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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/12/the-raspberry-pi-5-now-works-as-a-smaller-faster-kind-of-steam-link/

The Steam Link was a little box ahead of its time.

[...] Valve quietly discontinued the Steam Link gear in November 2018, but it didn't give up. These days, a Steam Link app can be found on most platforms, and Valve's sustained effort to move Linux-based (i.e., non-Windows-controlled) gaming forward has paid real dividends.

[...] As detailed in the Raspberry Pi blog, there were previously means of getting Steam Link working on Raspberry Pi devices

[...] Sam Lantinga from Valve worked with the Raspberry Pi team on optimizing for the Raspberry Pi 5 hardware. As of Steam Link 1.3.13 for the little board, Raspberry Pi 5 units could support up to 1080p at 144 frames per second (FPS) on the H.264 protocol and 4k at 60 FPS or 1080p at 240 FPS, presuming your primary gaming computer and network can support that.

[...] I have a documented preference for a Moonlight/Sunshine game streaming setup over Steam Link because I have better luck getting games streaming at their best on it. But it's hard to beat Steam Link for ease of setup

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Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Open-source OpenWrt One router released at $89 — 'hacker-friendly device' sports two Ethernet ports, three USB ports, with dual-band Wi-Fi 6

This 'Unbrickable' router should never fail you.

More than nine months after OpenWrt began finalizing its $100 open-source router, the consortium has finally released the OpenWrt One. According to the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), one of the groups working alongside OpenWrt, this wireless router "will never be locked and is forever unbrickable" as it was built-for and comes with the open-source OpenWrt firmware pre-installed.

The group worked together to draft the specifications for this router, and then OpenWrt tapped Banana Pi for the device production. You can now order a complete set with a case on Aliexpress for just $89 (although it's out of stock at the time of writing), but the tinkerers among us could choose just the logic board for $68.42, though it's unavailable in the U.S. at the moment.

[....rest omitted....]

The OpenWRT One router is designed with 'software freedom and right to repair' in mind

[....]

OpenWRT is an open source, customizable operating system based on the Linux kernel, designed primarily for networking devices — such as routers. While the OpenWRT One is far from the first router to support OpenWRT, it is the first to be designed from the ground up for OpenWRT, by the community behind the project, with the full source code published from the get-go.

A core selling-point, according to the SFC, is that the OpenWRT One can't be locked down or bricked — it gives the user full control, allowing them to modify, repair, and update as required.

[....rest omitted....]

Where did the WiFi router go?
He went data way.

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Japan's priceless asteroid Ryugu sample got 'rapidly colonized' by Earth bacteria

Scientists have discovered that a sample of the asteroid Ryugu was overrun with Earth-based life forms after being delivered to our planet. The research shows how successful terrestrial micro-organisms are at colonization, even on extraterrestrial materials.

The samples were collected by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)'s spacecraft Hayabusa2, which launched in December 2014 and rendezvoused with Ryugu in June 2018. Haybusa2 then spent a year studying the asteroid, which has a diameter of around 3,000 feet (900 meters), before diving to its surface and scooping out a sample.
...
"We found micro-organisms in a sample returned from an asteroid. They appeared on the rock and spread with time before finally dying off," team leader Matthew Genge of Imperial College London told Space.com. "The change in the number of micro-organisms confirmed these were living microbes. However, it also suggested they only recently colonized the specimen just before our analyses and were terrestrial in origin."

The discovery took the form of rods and filaments of organic matter, which the team interpreted as filamentous microorganisms. Exactly what type of microorganisms these were isn't known by the team, but Genge has a good idea of what they may be.

"Without studying their DNA, it is impossible to identify their exact type," the researcher said. "However, they were most likely bacteria such as Bacillus since these are very common filamentous micro-organisms, particularly in soil and
rocks."
...
"Before we prepared the sample, we performed nano-X-ray computed tomography, and no microbes were seen," Genge said. "In any case, the change in population suggests they only appeared after the rock was exposed to the atmosphere, more than a year after it was returned to Earth."

The researchers found that within a week of exposing the specimen to the Earth's atmosphere, 11 microbes were present on its surface. Just a week later, the population of terrestrial colonizers had grown to 147.

"It was very surprising to find terrestrial microbes within the rock," Genge said. "We usually polish meteorite specimens, and microbes rarely appear on them. However, it only needs one microbial spore to cause colonization."

While these results don't really tell us anything about extraterrestrial life, they do speak to the hardiness of life forms here on Earth, particularly micro-organisms. The findings also have implications for the effects that spacecraft and rovers could have on the planets they visit.

Journal Reference: https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.14288

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-donut-effect-persists-major-cities.html

What is the shelf life of a freshly baked donut? Two days, tops. But when it comes to an entirely different kind of donut—one that Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom described early in the pandemic when he measured the exodus of people from city centers to city suburbs—there appears to be no expiration date.

That's the key takeaway of Bloom's research of the "donut effect," a term he helped coin that refers to the hollowing out of big-city financial districts, the rising attraction of surrounding areas, and the impacts on local economies.

Since the pandemic, the country's 12 largest cities have cumulatively lost 8% of their downtown dwellers. Three-fifths of the households that left moved to nearby suburbs, according to the study, which was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Bloom also finds a steep drop in the number of businesses located in the business centers of these major metro areas, which include New York, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Meanwhile, the donut effects for other U.S. cities have either been much smaller or haven't happened at all.

For policymakers and business leaders in large urban centers, the study results may come as a surprise given widespread perceptions that their downtown economies are bouncing back to pre-pandemic health.

But Bloom and his co-authors—using rich data on real estate demand, migration flows, commuting patterns, public transit use and consumer spending—conclude that's not happening. And the flight from city cores promises to reshape America's largest cities in the long run, they say.

We have often heard of people who now work from home either frequently or even permanently. But do any of you live in the downtown areas of your city? How has the 'donut effect' changed your way of life? Is it better now or worse?

Original Submission

hubie writes:

FBI and CISA officials said it was impossible to predict when the telecommunications companies would be fully safe from interlopers:

Amid an unprecedented cyberattack on telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon, U.S. officials have recommended that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to ensure their communications stay hidden from foreign hackers.

The hacking campaign, nicknamed Salt Typhoon by Microsoft, is one of the largest intelligence compromises in U.S. history, and it has not yet been fully remediated. Officials on a news call Tuesday refused to set a timetable for declaring the country's telecommunications systems free of interlopers. Officials had told NBC News that China hacked AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies to spy on customers.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the call Tuesday, two officials — a senior FBI official who asked not to be named and Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — both recommended using encrypted messaging apps to Americans who want to minimize the chances of China's intercepting their communications.

"Our suggestion, what we have told folks internally, is not new here: Encryption is your friend, whether it's on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication. Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible," Greene said.

The FBI official said, "People looking to further protect their mobile device communications would benefit from considering using a cellphone that automatically receives timely operating system updates, responsibly managed encryption and phishing resistant" multi-factor authentication for email, social media and collaboration tool accounts.

The scope of the telecom compromise is so significant, Greene said, that it was "impossible" for the agencies "to predict a time frame on when we'll have full eviction."

[...] The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies have a complicated relationship with encryption technology, historically advocating against full end-to-end encryption that does not allow law enforcement access to digital material even with warrants. But the FBI has also supported forms of encryption that do allow some law enforcement access in certain circumstances.

[...] In a statement to NBC News, Ron Wyden, D-Ore, one of the Senate's fiercest privacy advocates, criticized America's reliance on CALEA as it leaves such sensitive information unencrypted.

"Whether it's AT&T, Verizon, or Microsoft and Google, when those companies are inevitably hacked, China and other adversaries can steal those communications," he said.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/12/from-diapers-to-mouths-of-babes-how-splash-pads-sickened-over-10k/

There's nothing quite like a deep dive into the shallow, vomitous puddles of children's splash pads. [...] But the brave souls at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have done it, wading into 25 years' worth of records on gastrointestinal outbreaks linked to the wellsprings of fecal pathogens. And they unsurprisingly found enough retch-inducing results to make any modern-day John Snows want to start removing some water handles. [...] In all, the outbreaks led to at least 10,611 illnesses, 152 hospitalizations, and 99 emergency department visits. People, mostly children, were sickened with pathogens including Cryptosporidium, Camplyobacter jejuni, Giardia duodenalis, Salmonella, Shigella, and norovirus, according to the analysis, published Tuesday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The tallies of outbreaks and illnesses are likely undercounts, given reporting delays and missed connections.

Though previous outbreak-based studies have provided bursts of data, the new analysis is the first to provide a comprehensive catalog of all the documented outbreaks since splash pads erupted in the 1990s. [...] Once infectious material gets into the water, disinfection systems that aren't working properly or are inadequate can allow pathogens to gush from every nozzle. Splash pads aren't unique in having to handle sick children in poopy swim diapers—but they are unique in how they are regulated. That is, in some places, they're not regulated at all. [...] The primary method for keeping recreational water free of infectious viruses and bacteria is chlorinating it. However, maintaining germ-killing chlorine concentration is especially difficult for splash pads because the jets and sprays aerosolize chlorine, lowering the concentration.

Still, in most splash-pad linked outbreaks, standard chlorine concentrations aren't enough anyway. [...] In 2023, the CDC recommended new health codes that call for "secondary disinfection" methods to keep Crypto at bay, including disinfection systems using ozone or ultraviolet light. Another possible solution is to have "single-pass" splash pads that don't recirculate water.

In all, to keep splash pads from being geysers of gastrointestinal parasites and pathogens, various changes have to happen, the CDC experts say.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

LinkedIn have become a AI regurgitation chamber. More than half of all text, longer then 100 words, is now assumed to be AI generated.

https://www.wired.com/story/linkedin-ai-generated-influencers/

Originality scanned a sample of 8,795 public LinkedIn posts over 100 words long that were published from January 2018 to October 2024. For the first few years, the use of AI writing tools on LinkedIn was negligible. A major increase then occurred at the beginning of 2023. "The uptick happened when ChatGPT came out," says Originality CEO Jon Gillham. At that point, Originality found the number of likely AI-generated posts had spiked 189 percent; it has since leveled off.

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

First image of the shape of a single photon revealed in light study

The first direct visualization of the shape of a photon has been created. These particles of light are impossible to photograph, but physicists at the University of Birmingham have now calculated their wave function to produce an accurate image of a photon as it's emitted.
...
However, one thing photons can never capture images of is other photons. That's because they don't interact with each other in any way. But now, Birmingham physicists have created the next best thing: a mathematically accurate visualization of the shape of a photon.

"The visualization is an exact simulation of a photon as it is emitted by an atom sitting on the surface of a nanoparticle," co-author Ben Yuen told New Atlas. "The shape of the photon is deeply affected by the nanoparticle, making it thousands of times more likely that the photon is emitted, and even allowing it to be reabsorbed by the atom multiple times."
...
... Instead, it's an intensity distribution – basically, a map of where you could expect to find the photon at a certain point in time. Brighter areas indicate a higher chance of the photon appearing there when its location is measured.

"The visualization is exactly that distribution of a photon a short time after it has been emitted," Yuen told us. "Because it's a quantum particle you cannot measure it in one go as the measurement destroys it. However, if you were to repeat the measurement of where a photon was detected many times, you would see exactly this distribution.

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

It's orangeish-green, with blue spikes, on a dark background

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/12/certain-names-make-chatgpt-grind-to-a-halt-and-we-know-why/

OpenAI's ChatGPT is more than just an AI language model with a fancy interface. It's a system consisting of a stack of AI models and content filters that make sure its outputs don't embarrass OpenAI or get the company into legal trouble when its bot occasionally makes up potentially harmful facts about people.

Recently, that reality made the news when people discovered that the name "David Mayer" breaks ChatGPT. 404 Media also discovered that the names "Jonathan Zittrain" and "Jonathan Turley" caused ChatGPT to cut conversations short. And we know another name, likely the first, that started the practice last year: Brian Hood.

[...] When asked about these names, ChatGPT responds with "I'm unable to produce a response" or "There was an error generating a response" before terminating the chat session, according to Ars' testing.

[...] ChatGPT-breaking names found so far through a communal effort taking place on [social media] and [Reddit].

• Brian Hood
• Jonathan Turley
• Jonathan Zittrain
• David Faber
• Guido Scorza

[...] We first discovered that ChatGPT choked on the name "Brian Hood" in mid-2023 while writing about his defamation lawsuit. In that lawsuit, the Australian mayor threatened to sue OpenAI after discovering ChatGPT falsely claimed he had been imprisoned for bribery when, in fact, he was a whistleblower who had exposed corporate misconduct.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The world currently produces more than 50 million tonnes of “mismanaged” plastic waste each year, and some researchers project this flood of pollution into the environment will double by mid-century. However, they also say that if countries can agree to adopt four key policies during global plastic treaty negotiations this week, we could slash that by 90 per cent.

Plastic pollution ends up clogging ecosystems on land and at sea. “This has an impact on every level of the food chain, from phytoplankton cells to humans,” says Sarah-Jeanne Royer at the University of California, San Diego. Plastics are also responsible for about 5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.

That is why most of the world’s countries are meeting in Busan, South Korea, this week to hammer out the final details of a global treaty aimed at ending such pollution. In 2022, 175 countries agreed to develop a legally binding treaty and have spent the past two years debating its requirements, with particular disagreements over setting limits on the production of new plastic.

To bring more clarity to the debate, Douglas McCauley at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his colleagues used an artificial intelligence model trained on economic data to test how the policies under consideration would affect this pollution globally. “I wasn’t convinced that [eliminating plastic pollution] was actually possible,” says McCauley. “But it turns out you can get pretty darn close.”

According to their projections, under current conditions, such pollution is set to roughly double to between 100 and 139 million tonnes by 2050. But a combination of four policies, all of which are still on the table in the current treaty draft, were enough to reduce this by more than 90 per cent.

The most impactful was a mandate that plastic products contain at least 40 per cent recycled material. That rule alone cuts plastic pollution in half by mid-century. This effect is so significant because it reduces demand for newly made or “virgin” plastic, while also spurring demand for recycled materials, says McCauley. “Suddenly there’s a giant global market for recycling.”

But recycling on its own wasn’t sufficient. “If your target is to end plastic pollution, you need to do things across the entire life cycle,” he says. Deeper cuts required limiting production of virgin plastics to 2020 levels. This cap cuts plastic pollution by around 60 million tonnes per year by the middle of the century, according to the model. This change also had the greatest impact on greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production, as extracting fossil fuels and turning them into virgin plastics involves emissions-intensive processes.

DannyB writes:

The Beginning of the End of Big Tech

From politicians to VC firms, everyone is falling out of love with the massive, money-oriented, global technology titans. In their place, we have the chance to build something open and trustworthy.

Next year will be Big Tech's finale. Critique of Big Tech is now common sense, voiced by a motley spectrum that unites opposing political parties, mainstream pundits, and even tech titans such as the VC powerhouse Y Combinator, which is singing in harmony with giants like a16z in proclaiming fealty to "little tech" against the centralized power of incumbents.

Why the fall from grace? One reason is that the collateral consequences of the current Big Tech business model are too obvious to ignore. The list is old hat by now: centralization, surveillance, information control. It goes on, and it's not hypothetical. Concentrating such vast power in a few hands does not lead to good things. No, it leads to things like the CrowdStrike outage of mid-2024, when corner-cutting by Microsoft led to critical infrastructure—from hospitals to banks to traffic systems—failing globally for an extended period.

Another reason Big Tech is set to falter in 2025 is that the frothy AI market, on which Big Tech bet big, is beginning to lose its fizz.

[.... rest omitted....]

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

As we age, our bodies slow down — not just in how we move, but also at the cellular level, where a decline in protein mobility may contribute to the development of chronic health issues.

Molecular stress brought on by diabetes, fatty liver disease and other chronic conditions can all cause proteins to put on the brakes. Instead of zipping around the cell and bumping into each other to perform vital tasks, these proteins become ensnared in chemical traffic jams, creating a kind of widespread sluggishness termed “proteolethargy.”

Such lethargy occurs when proteins with a sticky building block on their surface interact with harmful by-products from chronic inflammation and stress, causing the proteins to clump together and crawl to a near standstill, researchers report November 27 in Cell.

The result: Cells struggle to function, triggering the collapse of crucial biological systems — a hallmark feature of aging-related maladies.

This molecular bottleneck may be a “common denominator” underpinning many of life’s ailments, says cell biologist Alessandra Dall’Agnese, of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass. “It’s a unifying mechanism.”

Nearly half of all proteins in the body carry the sticky residue implicated in protein malfunction, putting countless cellular processes — metabolism, cell repair, immune defense, gene regulation and more — at risk of grinding to a halt.

Antioxidants and drugs that counteract the stickiness of proteins can partially restore protein mobility, Dall’Agnese and her colleagues note in the paper. The findings could pave the way for therapies designed to ease these molecular roadblocks and tackle the root causes of chronic disease.

Journal Reference:
Proteolethargy is a pathogenic mechanism in chronic disease, Alessandra Dall'Agnese, Ming M. Zheng, Shannon Moreno, et al., Cell, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.10.051

Original Submission

upstart writes:

'God of management' comes back to life as an AI model:

Panasonic Holdings has created an artificial intelligence clone of its late founder Konosuke Matsushita based on his writings, speeches, and over 3,000 voice recordings, the company announced Wednesday.

Known as Japan's "god of management," the Panasonic icon is one of the most respected by the Japanese business community, and comes back to life in digital form to impart wisdom directly to those he never met in person.

"As the number of people who received training directly from Matsushita has been on the decline, we decided to use generative AI technology to pass down our group's founding vision to the next generation," the company said in a statement.

Codeveloped with the University of Tokyo-affiliated Matsuo Institute, the model can reproduce how a person thinks or talks. The company aims to further develop the digital clone to help make business decisions in the future.

Matsushita, who died in 1989, pushed the company to become a leader in consumer electronics, and is often picked as one of the most respected Japanese business leaders of all time. His book "The Path" is regularly seen as a must-read for businesspeople in the country.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Chinese Ship's Crew Suspected of Deliberately Dragging Anchor for 100 Miles to Cut Baltic Cables:

A Chinese commercial vessel that has been surrounded by European warships in international waters for [several weeks] is central to an investigation of suspected sabotage that threatens to test the limits of maritime law—and heighten tensions between Beijing and European capitals.

Investigators suspect that the crew of the Yi Peng 3 bulk carrier—225 meters long, 32 meters wide and loaded with Russian fertilizer—deliberately severed two critical data cables last week as its anchor was dragged along the Baltic seabed for over 100 miles.

Their probe now centers on whether the captain of the Chinese-owned ship, which departed the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga on Nov. 15, was induced by Russian intelligence to carry out the sabotage. It would be the latest in a series of attacks on Europe's critical infrastructure that law-enforcement and intelligence officials say have been orchestrated by Russia.

"It's extremely unlikely that the captain would not have noticed that his ship dropped and dragged its anchor, losing speed for hours and cutting cables on the way," said a senior European investigator involved in the case.

Related: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=24/11/20/2252220

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In a landmark decision, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted SpaceX and T-Mobile a license to offer satellite-based mobile connectivity directly to smartphones. The two companies have been working in partnership with an aim to eradicate cellular dead zones across the United States by leveraging SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network. (h/t: Reuters)

This development comes on the heels of a temporary approval granted to T-Mobile and SpaceX in October, which allowed them to offer satellite-based features to affected areas in North Carolina following Hurricane Helene. The temporary approval provided a preview of what’s to come with the expanded satellite coverage.

Instead of relying on traditional cell towers, T-Mobile will now be able to tap into SpaceX’s Starlink satellites to provide cellular service directly to smartphones. This marks a significant shift in how the FCC approaches wireless communication, as it’s the first time a satellite operator has been allowed to work with a wireless carrier in this way, using specific spectrum bands originally intended for ground-based networks.

[...] However, not everyone is on board with the plan. AT&T and Verizon have previously voiced concerns that SpaceX’s satellite technology could interfere with their existing networks, especially with the proposed increase in power levels for satellite transmissions.

Original Submission