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Idiosyncratic use of punctuation - which of these annoys you the most?

  • Declarations and assignments that end with }; (C, C++, Javascript, etc.)
  • (Parenthesis (pile-ups (at (the (end (of (Lisp (code))))))))
  • Syntactically-significant whitespace (Python, Ruby, Haskell...)
  • Perl sigils: @array, $array[index], %hash, $hash{key}
  • Unnecessary sigils, like $variable in PHP
  • macro!() in Rust
  • Do you have any idea how much I spent on this Space Cadet keyboard, you insensitive clod?!
  • Something even worse...

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:39 | Votes:85

posted by janrinok on Sunday August 11, @08:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the get-the-popcorn dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Texas is one of eight states that have enacted laws that force adults to prove their age before accessing porn sites. Soon it will try to persuade the Supreme Court that its law doesn’t violate the First Amendment. 

Good luck with that. 

These laws are unconstitutional: They deny adults the well-established right to access constitutionally protected speech.

Texas’ H.B. 1181 forces any website made up of one-third or more adult content to verify every visitor’s age. Some adult sites have responded to the law by shutting down their services in Texas. The Free Speech Coalition challenged the law on First Amendment grounds, arguing that mandatory age verification does more than keep minors away from porn — the law nannies adults as well, barring them from constitutionally protected speech. 

The district court agreed with the challengers. Laws regulating speech because of its content (i.e., because it is sexually explicit) are presumed invalid. Under strict scrutiny, the state must show that its regulation is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. In other words, the government needs an exceptionally good reason to regulate, and it can’t regulate more speech than necessary. 

The case will turn on what level of scrutiny applies. Protecting minors from obscene speech is a permissible state interest, as the Fifth Circuit court established when it applied the lowest form of scrutiny — rational basis review — to uphold the law. But not all speech that is obscene to minors is obscene to adults. Judge Higginbotham, dissenting from the Fifth Circuit’s decision, pointed out that kids might have no right to watch certain scenes from Game of Thrones — but adults do.

There’s just one problem: Adults do care about age verification.

H.B. 1181 bars age verification providers from retaining “identifying” information. But nothing in the law stops providers from sharing that same info, and people are rightly concerned about whether their private sexual desires will stay private. That you visited an adult site is bad enough. Getting your personal Pornhub search history leaked along with your government ID is enough to make even the most shameless person consider changing their name and becoming a hermit. 

Texas swears up and down that age verification tech is secure, but that doesn’t inspire confidence in anyone following cybersecurity news. Malware is out there. Data leaks happen. 

A bored employee glancing at your driver’s license as you walk into the sex shop is not the same thing as submitting to a biometric face scan and algorithmic ID verification, by order of the government, before you can press play on a dirty video. Just thinking about it kills the mood, which may be part of the point. 

Texas pretends there’s no difference between the bored bouncer and biometric scans, but if you knew the bouncer had an encyclopedic, inhuman ability to remember every name and face that came through the door and loose lips, well, you wouldn’t go there either. 

Hand-waving away these differences is the kind of thing you only do if you’re highly ideologically motivated. But normal people are very reasonably concerned about whether their personal sexual preferences will be leaked to their boss, mother-in-law, or fellow citizens. Mandatory age verification turns people off of viewing porn entirely, and it chills their free expression. 

Sexual preferences are private and sensitive; they’re exactly the type of thing you don’t want leaking. So, of course, sexual content is a particularly juicy target for would-be hackers and extortionists. People pay handsomely to keep “sextortion” quiet. If you’re worried about your privacy and you don’t trust the age verification software (you shouldn’t), you’re likely to avoid the risk up front. One adult site says only 6% of visitors go through age verification and that even fewer succeed. Thus the chilling effect: even though adult access to porn is technically legal, people are so afraid of having their ID and last watched video plastered across the internet that they stop watching in the first place. 

If the Supreme Court recognizes this and applies strict scrutiny, it will ask whether less restrictive means could protect minors. Back in 2004, the Court tossed out COPA, a law requiring credit card verification to access sexually explicit materials, reasoning that blocking and filtering software would protect minors without burdening adult speech. Today’s filtering software is far more effective than what was available twenty years ago — as the district court found — and, notably, filtering software doesn’t scan adults’ faces. 

Sex — a “subject of absorbing interest to mankind,” as one justice once put it — matters. Adults have the right to sexually explicit speech, free of the fear that their identifying information will be leaked or sent to the state. Texas can and should seek to protect kids without stoking that fear. 

[Ed's Comment: Much more in the original article ]


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Sunday August 11, @04:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the sorry,-its-another-Boeing-report dept.

A new report finds Boeing's rockets are built with an unqualified work force

From Ars Technica:
new report finds Boeing's rockets are built with an unqualified work force

The NASA program to develop a new upper stage for the Space Launch System rocket is seven years behind schedule and significantly over budget, a new report from the space agency's inspector general finds. [Here is a direct link to PDF of NASA report] However, beyond these headline numbers, there is also some eye-opening information about the project's prime contractor, Boeing, and its poor quality control practices.

[....] "We found an array of issues that could hinder SLS Block 1B's readiness for Artemis IV including Boeing's inadequate quality management system, escalating costs and schedules, and inadequate visibility into the Block 1B's projected costs," [...]

[....] Boeing's quality control issues are largely caused by its workforce having insufficient aerospace production experience," the report states. "The lack of a trained and qualified workforce increases the risk that the contractor will continue to manufacture parts and components that do not adhere to NASA requirements and industry standards. [...]

[....] we found Boeing's quality management system at Michoud does not adhere to these standards or NASA requirements. NASA engages DCMA to conduct surveillance of Boeing's core and upper stage manufacturing efforts at Michoud, and when deficiencies in quality are found, DCMA issues Corrective Action Requests (CAR) to the contractor. CARs are labeled Level I through IV, with Level I the least serious deficiency. From September 2021 to September 2023, DCMA issued Boeing 71 Level I and II CARs, as well as a draft Level III CAR. According to DCMA officials, this is a high number of CARs for a space flight system at this stage in development and reflects a recurring and degraded state of product quality control. Boeing's process to address deficiencies to date has been ineffective, and the company has generally been nonresponsive in taking corrective actions when the same quality control issues reoccur.

Quality control issues at Michoud are largely due to the lack of a sufficient number of trained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing. To mitigate these challenges, Boeing provides training and work orders to its employees. Considering the significant quality control deficiencies at Michoud, we found these efforts to be inadequate. For example, during our visit to Michoud in April 2023, we observed a liquid oxygen fuel tank dome—a critical component of the SLS Core Stage 3—segregated and pending disposition on whether and how it can safely be used going forward due to welds that did not meet NASA specifications. According to NASA officials, the welding issues arose due to Boeing's inexperienced technicians and inadequate work order planning and supervision. The lack of a trained and qualified workforce increases the risk that Boeing will continue to manufacture parts and components that do not adhere to
NASA requirements and industry standards,

Report Slams Boeing For Bad Work, But Not Over The Starliner

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

[...] This is a high-stakes program. The first three Block 1 SLS systems will put US crews on the Moon for the first time in half a century and, if all goes well, enable creation of a base on our sole natural satellite.

If the program misses its schedule, Boeing won't be the only one wearing blame.

The report notes that NASA has changed made decisions that delayed the program and helped it to sail beyond initial budgets.

The OIG suggests four ways to improve matters:

  1. Establish a training program for Boeing contractors to ensure quality control is up to standard;
  2. Implement financial penalties for Boeing if it fails to meet quality standards;
  3. Draw up a detailed timeline for the development of EUS and ensure it is followed;
  4. Work with the Defense Contract Management Agency to ensure compliance.

NASA agreed with three of those points, but is unwilling to charge Boeing if the contractor fails to meet quality standards.

"NASA non-concurs. NASA interprets this recommendation to be directing NASA to institute penalties outside the bounds of the contract," the agency argued. "Instituting financial penalties outside the bounds of the contract subverts the control process of the contract."

Maybe someone at NASA should ask Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams – the two Boeing Starliner test pilots who might be stuck in space until next year – how they feel about that.

The report comes at an unfortunate time for Boeing's new CEO Kelly Ortberg, who started work on Thursday. Ortberg, a qualified mechanical engineer who has spent most of his life in aerospace, was lured out of retirement at 64 to fix Boeing's corporate problems. His first move was to return Boeing's corporate headquarters to Seattle and spend his first day on the production floor speaking with staff.

[...] "It also means meeting our commitments to each other and working collaboratively across Boeing to meet our goals. People's lives depend on what we do every day, and we must keep that top of mind with every decision we make."

The CEO is apparently quite popular at Boeing, as his management style elevates engineering.


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

posted by janrinok on Sunday August 11, @11:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the somebody-else's-computer dept.

Experts Uncover Severe AWS Flaws Leading to RCE, Data Theft, and Full-Service Takeovers:

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered multiple critical flaws in Amazon Web Services (AWS) offerings that, if successfully exploited, could result in serious consequences.

"The impact of these vulnerabilities range between remote code execution (RCE), full-service user takeover (which might provide powerful administrative access), manipulation of AI modules, exposing sensitive data, data exfiltration and denial of service," cloud security firm Aqua said in a detailed report shared with The Hacker News.

Following responsible disclosure in February 2024, Amazon addressed the shortcomings over several months from March to June. The findings were presented at Black Hat USA 2024.

Central to the issue, dubbed Bucket Monopoly, is an attack vector referred to as Shadow Resource, which, in this case, refers to the automatic creation of an AWS S3 bucket when using services like CloudFormation, Glue, EMR, SageMaker, ServiceCatalog, and CodeStar.

The S3 bucket name created in this manner is both unique and follows a predefined naming convention ("cf-templates-{Hash}-{Region}"). An attacker could take advantage of this behavior to set up buckets in unused AWS regions and wait for a legitimate AWS customer to use one of the susceptible services to gain covert access to the contents of the S3 bucket.

Based on the permissions granted to the adversary-controlled S3 bucket, the approach could be used to escalate to trigger a DoS condition, or execute code, manipulate or steal data, and even gain full control over the victim account without the user's knowledge.

To maximize their chances of success, using Bucket Monopoly, attackers can create unclaimed buckets in advance in all available regions and store malicious code in the bucket. When the targeted organization enables one of the vulnerable services in a new region for the first time, the malicious code will be unknowingly executed, potentially resulting in the creation of an admin user that can grant control to the attackers.

However, it's important to consider that the attacker will have to wait for the victim to deploy a new CloudFormation stack in a new region for the first time to successfully launch the attack. Modifying the CloudFormation template file in the S3 bucket to create a rogue admin user also depends on whether the victim account has permission to manage IAM roles.

Aqua said it found five other AWS services that rely on a similar naming methodology for the S3 buckets – {Service Prefix}-{AWS Account ID}-{Region} – thereby exposing them to Shadow Resource attacks and ultimately permitting a threat actor to escalate privileges and perform malicious actions, including DoS, information disclosure, data manipulation, and arbitrary code execution -

  • AWS Glue: aws-glue-assets-{Account-ID}-{Region}
  • AWS Elastic MapReduce (EMR): aws-emr-studio -{Account-ID}-{Region}
  • AWS SageMaker: sagemaker-{Region}-{Account-ID}
  • AWS CodeStar: aws-codestar-{Region}-{Account-ID}
  • AWS Service Catalog: cf-templates-{Hash}-{Region}

The company also noted that AWS account IDs should be considered a secret, contrary to what Amazon states in its documentation, as they could be used to stage similar attacks.

"This attack vector affects not only AWS services but also many open-source projects used by organizations to deploy resources in their AWS environments," Aqua said. "Many open-source projects create S3 buckets automatically as part of their functionality or instruct their users to deploy S3 buckets."

"Instead of using predictable or static identifiers in the bucket name, it is advisable to generate a unique hash or a random identifier for each region and account, incorporating this value into the S3 bucket name. This approach helps protect against attackers claiming your bucket prematurely."

See also:


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Sunday August 11, @05:41AM   Printer-friendly

Three part story. And, as it is on Medium (yuck), archive links are provided should the Medium links go hidden or disappear:

Part 1: The Cocainemaker, Reefer Madness, and the Vice-President of The Coca-Cola Company
https://rmcortes.medium.com/the-cocainemaker-reefer-madness-and-the-vice-president-of-the-coca-cola-company-e1b39e65b63c#.b43mv3bzh
Archive Link: https://archive.is/rdUt2

Part 2: How Coca-Cola Changed the World for Coca
https://rmcortes.medium.com/how-coke-changed-the-world-for-coca-95ccec58193b#.xa0rcxrdi
Archive link: https://archive.is/gbQeo

Part 3: I Wasn't the First Person to Find the NJ Cocaine Factory
https://rmcortes.medium.com/i-wasnt-the-first-to-find-the-nj-cocaine-factory-5f37aed74776
Archive link: https://archive.is/XypPx

In 1886, a pharmacist named Dr. John Pemberton mixed extract of the green coca leaf — containing the recently discovered marvel of cocaine — with the caffeine kick of West African kola nuts, making a "Brain Workers' Panacea" tonic called Coca-Cola.

Touted to relieve mental and physical exhaustion, "Coke" arrived alongside a wave of cocaine products advertised to ease toothaches and labor pains. Cocaine was said to cure fatigue, nervousness, impotence, even addiction to morphine.

But the medical miracle soon changed into the story of a crime epidemic. Cocaine's addictive properties were discovered and its increased availability fueled racial fears: cocaine made Negroes insane and murderous; Jewish doctors were identified as its peddlers.

The United States began prohibition of coca leaf, along with the cocaine it produces, with the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914.


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Sunday August 11, @12:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-guess-it's-back-to-crypto dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Amid fears of a US recession, there seems to be growing impatience among investors when it comes to the massive investment Big Tech has made into their AI products.

It has been a tough time for Big Tech in the stock market, as some of the biggest companies in the world have shed hundreds of billions in value after their latest earnings failed to meet the growing demands of investors.

[...] The value of some of these companies has soared in recent years, thanks to the major focus on AI technology, which has been a hot topic in the tech industry. But recent shifts in the stock market meant these companies were on track to lose roughly $800bn in value, Reuters reports.

The reason for the plunge is tied to fears of a potential recession in the US. For example, recent jobs data for the country was worse than expected. These concerns have caused a knock-on effect, with stock markets facing turmoil in Europe, Japan and Ireland.

But another concern among investors is the heavy financing many of these companies have put in AI technology, with the payoff coming too slowly for some Wall Street investors. This is despite the major boost this focus has had – Microsoft and Nvidia in particular saw their valuations grow massively over the past couple of years thanks to the recent AI boom.

[...] In a recent letter from activist investor group Elliot Management referenced by the Financial Times, the group described AI as overrated and claimed Nvidia is “in bubble land”.

One looming concern in the AI sector is the future of OpenAI, one of the key sparks of the generative AI hype since the launch of its product ChatGPT. Microsoft has been a major investor into OpenAI. But recent reports suggest OpenAI is burning through billions of dollars to stay afloat.


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Saturday August 10, @08:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-enough-juice dept.

Battery maker LG Energy Solution's second-quarter profit dropped 58% year-on-year to 195.3 billion won ($141m), the company said on Monday (8 July), as demand for electric vehicles (EVs) slows:

The South Korean-based battery company also saw its revenue drop 30% to 6.2 trillion won ($4.4bn).

The company also faces increased competition from its Chinese rivals, which has weakened its share of the market.

Car manufacturers have been calling for battery companies to create cheaper cells to lower EV prices, which has applied pressure to companies like LG Energy.

This led to LG Energy's chief technology officer, Kim Je-Young, stating that the company would commercialise dry-coating technology by 2028, a technology which makes battery manufacturing cheaper and more efficient.

Battery maker SK On declares 'emergency' as EV sales disappoint. Supplier to Ford and Volkswagen may have to be rescued by its South Korean parent as losses mount:

A leading South Korean producer of electric vehicle batteries has declared itself in crisis as its customers struggle with disappointing EV sales in Europe and the US.

SK On, the world's fourth-largest EV battery maker behind Chinese giants CATL and BYD and South Korean rival LG Energy Solution, has recorded losses for 10 consecutive quarters since being spun off by its parent company in 2021. Its net debt has increased more than fivefold, from Won2.9tn ($2.1bn) to Won15.6tn over the same period, as western EV sales have fallen far short of its expectations.

With losses snowballing, chief executive Lee Seok-hee announced a series of cost-cutting and working practice measures last Monday, describing them as a state of "emergency management".

[...] SK On has made a series of aggressive investments in the US and Europe in recent years, betting on a widely predicted boom in demand for EVs. However, it has since announced extended lay-offs for workers at its plant in the US state of Georgia and delayed launching a second plant in Kentucky, a joint venture with its principal US customer Ford.

Previously:


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Saturday August 10, @03:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the Not-just-for-sweaters dept.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new type of 3D printer that knits 3-dimensional solid objects, according to a new paper published in ACM Transactions on Graphics. From the introduction:

Unlike standard knitting, which makes hollow surfaces, solid knitting makes dense volumes by layering knit sheets—much as 3D printers layer plastic sheets. We envision a future where everyday objects like furniture or shoes—including soles—can be knit as one piece. Since the layers are topologically intertwined during fabrication, solid dense volume knitting requires no adhesives, allowing fabricated objects to be unraveled easily to recover the constituent yarn

Summary Article: https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/solid-knitting-a-different-spin-on-3d-printing-that-can-make-furniture-out-of-yarn/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVRXWlpiyAc
Research:
  Yuichi Hirose, Mark Gillespie, Angelica M. Bonilla Fominaya, and James McCann. 2024. Solid Knitting. ACM Trans. Graph. 43, 4 (July 2024)
  https://doi.org/10.1145/3658123
Alternate source (PDF): https://markjgillespie.com/Research/solid-knitting/SolidKnitting.pdf

This begs the question[sic], "Would you download a couch?"


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Saturday August 10, @10:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-couldn't-make-this-stuff-up dept.

Elon sues advertisers for boycotting X

The Verge has a better perspective:

X files antitrust lawsuit against advertisers over 'illegal boycott'

X is suing a group of major advertisers over accusations that they held an "illegal boycott" against the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, X claims Unilever, Mars, CVS, Ørsted, and dozens of other brands conspired to "collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue" through a World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) industry initiative.

To join the WFA's initiative, called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), companies must agree to withhold advertising from social platforms that aren't compliant with the organization's safety standards. X alleges GARM "organized an advertiser boycott of Twitter" to coerce the company into following the initiative's safety standards. The lawsuit is being filed despite X announcing that it was "excited" to rejoin GARM last month.

"The evidence and facts are on our side," X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a video posted to X. "They conspired to boycott X, which threatens our ability to thrive in the future. That puts your global Town Square — the one place that you can express yourself freely and openly — at long-term risk."

[...] It's not clear how well X's lawsuit will fare in court because, as pointed out by Techdirt, the ability to choose where to advertise is protected under the First Amendment. The ad tech watchdog group Check My Ads similarly states that advertisers have the right "to not send money to a platform that promotes hate and conspiracies."

Elon sues advertisers for boycotting X

Elon Musk sues Unilever and Mars over X 'boycott'

X claims they have deprived it of "billions of dollars" in revenue.

Legal experts say the case is unlikely to succeed as any collusion or agreement between companies will be hard to prove.

Elon Musk can't force advertisers to spend

[...] Musk's lawsuit is based on a recent investigation of Garm led by the judiciary committee of the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives. It was filed in an obscure federal court branch in Texas known for a particular conservative judge. X's lawyer is a well-known rightwing legal figure, not a big national law firm.

[...] X's business issues are real enough. According to the New York Times, X ad revenue in the US has collapsed to $114mn in a recent quarter. Total group global revenue for Twitter in 2021 was $5bn. The company has a $13bn debt pile where annual interest expense is well above $1bn.

[...] Advertisers decided that, since there were only a handful of dominant social networks, they needed to band together in order to enforce standards. Garm and the companies will have to show that while they perhaps co-ordinated on some matters, there was nothing binding about their alliance when it came to economic decisions. It would be decidedly odd for any company to surrender their autonomy to a trade association. Musk's burden is higher, explaining exactly why profit-seeking companies would irrationally avoid his product.

Other links:

Al-Jazeera: Musk declares 'war' on advertisers as X sues ad alliance, companies

The Guardian: Musk's X sues Unilever, Mars and CVS over 'massive advertiser boycott'

The Slate


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

posted by martyb on Saturday August 10, @06:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the mail-merge dept.

As you all know, I [Robert J. Sawyer] continue to use WordStar for DOS 7.0 as my word-processing program. It was last updated in December 1992, and the company that made it has been defunct for decades; the program is abandonware.

There was no proper archive of WordStar for DOS 7.0 available online, so I decided to create one. I've put weeks of work into this. Included are not only full installs of the program (as well as images of the installation disks), but also plug-and-play solutions for running WordStar for DOS 7.0 under Windows, and also complete full-text-searchable PDF versions of all seven manuals that came with WordStar — over a thousand pages of documentation.

I've also included lots of my own explanations on how to use and customize WordStar, many WordStar-related utility programs, and numerous other goodies.

Carolyn Clink kindly did the scanning of the manuals. When she was done, I said to her, "Countless WordStar users will thank you." She replied, "Oh, I think I can count them." ;)

And it's true that the WordStar die-hard community is pretty small these days (George R.R. Martin still uses the even-older WordStar 4.0). But the program has been a big part of my career — not only did I write all 25 of my novels and almost all of my short stories with it (a few date back to the typewriter era), I also in my earlier freelance days wrote hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles with WordStar.

I wanted there to be a monument to this, the finest word-processing program ever created. As Anne Rice said, "WordStar was magnificent. I loved it. It was logical, beautiful, perfect. Compared to it, Microsoft Word is pure madness."

And, I suppose I'm thinking a bit about my legacy, too. Once I'm gone, my literary estate will need to deal with my electronic manuscripts, and my executor should be able to work with them on her own computer rather than just mine. Also, there are countless other writers who are no longer with us who wrote with WordStar, including Arthur C. Clarke; I hope this archive I've created will be of use to scholars.

Anyone can have WordStar for DOS 7.0 up and running on a Windows computer in a matter of minutes using this archive; with just a little bit more work, WordStar for DOS 7.0 also runs just fine under Linux and Mac OS.

Here's the link to the full 680-megabyte archive:

https://sfwriter.com/ws7.htm

WordStar was first introduced in 1978 and the final release — WordStar for DOS 7.0 Rev. D — came out in December 1992. The program has never been updated since, and the company that made it has been defunct for decades; the program is abandonware.

The initial versions were for CP/M on the 8080 and Zilog Z80 and the MS-DOS version runs under an MS-DOS emulator, such as DOSBox. WordStar 7 was released in 1992 and was the final version of the famous editor. WordStar is still favored by many the famous Arthur C Clarke, Anne Rice, George R R Martin and many others.

Previously:
(2020) Old Fart's Quiz [Updated]
(2014) Game of Thrones Author Writes on a DOS System


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Saturday August 10, @01:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the hardware dept.

Raspberry Pi have released the small Pico 2 as an improvement to the original Pico: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-2-our-new-5-microcontroller-board-on-sale-now/.

The small single board computer looks virtually unchanged from its predecessor. All improvement is in a new microcontroller unit, the RP2350, which replaces the old RP2040. Most notable features are twice the memory, low power sleep options, and two added Risc-V cores. The two ARM cores are still there, but upgraded to Cortex-M33 from M0+.

Unlike the RP2040, the new MCU is available in different packages, with more pins and flash memory in-package. Top of the line will be the RP2354B with 80 pins and 2MB integrated flash.

(Ed note: My first computer ran at 1 MHz and had only 4K bytes of memory. We've come a long way since then! --MartyB)! )


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday August 09, @09:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the surprise-surprise-surprise dept.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/08/google-and-meta-ignored-their-own-rules-in-secret-teen-targeting-ad-deals/

Google and Meta made a secret deal to target advertisements for Instagram to teenagers on YouTube, skirting the search company's own rules for how minors are treated online.

According to documents seen by the Financial Times and people familiar with the matter, Google worked on a marketing project for Meta that was designed to target 13- to 17-year-old YouTube users with adverts that promoted its rival's photo and video app.

[...] The companies worked with Spark Foundry, a US subsidiary of French advertising giant Publicis, to launch the pilot marketing program in Canada between February and April this year, according to the people and documents seen by the Financial Times.

Due to its perceived success, it was then trialed in the US in May. The companies had planned to expand it further, to international markets and to promote other Meta apps such as Facebook, people familiar with the matter said.

[...] When contacted by the FT, Google initiated an investigation into the allegations. The project has now been canceled, a person familiar with the decision said.

Google said: "We prohibit ads being personalized to people under-18, period. These policies go well beyond what is required and are supported by technical safeguards. We've confirmed that these safeguards worked properly here" because no registered YouTube users known to be under 18 were directly targeted by the company.

However, Google did not deny using the "unknown" loophole, adding: "We'll also be taking additional action to reinforce with sales representatives that they must not help advertisers or agencies run campaigns attempting to work around our policies."

[...] "We've been open about marketing our apps to young people as a place for them to connect with friends, find community, and discover their interests," Meta said.

Spark Foundry did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

[...] Meta has long faced scrutiny for its policies on minors. It is being sued by 33 states accusing it of deploying 'manipulative' practices toward young users, which it denies. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is also seeking to ban Meta from making money from teen audiences as part of an update to an existing privacy settlement, which the company is challenging in court.

[...] Spark was working on behalf of the Meta marketing data science team and was tasked with getting more "Gen Z" customers to download Instagram, which has been losing users to rival apps, in particular TikTok, internal documents show.

[...] On its website, Google says the "unknown" group "refers to people whose age, gender, parental status or household income we haven't identified." But staff at the Internet group had thousands of data points on everything from users' location via phone masts to their app downloads and activity online. This allowed them to determine with a high degree of confidence that those in the "unknown" group included many younger users, in particular under-18s.

Turning off other age groups for which they had demographic data left only the unknown group, with its high proportion of minors and children: it was described as a way of "hacking" the audience safeguards in their system, one of the people said.

[...] During the pitching process, another email from Spark in late 2023 asked Google to provide Meta with "platform-specific data and insights into teen behavior." This would "enable us to tailor and refine our media tactics, messaging and creative execution," it read.

As part of its pitch, Google also boasted of its "really impressive" usage by 13- to 17-year-olds, handily outstripping daily engagement on TikTok and Instagram, documents show.

Google won the mandate from Spark, and the teams on both sides took precautions, banning any direct reference to the age range in writing, one of the people said. Staff used euphemisms in presentations, such as slides with only the words "embrace the unknown," according to documents reviewed by the FT.


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posted by janrinok on Friday August 09, @04:14PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Each August, the Perseid meteor shower provides a breathtaking sight of bright meteors and fireballs, best viewed in the early hours of August 12. These meteors, hitting atmospheric speeds up to 132,000 mph, are part of a display originating from Comet Swift-Tuttle.

They may not attract as much attention as last month’s daylight fireball over New York City, but stargazers can still anticipate seeing some shooting stars with the upcoming Perseid meteor shower. Caused by Earth passing through trails of debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle, the shower has become famous over the centuries because of its consistent display of celestial fireworks.

“The Perseids is the best annual meteor shower for the casual stargazer,” said Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “Not only is the shower rich in bright meteors and fireballs – No. 1 in fact – it also peaks in mid-August when the weather is still warm and comfortable. This year, the Perseid maximum will occur on the night of August 11 and pre-dawn hours of August 12. You’ll start seeing meteors from the shower around 11 p.m. local time and the rates will increase until dawn. If you miss the night of the 11th, you will also be able to see quite a few on the night of the 12th between those times.”

The best way to see the Perseids is to find the darkest possible sky and visit between midnight and dawn on the morning of August 12. Allow about 45 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the dark. Lie on your back and look straight up. Avoid looking at cell phones or tablets because their bright screens ruin night vision and take your eyes off the sky.

Perseid meteors travel at the blistering speed of 132,000 mph – or 500 times faster than the fastest car in the world. At that speed, even a smidgen of dust makes a vivid streak of light when it collides with Earth’s atmosphere. Peak temperatures can exceed 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit as they speed across the sky. The Perseids pose no danger to people on the ground as practically all burn up 60 miles above our planet.

The first Perseid captured by NASA’s All Sky Meteor Camera Network was recorded at 9:48 p.m. EDT on July 23. The meteor – about as bright as the planet Jupiter, so not quite bright enough to be considered a fireball – was caused by a piece of Comet Swift-Tuttle about 5 millimeters in diameter entering the atmosphere over the Atlantic and burning up 66 miles above St. Cloud, Florida, just south of Orlando.

It wasn’t part of the Perseids, but a rare daylight fireball streaked across the sky over New York City at 11:15 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, July 16. The event gained national attention and was reported in media outlets across the U.S.

The fireball, defined as a meteor brighter than the planet Venus, is estimated to have soared over New York City before traversing a short path southwest and disintegrating about 31 miles above Mountainside, New Jersey. Cooke said the meteor was likely about 1 foot in diameter, which would have made the rock bright enough to see during the day. Seeing a meteor of this size is rarer than catching sight of the smaller particles a few millimeters in size typically seen in the night sky.

“To see one in the daytime over a populated area like New York is fairly rare,” Cooke said during an interview with ABC 7 in New York.

The Meteoroid Environments Office studies meteoroids in space so that NASA can protect our nation’s satellites, spacecraft and even astronauts aboard the International Space Station from these bits of tiny space debris.


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posted by janrinok on Friday August 09, @11:28AM   Printer-friendly

Common blood thinner heparin shows promise as cobra bite antidote:

Scientists at the University of Sydney and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine have made a remarkable discovery: a commonly-used blood thinner, heparin, can be repurposed as an inexpensive antidote for cobra venom.

Cobras kill thousands of people a year worldwide and perhaps a hundred thousand more are seriously maimed by necrosis—the death of body tissue and cells—caused by the venom, which can lead to amputation.

Current antivenom treatment is expensive and does not effectively treat the necrosis of the flesh where the bite occurs.

"Our discovery could drastically reduce the terrible injuries from necrosis caused by cobra bites—and it might also slow the venom, which could improve survival rates," said Professor Greg Neely, a corresponding author of the study from the Charles Perkins Center and Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney.

Using CRISPR gene-editing technology to identify ways to block cobra venom, the team, which consisted of scientists based in Australia, Canada, Costa Rica and the UK, successfully repurposed heparin (a common blood thinner) and related drugs and showed they can stop the necrosis caused by cobra bites.

The research is published on the front cover of Science Translational Medicine.

Ph.D. student and lead author, Tian Du, also from the University of Sydney, said, "Heparin is inexpensive, ubiquitous and a World Health Organization-listed Essential Medicine. After successful human trials, it could be rolled out relatively quickly to become a cheap, safe and effective drug for treating cobra bites."

The team used CRISPR to find the human genes that cobra venom needs to cause necrosis that kills the flesh around the bite. One of the required venom targets are enzymes needed to produce the related molecules heparan and heparin, which many human and animal cells produce.

Heparan is on the cell surface and heparin is released during an immune response. Their similar structure means the venom can bind to both. The team used this knowledge to make an antidote that can stop necrosis in human cells and mice.

Unlike current antivenoms for cobra bites, which are 19th century technologies, the heparinoid drugs act as a 'decoy' antidote. By flooding the bite site with 'decoy' heparin sulfate or related heparinoid molecules, the antidote can bind to and neutralize the toxins within the venom that cause tissue damage.

Joint corresponding author, Professor Nicholas Casewell, Head of the Center for Snakebite Research & Interventions at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said, "Snakebites remain the deadliest of the neglected tropical diseases, with its burden landing overwhelmingly on rural communities in low- and middle-income countries.

"Our findings are exciting because current antivenoms are largely ineffective against severe local envenoming, which involves painful progressive swelling, blistering and/or tissue necrosis around the bite site. This can lead to loss of limb function, amputation and lifelong disability."

Snakebites kill up to 138,000 people a year, with 400,000 more experiencing long-term consequences of the bite. While the number affected by cobras is unclear, in some parts of India and Africa, cobra species account for most snakebite incidents.

The World Health Organization has identified snakebite as a priority in its program for tackling neglected tropical diseases. It has announced an ambitious goal of reducing the global burden of snakebite in half by 2030.

Reference:
Tian Y. Du, et. al, Molecular dissection of cobra venom highlights heparinoids as an antidote for spitting cobra envenoming, Science Translational Medicine, 17 Jul 2024, Vol 16, Issue 756, (DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adk4802)


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posted by janrinok on Friday August 09, @06:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the evolution-of-facepalm dept.

Study Finds Faces Evolve to Match Names Over Time

The researchers sought to determine whether parents choose a baby name based on what seems fitting for the baby's appearance, or if the process is the other way around — that, over the years, the individual's facial appearance changes to match the name given to them by their parents.

A new study reveals that a person's face tends to evolve to suit their name, demonstrating the profound impact of social expectations. The research showed that adults' faces could be matched to their names with high accuracy, while children's faces could not.

Machine learning also found significant similarities among adults with the same name. This effect, known as a self-fulfilling prophecy, suggests that social constructs can influence physical appearance over time.

Key Facts:

  • Adults' faces evolve to match their names due to social expectations.
  • Children's faces do not show the same name-based similarities as adults.
  • The study used both human participants and machine learning to confirm findings.

Reference:
Yonat Zwebner, et. al., "Can names shape facial appearance?", PNAS, July 15, 2024, 121 (30) e24053341 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2405334121


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Friday August 09, @01:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the stop-it dept.

https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/a-completely-different-kind-of-disc-brake-1949-chrysler/

In 1949, the Chrysler Corporation introduced a new disc brake system, but it was nothing like the disc brakes we know today. Here's how it worked.

...

As we can see, the Ausco Lambert bears no similarity to the caliper-type disc brakes developed for aircraft in the 1940s, or those later adopted by Crosley, Dunlop, and ultimately the entire auto industry. In its basic configuration, the Lambert design sort of resembles the familiar clutch-disc and pressure-plate arrangment for a conventional manual transmission (as do the Milan and Kinmont brakes) but there are some important differences there, too.


Original Submission