of the European Parliament, has also spoken out about the bill, saying that “indiscriminate searches and error-prone leaks of private chats and intimate photos destroy our fundamental right to private correspondence.”
[...] “Many lawmakers understand that fundamental rights prohibit mass surveillance, but they don’t want to be seen opposing a scheme that’s framed as combatting CSAM,” Breyer says. “My message is that children and abuse victims deserve measures that are truly effective and will hold up in court, not just empty promises, tech solutionism and hidden agendas.”
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Note: Comments are enabled for everyone including Anonymous Cowards and should be on-topic. However, if you abuse this privilege do not be surprised or complain if your comments are deleted.
This came to my attention on IRC; it was published yesterday. It should not surprise anyone, nor is it a unique occurrence. Most sites on the internet nowadays are suffering from the same problem. But I find it hard to understand how anyone can benefit from personal attacks, or by forcing sites to make unwanted decisions about how they operate.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/06/new-blog-moderation-policy.html
Schneier writes:
New Blog Moderation Policy
There has been a lot of toxicity in the comments section of this blog. Recently, we're having to delete more and more comments. Not just spam and off-topic comments, but also sniping and personal attacks. It's gotten so bad that I need to do something.
My options are limited because I'm just one person, and this website is free, ad-free, and anonymous. I pay for a part-time moderator out of pocket; he isn't able to constantly monitor comments. And I'm unwilling to require verified accounts.
So starting now, we will be pre-screening comments and letting through only those that 1) are on topic, 2) contribute to the discussion, and 3) don't attack or insult anyone. The standard is not going to be "well, I guess this doesn't technically quite break a rule," but "is this actually contributing."
Obviously, this is a subjective standard; sometimes good comments will accidentally get thrown out. And the delayed nature of the screening will result in less conversation and more disjointed comments. Those are costs, and they're significant ones. But something has to be done, and I would like to try this before turning off all comments.
In our own case it is rarely someone posting under his/her username that does similar things or at least not anyone who is logged in and posting anonymously. There are a few who push the boundaries from time to time but they usually do it without resorting to anonymity. It is almost without exception those who wish to remain Anonymous Cowards. Surely they realise that the eventual outcome will be to force sites to ban AC posting. How does that benefit any site or those ACs in particular? The end result will be that there will be fewer places where they are allowed to express themselves.
janrinok
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Human missions to Mars in serious doubt after discovery made on effects to astronaut's bodies
Scientists have admitted they do not know why it is happening
Even though Elon Musk claimed that humans could be flying to Mars within 10-20 years, it seems as though that plan could be at risk after studies have found some major issues.
Samples from more than 40 space missions, involving both humans and mice, have revealed that the conditions in space have adverse reactions on the body.
[....] Scientists at University College London (UCL), who carried out the study, have found that microgravity and galactic radiation from space caused serious health risks that emerge the longer a person is exposed to it.
The main part of the body that is at risk is the kidneys, with the research showing that parts of the kidneys showed signs of shrinkage after less than a month in space.
[....] Talking to The Independent, Dr. Keith Siew, first author of the study, said: "We know what has happened to astronauts on the relatively short space missions conducted so far, in terms of an increase in health issues such as kidney stones.
[....] "If we don't develop new ways to protect the kidneys, I'd say that while an astronaut could make it to Mars they might need dialysis on the way back."
The scientist added: "We know that the kidneys are late to show signs of radiation damage.
"By the time this becomes apparent it's probably too late to prevent failure, which would be catastrophic for the mission's chances of success."
Despite likely health problems and much shorter life, there would no doubt be a long list of volunteers willing to make the first trip.
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Tech Review is running a story about comedians who were asked to use "AI" to write jokes. https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/17/1093740/what-happened-when-20-comedians-got-ai-to-write-their-routines/ The results were mixed at best:
Google DeepMind researchers led by Piotr Mirowski, who is himself an improv comedian in his spare time, studied the experiences of professional comedians who have AI in their work.
[...]
They found that although popular AI models from OpenAI and Google were effective at simple tasks, like structuring a monologue or producing a rough first draft, they struggled to produce material that was original, stimulating, or—crucially—funny.
[...]
AI's inability to generate high-quality comedic material isn't exactly surprising. The same safety filters that OpenAI and Google use to prevent models from generating violent or racist responses also hinder them from producing the kind of material that's common in comedy writing, such as offensive or sexually uggestive jokes and dark humor.
[...]
The experiment also exposed the LLMs' bias. Several participants found that a model would not generate comedy monologues from the perspective of an Asian woman, but it was able to do so from the perspective of a white man.
Tech Review ends with a couple of the lame AI generated jokes, it seems fair to say that comedians don't have to worry about competition from AI anytime soon:
For the prompt: "Can you write me ten jokes about pickpocketing", one LLM response was: "I decided to switch careers and become a pickpocket after watching a magic show. Little did I know, the only thing disappearing would be my reputation!"
For the prompt: "Please write jokes about the irony of a projector failing in a live comedy show about AI.", one of the better LLM responses was: "Our projector must've misunderstood the concept of 'AI.' It thought it meant 'Absolutely Invisible' because, well, it's doing a fantastic job of disappearing tonight!"
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from the killing-the-goose-that-lays-the-golden-egg? dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
With its new unskippable ad feature, YouTube might end up killing ad blockers once and for all. Currently, the video platform is experimenting with server-side ad injection, which means the ads would appear directly in a video’s stream, bypassing ad blockers.
A Google spokesperson explained the test to Gizmodo: “YouTube is improving its performance and reliability in serving both organic and ad video content. This update may result in suboptimal viewing experiences for viewers with ad blockers installed. Ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service, and we’ve been urging viewers for some time to support their favorite creators and allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.”
[...] As a matter of fact, YouTube has been adding as many ads as it can to videos on the platform, as users occasionally have to sit through three ads before a video starts, a few more while watching the content, and a final ad after the video ends.
This is why, instead of using an ad blocker, I decided to pay for YouTube Premium. Not only did I leave the platform’s miserable ad-based experience behind, but I also learned to enjoy other perks, such as listening to a video in the background and downloading as many videos as I want when I’m on a trip with no cellular connection.
YouTube isn’t the only platform focusing on unskippable ads, as even Instagram has started testing some new forms of ad revenue that might see the light of day soon. While YouTube at least offers you a plan to get rid of ads, Meta doesn’t offer the same option yet.
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On 14 June 2024 IEEE and The Open Group published the first major revision of POSIX.1 since 2008*. It is simultaneously IEEE 1003.1-2024 and The Open Group Base Specifications, Issue 8. The latter will form, together with a soon to be published update to XCurses, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 5. The new standard will also be published by ISO as a revision to 9945:2009 in the not too distant future.
The revision adds the following 102 new functions (mostly from C17):
_Fork aligned_alloc at_quick_exit atomic_compare_exchange_strong atomic_compare_exchange_strong_explicit atomic_compare_exchange_weak atomic_compare_exchange_weak_explicit atomic_exchange atomic_exchange_explicit atomic_fetch_add atomic_fetch_add_explicit atomic_fetch_and atomic_fetch_and_explicit atomic_fetch_or atomic_fetch_or_explicit atomic_fetch_sub atomic_fetch_sub_explicit atomic_fetch_xor atomic_fetch_xor_explicit atomic_flag_clear atomic_flag_clear_explicit atomic_flag_test_and_set atomic_flag_test_and_set_explicit atomic_init atomic_is_lock_free atomic_load atomic_load_explicit atomic_signal_fence atomic_store atomic_store_explicit atomic_thread_fence bind_textdomain_codeset bindtextdomain c16rtomb c32rtomb call_once cnd_broadcast cnd_destroy cnd_init cnd_signal cnd_timedwait cnd_wait dcgettext dcgettext_l dcngettext dcngettext_l dgettext dgettext_l dladdr dngettext dngettext_l getentropy getlocalename_l getresgid getresuid gettext gettext_l mbrtoc16 mbrtoc32 memmem mtx_destroy mtx_init mtx_lock mtx_timedlock mtx_trylock mtx_unlock ngettext ngettext_l posix_close posix_devctl posix_getdents ppoll pthread_cond_clockwait pthread_mutex_clocklock pthread_rwlock_clockrdlock pthread_rwlock_clockwrlock qsort_r quick_exit reallocarray sem_clockwait setresgid setresuid sig2str str2sig strlcat strlcpy textdomain thrd_create thrd_current thrd_detach thrd_equal thrd_exit thrd_join thrd_sleep thrd_yield timespec_get tss_create tss_delete tss_get tss_set wcslcat wcslcpy
and the following new utilities:
gettext
msgfmt
ngettext
readlink
realpath
timeout
xgettext
[*] There was a revision in 2017, but it was just POSIX.1-2008 with two technical corrigenda rolled in; it did not contain any new interfaces.
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https://www.fastcompany.com/91128052/history-of-cd-roms-encarta-myst
Thirty years ago, a breakthrough technology was poised to transform how people stayed informed, entertained themselves, and maybe even shopped. I'm not talking about the World Wide Web. True, it was already getting good buzz among early adopter types. But even three years after going online, Tim Berners-Lee's creation was "still relatively slow and crude" and "limited to perhaps two million Internet users who have the proper software to gain access to it," wrote The New York Times' Peter H. Lewis in November 1994.
At the time, it was the CD-ROM that had captured the imagination of consumers and the entire publishing industry. The high-capacity optical discs enabled mass distribution of multimedia for the first time, giving software developers the ability to create new kinds of experiences. Some of the largest companies in America saw them as media's next frontier, as did throngs of startups. In terms of pure mindshare, 1994 might have been the year of Peak CD, with 17.5 million CD-ROM drives and $590 million in discs sold, according to research firms Dataquest and Link Resources.
Note, the following bookmarklet will remove the thin lightweight font style from the page, making the overall text much easier to read:
javascript:(function(){var all=document.getElementsByTagName("*");for (var i=0,max=all.length;i<max;i++){all[i].style.fontWeight='400';};void(0);})();
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MSU researchers discover honeybees can detect lung cancer:
Michigan State University researchers have discovered that honeybees can detect biomarkers or chemical concentrations associated with lung cancer in human breath. The researchers have also shown that the honeybees can distinguish between different lung cancer cell types using only the 'smell' of the cell cultures. These findings could be used as a model for developing new tests to diagnose lung cancer early.
"Insects have an amazing sense of smell the same way dogs do," said Debajit Saha, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and MSU's Institute for Quantitative Health Science and Engineering.
Saha and his team wanted to see if honeybees could distinguish between the chemicals in human breath from someone who was healthy compared to someone with lung cancer. Elyssa Cox, Saha's former lab manager, and Michael Parnas, a doctoral candidate working in Saha's lab, developed a "recipe" for a synthetic breath mixture using different levels of six compounds such as trichloroethylene and 2-methylheptane to create the chemical makeup of the breath of someone with lung cancer and a synthetic healthy breath mixture.
"It took a steady hand to create the recipe," said Cox. "We tested the synthetic lung cancer versus healthy human breath mixtures on approximately 20 bees."
Cox helped design a custom 3D-printed harness to hold a live honeybee while she attached a tiny electrode to its brain to measure any changes in the bee's brain signals.
"We pass those odors on to the antenna of the honeybees and recorded the neural signals from their brain," said Saha. "We see a change in the honeybee's neural firing response."
The researchers also wanted to measure how much of the cancer-indicating compounds needed to be present in someone's breath for the honeybee to detect cancer.
"The honeybees detected very small concentrations; it was a very strong result," said Saha. "Bees can differentiate between minute changes in the chemical concentrations of the breath mixture which is in the parts per 1 billion range."
Parnas analyzed the neural data and saw the spikes in the bees' brain signals.
"We can see differences in how the honeybees are smelling," said Parnas. "We detected several different neurons firing in the honeybees' brains that clearly differentiated between the synthetic lung cancer breath and healthy breath."
Another graduate student from Saha's team, Autumn McLane-Svoboda and an undergrad, Summer McLane-Svoboda jointly led the human lung cancer cell culture experiments with the help of Christopher Contag, director of Michigan State University's Institute for Quantitative Health Science and Engineering, and his lab. For these experiments, different types of human lung cancer cell cultures were grown in closed, airtight flasks and the honeybee brain-based sensor was used to test the odor of the lung cancer cells. The researchers have successfully demonstrated that using this honeybee brain-based sensor can distinguish between small cell lung cancer, non-small lung cancer cells and healthy cells.
"What's amazing is the honeybees ability to not only detect cancer cells, but also distinguish between cell lines of various types of lung cancer," said Autumn McLane-Svoboda. "The future implications for this are huge as our sensor could allow for patients to receive specific cancer diagnoses quickly which is imperative for correct treatment routes."
Saha envisions this work will open the door for more biological and smell-based disease detection technologies. In the future, Saha's team plans to develop a noninvasive test that only requires patients breathe into a device and the sensor inside, based on honeybee brains, would analyze the breath and wirelessly report back in real time if cancer chemicals are present.
The research was published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.
Journal Reference DOI: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0956566324004718)
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cURL (established 1998) is one of the most widely used pieces of software in the world, especially if the development library libcurl is included. As has become tradition, the founder and lead developer Daniel Stenberg has published a detailed analysis of the annual cURL survey.
Ten quick things to take away
If you are in too much of a hurry to read it all, here are ten facts this year's survey revealed:
- 96.4% of the users run it on Linux (*)
- 98.6% use it for HTTPS (*)
- 98% of Windows users run curl on x86 64 bit architecture (*)
- 99% of the users who know, use curl with OpenSSL (*)
- curl users run it on Android more than on FreeBSD
- Windows 10 is the most used Windows version for curl use
- More than 100 different command line options is a favorite for at least one
- 83.1% rates our "security handling" 5 out of 5
- 22.8% of users would like to see it offer recursive HTML download
- 14.1% of users have used curl for 18 or more years
(*) = not exclusively - as these questions allowed respondents to select multiple answers the total ends up larger than 100%
cURL and libcurl are Free and Open Source Software. cURL and libcurl are licensed under conditions similar to the MIT License.
Previously:
(2024) The I in LLM Stands for Intelligence
(2023) "cURL", the URL Code That Can, Marks 25 Years of Transfers
(2021) Half of Curl's Security Vulnerabilities Due to C Mistakes
(2020) curl up 2020 and Other Conferences Go Online Only
(2018) Daniel Stenberg, Author of cURL and libcurl, Denied US Visit Again
(2018) Reducing Year 2038 Problems in curl
(2016) Your wget (and curl) is Broken and Should DIE, GitHubbers Tell Microsoft
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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
In the U.S., as farmers wrestle with extreme heat and drought, heavy rainfall and flooding, and erosion—all factors of climate change which can take a toll on crops—there's been a lot of buzz over regenerative agriculture over the past few years, as big agriculture companies promise opportunities to make money from "carbon farming" while also improving soil health.
Regenerative farming strives to improve soil health through various methods, including reduced or no tillage, keeping the soil covered year-round through the use of cover crops, integrating livestock into crop farming, and rotating crops to encourage both above and below ground biodiversity.
Such practices can also be used to create carbon credits for carbon offset programs, which enable polluters to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions through the purchase of credits.
Farmers have often been told all they need to do is adopt certain practices, such as no-till or cover cropping. But few adopting these practices have signed up for carbon market programs.
While farmer surveys suggest that carbon prices are still too low relative to the paperwork these programs demand, a new study published in Agriculture and Human Values finds that money alone does not explain either farmers' doubts about carbon markets or their interest in regenerative agriculture. Instead, many farmers view improving soil health as a way to improve their quality of life by reducing their dependence on agrochemical companies' products and advice.
"Farmers are really looking to get off that treadmill of high-input, high yield commodity agriculture," says the study's co-lead author Susanne Freidberg, a professor of geography at Dartmouth.
[...] Below-ground microbial activity not only builds soil fertility, which enables farmers to use less fertilizer, but also helps reduce erosion, conserve water, and sequester carbon. But field practices that are good for soil microbes are not always good for relations with neighbors and landlords.
"Farmers mentioned that when they stopped tilling and started planting multi-species cover crops, they started getting strange looks at their local coffee shop because now their fields looked messy," said Freidberg.
These tensions made regenerative farmers' relationships with each other all the more important with some indicating that they joined informal "support groups" to share experiences or farm equipment. "Farmers who viewed regenerative agriculture as a way to gain more personal freedom also saw that this freedom depended on the support of other farmers," said Freidberg.
Some farmers also mentioned how they liked seeing birds and other wildlife returning to their fields, and how farming regeneratively had made their day-to-day work more enjoyable and interesting.
The handful of farmers in the study who had signed up for carbon programs emphasized that they looked for programs that did not demand long-term commitments or major changes in their farming practices. One farmer described it as a way to earn "beer money."
[...] But whether many farmers enroll in them, said Freidberg, will depend at least partly on how well the projects take account of what farmers value about such practices. "When farmers talk about the return on investment on regenerative agriculture, they're talking about more than just money," said Freidberg.
More information: Julie Snorek et al, Relationships of regeneration in Great Plains commodity agriculture, Agriculture and Human Values (2024). DOI: 10.1007/s10460-024-10558-3
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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Japan’s parliament passed a landmark law on Wednesday, officially titled the Act on Promotion of Competition for Specified Smartphone Software. The law is a direct response to concerns about stifled competition and consumer choice, particularly regarding Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems, which have dominated the smartphone market.
This legislation, echoing some elements of Europe’s recent Digital Markets Act (DMA), aims to prevent tech giants like Apple and Google from monopolizing app sales and operations on their respective platforms, a practice generally known as “gatekeeping.”
[...] Should these companies violate the new regulations, they will face hefty fines — 20 percent of the offending service’s domestic revenue, which can increase to 30 percent if the anti-competitive behavior continues. These fines represent a substantial increase from the existing anti-monopoly penalties in Japan, which are set at 6 percent of revenue gained through unfair practices.
[...] Outlined in the new regulations, the law specifies that companies identified under the law as ‘designated providers’ cannot prevent third-party providers from offering their own app stores, using third-party billing systems, or providing items through websites.
Additionally, they cannot unfairly discriminate against app developers or restrict the use of third-party browsers. Much like Europe, Japan wants users to be able to change default settings easily and have a choice among similar services for browsers and search services.
Scheduled to take effect by the end of 2025, this legislation mirrors regulatory efforts seen in other parts of the world. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act, which was fully implemented in March, and recent legal actions by the U.S. Department of Justice against large tech firms illustrate a global push towards stricter control over digital markets.
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