Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. HPE Acquires Juniper Networks for $14B After Settling Antitrust Case
  2. Why Do Killer Whales Keep Handing Us Fish? Scientists Unpack the Mystery
  3. Will FaceTime In IOS 26 Freeze Your Call If Someone Starts Undressing?
  4. Two Sudo Vulnerabilities Discovered and Patched
  5. Nuclear Microreactors Advance as US Picks Two Companies for Fueled Testing
  6. Near Antarctica, Saltier Seas Mean Less Ice, Study Finds
  7. AI Coding Agents Are Already Commoditized
  8. EU Sticks With Timeline For AI Rules
  9. US Plans AI Chip Curbs on Malaysia, Thailand Over China Concerns
  10. There Is No Safe Amount of Processed Meat To Eat, According to New Research
  11. Moderna Says mRNA Flu Vaccine Sailed Through Trial, Beating Standard Shot
  12. UK Minister Tells Turing AI Institute To Focus On Defense
  13. Laid-Off Workers Should Use AI To Manage Their Emotions, Says Xbox Exec
  14. Windows 11 Finally Overtakes Windows 10
  15. The Software Engineering ‘Squeeze’

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.

HPE Acquires Juniper Networks for $14B After Settling Antitrust Case

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
This week Hewlett-Packard Enterprise settled its antitrust case with America’s Justice Department, “paving the way for its acquisition of rival kit maker Juniper Networks,” reported Telecoms.com:
Under the agreement, HPE has agreed to divest its Instant On unit, which sells a range of enterprise-grade Wi-Fi networking equipment for campus and branch deployments. It has also agreed to license Juniper’s Mist AIOps source code — a software suite that enables AI-based network automation and management. HPE can live with that, since its primary motivation for buying Juniper is to improve its prospects in an IT networking market dominated by Cisco, where others like Arista and increasingly Nokia and Nvidia are also trying to make inroads.
And after receiving regulatory clearance, HPE “very quickly closed the deal…” reports The Motley Fool. “In the press release heralding the news, the buyer wrote that it “doubles the size of HPE’s networking business and provides customers with a comprehensive portfolio of networking solutions.”
Investors were obviously happy about this, as according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence the company’s stock price ballooned by nearly 16% across the week, largely on the news.... The Justice Department had alleged, in a lawsuit filed in January, that an HPE/Juniper tie-up would essentially result in a duopoly in networking equipment. It claimed that a beefed-up HPE and networking incumbent Cisco would hold more than 70% combined of the domestic market.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

Why Do Killer Whales Keep Handing Us Fish? Scientists Unpack the Mystery

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Science Daily reports:
Wild orcas across four continents have repeatedly floated fish and other prey to astonished swimmers and boaters, hinting that the ocean’s top predator likes to make friends. Researchers cataloged 34 such gifts over 20 years, noting the whales often lingered expectantly — and sometimes tried again — after humans declined their offerings, suggesting a curious, relationship-building motive…

“Orcas often share food with each other — it’s a prosocial activity and a way that they build relationships with each other,” said study lead author Jared Towers, of Bay Cetology in British Columbia, Canada. “That they also share with humans may show their interest in relating to us as well.”
The complete research was published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology. Its title? “Testing the Waters: Attempts by Wild Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) to Provision People (Homo sapiens).”

KIller Whales eat people, so....

By Brain-Fu • Score: 3 Thread

“It’s a trap!”

Give fish to them

By Iamthecheese • Score: 3, Insightful Thread
The point at which some environmentalism reveals itself as misanthropy is where “don’t feed the animals” is commanded because it’s “unnatural.” This stance overlooks that humans are a part of nature, not separate from it. Barring legitimate safety concerns, like habituating bears to human sites, there is nothing inherently wrong with developing relationships, even co-dependencies and forms of partial domestication, with wild animals. Such interactions can represent a form of interspecies mutualism, a concept well-documented in biology, where different species form beneficial partnerships. History, too, offers examples of co-evolution, such as the relationship between humans and the ancestors of domestic dogs. The argument that animals “don’t understand what humans are like” is paternalistic. They understand what they like and, as the orca study suggests, are capable of initiating interaction based on their own complex social logics. To deny them this agency is to deny their intelligence and autonomy. They can choose to interact or not, to the limits of their abilities; let them make that choice. This aligns with philosophical arguments for animal autonomy, which posit that sentient beings with preferences should have those preferences respected. The appeal to “naturalness” is a flawed premise in the Anthropocene, an epoch defined by human alteration of all ecosystems. There is no longer a “pure” nature to which we can defer. The insistence on a hands-off policy often stems from a puritanical, almost religious, reverence for a “Sacred” nature that must remain untouched by humanity. This view secretly frames humans as a blight, a contamination from which the world must be cordoned off. It is a philosophy of alienation, not of responsible cohabitation. The fear that a friendly whale, offering fish as a gesture of friendship, might suddenly attack boats is not just unfounded; it actively dismisses the animal’s observed intent. It is a projection of human fears onto a situation that the animals themselves are defining as peaceful. This is not to ignore all risks, but to challenge a risk-averse dogma that precludes the possibility of positive, unprecedented relationships. The real debate should be about fostering a more nuanced ethic of interaction, one that respects animal agency and acknowledges our shared and entangled future on this planet, rather than one that capitulates to a deep-seated misanthropy that ultimately desires a world with fewer people in it.

And no cat owner is surprised

By drnb • Score: 3 Thread
And no cat owner who has received certain gifts from a cat are surprised. :-)

Concerned for our health

By OrangeTide • Score: 4, Funny Thread

They’ve seen the obesity epidemic in America and are concerned we eat too much red meat and carbs.
They’re like: Try having a fish once in a while, fatso. Any maybe you’ll stop dumping garbage in our ocean if you have to eat out of it too.

If we can decode their communication…

By 93 Escort Wagon • Score: 3 Thread

Orca 1: What are those things? They keep showing up at inconvenient times.
Orca 2: Yeah, I was trying to make moves on Orca 3, but one of those wouldn’t give us privacy! It’s maddening…
Orca 1: They look pretty dumb. I wonder if they can communicate?
Orca 2: Hey, let’s see if they’re as dumb as they look! I’ve been playing with this bird carcass - I’m gonna give it to them and see what happens.

Orca 1: Yup, they’re dumb. I saw they kept pushing it back towards you, each time you tried to give it to them. Hmm… perhaps it’s some primitive form of play? Orca 4 thinks he saw a couple of them waving those scrawny limbs at each other - I wonder if that serves as some really primitive level of communication?

Will FaceTime In IOS 26 Freeze Your Call If Someone Starts Undressing?

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from the Apple news blog 9to5Mac:
iOS 26 is a packed update for iPhone users thanks to the new Liquid Glass design and major updates for Messages, Wallet, CarPlay, and more. But another new feature was just discovered in the iOS 26 beta: FaceTime will now freeze your call’s video and audio if someone starts undressing.

When Apple unveiled iOS 26 last month, it mentioned a variety of new family tools… “Communication Safety expands to intervene when nudity is detected in FaceTime video calls, and to blur out nudity in Shared Albums in Photos.” However, at least in the iOS 26 beta, it seems that a similar feature may be in place for all users — adults included.
That’s the claim of an X.com user named iDeviceHelp, who says FaceTime in iOS 26 swaps in a warning message that says “Audio and video are paused because you may be showing something sensitive,” giving users a choice of ending the call or resuming it.

9to5Mac says “It’s unclear whether this is an intended behavior, or just a bug in the beta that’s applying the feature to adults… [E]verything happens on-device so Apple has no idea about the contents of your call.”

It was a feature request from CNN

By drnb • Score: 3, Funny Thread
It was a feature request from CNN

“Jeffrey Toobin is back at CNN eight months after exposing himself on Zoom”
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/10…

Two Sudo Vulnerabilities Discovered and Patched

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
In April researchers responsibly disclosed two security flaws found in Sudo “that could enable local attackers to escalate their privileges to root on susceptible machines,” reports The Hacker News. “The vulnerabilities have been addressed in Sudo version 1.9.17p1 released late last month.”
Stratascale researcher Rich Mirch, who is credited with discovering and reporting the flaws, said CVE-2025-32462 has managed to slip through the cracks for over 12 years. It is rooted in the Sudo’s "-h” (host) option that makes it possible to list a user’s sudo privileges for a different host. The feature was enabled in September 2013. However, the identified bug made it possible to execute any command allowed by the remote host to be run on the local machine as well when running the Sudo command with the host option referencing an unrelated remote host. “This primarily affects sites that use a common sudoers file that is distributed to multiple machines,” Sudo project maintainer Todd C. Miller said in an advisory. “Sites that use LDAP-based sudoers (including SSSD) are similarly impacted.”

CVE-2025-32463, on the other hand, leverages Sudo’s "-R” (chroot) option to run arbitrary commands as root, even if they are not listed in the sudoers file. It’s also a critical-severity flaw. “The default Sudo configuration is vulnerable,” Mirch said. “Although the vulnerability involves the Sudo chroot feature, it does not require any Sudo rules to be defined for the user. As a result, any local unprivileged user could potentially escalate privileges to root if a vulnerable version is installed....”

Miller said the chroot option will be removed completely from a future release of Sudo and that supporting a user-specified root directory is “error-prone.”

When will sudo read email?

By TuballoyThunder • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
There is so much complexity incorporated into sudo that it may well be past the tipping point of perpetual vulnerabilities.

Weird

By Artem S. Tashkinov • Score: 3 Thread

I posted this four days ago when it was pertinent and relevant:

https://slashdot.org/submissio…

my submission was never approved and now most distros have already released a fix.

sudo-rs

By CommunityMember • Score: 3 Thread
The alternative implementation, sudo-rs, written in rust to be memory safe, is not vulnerable to these bugs, but that is because it choose not to implement those particular (not commonly used) features. There may be something about cleaning up code that has benefits. Who would have thought?

Nuclear Microreactors Advance as US Picks Two Companies for Fueled Testing

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
This week America’s Energy Department selected two companies to perform the first nuclear microreactor tests in a new facility in Idaho, saying the tests “will fast-track the deployment of American microreactor technologies… The first fueled reactor experiment will start as early as spring 2026.”

The new facility is named DOME (an acronym for Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments), and it leverages existing “to safely house and test fueled reactor experiments, capable of producing up to 20 megawatts of thermal energy,” according to a local newspaper.
[T]wo companies were competitively selected in 2023 and are currently working through a multi-phase Energy Department authorization process to support the design, fabrication, construction, and testing of each fueled reactor experiment. Both are expected to meet certain milestones throughout the process to maintain their allotted time in DOME and to ensure efficient use of the test bed, according to the release… The department estimates each DOME reactor experiment will operate up to six months, with the DOME test bed currently under construction and on track to receive its first experiment in early 2026… The next call for applications is anticipated to be in 2026.
The site Interesting Engineering calls the lab “a high-stakes proving ground to accelerate the commercialization of advanced microreactors…”
Based in Etna, Pennsylvania, Westinghouse will test its eVinci Nuclear Test Reactor, a compact, transportable microreactor that uses advanced heat pipe technology for passive cooling. Designed to deliver 5 megawatts of electricity on sites as small as two acres, eVinci could support applications ranging from remote communities to mining operations and data centers. Meanwhile, Radiant (El Segundo, California) will test its Kaleidos Development Unit, a 1.2 megawatt electric high-temperature gas reactor aimed at replacing diesel generators. Designed to run for five years, Kaleidos is fueled by TRISO fuel particles that could offer reliable backup power for hospitals, military bases, and other critical infrastructure.
Radiant’s CEO said “In short order, we will fuel, go critical, and operate, leading to the mass production of portable reactors which will jumpstart American nuclear energy dominance.”

More Paper Reactors

By Cyberpunk Reality • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
From Admiral Rickover’s 1953 ‘Paper Reactor’ memo, “An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: 1. It is simple. 2 It is cheap. 3.It is light. 4. It can be built very quickly. 5. It is very flexible in purpose (“omnibus reactor”). 6. Very little development is required. It will use mostly “off-the-shelf” components. 7. The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now.” Time will, of course, prove the final test as to whether these “microreactor experiments” to produce a “compact, transportable microreactor” will successfully " fast-track the path from lab bench to commercial rollout” and eventually " support applications ranging from remote communities to mining operations and data centers” and “replace disel generators”. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Re:Yeah right

By Mr. Dollar Ton • Score: 4, Informative Thread

LOL, you’re not going to war with China.

It has nukes that can reach the US, and the US ruling class fears nothing more than nukes that can reach them.

Your current chieftain sold out to putin because of a telephone threat.

The Chinese reactors will be fine.

And actual meaningful tests will be run 2035

By gweihir • Score: 3 Thread

And likely even later. Nuclear is always massively delayed and massively over price.

Surface area to volume ratio

By burtosis • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
The problem with miniature reactors is the cost of operation. Basically the amount of material that becomes contaminated and needs to be replaced and or disposed of is vastly higher on a lifetime $/kwh basis. It’s like running ten thousand one horsepower motors instead of one ten thousand horsepower motor. You are going to have incessant and massive component supply and disposal demand costs compared to the single reactor. Further, the mess from ten thousand units makes for rampant pollution whereas it’s easier to pin down and hold to account a single reactor. If you have a base in the Antarctic, or a satellite, these may be an option if the total supply is highly limited. But the ease and cost of a simple generator is going to price everyone out of miniature reactors except all but the least serviceable and hospitable applications.

Re:My only ‘gripe’ with nuclear

By aaarrrgggh • Score: 4, Informative Thread

If scientists had a preference we would be using breeder reactors that reduce waste and promote recycling.

Near Antarctica, Saltier Seas Mean Less Ice, Study Finds

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Some of the water around Antarctica has been getting saltier. And that has affected the amount of sea ice at the bottom of the planet. From a report:
A study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that increases in salinity in seawater near the surface could help explain some of the decrease in Antarctic sea ice that have been observed over the past decade, reversing a previous period of growth.

“The impact of Antarctic ice is massive in terms of sea-level rise, in terms of global warming, and therefore, in terms of extremes,” said Alessandro Silvano, a senior scientist at the University of Southampton studying the Southern Ocean and lead author of the study. The findings mean “we are entering a new system, a new world,” he said.
The Times adds: “the Department of Defense announced it would be no longer be providing some of the satellite data that researchers use to monitor changes in sea ice.”

To me the real news here

By ndsurvivor • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
is that the DOD will not be providing any more satellite images. I am guessing that the reason is that if you deny something is happening, then it won’t.

This link provides more detail …

By schwit1 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

https://joannenova.com.au/2025…

NYTimes provided no links to the study.

Out of sight, out of mind

By burtosis • Score: 3 Thread
You can’t have a climate catastrophe if you don’t look up - taps head. It works swimmingly as long as the body needs are looked after, despite the brain unhindered by reality. Usually they shuffle mindlessly about and moan about the freedom they lost in vapid irony. But if it’s deep enough, and they are truly faithful, that realization will lie beyond their grasp to the last breath.

Miracles: F’ing Science, How Do They Work?

By OrangeTide • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

You fellows get so excited whenever we have to revise the science around climate change.

I’m genuinely curious, do you believe we’ll one day revise it out of existence? If that’s your hope, I’m going to have to burst your bubble right now…

AI Coding Agents Are Already Commoditized

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Software engineer Sean Goedecke argues that AI coding agents have already been commoditized because they require no special technical advantages, just better base models. He writes:
All of a sudden, it’s the year of AI coding agents. Claude released Claude Code, OpenAI released their Codex agent, GitHub released its own autonomous coding agent, and so on. I’ve done my fair share of writing about whether AI coding agents will replace developers, and in the meantime how best to use them in your work. Instead, I want to make what I think is now a pretty firm observation: AI coding agents have no secret sauce.

[…] The reason everyone’s doing agents now is the same reason everyone’s doing reinforcement learning now — from one day to the next, the models got good enough. Claude Sonnet 3.7 is the clear frontrunner here. It’s not the smartest model (in my opinion), but it is the most agentic: it can stick with a task and make good decisions over time better than other models with more raw brainpower. But other AI labs have more agentic models now as well. There is no moat.

There’s also no moat to the actual agent code. It turns out that “put the model in a loop with a ‘read file’ and ‘write file’ tool” is good enough to do basically anything you want. I don’t know for sure that the closed-source options operate like this, but it’s an educated guess. In other words, the agent hackers in 2023 were correct, and the only reason they couldn’t build Claude Code then was that they were too early to get to use the really good models.

I still get terrible results from “coding” agents

By ffkom • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
Working for a company that is almost obsessed in its attempts to utilize “coding agents”, I have attempted time and again to delegate mundane sub-tasks to such agents - for easy things like reading configuration files of a given format. And the results I got, up until today, are so awful, that even in the rare cases when they were not just defunct, I ended up rewriting the code to not be the one signing a commit of inefficient slop code into the repository.

I can only image what terrible code must be the norm in the places where the “coding agents” available today are considered “good enough”.

Re:I still get terrible results from “coding” agen

By gweihir • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

You are not the only one. I am beginning to think that _everybody_ reporting great sucesses in this space is lying, deep in delusion or only doing very simplistic code (and struggling to do even that by themselves).

Re:If this makes any sense to someone

By gweihir • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

It means “Must keep AI hype going! Must pretent it is the only true thing! Must make more money!”.

It can safely be ignored as total bullshit of the marketing variant.

On A Long Enough Timeline

By DewDude • Score: 3 Thread

This all fails. Everyone gets replaced with AI, no one has a job, no one has money to support companies.

It’s just they get to screw us first.

We need an AI ban. This is not going to be a good thing for society. It already isn’t. People are going to die because of bullshit decisions made by AI…likely already have. When the black box is making the decision and no one lets you look in the black box....is there really a black box?

We’re all fucked. Congrats. It’s only going to get worse before it gets better.

Re:Fuck “good enough”

By LinuxRulz • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The point they all miss is that writing code which works was never the problem. Any junior dev can do it.
Software engineering always was about balancing tradeoffs, figuring integration points, ensuring long term maintainability, structuring for release and deployment, aligning design with roadmap, communication and collaboration, etc.

Maybe an AI can eventually get there, but your prompt will be way bigger than the code. I’d rather write the code.
For the rest, we already had cookiecutters and snippets.

EU Sticks With Timeline For AI Rules

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Reuters:
The European Union’s landmark rules on AI will be rolled out according to the legal timeline in the legislation, the European Commission said on Friday, dismissing calls from some companies and countries for a pause.

Google owner Alphabet, Facebook owner Meta and other U.S. companies as well as European businesses such as Mistral and ASML have in recent days urged the Commission to delay the AI Act by years.
Financial Times adds:
In an open letter, seen by the Financial Times, the heads of 44 major firms on the continent called on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to introduce a two-year pause, warning that unclear and overlapping regulations are threatening the bloc’s competitiveness in the global AI race.

[…] The current debate surrounds the drafting of a “code of practice,” which will provide guidance to AI companies on how to implement the act that applies to powerful AI models such as Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama and OpenAI’s GPT-4. Brussels has already delayed publishing the code, which was due in May, and is now expected to water down the rules.

Europeans follow rules?

By commodore73 • Score: 5, Funny Thread
As an American, I find this concept offensive.

Summary of rules

By JamesTRexx • Score: 3 Thread

https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/high-level-summary/

Feels like the EU is the only entity where corporations are forced to take responsibility like one would expect from adults.

US Plans AI Chip Curbs on Malaysia, Thailand Over China Concerns

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
President Donald Trump’s administration plans to restrict shipments of AI chips from the likes of Nvidia to Malaysia and Thailand, part of an effort to crack down on suspected semiconductor smuggling into China. Bloomberg:
A draft rule from the Commerce Department seeks to prevent China — to which the US has effectively banned sales of Nvidia’s advanced AI processors — from obtaining those components through intermediaries in the two Southeast Asian nations, according to people familiar with the matter. The rule is not yet finalized and could still change, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Officials plan to pair the Malaysia and Thailand controls with a formal rescission of global curbs from the so-called AI diffusion rule, the people said.

bad news for us good news for China.

By bloodhawk • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
This is great news for China in the long term. They are rapidly catching up in the microprocessor and fab side of things, shit like this just spurs more investment from them and will leave the rest of us out in the cold as they move past us like they did with EV’s. These sort of artificial barriers are short term thinking from morons that can’t perceive the long term effects.

There Is No Safe Amount of Processed Meat To Eat, According to New Research

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
A new study analyzing data from more than 60 previous research projects has found evidence that there is "no safe amount" of processed meat consumption — so much so that even small daily portions are being linked to increased disease risk.

The research, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, examined connections between processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages and trans fatty acids and the risk of type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer and ischemic heart disease. People who ate as little as one hot dog daily showed an 11% greater risk of type 2 diabetes and 7% increased risk of colorectal cancer compared to those who consumed none. Drinking approximately one 12-ounce soda per day was associated with an 8% increase in type 2 diabetes risk and 2% increased risk of ischemic heart disease.

Well within the margin of error

By phantomfive • Score: 5, Informative Thread
An 11% difference in a study of self-reported food habits is inconclusive. For comparison, here is a graph of different studies conducted on different foods. The numbers on the bottom of that graph are 2 = twice as likely, .5 equals half as likely. We routinely see effects that are much, much larger being within the margin of error. Quoting the article,

the study “relied on people recalling their dietary patterns, which can leave room for misremembering or misreporting…Utilizing even the most sophisticated techniques does not really solve the problem that the information about diet is rather limited – which is obviously a big problem in nutritional epidemiology in general”

So you really want to see a much stronger correlation before drawing a conclusion. Eating hot dogs every day is weird. I have to imagine that someone who eats hot dogs every day probably has other things going on in their diet (like never eating vegetables).

Re:Correlation is not causality… again ffs

By whit3 • Score: 5, Informative Thread
Yeah, the headline ‘no safe amount’ reference is a clue. It’s unlikely
anyone can identify ‘safe amount’ subjects. The headline term ‘new research’
doesn’t hold water either, this was a review of many old studies.

Correlation can mean that health issues cause diet, or diet causes health issues.
Neither is unlikely.

I just ran across How to Lie with Statistics the other day.
My hardback is first edition, 1954.
Maybe we should pay the copyright holder and train AIs on that text?

Immigration Reform [Re: What about not eating…]

By XXongo • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Yes, the immigration system needs reform in the US. There had been unified parties in Washington for both Democrats and Republicans to fix it and they haven’t.

There was a bipartisan immigration reform bill hammered out between Republican and Democratic Senators in 2024 and brought to the Senate for approval, the “Border Act of 2024.”

After it was brought to the floor, it was opposed by Donald Trump (who at the time held no political office), because he didn’t want immigration reform because he wanted to make it an issue in his campaign.

The actual paper says: [Re:What about not eati…]

By XXongo • Score: 5, Informative Thread

There’s some usable truth in this article.

Some. But the summary ignores this sentence from the actual paper‘s abstract (which is a meta study, not new data):
"These associations each received two-star ratings reflecting weak relationships or inconsistent input evidence, highlighting both the need for further research and—given the high burden of these chronic diseases—the merit of continuing to recommend limiting consumption of these foods.”

To its credit, the actual paper also makes a point that this is a correlation, not showing causation.

A term with multiple nuanced meanings

By OrangeTide • Score: 5, Informative Thread

If food has been changed from its natural state, then it is processed. Bake an apple pie, that’s processed. You cooked the apples with added sugar and spices, perhaps in a crust made of flour and shortening.

Minimally processed would be like if you bought some shelled raw almonds. It’s not completely original, but it’s processed in a way that added no additional ingredients.

A classic example of processed food would be canned sardines. They have added oil and salt and are cooked in their can. They are not necessarily devoid of nutrition, but you as the consumer don’t have a lot of control over their preparation and ingredients. You’re buying them as a package deal.

Processed meats, is a whole other category beyond simply being a processed food. And the term can have a very specific meaning. For this context of this article, assume that processed meat being meat that is transformed through salting, curing, fermentation, smoking, or other processes to enhance flavor or improve preservation.

Ultra-processed food is a new category. It’s a little harder to pin down because part of the definition is the intent to create food produces through intensive manufacturing processes. A signature trait of ultra-processed foods are ingredients that are taken from other foods. Generally purified at a chemical level such as lactose, modified food starch, casein, whey, hydrogenated oils, protein isolate, maltodextrin, invert sugar, or high-fructose corn syrup.

Moderna Says mRNA Flu Vaccine Sailed Through Trial, Beating Standard Shot

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Moderna’s mRNA-based seasonal flu vaccine proved 27% more effective at preventing influenza infections than standard flu shots in a Phase 3 trial involving nearly 41,000 people aged 50 and above, the firm said this week.

The company announced that mRNA-1010 had an overall vaccine efficacy that was 26.6% higher than conventional shots, rising to 27.4% higher in participants aged 65 and older during the six-month study period. The 2024-2025 flu season hospitalized an estimated 770,000 Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Re:I’ll pass on the clot shot, thanks.

By phantomfive • Score: 5, Informative Thread
Myocarditis is just inflammation as a natural part of the immune system being active. It can even be caused by the common cold. It’s not really surprising that vaccines cause myocarditis, since vaccines activate the immune system. https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.10…

Most people with myocarditis have an uncomplicated, self-limited and mild course while making a full recovery. In mild cases, they might not even notice they have it.

Re:But not in the US

By tlhIngan • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Sadly, this won’t be coming to the US any time soon. RFK Jr. has arbitrarily declared that future vaccines will only be approved if the control group in the trials got an inactive placebo. Why? No reason at all, it’s just an absurd requirement he made up. The control group in this trial got a conventional flu vaccine instead of a placebo (which would have been unethical), so it doesn’t count.

He’s relying on the double blind studies for effectiveness. New drugs go through the double blind test - where you have a control group and a test group, and the participants - both the people who give the medications and record the results as well as the patients don’t know who got what. This is considered “gold standard” research.

(There is also the “single blind” study, where only the patients don’t know if they’re getting the drug or the placebo, but the people giving it to them do know. This is of lower quality since there may be inadvertent communication that tells the patient what they’re actually getting)

Of course, you can’t do true double blind studies of vaccines, because it’s unethical to tell someone they’re getting the flu shot and then not give it to them so they believe they’re protected against the flu when they really aren’t. And the flu can kill, it sends people to hospital all the time (it did to me, and gave me a permanent heart condition). So it’s basically impossible to do a double-blind study of vaccines. It’s possible to judge the effectiveness of it though through a non-blinded study (the participants know if they’re getting the shot or not) - simply by observing if the people who come in with flu symptoms and asking if they got the shot or not.

Of course, that’s the worst kind of study, but it’s the only one that can be ethically done for vaccines - they are a choice, and many people choose to get the shot, while others choose not to and you can compare how the two populations did. We’ve traditionally used Australia and New Zealand for these studies because their peak flu season happens during “our” summers so we can tell their effectiveness or lack thereof.

RFK Jr. Is just being smart. He knows it’s unethical to do a double-blinded vaccine study, so he’s throwing it in the face of researchers and simply using “gold standard research” as a way to promote anti-vax beliefs.

Re:But not in the US

By newcastlejon • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

vaccines will only be approved if the control group in the trials got an inactive placebo. Why? No reason at all, it’s just an absurd requirement he made up.

I wouldn’t be so sure that it was RFK’s idea, but the effect is to stifle research. People working on new drugs and vaccines will be less willing to carry out tests subject to this restriction because it means knowingly putting the lives of the placebo group at risk. That makes it rather unethical I’d say. Compare this to a situation where the is no “current” treatment available to test against; the placebo group in that case face just the same risk as they would if the trial didn’t happen.

Re:But not in the US

By SoftwareArtist • Score: 5, Informative Thread

A double blind study means neither the patient nor the doctor knows whether they’re in the treatment group or the control group. It has nothing to do with what is used as the control. When there’s an existing safe, effective vaccine, you always use that for the control group. It would be unethical not to. It’s still a double blind study, because the patient still doesn’t know whether they’re getting the new vaccine or the old one. And it makes the resulting data stronger, not weaker. It tells you whether the new vaccine is more effective than the old vaccine, not just whether it’s more effective than no vaccine at all.

When there’s no existing vaccine, then you use an unrelated vaccine as the control. That’s essential. If you used an inactive placebo as the control, and a patient felt tired and achy the day after getting the shot, they could be pretty sure they were in the treatment group. That knowledge could affect their behavior and bias the results. So instead you use an unrelated vaccine with similar side effects as the control, so the patient can’t infer which group they’re in from side effects. This is standard practice.

But RFK has arbitrarily declared that won’t be accepted. Instead you must use an inactive placebo, even though that gives worse quality data.

Your revisionism is shocking

By OrangeTide • Score: 5, Informative Thread

No. you’re incorrect. The requirement in California never took practical effect for school children. It was contingent on FDA approval for age ranges of K-6 and 7-12 before going into full effect. It was not until the start of the 2023 school year when the FDA approval for covid-19 vaccine for ages 12 and up was announce, prior to that it was available only under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) and not mandated in California public schools.

Children in California public schools, depending on their vaccination status, were required to wear a mask or attend remotely. They were NOT required to vaccinate in order to attend public school in California. As such a requirement would violate the California State Constitution and probably violate some Federal statute or Dept of Education requirement (that’s more complicated to look up)

So keep digging for your bullshit. I already looked this up and you’re dead wrong.

UK Minister Tells Turing AI Institute To Focus On Defense

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UK Science and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has written to the UK’s national institute for AI to tell its bosses to refocus on defense and security. BBC:
In a letter, Kyle said boosting the UK’s AI capabilities was “critical” to national security and should be at the core of the Alan Turing Institute’s activities. Kyle suggested the institute should overhaul its leadership team to reflect its “renewed purpose.”

The cabinet minister said further government investment in the institute would depend on the “delivery of the vision” he had outlined in the letter. A spokesperson for the Alan Turing Institute said it welcomed “the recognition of our critical role and will continue to work closely with the government to support its priorities.”
Further reading, from April: Alan Turing Institute Plans Revamp in Face of Criticism and Technological Change.

Ya no.

By ndsurvivor • Score: 4, Funny Thread
I vowed to use my skills for good, and not evil.

This should be good.

By fuzzyfuzzyfungus • Score: 3 Thread
I always look to people with degrees in ‘community development’ to tell me whether there are enough spooks in my computer science or not; it’s just good sense.

AI arms race

By ZipNada • Score: 3 Thread

They’ve been getting services from Palantir, which probably has given them a pretty good idea as to just how powerful AI can when it comes to fighting an adversary;
“What that means in practice is that we are now in an AI arms race against our adversaries. And the government is right that we need to put all the resources we have into staying ahead - because that is our best path to preserving peace.”

I don’t know if it preserves peace but you definitely need to have some skin in the game or someone else’s even more powerful AI will eat you up.

Laid-Off Workers Should Use AI To Manage Their Emotions, Says Xbox Exec

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An anonymous reader shares a report:
The sweeping layoffs announced by Microsoft this week have been especially hard on its gaming studios, but one Xbox executive has a solution to “help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss”: seek advice from AI chatbots.

In a now-deleted LinkedIn post captured by Aftermath, Xbox Game Studios’ Matt Turnbull said that he would be “remiss in not trying to offer the best advice I can under the circumstances.” The circumstances here being a slew of game cancellations, services being shuttered, studio closures, and job cuts across key Xbox divisions as Microsoft lays off as many as 9,100 employees across the company.

Turnbull acknowledged that people have some “strong feelings” about AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot, but suggested that anybody who’s feeling “overwhelmed” could use them to get advice about creating resumes, career planning, and applying for new roles.

Sounds like a solid plan

By michaelmalak • Score: 5, Informative Thread
People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into “ChatGPT Psychosis”

Taking his own advice?

By dskoll • Score: 5, Funny Thread

His LinkedIn post looks like it was written by ChatGPT, so everything checks out. Maybe “Matt Turnbull” doesn’t exist and the AI bots really are taking over?

Hope He Remembers

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I hope he remembers his advice when he gets let go.

Re: Fantastic

By fluffernutter • Score: 5, Funny Thread
The title of ‘executive’ is strong evidence of an AICD-11 personality disorder.

Re:Sounds like a solid plan

By drnb • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into “ChatGPT Psychosis”

No shit. What AI developer PR machine came up with “Laid-Off Workers Should Use AI To Manage Their Emotions, Says Xbox Exec”. Oh, Microsofts.

For f*ck sake, go talk to friends and family in the real world. And if you don’t have any in the real world then go find some, not an AI.

This is like going to the fast food / snack food industry for advice on the food pyramid. Oh wait, we did that too.

Windows 11 Finally Overtakes Windows 10

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Windows 11 has finally overtaken the market share of its predecessor, with just three months remaining until Microsoft discontinues support for Windows 10. From a report:
As of today, July’s StatCounter figures show the market share of Windows 11 at 50.24 percent, with Windows 10 at 46.84 percent. It’s a far cry from a year ago, when Windows 10 stood at 66.04 percent and Windows 11 languished at 29.75 percent.

Not by choice

By Anonymous Coward • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
People buy a new computer, it comes with Windows 11. That’s the only reason Windows 11 is increasing its market share.

Windows 11 Bluetooth is Still Trash

By BrendaEM • Score: 3 Thread
To use Windows 11, is the continually beg it to reconnect your headset. They nearly eliminated Bluetooth file transfer.

Now Using Linux more than Windows

By BrendaEM • Score: 4 Thread
I have over $2000 worth of Windows software. Now I have to reconsider whether or not I should buy anything else Windows. I do not trust Recall. I am tired of forced inopportune updates. I am tried of its indexing grinding on my SSD’.

Microsoft needs to be held accountable

By xack • Score: 3 Thread
If hundreds of millions of people were told they are obsolete there would be revolutions on the street, why should we put up with it for our computers? I spent a lot of money on a Threadripper computer, it is currently on the right side of Windows 11s requirements but eventually with Windows 12 or 13 it will get the chop and my £5000 investment will be worthless. The complexity of modern operating systems need to be regulated like infrastructure megaprojects. The fact that Microsoft is laying off so many people is also causing loss of institutional knowledge in the company, which could lead to Windows being unfixable in the future.

Linux is becoming the only choice

By RazorSharp • Score: 3 Thread

It really doesn’t make sense to use Windows or macOS these days. Hardware now outlasts software by entirely too long. If you want to get the most out of your hardware, Linux is pretty much the only choice.

Most people don’t upgrade their hardware because it’s faulty or too slow to actually do the tasks they need. They upgrade because Microsoft and Apple intentionally drop support and cripple things. It’s downright wasteful. As more and more software becomes web apps it makes less sense to use MS or Apple in business settings.

The Software Engineering ‘Squeeze’

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Software developer Anton Zaides argues that software engineers have had it easy over the decades and the “best profession” on earth deserved the wake up call. He writes:
It’s not just one of the hardest times, it’s also one of the most exciting.

I’m hugely optimistic about the software engineering career. All those companies started by vibe-coders all around you? Many will succeed, and will need great engineers to scale up.

Some engineers understand this, and use the chance to skill up. To succeed, you’ll probably need all the skills of an engineer, some of a PM, and even a bit of design taste. It’s not just about shipping code anymore.

But if you work as a code monkey, getting detailed tickets and just shipping them, you’ve done this to yourself. You won’t be needed pretty soon.

I believe there are too many mediocre engineers, but also not enough great ones.

Sleazy McToolbag

By ihavesaxwithcollies • Score: 5, Informative Thread
This “author” is a sleazy toolbag. Just some rando spouting a stupid opinion. This idiot probably has a slashdot account.

Great software engineers are not afraid that AI will take their jobs - because they know it just can’t.

His logic in his writing invalidates his whole thesis. Rambling moron.

Also, I don’t need to do 3 fucking jobs to succeed!

My perspective

By MpVpRb • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I learned software engineering in the 70s. Back then there were not very many of us and even fewer who were good at it. Based on the laws of supply and demand, we were paid well. Then the word spread that software engineering paid well and a flood of people of varying talent jumped in. The word on the street was that everybody should learn to code. The truth is, talent is real. It takes a special kind of mind to be good at designing software. During the peak of boom times, lesser talented people got hired. Now, powerful tools are making the job easier. Change is coming and the best of the best will adapt and thrive. The others, not so much

Re:I agree

By gweihir • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The improvements will fix the technical debt.

They will not. The only way to fix technical debt is with real, deep insight. AI cannot deliver that.

Author ignores business fundimentals

By sdinfoserv • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
I wanted to test AI and and used it develop a time card entry system. I purchased a subscription to Anthropic to get a fell for capabilities. It took literally 4 days from LAMP server spin up to completed system. The AI built the AD authentication, style sheets, database modification, lots of JavaScript for page manipulation, reports and CRUD for about a dozen tables. As I wanted to add features ~ by entering things like, “now add a last updated field on screen X for table y”… Anthropic would spit out the updated SQL to modify the database, updated CSS additions, changes/additions to JavaScript, and new entry screens. Sometimes it would give code sniplets and instruct me where to paste it, other times it would regen the entire page. I thought it was pretty amazing. Overview - the code functional, but not phenomenal, junior programmer stuff. There we some errors and some “why the f*ck did you do that?” moments that I had to fix, and somethings it just didn’t understand. For example it was bad at effectively using stylesheets and wanted to put the style in every php page..
From a business perspective - All business care about is profit. period. If they can slash programmer jobs, they will. Using AI will allow them to easily reduce the number of developers by 1/5 or more. The fact the QA will suffer and in 10 years nobody will understand what’s under the skin doesn’t matter.- companies will be producing code at less $$ and time per application, which is all that matters and next quarters 10Q report will woo shareholders. The bottom line, there will be fewer developers, the entry market is on it’s way to being decimated. And by the way, “vibe coding” is bullshit.

Re:I agree

By PPH • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Yes AI may be generating a lot of code now. But you need someone to find where what was generated was weak, or inefficient.

Ever work with a couple of clowns who can’t code worth shit? I have. And most of the time it’s easier to throw their stuff out and start over.