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AnonTechie writes:

Station claims it's visionary, ex-employees claim it's cynical; reality appears way more fiscal

A Polish radio station has ditched its on-air talent for AI in what its editor-in-chief calls an experiment on the effect of AI in society, though it looks like a bid to save cash.

OFF Radio Krakow, an online and DAB+ subsidiary of the larger Radio Krakow station, announced this week that it was going all-in on AI, with new shows hosted by a trio of Gen Z AI talking heads, "Emi," "Kuba," and "Alex," all with their own biographies and personalities "created by journalists," according to the station.

Stop us if this sounds familiar: "The content they [the AI hosts] deliver is prepared by real journalists who use artificial intelligence tools for this purpose," OFF editor-in-chief Marcin Pulit wrote in the announcement. "After the text is generated, it is checked and verified by journalists and then processed into sound."

The same goes for written stories on the site, Pulit said, and even musical selections the AI hosts will play during their once-a-week "authorial" music broadcast.

[Source]: The Register

Original Submission

NotSanguine writes:

Dan Goodin over at Ars Technica is reporting on a company called Babel Street and its Location X program.

From the article:

You likely have never heard of Babel Street or Location X, but chances are good that they know a lot about you and anyone else you know who keeps a phone nearby around the clock.

Reston, Virginia-located Babel Street is the little-known firm behind Location X, a service with the capability to track the locations of hundreds of millions of phone users over sustained periods of time. Ostensibly, Babel Street limits the use of the service to personnel and contractors of US government law enforcement agencies, including state entities. Despite the restriction, an individual working on behalf of a company that helps people remove their personal information from consumer data broker databases recently was able to obtain a two-week free trial by (truthfully) telling Babel Street he was considering performing contracting work for a government agency in the future.

Tracking locations at scale

KrebsOnSecurity, one of five news outlets that obtained access to the data produced during the trial, said that one capability of Location X is the ability to draw a line between two states or other locations—or a shape around a building, street block, or entire city—and see a historical record of Internet-connected devices that traversed those boundaries.
[...]
404 Media, another outlet given access to the data, reported that the trove allowed a reporter to zoom in on the parking lot of an abortion clinic in Florida and observe more than 700 red dots, each representing a phone that had recently visited the clinic. Location X then allowed the reporter to trace the movements of one specific device.

That device—and by extension, the person carrying it—began the journey in mid-June from a residence in Alabama. The person passed by a Lowe's Home Improvement store, drove on a highway, visited a church, crossed into Florida, and finally stopped at the clinic where the phone indicates the person stayed for two hours before leaving and returning to Alabama. The data tracked the phone as having visited the clinic only once.

The technology making this vast data collection possible is, of course, tracking mechanisms built into Android and iOS and the apps that run on those operating systems. By default, Android assigns a unique ad ID to each device and makes it available to any app that has location permissions. iOS, by contrast, keeps its "Identifier for Advertisers" tracker private, but gives each installed app the opportunity to request access to it.

Some apps are given permission to access a phone's location and then sell the device's location to consumer data brokers. The data can also be made available through the web ad ecosystem. While an ad-supported page loads, the advertising network holds an auction in real time to sell a personalized ad to the highest bidder. A key piece of information bidders use to set a price is—you guessed it—the location of the device running the browser. Advertisers generate additional revenue by selling that history to the likes of Location X provider Babel Street.

fleg writes:

From The Guardian...

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/oct/24/how-one-engineer-beat-the-ban-on-home-computers-in-socialist-yugoslavia

"Very few Yugoslavians had access to computers in the early 1980s: they were mostly the preserve of large institutions or companies. Importing home computers like the Commodore 64 was not only expensive, but also legally impossible, thanks to a law that restricted regular citizens from importing individual goods that were worth more than 50 Deutsche Marks (the Commodore 64 cost over 1,000 Deutsche Marks at launch). Even if someone in Yugoslavia could afford the latest home computers, they would have to resort to smuggling.

In 1983, engineer Vojislav "Voja" Antonić was becoming more and more frustrated with the senseless Yugoslavian import laws.

Antonić was pondering this while on holiday with his wife in Risan in Montenegro in 1983. "I was thinking how would it be possible to make the simplest and cheapest possible computer," says Antonić. "As a way to amuse myself in my free time. That's it. Everyone thinks it is an interesting story, but really I was just bored!" He wondered whether it would be possible to make a computer without a graphics chip – or a "video controller" as they were commonly known at the time.

Instead of having a separate graphics chip, Antonić thought he could use part of the CPU to generate a video signal, and then replicate some of the other video functions using software. It would mean sacrificing processing power, but in principle it was possible, and it would make the computer much cheaper."

And the Galaksija (Galaxy) was born.

Original Submission

deganee writes:

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/german-air-taxi-maker-liliums-units-file-insolvency-shares-plunge-2024-10-24/:

German air-taxi developer Lilium said on Thursday two of its subsidiaries in the country have decided to file for insolvency following unsuccessful talks with state and federal governments to solve its cash crisis.

The company's U.S.-listed shares fell 57% to 23 cents after the subsidiaries - Lilium GmbH and Lilium eAircraft GmbH - told the parent they are over-indebted and will be unable to pay debts over the coming days.

Lilium is now "reviewing whether there are grounds for its own insolvency as well," it said in a regulatory filing.

The company, among a handful of air-taxi makers that are seeking to upend urban travel, was staring at a cash crunch as it is still developing aircraft that is yet to receive approval to carry passengers.

Lilium had asked the German federal government to guarantee 50 million euros ($54 million) of a contemplated 100 million euro convertible loan from KfW, the German state-owned development bank.

But the company received indications that the federal government would not approve it, Lilium said. Talks with Bavaria, where Lilium is based, for guarantee of at least 50 million euros have not yielded an agreement so far.

The filing for insolvency in Germany could result in the company's ordinary shares being delisted from the Nasdaq, or having its shares suspended, Lilium said.

Founded in 2015, Lilium is targeting the regional transport market with a 250 kilometer-range (155 miles) jet that can carry up to six passengers, unlike many rivals which are mainly looking at shorter trips between cities and suburbs.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2024/1019/1476279-bram-stoker/

A long-lost story from Bram Stoker, the Irish author of one of the world's best known gothic horror stories 'Dracula', has been found in Dublin.

In a remarkable discovery, the short story by Stoker, has been unearthed 130 years after it was first printed.

The haunting tale, titled 'Gibbet Hill', was found in the 1890 Christmas supplement of the Dublin Daily Express.

It is a dark story of a man travelling through the English countryside, who comes across a haunting story involving murders, hangings and demonic and malevolent children.

It's almost as if Halloween was upon us soon ... oh right.

If it was printed, and then forgotten about (or lost) for 130 years. How good can it really be? This is around the time he also wrote 'Dracula'. Considering it was a bit of a hit it seems odd that his other writing was then lost. Did they work contrary to how writers work today that if they make one hit then all their other writings become "gold" and are reprinted or rereleased etc etc.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/212-million-contract-will-finally-get-san-francisco-trains-off-floppy-disks/

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) board has agreed to spend $212 million to get its Muni Metro light rail off floppy disks.

The Muni Metro's Automatic Train Control System (ATCS) has required 5¼-inch floppy disks since 1998, when it was installed at San Francisco's Market Street subway station. The system uses three floppy disks for loading DOS software that controls the system's central servers.
[...]
After starting initial planning in 2018, the SFMTA originally expected to move to a floppy-disk-free train control system by 2028. But with COVID-19 preventing work for 18 months, the estimated completion date was delayed.

On October 15, the SFMTA moved closer to ditching floppies when its board approved a contract with Hitachi Rail for implementing a new train control system that doesn't use floppy disks, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
[...]
Further illustrating the light rail's dated tech, the current ATCS was designed to last 20 to 25 years, meaning its expected expiration date was in 2023. The system still works fine, but the risk of floppy disk data degradation and challenges in maintaining expertise in 1990s programming languages have further encouraged the SFMTA to seek upgrades.
[...]
The SFMTA plans to spend $700 million (including the $212 million Hitachi contract) to overhaul the light rail's control system. This includes replacing the loop cable system for sending data across the servers and trains. The cables are said to be a more pressing concern than the use of floppy disks. The aging cables are fragile, with "less bandwidth than an old AOL dial-up modem," Roccaforte previously told Ars.
[...]
The SFMTA's website says that the current estimated completion date for the complete overhaul is "2033/2034."
[...]
Various other organizations have also been slow to ditch the dated storage format, including Japan, which only stopped using floppy disks in governmental systems in June, and the German navy, which is still trying to figure out a replacement for 8-inch floppies.

Snotnose writes:

This isn't really tech-centric but, sadly, it reflects on the times. A Texas board has declared a non-fiction book as fiction so it can be banned.

[...] this new twist belongs to one county in Texas, which has given certain people the power to unilaterally decide what is or isn't factual.

• [A] decision made this month in a county near Houston left us stunned. The Montgomery County Commissioners Court ordered librarians there to reclassify the nonfiction children's book "Colonization and the Wampanoag Story" as fiction.

• This reclassification decision is a consequence of a contentious policy change in March. Right-wing activists pressured the Montgomery County Commissioners Court to remove librarians from the review process for challenged children's, young adult and parenting books.

• [...] Shortly thereafter, the newly formed Montgomery County "Citizens Review Committee" reclassified "Colonization and the Wampanoag Story" as fiction. The committee reviewed the book in a closed meeting — all its meetings are closed to the public — and it offered no explanation for its decision. The new policy does not allow decisions made by the Citizens Review Committee to be appealed.

That's how you start erasing your own history. You take the librarians out of the equation. Next, you remove the public from the conversation by making these discussions private. Then you give only the citizens you want to hear from — including any non-residents who want to challenge content they don't like — the only invitation to the discussion: the blanket permission to challenge books and/or their classifications. Then you seal it with a court order and pretend this is just citizens protecting each other, rather than the government engaging in censorship on behalf of people who love censorship as long as it only silences the people they don't like.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

The bad news continues as the rental giant tries to untangle itself from its failed electric vehicle strategy:

Ryan Brinkman, automotive equity research analyst with J.P. Morgan, downgraded Hertz Global Holdings from neutral to underweight Monday.

The assessment, Seeking Alpha reports, comes as the company tries to reverse course from its failed EV strategy, which has cost the company as much as $1 billion. The losses stem from the vehicle's high depreciation rates and high collision repair costs. The lack of spare parts for repairs is also undermining utilizations of the company's electric fleet.

As reported on Yahoo! News:

The challenges don't stop there. Hertz's heavy debt load is tying its hands, potentially forcing the company to navigate choppy waters without the lifeline of share buybacks. With used-vehicle prices on shaky ground and high refinancing costs, Hertz is bracing for more cash outflows. Throw in a recent adverse court ruling that resurrected litigation risks from its bankruptcy, and the financial landscape looks even more daunting. The path to stability isn't just steep; it's laden with obstacles.

Previously:

• Hertz is Selling 20,000 Electric Vehicles to Buy Gasoline Cars Instead
• Hertz to Purchase 175,000 General Motors EVs Over the Next Five Years
• Hertz Plans to Buy 65,000 EVs From Polestar Over Five Years

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

China's semiconductor industry is speeding up in response to US export controls, according to research by a specialist in intellectual property.

According to IP firm Mathys & Squire, semiconductor patent applications worldwide spiked by 22 percent, jumping from 66,416 in 2022-23 to 80,892 in 2023-24. Leading the charge is China, whose filings surged by 42 percent from 32,840 to 46,591, outstripping every other region.

Why the rush? In short, Washington's export controls. With restrictions cutting China off from the world's most advanced semiconductors and concerns of further tightening on the horizon, China's domestic chip sector is on a mission. Beijing has made it clear – the tech sector must innovate to avoid getting caught in the semiconductor dependency trap. Semiconductors have been pushed to the top of the tech priority list, and the results are showing up in the patent numbers.

"The US-China semiconductor rivalry is heating up," said Dr Edd Cavanna, partner at Mathys & Squire. "Export restrictions are pushing China to invest more in homegrown semiconductor R&D, and this is now reflected in their patent filings." China appears to be in a hurry to innovate its way around US sanctions and ensure its semiconductor sector isn't left trailing in the dust.

China is still very much playing catchup, with local designs trailing the bleeding edge by several years.

Chinese chip designer Loongson last week teased products it claimed will deliver the same performance as AMD and Intel products from five years ago. Its chairman, Hu Weiwu, reportedly told senior government figures that it had an upcoming 3B6600 desktop processor in the works that "can reach the performance of the x86 processor under the 7nm process."

And a teardown of Huawei's Pura 70 smartphone by an IC research firm earlier this year revealed the Chinese tech giant is relying on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp's HiSilicon Kirin 9010 processor, likely because US sanctions mean the Chinese company can't buy from other sources.

Rich writes:

About a dozen developers based in Russia have been removed in a commit by Greg Kroah-Hartman to the Linux Kernel MAINTAINERS file, Phoronix reports: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Russian-Linux-Maintainers-Drop. The reason given for the removal is vague: "Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements."

Controversial Linux VLogger Bryan Lunduke reports that this has happened due to US presidential executive order 14071, which sanctions IT collaborations with Russian residents (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5Ec5jrpLVk).

Linus himself backed the actions, The Register quotes him with "I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be *supporting* Russian aggression?" https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/23/linus_torvalds_affirms_expulsion_of/

This will likely have far reaching consequences, going vastly beyond the Linux kernel, with any FLOSS organization in the US or under direct US influence having to ban Russian contributors before the end of the year.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/peter-todd-in-hiding-after-being-unmasked-as-bitcoin-creator/

When Canadian developer Peter Todd found out that a new HBO documentary, Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, was set to identify him as Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, he was mostly just pissed. "This was clearly going to be a circus," Todd told WIRED in an email.
[...]
The mystery has proved all the more irresistible for the trove of bitcoin Satoshi is widely believed to have controlled, suspected to be worth many billions of dollars today. When the documentary was released on October 8, Todd joined a long line of alleged Satoshis.
[...]
Since the documentary aired, Todd has repeatedly and categorically denied that he created Bitcoin: "For the record, I am not Satoshi," he alleges. "I think Cullen made the Satoshi accusation for marketing. He needed a way to get attention for his film."
[...]
The search for the creator of Bitcoin has dragged into its orbit a colorful cast of characters, among them Hal Finney, recipient of the first ever bitcoin transaction; Adam Back, designer of a precursor technology cited in the Bitcoin white paper; and cryptographer Nick Szabo, to name just a few. Journalists at Newsweek, The New York Times, and WIRED, among others, have all taken stabs at solving the Satoshi riddle. But irrefutable proof has never been unearthed.
[...]
The case for Sassaman was first outlined in 2021 by Evan Hatch, founder of crypto gaming platform Worlds. Whenever speculation about Sassaman bubbles periodically to the surface, the spotlight is thrown on his widow, software developer Meredith Patterson, who believes the theory is unfounded.

"People used to be really fucking nosy and entitled. I'd get people writing me with a two-page list of dates and locations, asking where I was at such and such a time or place," says Patterson. "Where do you get off? A complete stranger walking up to a widow and trying to interrogate her. It's like, fuck off Sergeant Joe Friday."
[...]
"I was relieved for myself and my family that they named Peter Todd," says Patterson. "But I feel sorry for Peter Todd. Frankly, nobody deserves getting a target painted on their back."
[...]
Todd expects that "continued harassment by crazy people" will become the indefinite status quo. But he says the potential personal safety implications are his chief concern—and the reason he has gone into hiding.
[...]
Hoback sees things very differently. Though there have been cases where violent extortionists have targeted crypto holders, plenty of people have been unmasked as Satoshi before—and nothing terrible is known to have happened to them, he argues. "I think the idea that it puts their life [at risk] is a little overblown," says Hoback.

owl writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/lawsuit-city-cameras-make-it-impossible-to-drive-anywhere-without-being-tracked/

Police use of automated license-plate reader cameras is being challenged in a lawsuit alleging that the cameras enable warrantless surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The city of Norfolk, Virginia, was sued yesterday by plaintiffs represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public-interest law firm.

Norfolk, a city with about 238,000 residents, "has installed a network of cameras that make it functionally impossible for people to drive anywhere without having their movements tracked, photographed, and stored in an AI-assisted database that enables the warrantless surveillance of their every move. This civil rights lawsuit seeks to end this dragnet surveillance program," said the complaint filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Like many other cities, Norfolk uses cameras made by the company Flock Safety. A 404 Media article said Institute for Justice lawyer Robert Frommer "told 404 Media that the lawsuit could have easily been filed in any of the more than 5,000 communities where Flock is active, but that Norfolk made sense because the Fourth Circuit of Appeals—which Norfolk is part of—recently held that persistent, warrantless drone surveillance in Baltimore is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment in a case called Beautiful Struggle v Baltimore Police Department."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/10/effort-to-bring-back-the-tasmanian-tiger-builds-steam/

Colossal, the company founded to try to restore the mammoth to the Arctic tundra, has also decided to tackle a number of other species that have gone extinct relatively recently: the dodo and the thylacine. Because of significant differences in biology, not the least of which is the generation time of Proboscideans, these other efforts may reach many critical milestones well in advance of the work on mammoths.
[...]
Colossal has branched out from its original de-extinction mission to include efforts to keep species from ever needing its services. In the case of marsupial predators, the de-extinction effort is incorporating work that will benefit existing marsupial predators: generating resistance to the toxins found on the cane toad, an invasive species that has spread widely across Australia.
[...]
For the de-extinction process, the goal would be to ensure that the thylacine could survive in the presence of the cane toad. But Colossal has also begun a conservation effort, called the Colossal foundation, that aims to keep threatened species from needing its services in the future.
[...]
Colossal has obtained a nearly complete genome sequence from a thylacine sample that was preserved in ethanol a bit over a century ago. According to Pask, this sample contains both the short fragments typical of older DNA samples (typically just a few hundred base pairs long), but also some DNA molecules that were above 10,000 bases long. This allowed them to do both short- and long-read sequencing, leaving them with just 45 gaps in the total genome sequence, which the team expects to close shortly.
[...]
The final thing the company announced was that it was working on getting dunnart embryos to develop outside of the womb.
[...]
At this point, they've got immature neural cells and have started forming the cells that will go on to form muscles and the vertebrae. But many critical events need to happen in the remaining one-third of the pregnancy, and Colossal isn't ready to talk about what goes wrong to stop development here.
[...]
Hopefully, over time, the company will continue to submit some of its work to peer-reviewed journals.

In the meantime, the clear indications of progress suggest that some of the unique features of the marsupials—relatively rapid generation times, accessible reproductive system, and many similarities to well-studied placental mammals—are helping this project move ahead at a reasonably rapid clip.

Previously on SoylentNews:
Scientists Try to Bring Australian 'Tiger' Back From Extinction - 20220531
Tasmanian Tigers Were in Poor Genetic Health Prior to Extinction - 20171212

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

It’s not easy to study quantum systems — collections of particles that follow the counterintuitive rules of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, a cornerstone of quantum theory, says it’s impossible to simultaneously measure a particle’s exact position and its speed — pretty important information for understanding what’s going on.

In order to study, say, a particular collection of electrons, researchers have to be clever about it. They might take a box of electrons, poke at it in various ways, then take a snapshot of what it looks like at the end. In doing so, they hope to reconstruct the internal quantum dynamics at work.

But there’s a catch: They can’t measure all the system’s properties at the same time. So they iterate. They’ll start with their system, poke, then measure. Then they’ll do it again. Every iteration, they’ll measure some new set of properties. Build together enough snapshots, and machine learning algorithms can help reconstruct the full properties of the original system — or at least get really close.

This is a tedious process. But in theory, quantum computers could help. These machines, which work according to quantum rules, have the potential to be much better than ordinary computers at modeling the workings of quantum systems. They can also store information not in classic binary memory, but in a more complex form called quantum memory. This allows for far richer and more accurate descriptions of particles. It also means that the computer could keep multiple copies of a quantum state in its working memory.

[...] Now, two independent teams have come up with ways of getting by with far less quantum memory. In the first paper, Sitan Chen, a computer scientist at Harvard University, and his co-authors showed that just two copies of the quantum state could exponentially reduce the number of times you need to take a snapshot of your quantum system. Quantum memory, in other words, is almost always worth the investment.

“These two- or three-copy measurements, they’re more powerful than one might think,” said Richard Kueng, a computer scientist at Johannes Kepler University Linz in Austria.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

First came the nanny cams and home assistants, then came the security doorbells, now it's the age of the hacked vacuums.

First reported by ABC News Australia, owners of robot vacuums across multiple U.S. states experienced invasive hacking of their devices by individuals who took physical control of the cleaning bots and used their internal audio features to shout racial slurs at people in their homes. Owners first heard garbled voices coming from their devices, then noticed the vacuum's live feed camera and remote controls were turned on via the device's app.

All of the affected devices were manufactured by brand Ecovac, specifically the company's Deebot X2 model. The hack was confirmed to one customer after they filed a complaint through customer support.

Smart devices have long worried security experts and users for their potential vulnerabilities. In August, cyber security researchers uncovered multiple vulnerabilities in Ecovacs products (including lawn mowers) that could allow hackers to take control of microphones and cameras via mobile Bluetooth connections — to put it simply, researchers concluded the company's security was "really, really, really, really bad."

Design elements intended to protect users, like an audio alert that lets individuals know the vacuum's camera is on, could be easily switched off.

Original Submission