One-Third of US Newspapers As of 2005 Will Be Gone By 2024

Sara Fischer reports via Axios: The decline of local newspapers accelerated so rapidly in 2023 that analysts now believe the U.S. will have lost one-third of the newspapers it had as of 2005 by the end of next year -- rather than in 2025, as originally predicted. There are roughly 6,000 newspapers left in America, down from 8,891 in 2005, according to a new report from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. "We're almost at a one-third loss now and we'll certainly hit that pace next year," said the report's co-authors -- Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Medill, and Sarah Stonbely, director of Medill's State of Local News Project. Of the papers that still survive, a majority (4,790) publish weekly, not daily.

Over the past two years, newspapers continued to vanish at an average rate of more than two per week, leaving 204 U.S. counties, or 6.4%, without any local news outlet. Roughly half of all U.S. counties (1,562) are now only served with one remaining local news source -- typically a weekly newspaper. Abernathy and Stonbely estimate that 228 of those 1,562 counties, or roughly 7% of all U.S. counties, are at high risk of losing their last remaining local news outlet.

There isn't enough investment in digital news replacements to stop the spread of news deserts in America. The footprint for alternative local news outlets is tiny and they are mostly clustered around metro areas that already have some local coverage. The report estimates that -- for outlets focused on state and local news -- there are roughly 550 digital-only news sites, 720 ethnic media organizations and 215 public broadcasting stations in America, compared to 6,000 newspapers. The authors argue that the dynamic between those with access to quality local news and those who don't "poses a far-reaching crisis for our democracy as it simultaneously struggles with political polarization, a lack of civic engagement and the proliferation of misinformation and information online."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/11/17/0218247/one-third-of-us-newspapers-as-of-2005-will-be-gone-by-2024?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/11/17/0218247/one-third-of-us-newspapers-as-of-2005-will-be-gone-by-2024?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


'Hallucinate' Chosen As Cambridge Dictionary's Word of the Year

Cambridge dictionary's word of the year for 2023 is "hallucinate," a verb that took on a new meaning with the rise in popularity of artificial intelligence chatbots. The Guardian reports: The original definition of the chosen word is to "seem to see, hear, feel, or smell" something that does not exist, usually because of "a health condition or because you have taken a drug." It now has an additional meaning, relating to when artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT, which generates text that mimics human writing, "hallucinates" and produces false information. The word was chosen because the new meaning "gets to the heart of why people are talking about AI," according to a post on the dictionary site.

Generative AI is a "powerful" but "far from perfect" tool, "one we're all still learning how to interact with safely and effectively -- this means being aware of both its potential strengths and its current weaknesses." The dictionary added a number of AI-related entries this year, including large language model (or LLM), generative AI (or GenAI), and GPT (an abbreviation of Generative Pre-trained Transformer). "AI hallucinations remind us that humans still need to bring their critical thinking skills to the use of these tools," continued the post. "Large language models are only as reliable as the information their algorithms learn from. Human expertise is arguably more important than ever, to create the authoritative and up-to-date information that LLMs can be trained on."

https://slashdot.org/story/23/11/16/2139238/hallucinate-chosen-as-cambridge-dictionarys-word-of-the-year?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/11/16/2139238/hallucinate-chosen-as-cambridge-dictionarys-word-of-the-year?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Developers Can't Seem To Stop Exposing Credentials in Publicly Accessible Code

Despite more than a decade of reminding, prodding, and downright nagging, a surprising number of developers still can't bring themselves to keep their code free of credentials that provide the keys to their kingdoms to anyone who takes the time to look for them. From a report: The lapse stems from immature coding practices in which developers embed cryptographic keys, security tokens, passwords, and other forms of credentials directly into the source code they write. The credentials make it easy for the underlying program to access databases or cloud services necessary for it to work as intended. [...]

The number of studies published since following the revelations underscored just how common the practice had been and remained in the years immediately following Uber's cautionary tale. Sadly, the negligence continues even now. Researchers from security firm GitGuardian this week reported finding almost 4,000 unique secrets stashed inside a total of 450,000 projects submitted to PyPI, the official code repository for the Python programming language. Nearly 3,000 projects contained at least one unique secret. Many secrets were leaked more than once, bringing the total number of exposed secrets to almost 57,000.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/23/11/16/1639249/developers-cant-seem-to-stop-exposing-credentials-in-publicly-accessible-code?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/23/11/16/1639249/developers-cant-seem-to-stop-exposing-credentials-in-publicly-accessible-code?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Apple To Add RCS Support To iPhone Next Year

9to5Mac: In a surprising move, Apple has announced today that it will adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard. The feature will launch via a software update "later next year" and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users. Apple's decision comes amid pressure from regulators and competitors like Google and Samsung. It also comes as RCS has continued to develop and become a more mature platform than it once was.

In a statement to 9to5Mac, an Apple spokesperson said that the company believes RCS will offer better interoperability for cross-platform messages. "Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users."

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/23/11/16/1812216/apple-to-add-rcs-support-to-iphone-next-year?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/23/11/16/1812216/apple-to-add-rcs-support-to-iphone-next-year?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


China Receives US Equipment To Make Advanced Chips Despite New Rules

schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: Chinese companies are buying up U.S. chipmaking equipment to make advanced semiconductors, despite a raft of new export curbs aimed at thwarting advances in the country's semiconductor industry, a report said on Tuesday. The 741 page annual report, released by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, takes aim at the Biden administration's Oct. 2022 export curbs, which seek to bar Chinese chipmakers from getting U.S. chipmaking tools if they would be used to manufacture advanced chips at the 14 nanometer node or below. With the Commerce Department using the 14 nanometer restriction limit, 'importers are often able to purchase the equipment if they claim it is being used on an older production line, and with limited capacity for end-use inspections, it is difficult to verify the equipment is not being used to produce more advanced chips,' the report stated.

According to the document, between January and August 2023, China imported $3.2 billion (RMB 23.5 billion) worth of semiconductor manufacturing machines from the Netherlands, a 96.1% increase over the $1.7 billion (RMB 12 billion) recorded over the same period in 2022. China's imports of semiconductor equipment from all countries totaled $13.8 billion (RMB 100 billion) over the first eight months of 2023, it added. The report does not outline a specific recommendation to address the gaps in the U.S. rules, but urges Congress to request an annual evaluation, to be completed within 6 months by the General Accountability Office and later made public, of the effectiveness of export controls on chipmaking equipment to China.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/11/16/0157240/china-receives-us-equipment-to-make-advanced-chips-despite-new-rules?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/11/16/0157240/china-receives-us-equipment-to-make-advanced-chips-despite-new-rules?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Prices For Offshore Wind Power To Rise By 50%

Simon Jack reports via the BBC: The price paid to generate electricity by offshore wind farms is set to rise by more than 50% as the government tries to entice energy firms to invest. Its comes after an auction for offshore wind projects failed to attract any bids, with firms arguing the price set for electricity generated was too low. The BBC understands the government now will raise the price it pays from 44 pounds per MWh to as much as 70 pounds. It is hoped more offshore wind capacity will lead to cheaper energy bills. Energy companies have told the BBC that electricity produced out at sea would remain cheaper and less prone to shock increases compared to power derived from gas-fired power stations.

The UK is a world leader in offshore wind and is home to the world's four largest farms, supporting tens of thousands of jobs, which provided 13.8% of the UK's electricity generation last year, according to government statistics. But when the government revealed in September that no companies bid for project contracts, plans to nearly quadruple offshore wind capacity from 13 gigawatts GW to 50 by 2030 -- enough to power every home in the UK -- were dealt a heavy blow.

The technology has been described as the "jewel in the UK's renewable energy crown," but firms have been hit by higher costs for building offshore farms, with materials such as steel and labour being more expensive. According to energy companies, the government's failure to recognize the impact of higher costs led some firms to abandon existing projects, and all operators to boycott the most recent auction.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/2158242/prices-for-offshore-wind-power-to-rise-by-50?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/2158242/prices-for-offshore-wind-power-to-rise-by-50?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Firefox Going To Ship With Wayland Enabled By Default

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: Guardrails have been in place where the Firefox browser has enabled Wayland by default (when running on recent GTK versions) but as of today that code has been removed... Firefox will try to move forward with stable releases where Wayland will ship by default! Mozilla Bug 1752398 to "ship the Wayland backend to release" has been closed this evening! After the ticket was open for the past two years, it's now deemed ready to hopefully ship enabled for Firefox 121!

This patch drops the "early beta or earlier" check to let Wayland support be enabled by default when running on recent GTK versions (GTK 3.24.30 threshold). Firefox 121 is due for release around 19 December and if all continues to hold, it will finally ship with the Wayland back-end enabled by default as another big step forward.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/2116232/firefox-going-to-ship-with-wayland-enabled-by-default?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/2116232/firefox-going-to-ship-with-wayland-enabled-by-default?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Qi2 Wireless Charging Spec Is Here, Offering Speed Boosts and Magnets

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: If you've only ever used standard Qi chargers with devices that don't have their own schemes, the Wireless Power Consortium's announcement today of the first Qi 2.0 devices being ready to launch before the holidays, with more than 100 in the queue behind them, is great. Qi2 sports a "Magnetic Power Profile" (MPP), created with help by Apple's MagSafe team, to help align devices and chargers' coils for faster, more efficient charging. Qi2-certified devices set onto Qi2 chargers can achieve 15 W charging, up from 7.5 W in the standard Qi scheme.

That brings Qi2 devices up to the same speed as iPhones on MagSafe chargers, and it clears up some consumer confusion about how fast a device might charge on Qi, MagSafe, or proprietary chargers. Should a phone and charger be Qi2 certified, you can now expect about 15 W out of it, regardless of whatever Google, Apple, or third party is behind them. Android and iPhone users alike are no longer beholden to their primary hardware vendor if they want 15 W of wireless juice. This announcement does not, however, bring the Qi2 standard close to the far-out speeds that proprietary setups now offer. [...]

A number of accessory makers, including stalwarts Anker and Belkin, had already lined up their Qi2-compatible offerings, waiting for the certification to drop. It will be interesting to see if Qi2 brings a wave of magnet mania to Android phones, akin to the MagSafe-induced blitz a few years back. Magnetic charging packs, wallets, wireless charging for a non-wireless-charging phone -- there's a lot to work with, especially at now somewhat more respectable charging speeds. Regarding speed, the WPC told Android Authority back in January that the Qi2 standards group intends to standardize charging speeds above 15 W by mid-2024. If you need a fast charge, plugging in the right cable to a well-powered source is still the most certain route. But with magnetic alignment and a good deal more universal compatibility, Qi2 drags the broader wireless charging market forward.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/215217/qi2-wireless-charging-spec-is-here-offering-speed-boosts-and-magnets?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/215217/qi2-wireless-charging-spec-is-here-offering-speed-boosts-and-magnets?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Amazon To Stop Selling Seven Eyedrops After FDA Warning

Amazon said on Wednesday that it was removing seven eyedrops products from its website after the Food and Drug Administration warned the company that the eyedrops had not been recognized as safe and effective. From a report: The F.D.A. said in a letter to Andrew Jassy, Amazon's chief executive, on Monday that Amazon had violated federal regulations by selling the eyedrops, which claimed to help with problems including pink eye, dry eyes, eyestrain and floaters. "These products are especially concerning from a public health perspective," the F.D.A. letter said. "Ophthalmic drug products, which are intended for administration into the eyes, in general pose a greater risk of harm to users because the route of administration for these products bypasses some of the body's natural defenses."

The eyedrops named in the letter are: Similasan Pink Eye Relief, The Goodbye Company Pink Eye, Can-C Eye Drops, Optique 1 Eye Drops, OcluMed Eye Drops, TRP Natural Eyes Floaters Relief, and Manzanilla Sophia Chamomile Herbal Eye Drops. None of the eyedrops appeared to be available for purchase on Amazon on Wednesday morning. The company said in an emailed statement on Wednesday that "safety is a top priority."

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/1653221/amazon-to-stop-selling-seven-eyedrops-after-fda-warning?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/1653221/amazon-to-stop-selling-seven-eyedrops-after-fda-warning?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Microsoft and Nvidia Are Making It Easier To Run AI Models on Windows

Microsoft and Nvidia want to help developers run and configure AI models on their Windows PCs. During the Microsoft Ignite event on Wednesday, Microsoft announced Windows AI Studio: a new hub where developers can access AI models and tweak them to suit their needs. From a report: Windows AI Studio allows developers to access development tools and models from the existing Azure AI Studio and other services like Hugging Face. It also offers an end-to-end "guided workspace setup" with model configuration UI and walkthroughs to fine-tune various small language models (SLMs), such as Microsoft's Phi, Meta's Llama 2, and Mistral.

Windows AI Studio lets developers test the performance of their models using Prompt Flow and Gradio templates as well. Microsoft says it's going to roll out Windows AI Studio as a Visual Studio Code extension in the "coming weeks." Nvidia, similarly, revealed updates to TensorRT-LLM, which the company initially launched for Windows as a way to run large language models (LLMs) more efficiently on H100 GPUs. However, this latest update brings TensorRT-LLM to PCs powered by GeForce RTX 30 and 40 Series GPUs with 8GB of RAM or more.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/1644244/microsoft-and-nvidia-are-making-it-easier-to-run-ai-models-on-windows?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/1644244/microsoft-and-nvidia-are-making-it-easier-to-run-ai-models-on-windows?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Disney Pulls TV Channels From Vietnam, Govt 'Concerned' Piracy Will Run Riot

An anonymous reader writes: A newspaper run by the Communist Party of Vietnam is reporting the "disappearance" of a number of popular channels from pay TV packages. Citing National Geographic and Nat Geo Wild as examples, the paper notes they're owned by Disney. Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications is said to be "concerned" that the withdrawal will allow piracy to run rampant in Vietnam. Multiple high-level trade reports in the U.S. note that piracy has been rampant for years.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/167251/disney-pulls-tv-channels-from-vietnam-govt-concerned-piracy-will-run-riot?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/167251/disney-pulls-tv-channels-from-vietnam-govt-concerned-piracy-will-run-riot?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft

Programmer and writer James Somers, writing for New Yorker: Yes, our jobs as programmers involve many things besides literally writing code, such as coaching junior hires and designing systems at a high level. But coding has always been the root of it. Throughout my career, I have been interviewed and selected precisely for my ability to solve fiddly little programming puzzles. Suddenly, this ability was less important.

I had gathered as much from Ben (friend of the author), who kept telling me about the spectacular successes he'd been having with GPT-4. It turned out that it was not only good at the fiddly stuff but also had the qualities of a senior engineer: from a deep well of knowledge, it could suggest ways of approaching a problem. For one project, Ben had wired a small speaker and a red L.E.D. light bulb into the frame of a portrait of King Charles, the light standing in for the gem in his crown; the idea was that when you entered a message on an accompanying Web site the speaker would play a tune and the light would flash out the message in Morse code. (This was a gift for an eccentric British expat.) Programming the device to fetch new messages eluded Ben; it seemed to require specialized knowledge not just of the microcontroller he was using but of Firebase, the back-end server technology that stored the messages. Ben asked me for advice, and I mumbled a few possibilities; in truth, I wasn't sure that what he wanted would be possible. Then he asked GPT-4. It told Ben that Firebase had a capability that would make the project much simpler. Here it was -- and here was some code to use that would be compatible with the microcontroller.

Afraid to use GPT-4 myself -- and feeling somewhat unclean about the prospect of paying OpenAI twenty dollars a month for it -- I nonetheless started probing its capabilities, via Ben. We'd sit down to work on our crossword project, and I'd say, "Why don't you try prompting it this way?" He'd offer me the keyboard. "No, you drive," I'd say. Together, we developed a sense of what the A.I. could do. Ben, who had more experience with it than I did, seemed able to get more out of it in a stroke. As he later put it, his own neural network had begun to align with GPT-4's. I would have said that he had achieved mechanical sympathy. Once, in a feat I found particularly astonishing, he had the A.I. build him a Snake game, like the one on old Nokia phones. But then, after a brief exchange with GPT-4, he got it to modify the game so that when you lost it would show you how far you strayed from the most efficient route. It took the bot about ten seconds to achieve this. It was a task that, frankly, I was not sure I could do myself.

In chess, which for decades now has been dominated by A.I., a player's only hope is pairing up with a bot. Such half-human, half-A.I. teams, known as centaurs, might still be able to beat the best humans and the best A.I. engines working alone. Programming has not yet gone the way of chess. But the centaurs have arrived. GPT-4 on its own is, for the moment, a worse programmer than I am. Ben is much worse. But Ben plus GPT-4 is a dangerous thing.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/1411231/a-coder-considers-the-waning-days-of-the-craft?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/1411231/a-coder-considers-the-waning-days-of-the-craft?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Lost NASA Tool Bag Can Be Seen With Binoculars

A tool bag that astronauts accidentally let float away during a routine spacewalk at the International Space Station is now orbiting Earth and can be seen with a pair of binoculars. NBC News reports: The bag drifted away from the space station this month when NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara were performing maintenance on the exterior of the orbiting outpost. "During the activity, one tool bag was inadvertently lost," NASA officials wrote Nov. 1 in a blog post detailing the outcome of the spacewalk. "Flight controllers spotted the tool bag using external station cameras. The tools were not needed for the remainder of the spacewalk."

The bag is now circling the planet in low-Earth orbit, but NASA said there's little danger of the tools hitting the International Space Station. "Mission Control analyzed the bag's trajectory and determined that risk of recontacting the station is low and that the onboard crew and space station are safe with no action required," the agency said in the blog post. For now then, the lost tool bag has become a new artificial "star" in the night sky. The tool bag is orbiting about a minute ahead of the space station and may be bright enough to see with a pair of binoculars. "Skywatchers who want to try to spot the tool bag in orbit should head out on a clear night and first determine when the International Space Station is passing overhead," reports NBC News. "The tool bag will likely remain visible in the night sky for a few months, before its orbit slowly degrades and it eventually falls toward Earth."

You can track the ISS via NASA's Spot the Station website.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/028233/lost-nasa-tool-bag-can-be-seen-with-binoculars?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/15/028233/lost-nasa-tool-bag-can-be-seen-with-binoculars?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Google Stopped Selling Its Fitbit Products In Almost 30 Countries

Fitbit is active in only 23 countries after leaving Mexico, South Africa, and all Latin American countries. "We communicated that we will stop selling Fitbit products in select countries in order to align our hardware portfolio to map closer to Pixel's regional availability," a Google spokesperson confirmed to Cord Cutters News via email. From the report: The move marks a phasing out of Fitbit products after the Big Tech company acquired wearable company in 2021. Last month, Fitbit said it would remove itself from Asian markets Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, along with European markets Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Slovakia. It's possible Google is removing Fitbit and Nest from the European markets because they don't have a Google Store support. If that changes, Fitbit products and Nest Aware subscriptions could return. New products like the Pixel Watch could also arrive for the first time. "We remain committed to our customers and have not made any changes that impact the existing Fitbit devices they already own. Existing Fitbit customers will continue to have access to the same customer support, warranties will still be honored, and products will continue to receive software and security updates," the Google spokesperson said.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/11/14/2324205/google-stopped-selling-its-fitbit-products-in-almost-30-countries?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/11/14/2324205/google-stopped-selling-its-fitbit-products-in-almost-30-countries?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Delhi Plans To Unleash Cloud Seeding in Its Battle Against Deadly Smog

India's capital, New Delhi, is preparing a new weapon in the fight against deadly air pollution: cloud seeding. From a report: The experiment, which could take place as early as next week, would introduce chemicals like silver iodide into a cloudy sky to create rain and, it's hoped, wash away the fine particulate matter hovering over one of the world's largest cities. The need is desperate. Delhi has already tried traffic restriction measures, multimillion-dollar air filtration towers, and the use of fleets of water-spraying trucks to dissolve the particulate matter in the air -- but to no avail.

The use of cloud seeding, if it goes ahead, would be controversial. "It's not at all a good use of resources because it's not a solution, it's like a temporary relief," says Avikal Somvanshi, a researcher at the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi. Environmentalists and scientists worry that most of the government's response is focused on mitigating the pollution rather than trying to cut off its source. "There is just no political intent to solve this, that is one of the biggest problems," says Bhavreen Kandhari, an activist and cofounder of Warrior Moms, a network of mothers demanding clean air.

[...] Now, Delhi officials are seeking permission from federal agencies in India to try cloud seeding. The technique involves flying an aircraft to spray clouds with salts like silver or potassium iodide or solid carbon dioxide, also known as dry ice, to induce precipitation. The chemical molecules attach to moisture already in the clouds to form bigger droplets that then fall as rain. China has used artificial rain to tackle air pollution in the past -- but for cloud seeding to work properly, you need significant cloud cover with reasonable moisture content, which Delhi generally lacks during the winter. If weather conditions are favorable, scientists leading the project at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur plan to carry out cloud seeding around November 20.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/11/14/1930229/delhi-plans-to-unleash-cloud-seeding-in-its-battle-against-deadly-smog?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/11/14/1930229/delhi-plans-to-unleash-cloud-seeding-in-its-battle-against-deadly-smog?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Giant AI Platform Introduces 'Bounties' For Deepfakes of Real People

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Civitai, an online marketplace for sharing AI models that enables the creation of nonconsensual sexual images of real people, has introduced a new feature that allows users to post "bounties." These bounties allow users to ask the Civitai community to create AI models that generate images of specific styles, compositions, or specific real people, and reward the best AI model that does so with a virtual currency users can buy with real money. As is common on the site, many of the bounties posted to Civitai since the feature was launched are focused on recreating the likeness of celebrities and social media influencers, almost exclusively women. But 404 Media has seen at least one bounty for a private person who has no significant public online presence.

"I am very afraid of what this can become, for years I have been facing problems with the misuse of my image and this has certainly never crossed my mind," Michele Alves, an Instagram influencer who has a bounty on Civitai, told 404 Media. "I don't know what measures I could take, since the internet seems like a place out of control. The only thing I think about is how it could affect me mentally because this is beyond hurtful." The news shows how increasingly easy to use text-to-image AI tools, the ability to easily create AI models of specific people, and a platform that monetizes the production of nonconsensual sexual images is making it possible to generate nonconsensual images of anyone, not just celebrities.

The bounty of a real person that 404 Media saw on Civitai did not include a name, and included a handful of images that were taken from her social media accounts. 404 Media was able to find this person's online accounts and confirm they were not a celebrity or social media influencer, but just a regular person with personal social media accounts with few followers. The person who posted the bounty claimed that the woman he wanted an AI model of was his wife, though her Facebook account said she was single. Other Civitai users also weren't buying that explanation. Despite suspicions from these users, someone did complete the bounty and created an AI model of the woman that now any Civiai user can download. Several non-sexual AI generated images of her have been posted to the site.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/11/13/2135229/giant-ai-platform-introduces-bounties-for-deepfakes-of-real-people?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/11/13/2135229/giant-ai-platform-introduces-bounties-for-deepfakes-of-real-people?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


ExxonMobil Is a Lithium Company Now

ExxonMobil is venturing into lithium production, targeting a significant market share by initiating its first operation in southern Arkansas. With lithium's rising demand in the tech and electric vehicle sectors, ExxonMobil aims to begin production by 2027. By 2030, the company anticipates producing enough lithium to power over 1 million electric vehicles annually. From a report: Earlier this year, ExxonMobil purchased 120,000 acres of lithium-rich land spanning a geologic formation -- called the Smackover Formation -- in Arkansas. To access the lithium, the company will first drill 10,000 feet below the surface using gas and oil machinery. From there, it will then use direct lithium extraction (DLE) to separate the lithium from the saltwater it's mixed with. Once that's done, ExxonMobil will inject the saltwater back into the ground.

ExxonMobil says the DLE process "produces fewer carbon emissions than hard rock mining and requires significantly less land." The company will produce the battery-grade lithium on-site, which it will call Mobil Lithium. This technically isn't the first time ExxonMobil is getting involved in the battery business, as the company manufactured the first lithium-ion battery in the 1970s.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/11/13/1855213/exxonmobil-is-a-lithium-company-now?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/11/13/1855213/exxonmobil-is-a-lithium-company-now?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


OpenAI Expects 'To Raise a Lot More Over Time' From Microsoft, Others To Build 'Superintelligence'

OpenAI plans to secure further financial backing from its biggest investor Microsoft as the ChatGPT maker's chief executive Sam Altman pushes ahead with his vision to create artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- computer software as intelligent as humans. From a report: In an interview with the Financial Times, Altman said his company's partnership with Microsoft's chief executive Satya Nadella was "working really well" and that he expected "to raise a lot more over time" from the tech giant among other investors, to keep up with the punishing costs of building more sophisticated AI models.

Microsoft earlier this year invested $10bn in OpenAI as part of a "multiyear" agreement that valued the San Francisco-based company at $29bn, according to people familiar with the talks. Asked if Microsoft would keep investing further, Altman said: "I'd hope so." He added: "There's a long way to go, and a lot of compute to build out between here and AGI... training expenses are just huge." Altman said "revenue growth had been good this year," without providing financial details, and that the company remained unprofitable due to training costs. But he said the Microsoft partnership would ensure "that we both make money on each other's success, and everybody is happy."

https://slashdot.org/story/23/11/13/1556244/openai-expects-to-raise-a-lot-more-over-time-from-microsoft-others-to-build-superintelligence?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/11/13/1556244/openai-expects-to-raise-a-lot-more-over-time-from-microsoft-others-to-build-superintelligence?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Nvidia Upgrades Processor as Rivals Challenge Its AI Dominance

Nvidia, the world's most valuable chipmaker, is updating its H100 artificial intelligence processor, adding more capabilities to a product that has fueled its dominance in the AI computing market. From a report: The new model, called the H200, will get the ability to use high-bandwidth memory, or HBM3e, allowing it to better cope with the large data sets needed for developing and implementing AI, Nvidia said Monday. Amazon's AWS, Alphabet's Google Cloud and Oracle's Cloud Infrastructure have all committed to using the new chip starting next year.

The current version of the Nvidia processor -- known as an AI accelerator -- is already in famously high demand. It's a prized commodity among technology heavyweights like Larry Ellison and Elon Musk, who boast about their ability to get their hands on the chip. But the product is facing more competition: AMD is bringing its rival MI300 chip to market in the fourth quarter, and Intel claims that its Gaudi 2 model is faster than the H100. With the new product, Nvidia is trying to keep up with the size of data sets used to create AI models and services, it said. Adding the enhanced memory capability will make the H200 much faster at bombarding software with data -- a process that trains AI to perform tasks such as recognizing images and speech.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/11/13/1442221/nvidia-upgrades-processor-as-rivals-challenge-its-ai-dominance?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/11/13/1442221/nvidia-upgrades-processor-as-rivals-challenge-its-ai-dominance?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Oldest, Massive Black Hole Discovered With JWST Data. Confirms 'Collapsed Gas Cloud' Theory

"Scientists have discovered the oldest black hole yet," reports the CBC, calling it "a cosmic beast formed a mere 470 million years after the Big Bang."
"The findings, published Monday, confirm what until now were theories that supermassive black holes existed at the dawn of the universe..."
Given the universe is 13.7 billion years old, that puts the age of this black hole at 13.2 billion years. Even more astounding to scientists, this black hole is a whopper — 10 times bigger than the black hole in our own Milky Way. It's believed to weigh anywhere from 10 to 100 per cent the mass of all the stars in its galaxy, said lead author Akos Bogdan of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. That is nowhere near the miniscule ratio of the black holes in our Milky Way and other nearby galaxies — an estimated 0.1 per cent, he noted. "It's just really early on in the universe to be such a behemoth," said Yale University's Priyamvada Natarajan, who took part in the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy. A companion article appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters...

The researchers believe the black hole formed from colossal clouds of gas that collapsed in a galaxy next door to one with stars. The two galaxies merged, and the black hole took over.
The researchers combined data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, reports NASA:
"We needed Webb to find this remarkably distant galaxy and Chandra to find its supermassive black hole," said Akos Bogdan of the Center for Astrophysics/Harvard & Smithsonian who leads a new paper in the journal Nature Astronomy describing these results. "We also took advantage of a cosmic magnifying glass that boosted the amount of light we detected." This magnifying effect is known as gravitational lensing...

This discovery is important for understanding how some supermassive black holes can reach colossal masses soon after the big bang. Do they form directly from the collapse of massive clouds of gas, creating black holes weighing between about 10,000 and 100,000 Suns? Or do they come from explosions of the first stars that create black holes weighing only between about 10 and 100 Suns...? Bogdan's team has found strong evidence that the newly discovered black hole was born massive... The large mass of the black hole at a young age, plus the amount of X-rays it produces and the brightness of the galaxy detected by Webb, all agree with theoretical predictions in 2017 by co-author Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University for an "Outsize Black Hole" that directly formed from the collapse of a huge cloud of gas.

"We think that this is the first detection of an 'Outsize Black Hole' and the best evidence yet obtained that some black holes form from massive clouds of gas," said Natarajan. "For the first time we are seeing a brief stage where a supermassive black hole weighs about as much as the stars in its galaxy, before it falls behind." The researchers plan to use this and other results pouring in from Webb and those combining data from other telescopes to fill out a larger picture of the early universe.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/11/0616220/oldest-massive-black-hole-discovered-with-jwst-data-confirms-collapsed-gas-cloud-theory?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/11/0616220/oldest-massive-black-hole-discovered-with-jwst-data-confirms-collapsed-gas-cloud-theory?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Doctors Complete First Successful Face and Whole-Eye Transplant

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: This week doctors announced they had completed the first successful transplant of a partial face and an entire eye. In May at NYU Langone Health in New York City, the surgery was performed on a 46-year-old man who had suffered severe electrical burns to his face, left eye and left arm. He does not yet have vision in the transplanted eye and may never regain it there, but early evidence suggests the eye itself is healthy and may be capable of transmitting neurological signals to the brain. The feat opens up the possibility of restoring the appearance -- and maybe even sight -- of people who have been disfigured or blinded by injuries. Researchers caution there are many technical hurdles before such a procedure can effectively treat vision loss, however.

"I think it's an important proof of principle," says Jeffrey Goldberg, a professor and chair of ophthalmology at the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford University, who was not involved in the surgery but has been part of a team working toward whole-eye transplants in humans. "I think it points to the opportunity and importance that we really stand on the verge of being able to [achieve] eye transplants and vision restoration for blind patients more broadly."But he cautions that the main obstacle is achieving regeneration of the optic nerve, which carries visual signals from the retina to the brain; this step has not yet been successfully demonstrated in humans.

Scientists have been working toward whole-eye transplantation for many years. "This has been, I would say, science fiction for a long time," says Jose-Alain Sahel, a professor and chair of the department of ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who has been working toward such transplants with Goldberg and others. Progress in surgical techniques and nerve regeneration have made this goal seem more attainable. [...] "The fact that this surgery was successful is wonderful news," Sahel says. He cautions that surgery is only a small part of the issues that need to be addressed in order to restore eye function, however. These include making sure the immune system doesn't reject the donor eye, which is a challenge with any type of transplant. Then the corneal nerve -- which carries sensory signals from the transparent part of the eye -- must be reconnected. Yet the most complex part is regenerating the optic nerve. In order to do so, surgeons have to coax the nerve fibers to grow to the right place, which Sahel says could take months or even years. And complete optic nerve regeneration has not yet been successfully achieved in humans or other mammals.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/10/235229/doctors-complete-first-successful-face-and-whole-eye-transplant?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/10/235229/doctors-complete-first-successful-face-and-whole-eye-transplant?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Microsoft Windows Turns 40

Long-time Slashdot reader cusco writes: Forty years ago today Microsoft introduced its new Graphical User Interface for MS-DOS. Inspired by the Xerox PARC project Alto, as was the Apple Mac, it was their first attempt to address the user unfriendliness of the standard computer interface. Named Windows 1.0 after the "windows" it created to view individual running programs, it generated quite a bit of interest at the initial reveal. Unfortunately, difficulty in ironing out bugs (especially in memory management) delayed release for two years, to November 1985.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/11/10/2131256/microsoft-windows-turns-40?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/11/10/2131256/microsoft-windows-turns-40?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


The Evolutionary Reasons We Are Drawn To Horror Movies and Haunted Houses

Scary play lets people -- and other animals -- rehearse coping skills for disturbing challenges in the real world. Scientific American: Our desire to experience fear, it seems, is rooted deep in our evolutionary past and can still benefit us today. Scary play, it turns out, can help us overcome fears and face new challenges -- those that surface in our own lives and others that arise in the increasingly disturbing world we all live in. The phenomenon of scary play surprised Charles Darwin. In The Descent of Man, he wrote that he had heard about captive monkeys that, despite their fear of snakes, kept lifting the lid of a box containing the reptiles to peek inside. Intrigued, Darwin turned the story into an experiment: He put a bag with a snake inside it in a cage full of monkeys at the London Zoological Gardens. A monkey would cautiously walk up to the bag, slowly open it, and peer down inside before shrieking and racing away. After seeing one monkey do this, another monkey would carefully walk over to the bag to take a peek, then scream and run. Then another would do the same thing, then another.

The monkeys were "satiating their horror," as Darwin put it. Morbid fascination with danger is widespread in the animal kingdom -- it's called predator inspection. The inspection occurs when an animal looks at or even approaches a predator rather than simply fleeing. This behavior occurs across a range of animals, from guppies to gazelles. At first blush, getting close to danger seems like a bad idea. Why would natural selection have instilled in animals a curiosity about the very things they should be avoiding? But there is an evolutionary logic to these actions. Morbid curiosity is a powerful way for animals to gain information about the most dangerous things in their environment. It also gives them an opportunity to practice dealing with scary experiences.

When you consider that many prey animals live close to their predators, the benefits of morbidly curious behavior such as predator inspection become clear. For example, it's not uncommon for a gazelle to cross paths with a cheetah on the savanna. It might seem like a gazelle should always run when it sees a cheetah. Fleeing, however, is physiologically expensive; if a gazelle ran every time it saw a cheetah, it would exhaust precious calories and lose out on opportunities for other activities that are important to its survival and reproduction. Consider the perspective of the predator, too. It may seem like a cheetah should chase after a gazelle anytime it sees one. But for a cheetah, it's not easy to just grab a bite; hunting is an energetically costly exercise that doesn't always end in success.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/10/1825243/the-evolutionary-reasons-we-are-drawn-to-horror-movies-and-haunted-houses?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/10/1825243/the-evolutionary-reasons-we-are-drawn-to-horror-movies-and-haunted-houses?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


DIY Tinkerer Invents MacBook Tool That Breaks Apple's Repair Locks

Jason Koebler writes via 404 Media: An independent repair shop in Germany has invented a tool that can break through anti-repair locks Apple has put on a specific sensor on the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. The Nerd.Tool.1 was invented by Stephan Steins of Dortmund's Notebook Nerds repair shop. It is specifically designed to allow independent repair shops to replace the display angle sensor on broken MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops. This was formerly a replacement that only Apple could do because the replacement part had to be "calibrated" with the specific device, which only Apple could do, until now. This sensor detects when the laptop lid is closed, and turns the screen and fan off, and puts the laptop to sleep. If it's broken, the laptop's screen will remain on even when the lid is closed, which drains the battery, can keep the fans running, and generally shorten the life of the computer.

The Nerd.Tool.1 recalibrates replacement sensors, allowing repair techs to replace them without any fuss. "We are calibrating new sensors nearly the same way Apple does," Steins told me. "They can do it via their T2 [security chip] or their M1/M2 chips. We are using the nerd.tool.1 for this task. The sensor holds all the data. It is not serialized or paired to the logic board so we are just calibrating it." "We broke Apple's lock," independent repair advocate and repair pro Louis Rossmann explained in a YouTube video demoing the Nerd.Tool.1. "To whoever it is at Apple who decided to not make this available to technicians, 'Fuck you, we win,'" Rossman said.

"We are selling the nerd.tool.1 to be able to spend time in developing other solutions," added Steins. "We will do our best to get nerd.tool.2 to fix other issues which repair shops are facing. The response has been awesome! The community is very kind, which shows how painful these missing tools are for many independent repair shops."

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/23/10/04/213228/diy-tinkerer-invents-macbook-tool-that-breaks-apples-repair-locks?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/23/10/04/213228/diy-tinkerer-invents-macbook-tool-that-breaks-apples-repair-locks?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


NASA Plans To Build Houses On the Moon By 2040

Several scientists from NASA told the New York Times that the agency is planning to build houses on the moon by 2040. Forbes reports: The agency is set to return to the moon and is hoping its astronauts can stay long-term -- in a house built on the moon via a 3D printer. The idea is to build the house structure out of a special lunar concrete from the moon's surface, and NASA has found just the company to do it: Austin-based 3D printing company, ICON. In what's been dubbed Project Olympus, ICON

ICON created its first 350-square-foot prototype home in Austin in March 2018 with a proprietary machine called Vulcan. This year, it showcased its first model home at Wolf Ranch in Georgetown, Texas, which is part of its 3D-printed 100-home community project. The start-up first received funding from NASA in 2020, and in 2022 it announced an additional $60 million for a space-based construction system that can be used beyond earth. The idea is to send a 3D printer up to the moon via a rocket, and the printer completes its job from there. "We've got all the right people together at the right time with a common goal, which is why I think we'll get there," NASA's director of technology maturation, Niki Werkheiser told The New York Times. "Everyone is ready to take this step together, so if we get our core capabilities developed, there's no reason it's not possible."

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/10/04/0439245/nasa-plans-to-build-houses-on-the-moon-by-2040?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/10/04/0439245/nasa-plans-to-build-houses-on-the-moon-by-2040?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Amazon Used Secret 'Project Nessie' Algorithm To Raise Prices

Amazon used an algorithm code-named "Project Nessie" to test how much it could raise prices in a way that competitors would follow, according to redacted portions of the Federal Trade Commission's monopoly lawsuit against the company. From a report: The algorithm helped Amazon improve its profit on items across shopping categories, and because of the power the company has in e-commerce, led competitors to raise their prices and charge customers more, according to people familiar with the allegations in the complaint. In instances where competitors didn't raise their prices to Amazon's level, the algorithm -- which is no longer in use -- automatically returned the item to its normal price point.

The company also used Nessie on what employees saw as a promotional spiral, where Amazon would match a discounted price from a competitor, such as Target.com, and other competitors would follow, lowering their prices. When Target ended its sale, Amazon and the other competitors would remain locked at the low price because they were still matching each other, according to former employees who worked on the algorithm and pricing team. The algorithm helped Amazon recoup money and improve margins. The FTC's lawsuit redacted an estimate of how much it alleges the practice "extracted from American households," and it also says it helped the company generate a redacted amount of "excess profit." Amazon made more than $1 billion in revenue through use of the algorithm, according to a person familiar with the matter. Amazon stopped using the algorithm in 2019, some of the people said. It wasn't clear why the company stopped using it.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/10/03/1935211/amazon-used-secret-project-nessie-algorithm-to-raise-prices?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/10/03/1935211/amazon-used-secret-project-nessie-algorithm-to-raise-prices?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Google Is Retiring Its Gmail Basic HTML View In January 2024

Bill Toulas writes via Bleeping Computer reports: Google is notifying Gmail users that the webmail's Basic HTML view will be deprecated in January 2024, and users will require modern browsers to continue using the service. After that date, all users of the popular webmail service will automatically be redirected to the more modern Standard view, which supports all the latest usability and security features.

The basic HTML view is a stripped-down version of Gmail that does not offer users chat, spell checking, keyboard shortcuts, adding or importing contacts, setting custom "from" addresses, or using rich text formatting. This feature is designed for people living in areas with internet access, using older hardware with limited memory, or using legacy web browsers that do not support current HTML features.

However, one of the biggest reasons users use HTML view is that text-to-speech tools used by users with visual impairment are more reliable, as the Standard view introduces technical complexities that are harder for these tools to manage. Nonetheless, Google has decided to retire Gmail's HTML view without providing specific reasons.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/09/25/2152210/google-is-retiring-its-gmail-basic-html-view-in-january-2024?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/09/25/2152210/google-is-retiring-its-gmail-basic-html-view-in-january-2024?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Tesla Bot Can Now Sort Objects Autonomously

The official Tesla Optimus account shared an update video showing the progress its humanoid robot has made since it was announced in August 2021. In a video that looks like CGI, you can see Optimus sorting blocks and performing some yoga poses, among other things. Interesting Engineering reports: The video begins with the Tesla Bot aka the Optimus robot performing a self-calibration routine, which is essential for adapting to new environments. It then shows how TeslaBot can use its vision and joint position sensors to accurately locate its limbs in space, without relying on any external feedback. This enables TeslaBot to interact with objects and perform tasks with precision and dexterity.

One of the tasks that Optimus demonstrates is sorting blue and green blocks into matching trays. Tesla Optimus can grasp each block with ease and sort them at a human-like speed. It can also handle dynamic changes in the environment, such as when a human intervenes and moves the blocks around. TeslaBot can quickly adjust to the new situation and resume its task. It can also correct its own errors, such as when a block lands on its side and needs to be rotated.

The video also showcases Tesla Bot's balance and flexibility, as it performs some yoga poses that require standing on one leg and extending its limbs. These poses are not related to any practical workloads, but they show how TeslaBot can control its body and maintain its stability. The video ends with a call for more engineers to join the Tesla Optimus team, as the project is still in development and needs more talent. There is no information on when TeslaBot will be ready for production or commercial use, but the video suggests that it is making rapid progress and using the same software as the Tesla cars.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/09/25/2040211/tesla-bot-can-now-sort-objects-autonomously?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/09/25/2040211/tesla-bot-can-now-sort-objects-autonomously?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


China's Spy Balloon Program Appears to Have Been Suspended, US Officials Say

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:

China appears to have suspended its surveillance balloon program following a major diplomatic incident earlier this year, when one of the country's high-altitude spy balloons transited the United States, multiple sources familiar with US intelligence assessments told CNN. US officials believe that Chinese leaders have made a deliberate decision not to launch additional balloons since the one over the US was shot down by American fighter jets in February, the sources said. The US has not observed any new launches since the episode occurred... The US intelligence community believes that Chinese Communist Party leaders did not intend for the balloon to cross over the United States, and even reprimanded the operators of the surveillance program over the incident, one of the sources said...

The US assessed at the time that the spy balloon was part of an extensive surveillance program run by the Chinese military, CNN has previously reported. The balloon fleet had conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years, according to US officials. The suspension of the program is likely China's way of trying to stabilize its relations with the United States in the run-up to a potential meeting between President Biden and Xi in November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, said Christopher Johnson, a former senior China analyst at the CIA and now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Although China is unlikely to publicly acknowledge that the balloon was part of an espionage program or announce it will no longer conduct such surveillance on the United States, Johnson said, quietly suspending the program is "a positive step" and likely Beijing's way of showing the US it is trying to address some of the friction points in the relationship...

The FBI concluded its analysis of the balloon's remnants earlier this year, and the Pentagon announced in June that the US government assessed that the balloon did not collect intelligence while flying over the country...In the wake of the incident, the US widened the aperture of its radar systems so that they could better detect objects traveling above a certain altitude and at certain speeds. The aim was to fix a "domain awareness gap" that had allowed three other suspected Chinese spy balloons to transit the continental United States undetected under the Trump administration, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said at the time. The more sensitive radar systems led the US military to spot more unidentified objects in US airspace, however, leading to three additional shootdowns of unidentified high-altitude objects in the weeks following the Chinese balloon incident.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/09/16/2242228/chinas-spy-balloon-program-appears-to-have-been-suspended-us-officials-say?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/09/16/2242228/chinas-spy-balloon-program-appears-to-have-been-suspended-us-officials-say?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


For the First Time, Research Reveals Crows Use Statistical Logic

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [R]esearchers from the University of Tubingen found for the first time that crows can perform statistical reasoning. These results can help scientists better understand the evolution of intelligence (and may give us a better appreciation of what's going on in our backyard). [...] Dr. Melissa Johnston, a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Tubingen, certainly appreciated the specialness of these creatures, as she and her colleagues have been studying these animals for several years. "In our lab, it has been shown that crows have sophisticated numerical competence, demonstrate abstract thinking, and show careful consideration during decision-making," she said. In her most recent experiment, Johnston and her team pushed these abilities to a new extreme, testing statistical reasoning.

To do this, Johnston and her team began by training two crows to peck at various images on touchscreens to earn food treats. From this simple routine of peck-then-treat, the researchers significantly raised the stakes. "We introduce the concept of probabilities, such as that not every peck to an image will result in a reward," Johnston elaborated. "This is where the crows learn the unique pairings between the image on the screen and the likelihood of obtaining a reward." The crows quickly learned to associate each of the images with a different reward probability. In the experiment, the two crows had to choose between two of these images, each corresponding to a different reward probability. "Crows were tasked with learning rather abstract quantities (i.e., not whole numbers), associating them with abstract symbols, and then applying that combination of information in a reward maximizing way," Johnston said. Over 10 days of training and 5,000 trials, the researchers found that the two crows continued to pick the higher probability of reward, showing their ability to use statistical inference.

Pushing the crows even further, Johnston and her team waited a whole month before testing the crows again. Even after a month without training, the crows remembered the reward probabilities and could pick the highest number every time. Johnston and her team were excited that the crows could apply statistical reasoning in almost any setting to ensure their reward. "Working with the birds every day is very rewarding! They are very responsive animals, so I enjoy spending time with them," added Johnston. The findings have been published in the journal Current Biology.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/09/14/227251/for-the-first-time-research-reveals-crows-use-statistical-logic?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/09/14/227251/for-the-first-time-research-reveals-crows-use-statistical-logic?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed