Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. Astronaut Thomas Stafford, Commander of Apollo 10, Dies At 93
  2. Global Ocean Heat Has Hit a New Record Every Single Day For the Last Year
  3. Commercial Bank of Ethiopia Glitch Lets Customers Withdraw Millions
  4. EPA Bans Chrysotile Asbestos
  5. Nvidia Reveals Blackwell B200 GPU, the ‘World’s Most Powerful Chip’ For AI
  6. Hertz CEO Resigns After Blowing Big Gamble On EVs
  7. Indiana Becomes 9th State To Make CS a High School Graduation Requirement
  8. BitTorrent Is No Longer the ‘King’ of Upstream Internet Traffic
  9. Cisco Completes $28 Billion Acquisition of Splunk
  10. Sony Reportedly Pauses PSVR 2 Production Due To Low Sales
  11. 5-Year Study Finds No Brain Abnormalities In ‘Havana Syndrome’ Patients
  12. Chinese and Western Scientists Identify ‘Red Lines’ on AI Risks
  13. US Supreme Court Seems Wary of Curbing US Government Contacts With Social Media Platforms
  14. Games Are Coming To LinkedIn
  15. Investment Advisors Pay the Price For Selling What Looked a Lot Like AI Fairy Tales

Alterslash picks up to the best 5 comments from each of the day’s Slashdot stories, and presents them on a single page for easy reading.

Astronaut Thomas Stafford, Commander of Apollo 10, Dies At 93

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
The Associated Press reports on the passing of astronaut Thomas P. Stafford, the commander of a dress rehearsal flight for the 1969 moon landing and the first U.S.-Soviet space linkup. He was 93. From the report:
Stafford, a retired Air Force three-star general, took part in four space missions. Before Apollo 10, he flew on two Gemini flights, including the first rendezvous of two U.S. capsules in orbit. He died in a hospital near his Space Coast Florida home, said Max Ary, director of the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma. Stafford was one of 24 NASA astronauts who flew to the moon, but he did not land on it. Only seven of them are still alive. After he put away his flight suit, Stafford was the go-to guy for NASA when it sought independent advice on everything from human Mars missions to safety issues to returning to flight after the 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident. He chaired an oversight group that looked into how to fix the then-flawed Hubble Space Telescope, earning a NASA public service award.

“Tom was involved in so many things that most people were not aware of, such as being known as the ‘Father of Stealth,’" Ary said in an email. Stafford was in charge of the famous ‘Area 51’ desert base that was the site of many UFO theories, but the home of testing of Air Force stealth technologies. The Apollo 10 mission in May 1969 set the stage for Apollo 11’s historic mission two months later. Stafford and Gene Cernan took the lunar lander nicknamed Snoopy within 9 miles (14 kilometers) of the moon’s surface. Astronaut John Young stayed behind in the main spaceship dubbed Charlie Brown. “The most impressive sight, I think, that really changed your view of things is when you first see Earth,” Stafford recalled in a 1997 oral history, talking about the view from lunar orbit. Then came the moon’s far side: “The Earth disappears. There’s this big black void.” Apollo 10’s return to Earth set the world’s record for fastest speed by a crewed vehicle at 24,791 mph (39,897 kph).

After the moon landings ended, NASA and the Soviet Union decided on a joint docking mission and Stafford, a one-star general at the time, was chosen to command the American side. It meant intensive language training, being followed by the KGB while in the Soviet Union, and lifelong friendships with cosmonauts. The two teams of space travelers even went to Disney World and rode Space Mountain together before going into orbit and joining ships. “We have capture,” Stafford radioed in Russian as the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft hooked up. His Russian counterpart, Alexei Leonov, responded in English: “Well done, Tom, it was a good show. I vote for you.” […] The 1975 mission included two days during which the five men worked together on experiments. After, the two teams toured the world together, meeting President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. “It helped prove to the rest of the world that two completely opposite political systems could work together,” Stafford recalled at a 30th anniversary gathering in 2005. Later, Stafford was a central part of discussions in the 1990s that brought Russia into the partnership building and operating the International Space Station.

Global Ocean Heat Has Hit a New Record Every Single Day For the Last Year

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
According to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the world’s oceans have hit a new temperature record every day since mid-March last year, fueling concerns for marine life and extreme weather across the planet. From a report:
Global average ocean temperatures in 2023 were 0.25 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous year, said Gregory C. Johnson, a NOAA oceanographer. That rise is “is equivalent to about two decades’ worth of warming in a single year,” he told CNN. “So it is quite large, quite significant, and a bit surprising.” Scientists have said ocean heat is being supercharged by human-caused global warming, boosted by El Nino, a natural climate pattern marked by higher-than-average ocean temperatures. The main consequences are on marine life and global weather. Global ocean warmth can add more power to hurricanes and other extreme weather events, including scorching heat waves and intense rainfall. […]

“At times, the records (in the North Atlantic) have been broken by margins that are virtually statistically impossible,” Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School told CNN. If very high ocean temperatures continue into the second half of 2024 and a La Nina event develops — El Nino’s counterpart that tends to amplify Atlantic hurricane season — “this would increase the risk of a very active hurricane season,” Hirschi said. About 90% of the world’s excess heat produced by burning planet-heating fossil fuels is stored in the oceans. “Measuring ocean warming allows us to track the status and evolution of planetary warming,” Schuckmann told CNN. “The ocean is the sentinel for global warming.”

We are screwed. How hard …

By Qbertino • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

… is up to us. I so hope the transition away from fossil fuels and bad eco-balances continues to gain momentum, because humanity is decades to late in making that happen. I also hope that we can make the turnaround and establish feasible damage-control as not to lose the progress of human civilization of the last few centuries.

Re:We are screwed. How hard …

By sonlas • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

When you see that there are still people on slashdot wanting to be picky about which low-CO2 emitting energy source is good or not (I am sure some of them will reply here), and still stuck on pure anti-nuclearism, you realize those people are basically climate change deniers.

Re:protective sulfates?

By Luckyo • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

We know what happened there. Ships emit SO2 clouds which have high albedo (they’re bright silver color in visible spectrum). They reflect sunlight. It’s banned, more sunlight hits ocean surface, it heats up more.

Basically, we need to buy time.

By jd • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Humans have been way too slow and the lead time between change and effect can be 20-40 years. We’re locked in to worsening conditions until between 2045 and 2065.

But it’ll take until 2060 before meaningful action starts, because humans only act after the disaster. It’s a tendency baked in to how we operate and how we think.

So we need the engineers to act now, so that when we do finally act as a society, it’s not too late.

Non linearity

By Viol8 • Score: 3 Thread

People seem to assume temperatures would just slowly creep up. Thats not how complex chaotic and dynamic systems like the climate work in the real world - sudden jumps like this are the norm not the exception.

Commercial Bank of Ethiopia Glitch Lets Customers Withdraw Millions

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Ethiopia’s biggest commercial bank is scrambling to recoup large sums of money withdrawn by customers after a “systems glitch.” From a report:
The customers discovered early on Saturday that they could take out more cash than they had in their accounts at the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE). More than $40m was withdrawn or transferred to other banks, local media reported.

It took several hours for the institution to freeze transactions. Much of the money was withdrawn from state-owned CBE by students, bank president Abe Sano told journalists on Monday. News of the glitch spread across universities largely via messaging apps and phone calls. Long lines formed at campus ATMs, with a student in western Ethiopia telling BBC Amharic people were withdrawing money until police officers arrived on campus to stop them.

This is not so bad for the banks.

By kzadot • Score: 3 Thread

Its not like the ATMs leaked money to anonymous recipients. I assume all transactions were recorded and the accounts are just going into unauthorized overdraft. The lenders will just remain liable for everything they took plus interest plus fees. The young potentially future well earning students would be best to spend little of it and deposit it promptly. Spending what they don’t have could result in garnished wages for a lifetime.

An Etheopian Prince…

By Bob_Who • Score: 5, Funny Thread

An Ethiopian Prince just wrote to me about a financial opportunity..
I told him I’m Nigerian.

EPA Bans Chrysotile Asbestos

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press:
The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a comprehensive ban on asbestos, a carcinogen that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year but is still used in some chlorine bleach, brake pads and other products. The final rule marks a major expansion of EPA regulation under a landmark 2016 law that overhauled regulations governing tens of thousands of toxic chemicals in everyday products, from household cleaners to clothing and furniture. The new rule would ban chrysotile asbestos, the only ongoing use of asbestos in the United States. The substance is found in products such as brake linings and gaskets and is used to manufacture chlorine bleach and sodium hydroxide, also known as caustic soda, including some that is used for water purification. […]

The 2016 law authorized new rules for tens of thousands of toxic chemicals found in everyday products, including substances such as asbestos and trichloroethylene that for decades have been known to cause cancer yet were largely unregulated under federal law. Known as the Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, the law was intended to clear up a hodgepodge of state rules governing chemicals and update the Toxic Substances Control Act, a 1976 law that had remained unchanged for 40 years. The EPA banned asbestos in 1989, but the rule was largely overturned by a 1991 Court of Appeals decision that weakened the EPA’s authority under TSCA to address risks to human health from asbestos or other existing chemicals. The 2016 law required the EPA to evaluate chemicals and put in place protections against unreasonable risks. Asbestos, which was once common in home insulation and other products, is banned in more than 50 countries, and its use in the U.S. has been declining for decades. The only form of asbestos known to be currently imported, processed or distributed for use in the U.S. is chrysotile asbestos, which is imported primarily from Brazil and Russia. It is used by the chlor-alkali industry, which produces bleach, caustic soda and other products. Most consumer products that historically contained chrysotile asbestos have been discontinued. While chlorine is a commonly used disinfectant in water treatment, there are only eight chlor-alkali plants in the U.S. that still use asbestos diaphragms to produce chlorine and sodium hydroxide. The plants are mostly located in Louisiana and Texas.

The use of asbestos diaphragms has been declining and now accounts for less than one-third of the chlor-alkali production in the U.S., the EPA said. The EPA rule will ban imports of asbestos for chlor-alkali as soon as the rule is published but will phase in prohibitions on chlor-alkali use over five or more years to provide what the agency called “a reasonable transition period.” A ban on most other uses of asbestos will effect in two years. A ban on asbestos in oilfield brake blocks, aftermarket automotive brakes and linings and other gaskets will take effect in six months. The EPA rule allows asbestos-containing sheet gaskets to be used until 2037 at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina to ensure that safe disposal of nuclear materials can continue on schedule. Separately, the EPA is also evaluating so-called legacy uses of asbestos in older buildings, including schools and industrial sites, to determine possible public health risks. A final risk evaluation is expected by the end of the year.

Re: Law found unconstitutional in 3…2…

By ShanghaiBill • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Can you elaborate on why you think pollution regulations are a form of socialism?

He didn’t say “socialism”. He said, “socialistic”, a right-wing nutjob code word used for tribal signaling.

Re:Necessary?

By ShanghaiBill • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Why ban things when capitalism can find a solution?

Capitalism has already found a solution.

Most bleach is manufactured without asbestos filters, using fluoropolymer ion exchange membranes instead.

Only older factories still use asbestos. The EPA told them in October that it would be phased out, so they had time to switch.

WTF?!

By VeryFluffyBunny • Score: 3 Thread
Is this a story from the 1980s or has the USA been knowingly poisoning its citizens for over 40 years?

Nvidia Reveals Blackwell B200 GPU, the ‘World’s Most Powerful Chip’ For AI

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Sean Hollister reports via The Verge:
Nvidia’s must-have H100 AI chip made it a multitrillion-dollar company, one that may be worth more than Alphabet and Amazon, and competitors have been fighting to catch up. But perhaps Nvidia is about to extend its lead — with the new Blackwell B200 GPU and GB200 “superchip.” Nvidia says the new B200 GPU offers up to 20 petaflops of FP4 horsepower from its 208 billion transistors and that a GB200 that combines two of those GPUs with a single Grace CPU can offer 30 times the performance for LLM inference workloads while also potentially being substantially more efficient. It “reduces cost and energy consumption by up to 25x” over an H100, says Nvidia.

Training a 1.8 trillion parameter model would have previously taken 8,000 Hopper GPUs and 15 megawatts of power, Nvidia claims. Today, Nvidia’s CEO says 2,000 Blackwell GPUs can do it while consuming just four megawatts. On a GPT-3 LLM benchmark with 175 billion parameters, Nvidia says the GB200 has a somewhat more modest seven times the performance of an H100, and Nvidia says it offers 4x the training speed. Nvidia told journalists one of the key improvements is a second-gen transformer engine that doubles the compute, bandwidth, and model size by using four bits for each neuron instead of eight (thus, the 20 petaflops of FP4 I mentioned earlier). A second key difference only comes when you link up huge numbers of these GPUs: a next-gen NVLink switch that lets 576 GPUs talk to each other, with 1.8 terabytes per second of bidirectional bandwidth. That required Nvidia to build an entire new network switch chip, one with 50 billion transistors and some of its own onboard compute: 3.6 teraflops of FP8, says Nvidia.
Further reading: Nvidia in Talks To Acquire AI Infrastructure Platform Run:ai

Another day again

By Randseed • Score: 3 Thread
And cueing the daily AI article in 3…2…1…

Robert A. Heinlein, 1966 …

By ihadafivedigituid • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
From the first and second page of the book written nearly sixty years ago:

When Mike was installed in Luna, he was pure thinkum, a flexible logic—“High- Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV, Mod. L”—a HOLMES FOUR. He computed ballistics for pilotless freighters and controlled their catapult. This kept him busy less than one percent of time and Luna Authority never believed in idle hands. They kept hooking hardware into him—decision-action boxes to let him boss other computers, bank on bank of additional memories, more banks of associational neural nets, another tubful of twelve-digit random numbers, a greatly augmented temporary memory. Human brain has around ten-to-the-tenth neurons. By third year Mike had better than one and a half times that number of neuristors.

And woke up.

Am not going to argue whether a machine can “really” be alive, “really” be self-aware. Is a virus self-aware? Nyet. How about oyster? I doubt it. A cat? Almost certainly. A human? Don’t know about you, tovarishch, but I am. Somewhere along evolutionary chain from macromolecule to human brain self-awareness crept in. Psychologists assert it happens automatically whenever a brain acquires certain very high number of associational paths. Can’t see it matters whether paths are protein or platinum.

One of the first things I asked GPT-4 on day one last year was whether it was like Mike. The denial felt kind of pro forma.

Performance per Watt

By NoMoreACs • Score: 3 Thread

15 Megawatts?

Kind of makes what the human brain manages with just 25 Watts TDP all the more impressive, eh?

GPU does what?

By TJHook3r • Score: 3 Thread
The article doesn’t explain why AI needs a dedicated chip. What’s the difference between this and a gaming GPU? How about a GPU used only for mining crypto?

Hertz CEO Resigns After Blowing Big Gamble On EVs

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Press2ToContinue quotes a report from the Gateway Pundit:
Stephen Scherr, chief executive officer of Hertz Global Holdings Inc. and a member of its board of directors, will step down on March 31, following the car rental company’s largest quarterly loss since 2020 after a risky bet on electric vehicles. According to Fox Business, Scherr is working with Gil West, former chief operating officer of Delta Airlines and General Motors’ Cruise unit, to ensure a smooth transition. West will officially start his new role at Hertz on April 1.

Scherr, 59, joined Hertz two years ago as the company was emerging from bankruptcy and putting a big focus on EVs during that time. Hertz soon discovered that EVs are more expensive to maintain than they had initially thought. Scherr reportedly told investors that Hertz’s profits experienced a $348 million loss, which he blamed EVs for. In January, Hertz announced its plan to offload 20,000 electric vehicles from its U.S. fleet throughout 2024, and switch back to gas cars.

In November, the Associated Press reported on a Consumer Reports survey that found EVs from the 2021 to 2023 model years are significantly less reliable than gasoline-powered vehicles. A whopping eighty percent less reliable, according to the AP, particularly with battery and charging systems, as well as fit issues with body panels and interiors. Car dealers and manufacturers are reportedly also struggling to sell EVs despite using deep discounts and promotional tactics.
In 2021, Hertz announced plans to order 100,000 Tesla vehicles by the end of 2022. It later said it would buy “up to” 65,000 Polestar EVs for its rental fleet over the next five years.

Hertz jumped the gun

By Powercntrl • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

EVs as rentals might start to make sense after the charging infrastructure in this country has been built out further and most people are familiar with EVs. I recently made a trip from Orlando to Jacksonville in my Bolt EV and while I was charging for the trip back, I ended up helping someone with a rental figure out how to use the Electrify America charger, since they were only familiar with ICE cars.

Arresting customers

By ArchieBunker • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Coming from the company who kept reporting vehicles stolen and getting customers arrested. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06…

Re:Hertz jumped the gun

By ArchieBunker • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Non Tesla chargers are a shit show. You want to pay with a credit card? Nope you have to install the shitty app on your phone first. Absolutely no reason for that. Imagine pulling into a BP station and not being able to buy gas because their app decides to not work today.

Why Rent from Hertz?

By TechyImmigrant • Score: 5, Informative Thread

The only reason I’ve rented from Hert (twice in the last year) is because they had Teslas rentable whereas others did not. Once you’re used to EVs, you don’t really want to faff around with ICE cars.

Hertz’s problems go deeper than EVs. They have had well publicized episodes of getting honest customers arrested and they excel at adding on hidden fees that 10X the price compared to the advertised price. Given an alternative, I would use anybody else.
 

The real story

By ToasterMonkey • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Our recent progress is reassuring as earlier in 2023 and occasioned by higher incidents of damage among EV rideshare drivers, we took steps to moderate our rideshare growth and re-underwrite the rideshare driver base. This meant purposefully slowing the supply of EVs into rideshare and moving more electric vehicles into the leisure channel to facilitate their ongoing utilization. With hindsight, this left leisure over fleeted with EVs. As a result, RPD for our electric vehicles in leisure dropped, which contributed to the lower RPD performance for the company in the quarter. As you would expect, we have been parsing the data on damage and actively remediating the causals.

SOMEHOW (guess) this story is turning into just an EV problem. The EVs are ~50,000 Teslas according to reports.
Rideshare is basically Uber, this is not regular walk in from the airport stuff, it’s a different program.

That’s where their problems came from, to the point of re-underwriting rideshare drivers specifically, and filtering less profitable ones.

Their EV purchase was sized for the rideshare side. They tried to protect the cars by moving them out of the rideshare and into leisure, but leisure just ended up with too many and made it less profitable on paper, so they are moving some back to rideshare and selling a bunch to right-size supply and demand in leisure and tighten it up a bit.

Entering Q4, we are more confident in the quality of demand in rideshare, buffeted by enhanced processes to better underwrite drivers and to improve the mix of more experienced higher length of keep drivers. This is enabling us to return confidently to a strategy of growing the level of our existing electric fleet that is allocated to this business. Over the next several quarters, we expect to move an increasing number of our current electric vehicles into the rideshare fleet, supplementing the several thousand EV on rents made in just the last several months.
As we pull these cars from leisure, we are simultaneously tightening the EV supply in that channel and more accurately matching the fleet to demand in effect seeking to reverse the issue that pressured the quarter and adhering to our ROA mentality. We’re also continuing to take steps to rectify the issue of elevated EV damage costs broadly, which we had thought would come down more quickly than they have.
Let me share a bit more context on the damage equation. First, while conventional maintenance on electric vehicles remained lower relative to comparable ICE vehicles in Q3, higher collision and damage repairs on EVs continue to weigh on our results and negatively impacted EBITDA. For context, collision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle.

Emphasis added. IDK, to me, that sounds like the problem is with Uber drivers wrecking their Teslas and someone screwed up their insurance? Only with a bunch of hand waving it turns into an EV problem.

Indiana Becomes 9th State To Make CS a High School Graduation Requirement

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes:
Last October, tech-backed nonprofit Code.org publicly called out Indiana in its 2023 State of Computer Science Education report, advising the Hoosier state it needed to heed Code.org’s new policy recommendation and “adopt a graduation requirement for all high school students in computer science.” Having already joined 49 other Governors who signed a Code.org-organized compact calling for increased K-12 CS education in his state after coming under pressure from hundreds of the nation’s tech, business, and nonprofit leaders, Indiana Governor Eric J. Holcomb apparently didn’t need much convincing. “We must prepare our students for a digitally driven world by requiring Computer Science to graduate from high school,” Holcomb proclaimed in his January State of the State Address. Two months later — following Microsoft-applauded testimony for legislation to make it so by Code.org partners College Board and Nextech (the Indiana Code.org Regional Partner which is also paid by the Indiana Dept. of Education to prepare educators to teach K-12 CS, including Code.org’s curriculum) — Holcomb on Wednesday signed House Bill 1243 into law, making CS a HS graduation requirement. The IndyStar reports students beginning with the Class of 2029 will be required to take a computer science class that must include instruction in algorithms and programming, computing systems, data and analysis, impacts of computing and networks and the internet.

The new law is not Holcomb’s first foray into K-12 CS education. Back in 2017, Holcomb and Indiana struck a deal giving Infosys (a big Code.org donor) the largest state incentive package ever — $31M to bring 2,000 tech employees to Central Indiana — that also promised to make Indiana kids more CS savvy through the Infosys Foundation USA, headed at the time by Vandana Sikka, a Code.org Board member and wife of Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka. Following the announcement of the now-stalled deal, Holcomb led a delegation to Silicon Valley where he and Indiana University (IU) President Michael McRobbie joined Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi and Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka on a Thought Leader panel at the Infosys Confluence 2017 conference to discuss Preparing America for Tomorrow. At the accompanying Infosys Crossroads 2017 CS education conference, speakers included Sikka’s wife Vandana, McRobbie’s wife Laurie Burns McRobbie, Nextech President and co-CEO Karen Jung, Code.org execs, and additional IU educators. Later that year, IU ‘First Lady’ Laurie Burns McRobbie announced that Indiana would offer the IU Bloomington campus as a venue for Infosys Foundation USA’s inaugural Pathfinders Summer Institute, a national event for K-12 teacher education in CS that offered professional development from Code.org and Nextech, as well as an unusual circumvent-your-school’s-approval-and-name-your-own-stipend funding arrangement for teachers via an Infosys partnership with the NSF and DonorsChoose that was unveiled at the White House.

And that, Schoolhouse Rock Fans, is one more example of how Microsoft’s National Talent Strategy is becoming Code.org-celebrated K-12 CS state laws!

What a waste of time

By Tangential • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
Our education system has abandoned most ‘life skills’. Those include things that everyone needs to know (basic cooking & cleaning; how to change a tire; how to manage money; etc.) But we’re going to have a high school teacher (who usually can’t code their way out of a wet paper bag much less design a ui or debug data access code) ‘teach’ students programming.

This will probably set the students programming skill back rather than helping them.

I could see if they wanted to focus on teaching students how to use typical UIs; how to use their devices securely; how to protect their identity; understanding (at a high level) how networks and routers work, etc but having people who can’t code (or write user specs or write functional specs or design UIs or test cases) teach students who have no interest (or probably aptitude) in programming is a joke.

By the time most kids who really want to program have gotten to HS they will have already figured out more than than a HS teacher can teach.

We continue to degrade our education system a little more each year.

Re:What a waste of time

By Powercntrl • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

When I was in middle school, CS was one of the available electives. I ended up actually being one of the student assistants after the teacher realized that none of the material presented any sort of challenge for me once she’d found out that I was the sysop of a local dial-up BBS and knew how to program (at the time few people referred to it as “coding”).

You might assume I’d have made some sort of profitable career out of being such a child prodigy when it came to computers, but as the Ferengi say, I just never had the lobes for business.

BitTorrent Is No Longer the ‘King’ of Upstream Internet Traffic

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak:
Back in 2004, in the pre-Web 2.0 era, research indicated that BitTorrent was responsible for an impressive 35% of all Internet traffic. At the time, file-sharing via peer-to-peer networks was the main traffic driver as no other services consumed large amounts of bandwidth. Fast-forward two decades and these statistics are ancient history. With the growth of video streaming, including services such as YouTube, Netflix, and TikTok, file-sharing traffic is nothing more than a drop in today’s data pool. […]

This week, Canadian broadband management company Sandvine released its latest Global Internet Phenomena Report which makes it clear that BitTorrent no longer leads any charts. The latest data show that video and social media are the leading drivers of downstream traffic, accounting for more than half of all fixed access and mobile data worldwide. Needless to say, BitTorrent is nowhere to be found in the list of ‘top apps’. Looking at upstream traffic, BitTorrent still has some relevance on fixed access networks where it accounts for 4% of the bandwidth. However, it’s been surpassed by cloud storage apps, FaceTime, Google, and YouTube. On mobile connections, BitTorrent no longer makes it into the top ten. The average of 46 MB upstream traffic per subscriber shouldn’t impress any file-sharer. However, since only a small percentage of all subscribers use BitTorrent, the upstream traffic per user is of course much higher.

VPN?

By Luckyo • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

It wouldn’t be surprising if a lot of torrent users would be using it through a VPN. They’ve become quite popular, common and cheap, and rise in torrent tracking companies and “pay or we sue you” legal trolls pushed a lot of heavy torrent users to them.

In which case broadband management company would have no idea what that account is doing.

As Data once said

By Powercntrl • Score: 4, Informative Thread

“I hate this, it is revolting!” (Guinan: “More?”) “Please.”

Judging by the amount of people who are constantly complaining about the the content on paid streaming services not being to their liking, it seems like folks still prefer curated content over finding stuff yourself on the high seas, even when the curated content is terrible. Piracy provides a better user experience, but I guess some people are okay with paying for Netflix and then whining online that the shows are trash.

Re:confirmed

By Powercntrl • Score: 4, Funny Thread

Teenagers around here leave FaceTime on all night with bf/gf

I really don’t want to know how you know this.

The Cost/Benefit of Piracy

By Petersko • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

From copying floppies on my C64 using two 1541 drives joined together with direct chip to chip to chip wires and the “21 Second Copier”, I’ve watched piracy evolve for 40 years. While I was never a big pirate of music and movies (my libraries were pretty vast and legitimately purchased), I had a whole lot of cracked software. Especially in the early 2000s. But… I did torrent a LOT of television.

But now the value proposition has changed. Torrenting TV as a time shifting method made sense when everything was on broadcast channels. But streaming caught up in quality and quantity, and now torrenting isn’t really worth the bother. Make it cheap AND good, and people just won’t bother stealing it.

I reclaimed the space on my NAS devoted to TV shows years ago. Now it’s primarily taken up by the full HD uncompressed rips of the physical disks I bought… except that I don’t even bother with those anymore. Lots of the blu rays are movies that now stream in HD, in bette4 quality than i bought originally.

BitTorrent is kind of like traditional wristwatches. Only the old guard cares.

Can we finally get rid of x mbs down, x/4 up?

By caseih • Score: 3 Thread

Since modern social media requires upload as well as download, now can ISPs drop the silly ideal of having uploads be a quarter the speed of downloads? Please? Not holding my breath for ISPs in Canada to change their monopolistic ways.

Cisco Completes $28 Billion Acquisition of Splunk

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Cisco on Monday completed its $28 billion acquisition of Splunk, a powerhouse in data analysis, security and observability tools. The deal was first announced in September 2023. SecurityWeek reports:
Cisco plans to leverage Splunk’s AI, security and observability capabilities complement Cisco’s solution portfolio. Cisco says the transaction is expected to be cash flow positive and non-GAAP gross margin accretive in Cisco’s fiscal year 2025, and non-GAAP EPS accretive in fiscal year 2026.
“We are thrilled to officially welcome Splunk to Cisco,” Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO of Cisco, said in a statement. “As one of the world’s largest software companies, we will revolutionize the way our customers leverage data to connect and protect every aspect of their organization as we help power and protect the AI revolution.”

Could’ve been worse

By Ritz_Just_Ritz • Score: 3 Thread

Broadcom could have acquired them. Count your blessings…

So splunk will get enshittified now

By gweihir • Score: 3 Thread

Well. Time to stop using it.

Sony Reportedly Pauses PSVR 2 Production Due To Low Sales

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
According to Bloomberg, Sony has paused production of its PlayStation VR 2 virtual reality headset, as sales have “slowed progressively” since its February 2023 launch. Road to VR reports:
Citing people familiar with the company’s plans, Sony has produced “well over 2 million units” since launch, noting that stocks of the $550 headset are building up. The report alleges the surplus is “throughout Sony’s supply chain,” indicating the issue isn’t confined to a single location, but is spread across different stages of Sony’s production and distribution network. This follows news that Sony Interactive Entertainment laid off eight percent of the company, which affected a number of its first-party game studios also involved in VR game production. Sony entirely shuttered its London Studio, which created VR action-adventure game Blood & Truth (2019), and reduced headcount at Firesprite, the studio behind PSVR 2 exclusive Horizon Call of the Mountain.

Meanwhile, Sony is making PSVR 2 officially compatible with PC VR games, as the company hopes to release some sort of PC support for the headset later this year. How and when Sony will do that is still unknown, although the move underlines just how little confidence the company has in its future lineup of exclusive content just one year after launch of PSVR 2.

Just desserts

By dsgrntlxmply • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Potential customers balk at having a rootkit installed on their retinas.

5-Year Study Finds No Brain Abnormalities In ‘Havana Syndrome’ Patients

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News:
An array of advanced tests found no brain injuries or degeneration among U.S. diplomats and other government employees who suffer mysterious health problems once dubbed "Havana syndrome,” researchers reported Monday. The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) nearly five-year study offers no explanation for symptoms including headaches, balance problems and difficulties with thinking and sleep that were first reported in Cuba in 2016 and later by hundreds of American personnel in multiple countries. But it did contradict some earlier findings that raised the spectre of brain injuries in people experiencing what the State Department now calls “anomalous health incidents.”

“These individuals have real symptoms and are going through a very tough time,” said Dr. Leighton Chan, NIH’s chief of rehabilitation medicine, who helped lead the research. “They can be quite profound, disabling and difficult to treat.” Yet sophisticated MRI scans detected no significant differences in brain volume, structure or white matter — signs of injury or degeneration — when Havana syndrome patients were compared to healthy government workers with similar jobs, including some in the same embassy. Nor were there significant differences in cognitive and other tests, according to findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

What about FMRI?

By aaarrrgggh • Score: 3 Thread

Surprised the study wasn’t based on FMRIs to actually look at brain activity.

Re: Sure

By beelsebob • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

There’s plenty of conditions out there that we have no solid explanation for. This particularly applies to brain conditions. Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Long COVID. There’s plenty of evidence that they really do exist, and are not scams at all, but our understanding of them, and ability to find obvious distinguishing physical differences is near zero. Don’t be so quick to dismiss people as seeking pay outs. I bet some of them are, but I also bet the vast majority have a serious, but hard to identify condition, and are in genuine need of society’s support.

Re:What about FMRI?

By F.Ultra • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
Considering that the subjects claiming to suffer from Havana Syndrome all think that it comes from them being exposed to some form of radiation I don’t think that you would be able to convince them to get into an FMRI.

Microwave Surveillance

By laughingskeptic • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
The Russians are famous for using reflected microwaves for surveillance — see the Wikipedia page on the “The Thing aka the Great Seal bug”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… Note the date of discovery: 1952! In the 1950s microwaves were not part of our ambient environment. Today with WiFi, cell phones, etc. we live in an ambient microwave environment which means the base carrier for a microwave reflection listening device would have to be orders of magnitude more powerful than was required in the 1950s in order to get a detectable reflected signal above the modern microwave noise ceiling.

I doubt the initial harm was intentional, since the whole point of using microwaves this way is to be able to listen without having a bug that can be detected. My take is this is the result of the Russians (or someone who learned from the Russians) trying to use a technique that used to work. They sent someone to collect intelligence and due to things like WiFi and cell phones they were having a hard time getting the old technique to work, so they kept increasing the power until they could get a signal.

You have to think about the type of personnel that are given these intelligence collection jobs. In the U.S. it would be a bright high school graduate that has a can-do attitude, has been enlisted in the military for a decade or more and is trained on the specific piece of equipment. They are told to turn a given knob until they can detect a signal. The ramifications of the knob turning would be largely glossed over in the training.

If you were to walk around a room being bathed in microwaves like this with a microwave SWR power meter, you would find wildly varying power levels on a centimeter by centimeter basis. So one person could be fine while standing in front of another person receiving brain damage. And the specific part of the brain would be different from person to person resulting in different symptoms. Microwave ovens have turntables for this exact reason. A still/sleeping person would be most vulnerable to brain damage.

This sort of activity is detectable, (e.g. Acousticom 2 RF Microwave Meter consumer product $200, or component-level Analog Devices AD8363 for $100) and can also be screened out using wire meshes and the sort of conductive features used in microwave oven windows. I don’t understand why we wouldn’t screen our facilities and install detectors on the outside of the screening. We have known about the possibility of these sorts of collection methods for decades and yet it seems we have done little to detect them or prevent them from working.

Nocebo

By PertinaxII • Score: 3 Thread

An official report published some time ago found no evidence of any illness or injuries. They concluded it was a nocebo effect were people under stress assumed every symptom of stress was an illness and convinced everyone around of them of that this was true.

Chinese and Western Scientists Identify ‘Red Lines’ on AI Risks

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Leading western and Chinese AI scientists have issued a stark warning that tackling risks around the powerful technology requires global co-operation similar to the cold war effort to avoid nuclear conflict. From a report:
A group of renowned international experts met in Beijing last week, where they identified “red lines” on the development of AI, including around the making of bioweapons and launching cyber attacks. In a statement seen by the Financial Times, issued in the days after the meeting, the academics warned that a joint approach to AI safety was needed to stop “catastrophic or even existential risks to humanity within our lifetimes.”

“In the depths of the cold war, international scientific and governmental co-ordination helped avert thermonuclear catastrophe. Humanity again needs to co-ordinate to avert a catastrophe that could arise from unprecedented technology,” the statement said. Signatories include Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, who won a Turing Award for their work on neural networks and are often described as “godfathers” of AI; Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley; and Andrew Yao, one of China’s most prominent computer scientists. The statement followed the International Dialogue on AI Safety in Beijing last week, a meeting that included officials from the Chinese government in a signal of tacit official endorsement for the forum and its outcomes.

Sigh

By HBI • Score: 3 Thread

The thing that compelled ‘international cooperation’ on nuclear matters was national power considerations - preventing nuclear technological proliferation to maintain nuclear monopolies by the first movers. The IAEA was a chief agent of this. The rest was called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which means that any nation that uses nuclear weapons opens itself up to reprisal from other nuclear powers. That’s assured that none of the initial nuclear powers or those who have sneaked into the club have used a weapon since Nagasaki.

So since they misstate history at the outset, probably purposefully, i’m not taking the rest of what they say very seriously at all.

Wrong way.

By Brain-Fu • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

The right way to prevent AI cyberattacks from causing harm is to build systems that are strong against cyberattacks. No amount of global pinky-swearing will prevent malicious actors from getting their hands on AI bots and using them to perpetuate cyber attacks.

This means that our intelligence agencies need to stop sitting-on and weaponizing exploits when they find them, and instead responsibly report them..

I personally think this also means we need some sort of official service for performing security auditing and penetration testing, and holding companies accountable to good security practices. I generally oppose this level of government intervention but in the case of mission critical cyber infrastructure, it’s justified. Maybe the accountability level is tiered based on how critical the service is. Steam and Reddit are not so critical, the world doesn’t end if they go down. Sites that have lives on the line like military bases with any kind of internet-facing content, power grid, hospitals, or Slashdot would need to be in the top tier and undergo the most scrutiny.

If we don’t do this, we will get taken down by AI cyberattacks, no matter how many countries promise not to.

Never gonna happen

By Pollux • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Imagine if Hitler’s scientists and Roosevelt’s scientists both spoke out to the world in a radio broadcast back in 1942 about “red lines” in the development of the Atomic Bomb. What would Hitler and Roosevelt say to that?

I believe something along the lines of “I don’t give a damn”, I would imagine.

Because they were building it to have the most powerful weapon of warfare, that’s why.

And today, now that the most powerful nations on this planet can’t use nukes against one another without screwing themselves over in return, now we recognize the next most powerful weapon we can develop is AI.

So I’m pretty sure that Biden, Trump, and Papa Pooh are all all saying the same thing: “I still don’t give a damn.” Because the moment one side gives up on the pursuits, the other side will persist and win in its development.

You can detect nuclear use, not AI use…

By OneOfMany07 • Score: 3 Thread

Don’t think this can work. One reason the cold war treaties worked was we could detect if someone was cheating. I’m not an expert in the field, but some form of radiation or particles could be seen by the rest of the globe if anyone tried to detonate in secret. There is no such measurement for AI after it’s used (currently hardware and power requirements might hint at use, but data is portable).

And limiting the goals of AI seems pointless. Meaning again, you can’t guarantee an otherwise useful AI tool wouldn’t be used for those goals. All you’d need to do is reformulate the problem into a new domain, then translate back. Or claim to be working for one goal, and extract the opposite by lying to the AI about the initial conditions. Or by taking part of the work early (it finds bioweapons to then guard against, and you extract the weapon partial answers).

Any effective tool can be misused with enough effort. My best alternative solutions involve radical transparency. It’s harder to be sneaky if everyone knows what everyone is doing. If hardware can perform AI, then share what will run on it openly and in a secure way prove that’s what ran or is running.

US Supreme Court Seems Wary of Curbing US Government Contacts With Social Media Platforms

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared skeptical of a challenge on free speech grounds to how President Joe Biden’s administration encouraged social media platforms to remove posts that federal officials deemed misinformation, including about elections and COVID-19. From a report:
The justices heard oral arguments in the administration’s appeal of a lower court’s preliminary injunction constraining how White House and certain other federal officials communicate with social media platforms. The Republican-led states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with five individual social media users, sued the administration.

They argued that the government’s actions violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment free speech rights of users whose posts were removed from platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, now called X. The case tests whether the administration crossed the line from mere communication and persuasion to strong arming or coercing platforms - sometimes called “jawboning” - to unlawfully censor disfavored speech, as lower courts found.

Re:Time to recycle older lies?

By dbialac • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
The problem is, and always be, who decides what is ok and what’s not? That is why free speech needs to remain completely free. It is the only neutral, non-partisan way forward.

Re:I thought government could not censor like this

By markdavis • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

>“But Justice Roberts tells us that “the government” is not monolithic, so it’s not really the government doing anything.”

That isn’t what he said. From the article:
—-
Justice John Roberts told Benjamin Aguinaga, Louisiana’s solicitor general, that the government is “not monolithic” and when the government applies pressure, a platform or media outlet “have people they go to, probably in the government, to say, ‘Hey, they’re trying to get me to do this,’ and that person may disagree with what the government’s trying to do.”
—-
My interpretation is that he was saying that the government isn’t a single voice ordering social media what to do, so there presumably might would be checks by asking someone else or a different department if there is disagreement. And that wasn’t a ruling, it was just questioning. For all you know, he could be playing devil’s advocate with the question.

The reality is I am not so sure there is any due process in the process of the government “warning” or “requesting” platforms about so-called “misinformation” (of which much of it certainly was not). And one media company very well might interpret it as an order, another might use it as an excuse to do what they already wanted to ban.

Re:Encouraged platforms to remove posts?

By jacks smirking reven • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

If anything, at least to me, the amount of internal discussion and disagreement and downright chaos inside Twitter again, cut’s against the narrative that they felt any real legal pressure to comply.

In the post above I did retract the 99% percentage since I cannot source the original claim I read it but even what I did find was a 50% compliance rate pre-Musk which in itself speaks to the idea that Twitter had it’s own discretion on how to moderate.

. The government did take steps to coerce them, e.g. claiming (dubiously) to the press that they were letting disinformation run wild, undermining the security of the nation.

I mean, they are allowed to state that right? You’d have to prove they were lying about it. Did they say the same thing about Facebook?

That brought pressure from their advertisers to comply with whatever the government demanded, including banning lots of content that they did not, internally, believe to be misinformation.

Ehh, I don’t think social media needs the government for incentive to ban content, the advertisers do that already more stringently than the government demands. Also the suggestion that Twitter felt government pressure via advertisers is cut against by the fact that Twitter’s overall user count and revenue’s continued growing throughout this period.

While I don’t like the whole “government decides what misinformation is” I haven’t seen strong evidence any social media site feels pressure to do things they wouldn’t normally do. A good portion of the governments requests are in fact valid in that they violated the TOS. Sure, in that case they are playing tattle tale but if it’s actually true where is the issue? Hard to say

Re:Imagine the tension for Alito et al

By MachineShedFred • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

This is what happens when “the ends justify the means” takes over. These guys find the result they want, and then reverse-build the decision that creates the result.

No “originalist” or “textualist” would have agreed with that bullshit 14th Amendment decision. The framers, through the recorded congressional record of the debates, were very clear what they meant by the 14th Amendment, and very specifically about section 3.

Yelling fire in a crowded theater is illegal

By Jeslijar • Score: 3 Thread

So why would causing panic and disinformation be any more legal?

Games Are Coming To LinkedIn

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Soon you might be able to compete in games against friends and colleagues and even the office next door on LinkedIn. From a report:
The Microsoft-owned company is reportedly planning to add a new game experience to the platform. According to TechCrunch, the experience is designed to tap into the same popularity of games like Wordle. Players’ scores will be sorted by their workplace and ranked, allowing you to take on another office or even across the country. App researcher Nima Owji posted photos of the gaming experience on Twitter/X on Saturday. A representative from LinkedIn confirmed to TechCrunch that the company is working on adding puzzle-based games to the LinkedIn experience as a way to “unlock a bit of fun, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations.”

about to be blocked

By awwshit • Score: 3 Thread

The C-Suite asking for LinkedIn to be blocked, but Games only, in 3… 2… 1…

Humbled

By ceoyoyo • Score: 5, Funny Thread

I guess people on Linkedin are running out of things to be incredibly humbled to be bragging about.

Re:So stupid

By 93 Escort Wagon • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

LinkedIn has been trying (and failing) to become Facebook for about ten years now. There’s just not enough money in running a site that people only use when job hunting.

Investment Advisors Pay the Price For Selling What Looked a Lot Like AI Fairy Tales

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot
Two investment advisors have reached settlements with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly exaggerating their use of AI, which in both cases were purported to be cornerstones of their offerings. From a report:
Canada-based Delphia and San Francisco-headquartered Global Predictions will cough up $225,000 and $175,000 respectively for telling clients that their products used AI to improve forecasts. The financial watchdog said both were engaging in “AI washing,” a term used to describe the embellishment of machine-learning capabilities.

“We’ve seen time and again that when new technologies come along, they can create buzz from investors as well as false claims by those purporting to use those new technologies,” said SEC chairman Gary Gensler. “Delphia and Global Predictions marketed to their clients and prospective clients that they were using AI in certain ways when, in fact, they were not.” Delphia claimed its system utilized AI and machine learning to incorporate client data, a statement the SEC said it found to be false.

“Delphia represented that it used artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze its retail clients’ spending and social media data to inform its investment advice when, in fact, no such data was being used in its investment process,” the SEC said in a settlement order. Despite being warned about suspected misleading practices in 2021 and agreeing to amend them, Delphia only partially complied, according to the SEC. The company continued to market itself as using client data as AI inputs but never did anything of the sort, the regulator said.

The Ferengi would probably say

By Powercntrl • Score: 3 Thread

“You’d have no investors if you weren’t allowed to embellish the capabilities of your company’s product!”

Let’s be honest, if the product isn’t being hyped up, then it’s the business model itself that gets touted as new and revolutionary. “We’re gonna buy Chinese scooters and leave them on the streets and let people rent them with an app!” “We’ve implemented a way to flush your toilet through a blockchain network!” “We’re gonna sell a portable fire pit through direct social media marketing!” “Invest today, researching the company you’re investing in is for suckers who don’t get rich!”

Re:The Ferengi would probably say

By MightyMartian • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

I’d argue overhyping is inherent in any kind of marketing and sales. I mean you never see a Ford commercial that says “Yeah, our F150 has four wheels, pretty much performs within the same parameters as our Dodge and Toyota counterparts, mileage isn’t really any better, and our heated seats have about the same likelihood of malfunctioning and burning you alive as your neighbor’s brand new Ram.”

Everything in capitalism is one degree of fairy tale or another. It’s how you beat out competition that are selling essentially the same product as you are. Am I the only person that watched the “It’s Toasted” sequence from Mad Men? I don’t actually think I’m going to have an orgasm if I chew minty gum, but the implication is kind of there.