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Submission + - I am a robot? 1

Submitted by Anne Thwacks
Anne Thwacks writes: Today, I have twice failed to complete a capcha despite trying as hard as I can for absolutely ages.
Is this because I am secretly a robot?

Or is it because the pathetically poor, grainy, low resolution pictures are impossible for humans to interpret?
Not helped by instructions given in US English?

This side of the Atlantic (LANG=en_GB), our fire hydrants look different, we do not consider motorcycles to be bicycles (despite both having two wheels), and we don't have sidewalks or crosswalks (but do have pavements and zebra crossings).

Also, the foolish questions to not specify whether a part of a motorcycle wheel is considered to be a whole bicycle, and if a part is considered to be the whole, how small a part? Does a single pixel count? Does the handrail count as part of stairs?

I am not opposed to the concept of captchas, However, Google's implementation appears to be designed by the kind of American that does not understand that the rest of the world considers American English to be the work of unintelligible idiots.

Submission + - Craig Wright Handed Suspended Prison Sentence (theguardian.com)

Submitted by newcastlejon
newcastlejon writes: From The Guardian:

An Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the creator of bitcoin has been given a one-year suspended prison sentence after the high court in London ruled he was in contempt because he would not stop suing people.

Mr Justice Mellor had already found that Craig Wright, 54, repeatedly lied about his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the person or people who launched bitcoin – the cryptocurrency that was first mined in 2009 and recently soared in value to £79,000.

On Thursday Wright was sentenced for five counts of contempt of court. Sentencing him to 12 months in jail, suspended for two years and to pay £145,000 in costs within a fortnight, the court also struck out his enormous claim.

Wright appeared by video link from an undisclosed location in Asia, having refused to comply with an order to appear in person.

Submission + - Hydroxychloroquine promoting COVID study retracted after 4 yrs (nature.com) 1

Submitted by backslashdot
backslashdot writes: The study received almost 3,400 citations (follow on studies mentioning it) according to the web of Science database, it is the second-most-cited retracted paper of any kind, and highest cited COVID paper to be retracted.

Researchers had critiqued the controversial paper many times, raising concerns about its data quality and an unclear ethics-approval process. Its eventual withdrawal, on the grounds of concerns over ethical approval and doubts about the conduct of the research, marks the 28th retraction for co-author Didier Raoult, a French microbiologist, formerly at Marseille’s Hospital-University Institute Mediterranean Infection (IHU), who shot to global prominence in the pandemic. French investigations found that he and the IHU had violated ethics-approval protocols in numerous studies, and Raoult has now retired.

Submission + - LockBit plans comeback with 4.0 release (thecyberexpress.com)

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: LockBit was the most active ransomware group until a massive global law enforcement action resulted in takedowns, arrests and source code and decryption key leaks.

Now the group plans a comeback, according to a Cyber Express article that cited Cyble threat researchers, with the launch of LockBit 4.0 coming in February.

“Want a lamborghini, ferrari and lots of girls?” LockBit’s announcement said. “Sign up and start your pentester billionaire journey in 5 minutes with us.”

Cyble researchers noted that “it is uncertain whether LockBit will regain traction, as the group has faced declining credibility amidst competition from other RaaS groups, such as RansomHub, which currently dominate the ransomware landscape.”

Submission + - A Mom Asked for Public School Board Records. They Charged Her $33 Million (thefp.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Elizabeth Clair, the mother of a seventh grader in suburban Detroit, wanted to find out whether her local school district had mended its ways after it lost a lawsuit for improperly tracking disgruntled parents. Instead, she’s the one who learned a lesson: Prying information out of local governments can be very expensive—and state transparency laws don’t always help.

Back in 2022, the Rochester Community School District settled a lawsuit for nearly $200,000 with another mom who accused the district of keeping a “dossier” on parents critical of Covid lockdowns. Clair said she wanted to know what the district was doing to stem future retaliation against parents. So she filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for six months’ worth of emails containing the word anti-retaliation.

A few weeks later, she heard back from the district’s FOIA coordinator: Her request had been granted. All she had to do was pay $33,103,232.56. That’s right. More than $33 million.

The district explained that it would take an employee 717,000 hours at a rate of over $46 per hour to review the 21,514,288 emails related to her request.

Submission + - T2 Linux SDE 24.12 "Sky's the Limit!" Released with 37 ISOs for 25 CPU ISAs (t2sde.org)

Submitted by ReneR
ReneR writes: The T2 Linux team has unveiled T2 Linux SDE 24.12, codenamed "Sky’s the Limit!", delivering a massive update for this highly portable source-based Linux distribution. The release includes 37 pre-compiled ISOs with Glibc, Musl, and uClibc, supporting 25 CPU architectures like ARM(64), RISCV(64), Loongarch64, SPARC(64), and vintage retro computing platforms such as M68k, Alpha, and even initial Nintendo Wii U support added.
The Cosmic Desktop, a modern Rust-based environment, debuts alongside expanded application support for non-mainstream RISC architectures, now featuring LibreOffice, OpenJDK, and QEMU. With 3280 package updates, 206 new features, and the ability to boot on systems with as little as 512MB RAM, this release further strengthens T2 Linux’s position as the ultimate tool for developers working across diverse hardware and embedded systems.
More details and downloads are available on the official https://t2linux.com/ site.

Submission + - New Shelly Smart Devices Have One-Mile Range, Thanks To Z-Wave (pcworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Smart home devices compatible with the Matter standard have garnered most of our attention lately, but the compelling features in the latest generation of Z-Wave chips convinced the IoT developer Shelly Group to build no fewer than 11 new products powered by Z-Wave technology. The new collection includes a smart plug, in-wall dimmers, relays, and various sensors aimed at DIYers, installers, and commercial builders. Citing the ability of Z-Wave 800 (aka Z-Wave Long Range or LR) chips to operate IoT devices over extremely long range—up to 1 mile, line of sight—while running on battery power for up to 10 years, Shelly Group CTO Leon Kralj said “Shelly is helping break down smart home connectivity barriers, empowering homeowners, security installers, and commercial property owners and managers with unmatched range, scalability, and energy efficiency to redefine their automation experience.”

[...] While most homeowners won’t need to worry about the number of IoT devices their networks can support, commercial builders will appreciate the scalability of Z-Wave 800-powered devices – namely, you can deploy as many as 4,000 nodes on a single mesh network. That’s a 20x increase over what was possible with previous generations of the chip. And since Z-Wave LR is backward compatible with those previous generations, there should be no worries about integrating the new devices into existing networks. Shelly says all 11 of its new Z-Wave 800-powered IoT devices will be available in the first half of 2025.

Submission + - Hackers Can Alter Digital License Plates (wired.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Hackers Can Jailbreak Digital License Plates to Make Others Pay Their Tolls and Tickets.Digital license plates sold by Reviver, already legal to buy in some states and drive with nationwide, can be hacked by their owners to evade traffic regulations or even law enforcement surveillance.

This story will be on-going payday for traffic ticket lawyers. I am ordering one now.

Submission + - 'World's first' grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant announced in the US (cnn.com)

Submitted by timeOday
timeOday writes: If all goes to plan, Virginia will be the site of the world’s first grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant, able to harness this futuristic clean power and generate electricity from it by the early 2030s, according to an announcement Tuesday by the startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

CFS, one of the largest and most-hyped nuclear fusion companies, will make a multibillion-dollar investment into building the facility near Richmond. When operational, the plant will be able to plug into the grid and produce 400 megawatts, enough to power around 150,000 homes, said its CEO Bob Mumgaard.

“This will mark the first time fusion power will be made available in the world at grid scale,” Mumgaard said. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin welcomed the announcement, calling it “an historic moment for Virginia and the world at large.”

The plant would represent a new stage in the quest to commercialize nuclear fusion, the process which powers the stars. But the path toward it is unlikely to be smooth, not least because the technology has not yet been proved viable.

Submission + - Salesforce Will Hire 2,000 People To Sell AI Products (cnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Salesforce will hire 2,000 people to sell artificial intelligence software to clients, CEO Marc Benioff said on Tuesday, double the number the company indicated it was planning to add a month ago. The cloud software company, which targets sales reps, marketers and customer service agents, is among the many technology companies hoping to boost revenue with generative AI features. “We’re adding another couple of thousand salespeople to help sell these products,” Benioff said at a company event in San Francisco. “We already had 9,000 referrals for the 2,000 positions that we’ve opened up. It’s amazing.”

Last month, Benioff told Bloomberg that it planned to hire 1,000 salespeople focusing on AI. On Tuesday, Salesforce said the second generation of its Agentforce technology creating and operating AI agents will become available to customers in February 2025. Agentforce will be able to tackle sophisticated questions in Salesforce’s Slack communications app, based on all available data. [...] Benioff said Salesforce’s homepage now features an experimental AI agent that can respond to user queries about the company’s products. Salesforce customers in need of assistance can visit a chat-based help page that conducts 32,000 conversations a week. About 5,000 are getting escalated to humans as a result of current AI capabilities, down from 10,000 before, Benioff said.

Submission + - Additional Seatbelt Reminders Mandated by NHTSA (caranddriver.com) 2

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

NHTSA will require audible warnings for everyone in the car, including back-seat riders, in an effort to reduce the 50 percent of traffic fatalities who are unbuckled.

As someone that uses back seats to carry some luggage, I am not a fan of this requirement.

Submission + - 'Ghost Gun' Linked to Mangione Shows Just How Far 3D-Printed Weapons Have Come (wired.com) 4

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: More than a decade after the advent of the 3D-printed gun as an icon of libertarianism and a gun control nightmare, police say one of those homemade plastic weapons has now been found in the hands of perhaps the world’s most high-profile alleged killer. For the community of DIY gunsmiths who have spent years honing those printable firearm models, in fact, the handgun police claim Luigi Mangione used to fatally shoot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is as recognizable as the now-famous alleged shooter himself—and shows just how practical and lethal those weapons have become.

In the 24 hours since police released a photo of what they say is Mangione’s gun following the 26-year-old’s arrest Monday, the online community devoted to 3D-printed firearms has been quick to identify the suspected murder weapon as a particular model of printable “ghost gun”—a homemade weapon with no serial number, created by assembling a mix of commercial and DIY parts. The gun appears to be a Chairmanwon V1, a tweak of a popular partially 3D-printed Glock-style design known as the FMDA 19.2—an acronym that stands for the libertarian slogan “Free Men Don’t Ask.”

The FMDA 19.2, released in 2021, is a relatively old model by 3D-printed-gun standards, says one gunsmith who goes by the first name John and the online handle Mr. Snow Makes. But it’s one of the most well-known and well-tested printable ghost gun designs, he says. The Chairmanwon V1 remix that police say Mangione had in his possession when he was arrested in a Altoona, Pennsylvania McDonald’s varies from that original FMDA 19.2 design only in that another amateur gunsmith, who goes by the pseudonym Chairmanwon, added a different texture to the gun’s grip.

“For someone who has been building firearms like this for five years, it’s a bit of an odd choice. We’ve been building nicer models,” says Mr. Snow Makes, who hosts an annual ghost gun shooting competition. But he adds that “this is one of the earliest 3D-print Glock styles that was widely tested and successful at creating a reliably functional firearm.”

Authorities in New York charged Mangione on Monday in the December 4 murder of Thompson, alongside weapons charges and other alleged offenses in Pennsylvania. A handwritten “manifesto” police say they found on Mangione's person upon his arrest laments UnitedHealthcare's practices and the US health insurance industry more broadly. Bullet casings discovered at the scene of the shooting outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel in Manhattan were reportedly emblazoned with the words “deny,” “defend,” “depose”—likely criticisms of health care industry practices.

Submission + - Companies Issuing RTO Mandates 'Lose Their Best Talent': Study (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Return-to-office (RTO) mandates have caused companies to lose some of their best workers, a study tracking over 3 million workers at 54 "high-tech and financial" firms at the S&P 500 index has found. These companies also have greater challenges finding new talent, the report concluded. The paper, Return-to-Office Mandates and Brain Drain [PDF], comes from researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Baylor University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. The study, which was published in November, spotted this month by human resources (HR) publication HR Dive, and cites Ars Technica reporting, was conducted by collecting information on RTO announcements and sourcing data from LinkedIn.

The researchers said they only examined companies with data available for at least two quarters before and after they issued RTO mandates. The researchers explained: "To collect employee turnover data, we follow prior literature ... and obtain the employment history information of over 3 million employees of the 54 RTO firms from Revelio Labs, a leading data provider that extracts information from employee LinkedIn profiles. We manually identify employees who left a firm during each period, then calculate the firm’s turnover rate by dividing the number of departing employees by the total employee headcount at the beginning of the period. We also obtain information about employees’ gender, seniority, and the number of skills listed on their individual LinkedIn profiles, which serves as a proxy for employees’ skill level."

There are limits to the study, however. The researchers noted that the study "cannot draw causal inferences based on our setting." Further, smaller firms and firms outside of the high-tech and financial industries may show different results. Although not mentioned in the report, relying on data from a social media platform could also yield inaccuracies, and the number of skills listed on a LinkedIn profile may not accurately depict a worker's skill level. [...] The researchers concluded that the average turnover rates for firms increased by 14 percent after issuing return-to-office policies. "We expect the effect of RTO mandates on employee turnover to be even higher for other firms" the paper says.

Submission + - Nuclear-diamond battery could power devices for 1000s of years. (livescience.com) 1

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Live Science has a report about the world's first nuclear-diamond battery using carbon-14, which has a half-life of 5,700 years, to power devices.

The nuclear battery uses the reaction of a diamond placed close to a radioactive source to spontaneously produce electricity, scientists at the University of Bristol in the U.K. explained in a Dec. 4 statement. No motion — neither linear nor rotational — is required. That means no energy is needed to move a magnet through a coil or to turn an armature within a magnetic field to produce electric current, as is required in conventional power sources.

The diamond battery harvests fast-moving electrons excited by radiation, similar to how solar power uses photovoltaic cells to convert photons into electricity, the scientists said.

The researchers chose carbon-14 as the source material because it emits short-range radiation, which is quickly absorbed by any solid material — meaning there are no concerns about harm from the radiation. In addition, while carbon-14 is extremely toxic to touch or ingest, the surrounding diamond also provides maximal protection.

A single nuclear-diamond battery containing 0.04 ounce (1 gram) of carbon-14 could deliver 15 joules of electricity per day. For comparison, a standard alkaline AA battery, which weighs about 0.7 ounces (20 grams), has an energy-storage rating of 700 joules per gram. It delivers more power than the nuclear-diamond battery would in the short term, but it would be exhausted within 24 hours.

By contrast, the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730 years, which means the battery would take that long to be depleted to 50% power. This is close to the age of the world's oldest civilization. As another point of comparison, a spacecraft powered by a carbon-14 diamond battery would reach Alpha Centauri — our nearest stellar neighbor, which is about 4.4 light-years from Earth — long before its power were significantly depleted.

The battery, which was built on a plasma deposition rig near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in the U.K. by a team from the University of Bristol and the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), has no moving parts and thus requires no maintenance, nor does it have any carbon emissions.

Submission + - OpenStreetMap suffers extended outage (openstreetmap.org)

Submitted by denelson83
denelson83 writes: The crowdsourced, widely-used map database has had a hardware failure at its upstream ISP in Amsterdam and has been put into a protective read-only mode to avoid loss or corruption of data. Full services are expected to be restored in a couple of days.

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