Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
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Contents

  1. Middle-Aged Man Trading Cards Go Viral in Rural Japan Town
  2. China’s Biotech Advances Threaten US Dominance, Warns Congressional Report
  3. Shopify CEO Says Staffers Need To Prove Jobs Can’t Be Done By AI Before Asking for More Headcount
  4. Micron To Impose Tariff-Related Surcharge on SSDs, Other Products
  5. Meta Got Caught Gaming AI Benchmarks
  6. India’s ‘Frankenstein’ Laptop Economy Thrives Against Planned Obsolescence
  7. Bluesky Can’t Take a Joke
  8. US’s AI Lead Over China Rapidly Shrinking, Stanford Report Says
  9. No, the Dire Wolf Has Not Been Brought Back From Extinction
  10. States Are Banning Forever Chemicals. Industry Is Fighting Back
  11. Framework Stops Selling Some of Its Laptops in the US Due To Tariffs
  12. China Launches GPMI, a Powerful Alternative To HDMI and DisplayPort
  13. Waymo May Use Interior Camera Data To Train Generative AI Models, Sell Ads
  14. UK Bans Fake Reviews and ‘Sneaky’ Fees For Online Products
  15. Scientists Debate Actual Weight of the Internet

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.

Middle-Aged Man Trading Cards Go Viral in Rural Japan Town

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Children in a small Japanese town are obsessively collecting trading cards featuring local elderly men rather than popular fantasy creatures, helping bridge generational gaps in an aging rural community.

In Kawara, Fukuoka Prefecture, the “Ojisan TCG” (Middle-aged Man Trading Card Game) features 28 local men with assigned elemental types and battle stats. The collection includes a former fire brigade chief and a prison officer-turned-volunteer whose card has become so sought-after that children request his autograph.

Created by Eri Miyahara of the Saidosho Community Council, the initiative has doubled participation in town events. “We wanted to strengthen the connection between children and older generations,” Miyahara told Fuji News Network. “So many kids are starting to look up to these men as heroic figures.”

I love this

By CityZen • Score: 3, Insightful Thread

Now they just need (to make) more kids to buy them.

Uncle TCG

By Gravis Zero • Score: 3 Thread

“Ojisan TCG” correctly translates to “Uncle TCG” (Trading Card Game) as a more endearing term than “Middle-aged Man”, in the same way that any friend of a parent that is often around may be called “aunt” or “uncle” by a child despite having no blood relation.

China’s Biotech Advances Threaten US Dominance, Warns Congressional Report

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
China is moving fast to dominate biotechnology, and the U.S. risks falling behind permanently unless it takes action over the next three years, a congressional commission said. WSJ:
Congress should invest at least $15 billion to support biotech research over the next five years and take other steps to bolster manufacturing in the U.S., while barring companies from working with Chinese biotech suppliers, the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology said in a report Tuesday. To achieve its goals, the federal government and U.S.-based researchers will also need to work with allies and partners around the world.

“China is quickly ascending to biotechnology dominance, having made biotechnology a strategic priority for 20 years,” the commission said. Without prompt action, the U.S. risks “falling behind, a setback from which we may never recover.” The findings convey the depth of worry in Washington that China’s rapid biotechnology advances jeopardize U.S. national security. Yet translating the concern into tangible actions could prove challenging.

[…] China plays a large role supplying drug ingredients and even some generic medicines to the U.S. For years, it produced copycat versions of drugs developed in the West. Recent years have seen it become a formidable hub of biotechnology innovation, after the Chinese government gave priority to the field as a critical sector in China’s efforts to become a scientific superpower.

Allies and partners?

By marcle • Score: 5, Informative Thread

“To achieve its goals, the federal government and U.S.-based researchers will also need to work with allies and partners around the world.”

I think that horse has already left the barn.

Raises hand

By fahrbot-bot • Score: 3 Thread

To achieve its goals, the federal government and U.S.-based researchers will also need to work with allies and partners around the world.

Um… What federal and U.S.-based researchers, didn’t the former just get fired and the latter just get their grants chainsawed - I mean - revoked? And weren’t we just told they’re all just lazy, incompetent, losers living off the taxpayers? /s Sounds to me like the U.S. needs to outsource all this to, um… China. :-)

Congress should invest at least $15 billion to support biotech research over the next five years and take other steps to bolster manufacturing in the U.S. …

Haven’t seen any of that in the latest tax cut and spending cut bills from the party in charge …

No worries

By dskoll • Score: 3 Thread

I’m sure Trump has this situation well in hand.

also need to work with allies and partners around the world

What allies? What partners?

I detest the Chinese Communist Party and wouldn’t trust China a millimetre. But I’m conflicted because I also feel schadenfreude when “US dominance is threatened”.

Shopify CEO Says Staffers Need To Prove Jobs Can’t Be Done By AI Before Asking for More Headcount

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke is changing his company’s approach to hiring in the age of AI. Employees will be expected to prove why they “cannot get what they want done using AI” before asking for more headcount and resources, Lutke wrote in a memo to staffers that he posted to X. From a report:
“What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team?” Lutke wrote in the memo, which was sent to employees late last month. “This question can lead to really fun discussions and projects.” Lutke also said there’s a “fundamental expectation” across Shopify that employees embrace AI in their daily work, saying it has been a “multiplier” of productivity for those who have used it.

“I’ve seen many of these people approach implausible tasks, ones we wouldn’t even have chosen to tackle before, with reflexive and brilliant usage of AI to get 100X the work done,” Lutke wrote. The company, which sells web-based software that helps online retailers manage sales and run their operations, will factor AI usage into performance reviews, he added.

Him included?

By jrnvk • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

I am sure that he is excluded from this asinine rule, no?

Staffers Need To Prove Jobs Can’t Be Done By AI?

By Freischutz • Score: 3 Thread

Shopify CEO Says Staffers Need To Prove Jobs Can’t Be Done By AI Before Asking for More Headcount

In any normal business you’d expect management to assess whether a job can be done by AI, and that includes practical pilot testing, before deciding whether or not to introduce AI instead of offloading this on staff. If I was working for Shopify I’d go looking for a new employer with less stupid and lazy management.

Shopify’s Hunger Games: may the best prompt win!

By rocket rancher • Score: 3 Thread

It’s not collaboration if you’re competing with the thing you’re supposed to be collaborating with. In the future, your job interview will be a Turing test—and the AI is on the panel.

What’s being sold as an “AI-first” innovation strategy is, in reality, a reframing of resource constraints as creative empowerment. Shopify’s CEO is using optimistic language—“fun discussions,” “brilliant usage of AI,” “100X the work”—to reposition what is effectively a cost-cutting policy as a visionary approach to productivity.

But the underlying message to employees is clear:
Prove your role can’t be automated before asking for help.

That’s not collaboration. It’s competition masquerading as collaboration. AI isn’t being used to augment human potential—it’s being positioned as the metric by which human value is measured. And anyone who’s worked in a large corporation will recognize the pattern: bring in a shiny new system, claim it’s here to assist, then gradually push employees to train it, measure against it, and eventually get displaced by it.

I’ve lived through this before—watching long-time employees told to train third-party contractors who then replaced them. The only difference now is that the contractor has been rebranded as “autonomous AI,” and the pink slips are wrapped in a TED Talk.

The philosophical problem is that workers are now being asked to justify their relevance not on the basis of creativity, judgment, or experience—but on their ability to beat automation at its own game. That’s not a collaborative future. That’s just a new face on the same old race to the bottom.

Use AI

By groobly • Score: 3 Thread

The answer is clear: ask AI to write up the justification. If the justification is valid, then the guy shouldn’t be fired. If the justification is invalid, then clearly AI could not do the job, so the guy shouldn’t be fired.

Until Death Do You Part. Your Employer.

By geekmux • Score: 3 Thread

“What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team?..This question can lead to really fun discussions and projects.”

Abusing premature-AI to dismiss adding headcount is also known as a hiring freeze. A trend that could become rather permanent. Among every other CEO who read the “fun” report from that “exciting” project titled Maximizing CEO Pay and Bonuses through Permanent Hiring Freezes.

As if Greed is any less predictable.

Micron To Impose Tariff-Related Surcharge on SSDs, Other Products

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Micron has informed US customers it will implement surcharges on memory modules and solid-state drives starting Wednesday to offset President Trump’s new tariffs, according to Reuters. While semiconductors received exemptions in Trump’s recent trade action, memory storage products didn’t escape the new duties.

Micron, which manufactures primarily in Asian countries including China and Taiwan, had previously signaled during a March earnings call that tariff costs would be passed to customers.

Weird

By AmiMoJo • Score: 5, Funny Thread

I as assured that the countries sending stuff to the US would pay the tariffs, not Americans. Surely some mistake.

Re:Weird

By smooth wombat • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Saw a post this morning where a company is including the tariff surcharge on the bill when you order from them. This way you know why it costs more.

The Republicans in the Senate could stop this

By rsilvergun • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Right now. Today even. Trump doesn’t have the right to do this except under emergency authority. There is obviously no emergency. The Senate could pass a resolution to revoke his emergency powers. Wouldn’t even need a law and wouldn’t need anyone from the house of representatives to vote for it.

If you are a right winger and you own a small business or know someone who does it’s about to go away. You’re not going to survive the recession that’s coming. And I know you know that because my feed is blowing up with small business owners freaking out right now.

If you are a retiree here is where I remind you that your medicine is about to go up 25% in cost. Can you absorb that?

Now is the time to talk to your state senator. Remind them they have primary elections and you have a long memory

Re:The Republicans in the Senate could stop this

By dskoll • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

This will not happen until a critical mass of spineless GOP quislings make the calculation that supporting Trump is worse for their careers than opposing him.

I have no idea when (or if) that will happen.

Lies

By benjymouse • Score: 5, Funny Thread

Tariffs are actually *tax cuts*. Karoline Leavitt told me so, very strongly.

Meta Got Caught Gaming AI Benchmarks

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Meta released two new Llama 4 models over the weekend — Scout and Maverick — with claims that Maverick outperforms GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 Flash on benchmarks. Maverick quickly secured the number-two spot on LMArena, behind only Gemini 2.5 Pro.

Researchers have since discovered that Meta used an “experimental chat version” of Maverick for LMArena testing that was "optimized for conversationality" rather than the publicly available version.

In response, LMArena said “Meta’s interpretation of our policy did not match what we expect from model providers” and announced policy updates to prevent similar issues.

Is this a surprise?

By Snotnose • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Meta isn’t exactly a paragon of corporate virtue. More like the swamp the sewers flow into.

Any actual penalties?

By fleeped • Score: 4 Thread
At the university, if students are caught cheating (to gain advantage over their peers) there are penalties… What penalty/fine does Meta get for this I wonder, since they use these benchmarks to drive investment? Ah yeah, nothing - apparently the greater the stakes the less the accountability in the corporate space.

Re:Is this a surprise?

By phantomfive • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Facebook ethics are criminal ethics, and with the current hype environment, with open source benchmarks there’s a lot of incentive to cheat.



A lot of people say, “That’s unethical AND illegal, I’m not going to do it.” Facebook says, “That’s unethical AND illegal…but when I get caught, can I blame someone else?” They’re at a different level.

Hmm, Only 22% AI Articles This Morning : )

By BrendaEM • Score: 3, Insightful Thread
Let’s see, seeing that there is still some other Information and technology news in the world. And also seeing that Slashdot has 8 characters, so we would only need to change 1.8 characters to AI. So it would Only be Alashdot, for today.

Such a surprise

By gweihir • Score: 3 Thread

Benchmarks used for marketing are an invitation to gaming them. The only somewhat useful benchmarks are independently done secret ones, and even those are of limited use. The usual morons do not get that though, because they do not understand the real world at all.

India’s ‘Frankenstein’ Laptop Economy Thrives Against Planned Obsolescence

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
In Delhi’s Nehru Place and Mumbai’s Lamington Road, technicians are creating functional laptops from salvaged parts of multiple discarded devices. These “Frankenstein” machines sell for approximately $110 USD — a fraction of the $800 price tag for new models. Technicians extract usable components — motherboards, capacitors, screens, and batteries — from e-waste sourced locally and from countries like Dubai and China.

“Most people don’t care about having the latest model; they just want something that works and won’t break the bank,” a technician told Verge. This repair ecosystem operates within a larger battle against tech giants pushing planned obsolescence through proprietary designs and restricted parts access. Many technicians source components from Seelampur, India’s largest e-waste hub processing 30,000 tonnes daily, though workers there handle toxic materials with minimal protection. “India has always had a repair culture,” says Satish Sinha of Toxics Link, “but companies are pushing planned obsolescence, making repairs harder and forcing people to buy new devices.”

TFS is an odd read.

By geekmux • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Reading TFS about how someone is putting together a computer from parts, only reminds me of just how far we’ve come from when I was building company computers. From parts. Sourced at my local computer parts reseller.

It’s unreal how much shit has happened in 20-25 years.

Re:TFS is an odd read.

By grumpy-cowboy • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Apple started this trend/mess of e-waste. From Smartphone to computer/laptop: everything soldered on board and nearly impossible to fix/upgrade (RAM, CPU, Batteries, …). Everything is now disposable and planned for obsolescence. This is a freaking nonsense and it’s having impact on environment, humans, … A trend now infecting cars, appliances, … and many other industries. This have to stop.

TFA doesn’t mention OS just hardware

By DigitalSorceress • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

So, interestingly, the biggest thing driving planned obsolescence right now as far as I can tell is MS pushing windows 10 out, and so many devices unable to meet the hardware requirements for Win 11

The article didn’t mention if these machines would be set up with older Windows or with Linux, though I’m going to guess it will be the former.

I do developer support for an SDK, and thus I have a lot of customers in India, so I have some sense of one part of this: an incredibly strong “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude. I regularly have customers using a 10 or even 15 year outdated version of our SDK they’re trying to work with - it worked well enough that they didn’t need to update and so they didn’t. Many of these folks are also using really outdated Windows. I’ll admit it’s been a while since I’ve seen someone actively using XP still, but I still often see win 7. We don’t officially tell them “no we won’t support you” but we will tell them “if your issue is fixed in a newer version, you need to upgrade, we can’t backport fixes to ancient versions.”, and over time, those ancient windows systems have been mostly replaced… I’d guess though that just like other OS versions, a huge number of folks will continue to use outdated / unsupported versions long past end of life…

Granted, this isn’t just India - but I do think they have extra large motivation and that repair culture there (as mentioned in TFA) to keep older hardware limping along, and probably using out of support Windows.. I kind of shudder at the security implications… but I also kind of really admire the ingenuity and resourcefulness.

The whole windows 10 end of life due to hardware requirements is indeed going to drive a lot of waste of perfectly serviceable hardware - honestly, I kind of hope it finds its way to the bodgers / makers / hackers rather than landfills.. but I do kind of wish there was more Linux uptake to lessen the number of unpatched/unpatchable vulnerable machines out there.

Re:TFS is an odd read.

By buck-yar • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
Someone should sue Microsoft over the damage that will be caused from all the ewaste from their forced upgrade. If states are suing oil companies, this is only logical.

Re:TFS is an odd read.

By Nadir • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Friends don’t let friends use the abandoned Apache OpenOffice, but suggest Libreoffice instead

Bluesky Can’t Take a Joke

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
On Bluesky, the joke’s on you if you don’t get the joke. The social network has become a “refuge” for those fleeing X and Threads, but its growing pains include a serious case of humor-impairment. When Amy Brown jokingly posted she was “screaming, crying, and throwing up” about price differences between Ohio and California Walgreens, literal-minded users scolded her for exaggerating. Brown, a former Wendy’s social media manager who got banned from X after impersonating Elon Musk, puts it simply: “We’re both speaking English, but I’m speaking internet.”

This clash stems from Bluesky’s oddly mixed population: irony-steeped Twitter refugees mingling with earnest Facebook transplants and MSNBC viewers who took the plunge after seeing the platform mentioned on shows like Morning Joe. “It’s riff collapse,” says cartoonist Mattie Lubchansky, describing how her obviously absurd Oscar post triggered sincere movie recommendations.

Re:Blue Sky - an ECHO CHAMBER for Ugly Fat Libs.

By Kokuyo • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

X is social media. Social media is not made for beneficial interaction. It’s made for clicks (which is why I don’t consider Slashdot social media, even though it has a social aspect).

Threaded comments would make it possible to reorient yourself in the discussion, contextualize a post and post a level-headed reply that shows understanding of the point another has made.
None of that leads to drive-by insults, rage and flamewars, which bring views.

Invite them all to join SlashDot

By jfdavis668 • Score: 5, Funny Thread
Great place if you can’t take a joke.

Like-minded?

By RobinH • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Why would you want to be on a platform with only a bunch of like-minded individuals? Understanding begins with hearing something you either haven’t heard before, or don’t necessarily agree with, and trying to understand where they’re coming from. The last thing we need is more echo chambers.

Re:This is “social media”

By dfghjk • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Social media started as a steaming pile of crap, it was always a race to the bottom. Twitter’s “innovation” was literally limited message lengths, a “feature” they eventually removed. Foursquare’s “innovation” was to post twitter messages automatically! Social media has never been about anything other than greed and exploitation. Devolving not required.

But yeah, plenty will look back and wonder how we didn’t see this coming. Hindsight works that way.

Re:Invite them all to join SlashDot

By chispito • Score: 5, Funny Thread

Great place if you can’t take a joke.

Only an insensitive clod would celebrate this.

US’s AI Lead Over China Rapidly Shrinking, Stanford Report Says

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
The U.S. is still the global leader in state-of-the-art AI, but China has closed the gap considerably, according to a new report from Stanford. Axios:
Institutions based in the U.S. produced 40 AI models of note in 2024, compared with 15 from China and three from Europe, according to the eighth edition of Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Index, released on Monday.

However, the report found that Chinese models have rapidly caught up in quality, noting that Chinese models reached near parity on two key benchmarks after being behind leading U.S. models by double digit percentages a year earlier. Plus, it said, China is now leading the U.S. in AI publications and patents.

Researcher asks for research funds

By will4 • Score: 3 Thread

It’s somewhat of a self-serviing article.

Rank what is hard to rank, claim we’re behind as a country, extend hand for research funds.

We see this same exact template article for US and China aerospace research programs recently.

that’s okay

By SirSlud • Score: 4, Funny Thread

Americans have the most important thing in the world! Confidence, and an upbringing that, you know, stresses that they’re the best! American hegemony is forever. It’s ordained or something.

No need to worry.

By Rumagent • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
I am sure those big beautiful tariffs will fix this as well. No need to think, just listen to the great leader.

No, the Dire Wolf Has Not Been Brought Back From Extinction

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Colossal Biosciences has claimed it “successfully restored” the extinct dire wolf after a “10,000+ year absence,” but scientists clarify these are actually genetically modified grey wolves. The U.S. company announced three pups — males Remus and Romulus born in October, and female Khaleesi born in January — as dire wolves, but made only 20 genetic edits to grey wolves.

Beth Shapiro of Colossal told New Scientist that just 15 modifications were based on dire wolf DNA, primarily targeting size, musculature and ear shape. Five other changes involve mutations known to produce light coats in grey wolves. A 2021 DNA study revealed dire wolves and grey wolves last shared a common ancestor about 6 million years ago, with jackals and African wild dogs more closely related to grey wolves.

great idea

By cstacy • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

We barely understand the environment enough to safely bring back animals that went extinct in the past 250 years. Why would it be a good idea to bring back a super-predator that would outcompete the closest relatives, and decimate all their prey (and all kinds of other fun new things they will decide to eat)?

That sounds stupid.

Why did they pick this one? Because they can’t actually do it. But it is relatively easy to make a few edits, creating a new breed of wolf that is somewhat larger than the existing ones. (Still not a benefit;) And because they can make the color of its coat look more similar to the extinct one (but still not the same). And the result is a non-beneficial breed, fraudulently advertised as bringing back an extinct species. For the purpose of showing the company can DO something/anythiing, so it can GET MORE FUNDING.

However, they have already thoroughly illustrated that they do not have any motivation for planetary benefit, that they will act against us, that they are irresponsible, and that they are money-grubbing liars. Who have access to standard gene editing technology (CRISPR I presume).

Yay.

Re:great idea

By OrangAsm • Score: 4, Funny Thread

I’m guessing it’s due to them being featured on Game of Thrones, a show about medieval toiletry.

Selective breeding

By will4 • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Oddly, how the centuries of selectively breeding domesticated animals is never discussed as possibly harmful to the ecosystem.

https://wildlife.org/australia…
Australia uses poison sausages to tackle feral cat problem — April 29, 2019 by The Wildlife Society

Australia has eliminated an estimated 211,560 feral cats since it decided in 2015 to kill 2 million of them by 2020. The cats prey on threatened rodent and marsupial species native to the country. As part of their effort to eradicate the cats, wildlife managers have dropped lethal bait in the form of sausages laced with poison. But that’s only one way Australians are tackling feral cats. They are also trapping and shooting them, and they’re looking at other ways of distributing poison to the species. The strategies have caused some contention among animal rights groups and other members of the public.

Re:great idea

By Whateverthisis • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
It’s more than that. Behavior is not necessarily in the genome. Wolves in particular have a culture to them; they grow up in packs and are trained. That culture, like human cultures, is byproduct of their environment. DNA is not the code of life the way it’s been discussed, it’s simply an important, but not the only, piece in a vast puzzle that makes up living organisms.

Dire wolves existed at a period in time when the environment supported it. Climate change (mostly the ice age ending) led to the extinction of various forms of megafauna like the wooly mammoth (which Colossal also aims to bring back), which led to the extinction of their species. They fit within an ecological niche for the environment at the time, and they’re gone because that environment is now gone too. Bringing them back won’t change that; dire wolves and wooly mammoths cannot survive today not because of their genomes but because the global environment doesn’t support megafauna any more.

But also, understand what Colossal Biosciences actually is. It’s a story. It makes cool sense to “bring back wooly mammoths”. It’s better than “bringing back dinosaurs” because those creatures are closer to our own time and Jurassic Park put the kibosh on that. As you correctly pointed out, these aren’t dire wolves, they’re grey wolves with a few gene edits; we’re genetically closer to bananas than these things are to true dire wolves. That’s not the point. The point is the story, which helps them raise money, do cool science, and develop tools around life science that they then spin out to create new businesses, and make educational videos about ecological preservation. It’s not a bad idea overall, but they do misrepresent what they’re doing for the sake of the story and sound like hippy idiots to make the emotional play on what they’re doing.

It’s a weird company.

States Are Banning Forever Chemicals. Industry Is Fighting Back

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
New Mexico’s legislature passed bills last week that would ban consumer products containing PFAS, joining a small but growing number of states taking action against these persistent “forever chemicals.” If signed by the governor, the legislation would prohibit the sale of many products with added per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) in New Mexico, making it the third state after Maine and Minnesota to enact such comprehensive restrictions.

At least 29 states have PFAS-related bills before state legislatures this year, according to Safer States, a network of advocacy organizations. Research shows PFAS accumulate in the environment and human bodies, potentially causing health problems from high cholesterol to cancer. EPA figures indicate almost half of Americans are exposed to PFAS in their drinking water.

Wired reports that chemical and consumer products industries are aggressively fighting state-level bans on “forever chemicals” through lobbying and legal action as regulations spread across the United States. The Cookware Sustainability Alliance, formed in 2024 by major cookware manufacturers, has testified in 10 statehouses against PFAS restrictions and sued Minnesota in January, claiming its ban is unconstitutional. (The New Mexico bills include notable exemptions, particularly for fluoropolymers used in nonstick cookware, following successful lobbying by industry groups.)

Industry groups are also targeting federal regulators, with the American Chemistry Council and others recommending the EPA adopt a narrower definition of PFAS. “The federal regulatory approach is preferable to a patchwork of different and potentially conflicting state approaches,” said Erich Shea from the American Chemistry Council.

New Mexico

By GrahamJ • Score: 5, Funny Thread

Isn’t it called New America now?

Cast Iron

By grasshoppa • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Putting aside the legality of it, if you want safe nonstick; get cast iron. It only takes a little bit of adjustment, but then it works as well if not better than any non-stick pans out there.

The biggest hurdle is comfort/education, but once you’ve got it it’s pretty simple. And they last forever; I’m only half joking when I tell my daughter that my cast iron pans are her inheritance.

always states rights until it’s not

By zeiche • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

enuf said

Re:Cast Iron

By piojo • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Putting aside the legality of it, if you want safe nonstick; get cast iron. It only takes a little bit of adjustment, but then it works as well if not better than any non-stick pans out there.

This has not been my experience. One pan does not hold a seasoning. My other cast iron pan is fairly nonstick but sticky and unpleasant to touch, since too much effort goes into avoiding rust or degrading the seasoning. Plus it’s so heavy that it’s very hard to wash. My wrists aren’t strong enough to deal with it on a regular basis. Lastly, when food does burn, it tends to ruin the seasoning because the residue needs to be scrubbed off. Lastly for real, it always burns food when used on induction cookers since the ring of heat is more focused than a flame and even a quite heavy cast iron pan conducts heat poorly.

I use laminated stainless steel pans with a cooking spray (which must contain lecithin as the nonstick agent). Is there any reason to use nonstick over laminated stainless steel? The teflon/aluminum pans are cheaper, but that doesn’t necessarily justify the use of forever chemicals.

Chem. companies CEO at French parlement hearing:

By brebisson • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Hello,

I was recently listening to a hearing of international chemical companies CEO at the french parlement…

Some very interesting exchange happened there where representatives will ask questions.

One representative asked about “returning some manufacturing to France” for “strategic reasons”. This included molecules for medicine and some needed base products…

Later on, another representative (ecologist) talked about PFAS…

One of the CEOs answered (and I paraphrase) :

“Fluor is an element that forms VERY strong bonds and anything that has, or use Fluor is, or decays, for all intent and purpose, into a “forever chemical”.

Fluor is present in over 40% of the medicine that we talked about earlier. And will be used in the manufacturing of another 20% of it.

As an ecologist, you want products that last. Fluor is one of the main components to make product last. Remove it and you get “low grade” plastics that decay faster.

We understand that PFAS are not good, but having them has a measurably huge effect through products that could not be done without them and through the quality improvements that they allow on other.

I guess our job is to make products that allow manufacturing of other products, your job as citizen representative is to find the balance between different conflicting needs and wants. In this meeting we are trying to give you the information that will help you understand what is at stake.
".

Interestingly enough, this answer was kind of candid in the delivery (the guy was an old school CEO who went up the rank), and really hit the nail on the head highlighting the difficulties of making such decision and I hope that, in Mexio as in France politician will take the time to think hard and long before deciding where to place the cursor.

Cyrille

Framework Stops Selling Some of Its Laptops in the US Due To Tariffs

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Framework — a company that makes upgradeable and repairable laptops — will pause sales on several versions of one of its models in America thanks to Trump’s tariffs, it said. From a report:
“Due to the new tariffs that came into effect on April 5th, we’re temporarily pausing US sales on a few base Framework Laptop 13 systems (Ultra 5 125H and Ryzen 5 7640U). For now, these models will be removed from our US site. We will continue to provide updates as we have them,” Framework said in a post on X.

A spokesperson for Framework told 404 Media in an email that the company was pausing sales on their six lowest priced units in the U.S. They clarified that those models are still available to customers that are ordering the machines outside of America.

Re: So....

By caseih • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Well if the laptops would be too expensive to sell with the tariff tacked on, why bother importing them in the first place? You expect them to simply eat the tariff and sell their laptop at the same price they do now? I am genuinely curious.

Further, theoretically the point of the tariffs are to push Americans towards American-made goods. So stopping the sale of imported Framework laptops would seem to be something that the folks who have posted here so far should applaud.

But it’s obvious from the posts on this story so far that Americans still don’t understand that the American consumer pays the tariffs.

Re:So....

By caseih • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I would expect you rather to applaud Framework’s move to stop importing certain laptops. Isn’t that the goal of the tariffs, to influence American companies to make goods here?

Re:So....

By DamnOregonian • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Because price points affect revenue in a more convoluted fashion than simply “I charged 20% more, now I make 20% more.”
As you raise prices, the demand will fall depending on the intended consumer.
At the high end, you can afford to pump these pretty hard, because those fuckers will pay anything.
At the mid range, you can pump a little, but less, because there is a threshold where these people will look for something else.
At the low end, people are looking for the cheapest thing they can find. Touch that price, and people will flock away from you.
This is why the low margin devices were dropped- because they didn’t perceive people being willing to pay the tariff-adjusted price for them, and ending up with extra inventory that you have to sell at a loss is how small businesses die.

Are you saying their different models have parts sourced from different places, so costs have not gone up uniformly across their product-line?

Nope. I mean that might be true- but the base effect isn’t because of that. It’s simply because people react to prices- demand isn’t price invariant.

Re:So....

By grolschie • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Yes, good on them. Stop selling Americans cheap goods made in places that circumvent our notions of fairness like minimum wages and environmental protections.

America the land of fair minimum wages and environmental protections? You are being sarcastic, right?

Re:So....

By AmiMoJo • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Shame that Trump didn’t think to develop the domestic supply chains and manufacturing first. It’s not like they can just switch to American made AMD CPUs, or American made flash, or American made RAM, because America doesn’t make those things.

If the plan actually worked it would take years for those things to come to the US. How long can Americans afford to wait?

China Launches GPMI, a Powerful Alternative To HDMI and DisplayPort

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
AmiMoJo writes:
The Shenzhen 8K UHD Video Industry Cooperation Alliance, a group made up of more than 50 Chinese companies, just released a new wired media communication standard called the General Purpose Media Interface or GPMI. This standard was developed to support 8K and reduce the number of cables required to stream data and power from one device to another. According to HKEPC, the GPMI cable comes in two flavors — a Type-B that seems to have a proprietary connector and a Type-C that is compatible with the USB-C standard.

Because 8K has four times the number of pixels of 4K and 16 times more pixels than 1080p resolution, it means that GPMI is built to carry a lot more data than other current standards. There are other variables that can impact required bandwidth, of course, such as color depth and refresh rate. The GPMI Type-C connector is set to have a maximum bandwidth of 96 Gbps and deliver 240 watts of power. This is more than double the 40 Gbps data limit of USB4 and Thunderbolt 4, allowing you to transmit more data on the cable. However, it has the same power limit as that of the latest USB Type-C connector using the Extended Power Range (EPR) standard. GPMI Type-B beats all other cables, though, with its maximum bandwidth of 192 Gbps and power delivery of up to 480 watts.

Obligatory XKCD

By Zak3056 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Standards.

They are NOT flexing

By Entrope • Score: 5, Informative Thread

I fixed the subject for you. USB4 version 2.0 (yes, I agree it’s a dumb numbering scheme) has an 80 Gbps symmetric mode and 120/40 Gbps asymmetric mode. So they’ve announced a sometimes-proprietary cable that has a standard connector, but the standard connector runs slower than what the rest of the world decided on 2+ years ago. Being late to the party with a slow cable is not a flex.

Re:They are NOT flexing

By DamnOregonian • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
Holy fuck, what confident ignorance.

The target here is HDMI. Everyone knows that DP can handle 8K over USB-C just fine.
The problem is that HDMI2.2 still isn’t here, and HDMI2.1 is way, way, behind.
DisplayPort does not handle media-center requires like ARC and CEC.
Could they have just pumped HDMI framing over the 120Gbps channels? Yes. They could have. But they wouldn’t be able to call it HDMI.
Could they have made this “GPMI” higher bandwidth? Yes, they could have, but there wasn’t a need- and lowest bandwidth to get the job is always better, because the higher the bandwidth, the more sensitive the cable is to length.

In short, this is someone getting annoyed waiting for HDMI 2.2, and making their own. Using a USB-C port was just sound reasoning.

Re:They are NOT flexing

By DamnOregonian • Score: 5, Informative Thread

HDMI 2.1 is extremely common now, and supports 8K up to 120 Hz.

Only with pretty extreme color space compression.
8K HDR over HDMI2.1 is a joke.

What exactly do you think they currently need that’s beyond that, such that they decided to make a new, incompatible format instead of using HDMI 2.2, which was announced before this?

Better than 50Hz SDR uncompressed? Or the ability to do 60Hz 8K at something better than 4:2:2 chroma subsampling?
They obviously started work on this long before HDMI2.2 was announced, as this is a fully-fleshed electrical standard.
HDMI2.1 is hideously outdated.

Your “annoyed waiting” hypothesis makes no sense at all.

It does, you just didn’t think it through.
Pretend like HDMI 2.1 was released in 2017.
Pretend like GPMI took more than the 3 months to create between HDMI2.2’s spec release and now.
Pretend like DP hasn’t been able to do 8K/60Hz/10bpc RGB since 2019.

HDMI2.1 has been stretched to hit a few technical benchmarks, but that taffy is real thin in the middle now.

All of this ignoring the argument of whether or not 8K is even really a thing or not.

Re:Obligatory XKCD

By DamnOregonian • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

USB-C is rapidly replacing DisplayPort, so within maybe a decade, that standard will be pretty much defunct, and arguably, it almost is already, given that you can always adapt, and most people don’t go around plugging into random monitors all the time.

USB-C has not, will not, and can not replace DisplayPort.
DisplayPort is far more than a connector. USB-C is only a connector.
USB-C transports DisplayPort in 2 different ways. 1, with the high-bandwidth lines driven directly using DisplayPort signaling protocol (DP-Alt- which is actually how every USB-C monitor you’ve ever used works), or via CIO- packetized for switching with a hub.

And although it is taking longer, we’re starting to see TVs with USB-C ports now, too. That’s what I expect to replace HDMI — not yet another new standard, but something that unifies the TV and computer display markets once and for all, the way HDMI should have, but didn’t for various reason (inability to get the bandwidth high enough quickly enough, licensing fees, CEC requirements, the computer industry’s general reluctance to deal with HDCP, etc.).

HDMI-Alt is a thing, though it’s very rare. That’s HDMI over USB-C. The TVs you are using are using either HDMI-Alt, or DP-Alt.
USB-C is just a connector.

Based on that, my suspicion is that HDMI 2.2 is likely to be a DOA standard. By the time your average consumer cares about 8K video (if they ever do), most TVs on the market will probably have USB-C ports, and everybody will just use those.

It won’t. HDMI 2.1 is woefully deficient. HDMI 2.2 is a much needed breath of fresh air for it to catch up with DisplayPort.
Remember, USB-C is just a port. It transmits either HDMI-Alt, DP-Alt, or CIO-encapsulated-DP.

So in much the same way, I fully expect HDMI to slowly fade away. It will just take a lot longer — probably more like twenty years before every TV in every hotel room has a USB-C port, and that’s really the point at which people stop caring. :-)

The port may (FSM willing) but the signaling protocol will not, at least until DP subsumes the HDMI-specific functionality that’s mainstream in home entertainment systems.

Waymo May Use Interior Camera Data To Train Generative AI Models, Sell Ads

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader shares a report:
Waymo is preparing to use data from its robotaxis, including video from interior cameras tied to rider identities, to train generative AI models, according to an unreleased version of its privacy policy found by researcher Jane Manchun Wong.

The draft language reveals Waymo may also share this data to personalize ads, raising fresh questions about how much of a rider’s behavior inside autonomous vehicles could be repurposed for AI training and marketing. The privacy page states: “Waymo may share data to improve and analyze its functionality and to tailor products, services, ads, and offers to your interests. You can opt out of sharing your information with third parties, unless it’s necessary to the functioning of the service.”

So you are the product!

By oldgraybeard • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
And they still charge you for the ride!

Scramble Suits?

By cayenne8 • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
Perhaps it is time to really get to working on functional Scramble Suits .....

Everything will be monetized

By hdyoung • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
I’ve said this many times. The internet companies will harvest and monetize every scrap of data they can. Everything. Everything means EVERYTHiNG. Data is the oxygen of the entire industry. Demanding that they stop is like demanding that someone stop breathing. Corporate promises are meaningless. The TOS is meaningless. Hell, so are mist privacy laws. Passing a law requiring them to stop them is like passing a law that requires someone to stop breathing. The law will be ignored, because they die if they comply anyways.

Will be illegal

By NotEmmanuelGoldstein • Score: 3, Insightful Thread

… tied to rider identities.

Tracking children would violate safety/privacy laws in many countries. They would have to stop recording as soon as a non-adult entered the vehicle. In my town, Uber is a cheap way for working-mothers to help their children. If Waymo wants to compete, their business model will have to change.

Expect the same from AI agents

By rapjr • Score: 3 Thread
Your personal AI agent will know everything you do and use it all against you.

UK Bans Fake Reviews and ‘Sneaky’ Fees For Online Products

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
The United Kingdom has banned “outrageous fake reviews and sneaky hidden fees” to make life easier for online shoppers. From a report:
New measures under the Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumer Act 2024 came into force on Sunday that require online platforms to transparently include all mandatory fees within a product’s advertised price, including booking or admin charges.

The law targets so-called “dripped pricing,” in which additional fees — like platform service charges — are dripped in during a customer’s checkout process to dupe them into paying a higher price than expected. The ban “aims to bring to an end the shock that online shoppers get when they reach the end of their shopping experience only to find a raft of extra fees lumped on top,” according to Justin Madders, the UK’s Minister for Employment Rights, Competition and Markets.

Wishful Thinking

By Bahbus • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

I just wish all prices, everywhere in the world were required to be “the price” - in person and online. If an item has a price tag for $139.99 and it’s the only item I’m buying, I should only be paying $139.99. Not $139.99 plus taxes, plus fees. Calculate that ahead of time and include it in your prices before I get to the register/checkout. A long time ago, when you had to do everything manually, I could see it being a pain in the ass, but it would be trivial to do it now a days. Hell, it’s one of the smartest things a retail business could do nowadays.

Ban credit card data upfront next

By devslash0 • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

The next step should be to ban another sourge of the internet being “free” trials of online services that require your credit card details upfront, on day 1, and where it automatically autorenews at the end of the “free” period. If something is free, in the light of GDPR and other related regulations, you should not be asking for credit card information because there is no payment to make therefore you don’t need credit card data to fulfil the function of setting up a free trial. Then, the default policy should be for the subscription to expire by default at the end of the trial.

Re:UK’s Left Wing Deep State Fascism

By serviscope_minor • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Sort of like the attachment to guns. You’ll cheer on the first and second amendments as you descend into fascism.

Your king has already declared that the wrong ideologies must be scrubbed from the government, truth be damned. And you’ve somehow managed to lock up more people than anywhere else in the world, a status which makes them not have free speech.

So you might want to check the windows in your glass house before flinging rocks.

Think is in I’m happy to crap all over my government and their record, bit not to someone who’s being both insufferably smug and also wrong.

Re:Good

By Richard_at_work • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

You really do slurp up the right wing propaganda over there in America dont you?

Theres nothing wrong with the UKs freedom of press or freedom of speech for the average person - sure, hate speech is banned, which is good. It also means we dont have anywhere near the issues that you do in America.

By the way, your President recently called a boycott of a private companies products “illegal”, and many of your states have laws which make boycotts of Israel illegal. Is everything ok over there?

Scientists Debate Actual Weight of the Internet

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot
The internet’s physical mass remains contested among scientists, with estimates ranging from a strawberry to something almost unimaginably small. In 2006, Harvard physicist Russell Seitz calculated the internet weighed roughly 50 grams based on server energy, a figure that would now equate to potato-weight given internet growth.

Christopher White, president of NEC Laboratories America, has dismissed this calculation as “just wrong.” White suggests a more accurate method that accounts for the energy needed to encode all internet data in one place, yielding approximately 53 quadrillionths of a gram at room temperature. Alternatively, if the internet’s projected 175 zettabytes of data were stored in DNA — a storage medium scientists are actively exploring — it would weigh 960,947 grams, equivalent to 10.6 American males. Though scientists debate measurement methods, White asserts the web’s true complexity makes it “essentially unknowable.”

Re:What is the Internet?

By 93 Escort Wagon • Score: 5, Funny Thread

C’mon, Jen, everyone knows the Internet doesn’t weigh anything. And it’s wireless. They keep it at the top of Big Ben because that’s where the reception is best.

https://youtu.be/iDbyYGrswtg?s…

A silly question

By Geoffrey.landis • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

It’s a silly question. The internet resides on the servers and memories of the computers that comprise it, any reasonable measurement would have to include the servers which hold it. Otherwise, it’s like asking “what is the weight of your memories”? Well, your memories reside in your brain. You can’t weigh the memories as if they were separate from the brain.

Information itself has no weight. A FET holding a specific bit, 1 or 0, doesn’t weigh any more or less than one holding a random bit (0 or 1 are both information. A random bit has no information.)

Mass != Weight

By Roger W Moore • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
I suspect they were debating the _mass_ of the internet. While weight and mass have some degree of equivalence in a constant gravitational field the internet is distributed around the globe and so it really makes a huge difference in this case since the direction of the gravitational field varies a lots over the surface of the Earth even if the magnitude is only varies a little. So to calculate the weight you not only need to worry about how to calculate the mass but where that mass is located.

If we assume that the internet is roughly evenly distributed around the planet then he weight of the internet would be close to zero because weight is the force exerted by gravity on an object and summed uniformly over the surface of a sphere that would give zero. However, the Earth is not a perfect sphere and the variations in distribution would mean cancellation would not be perfect, so the result would likely be a very small weight.

However, if we assume the internet is largely located around the northern hemisphere there will still be a lot of cancellation of the weight and what’s left will have a direction pointing towards somewhere close to the south pole.

Re:A silly question

By rossdee • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

Well an angel is 1,000 ft in altitude, so about 328 until the top of the atmosphere.

Re: What is the Internet?

By databasecowgirl • Score: 4, Funny Thread
Whatever you do, don’t google Google.