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Comment Is growth really improving San Francisco? (Score 1) 164

by couchslug (#64450844) Attached to: Some San Francisco Tech Workers are Renting Cheap 'Bed Pods'

Growth draws people whose presence destroys most of what makes a location desirable. There are too many people in SF for available space.
Should their presence be facilitated?
Is there a right to infinite overcrowding?
Is government obliged to facilitate infinite overcrowding?

How socially desirable is concentrating the tech gold rush in SF? Who besides the ultra-rich benefit from concentration?

What are better ways to grow the economy than passively accepting overwhelming urban population growth?

Submission + - Is It Time to Call BS on "The Retention Policy Ate My Communications" Excuse?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The FTC is accusing Amazon execs, including founder Jeff Bezos, of using encrypted messaging apps that automatically delete messages to communicate, even after they were notified they were under investigation. The FTC is asking a judge to force Amazon to produce documents related to the company’s failure to preserve Signal messages, the company’s document preservation notices, and its instructions about using disappearing messaging applications. The FTC alleges Amazon execs did this while discussing "sensitive business matters, including antitrust" (instead of using email) to destroy potential evidence. Google also came under fire this week in its antitrust case over an issue about whether it intentionally deleted or failed to retain documents that might have been used as evidence in the trial. Google had a policy of having 'history off' on its chats by default, leaving it to employees [including CEO Sundar Pichai] to determine when to turn it on for relevant conversations (akin to some police bodycam policies). The Department of Justice (DOJ) called the alleged destruction of documents "unequivocal and honestly breathtaking," adding that "there’s no question" executives "intentionally had conversations with history off." "Google’s retention policy leaves a lot to be desired," said the judge, adding disapprovingly that it was “surprising to me that a company would leave it to their employees to decide when to preserve documents." And back in 2018, Facebook acknowledged that a secret Messenger retention policy feature was the cause of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's mysteriously disappearing messages.

Which begs the question — are Mission Impossible-like self-destructing email, messaging, and document policies beneficial to rank-and-file employees, or is this more about a play to "reduce your risk in the event of litigation [...] by permanently deleting old content that you're no longer required to keep," as Microsoft explains? Microsoft goes on to claim that destroying all of your employees' communications — like the University of Washington's just-implemented Microsoft Teams Chat Message 'Retention' Project that calls for destroying all of the university's messages after 30 days with 'no exceptions' (UW also suggests other FOIA-dodging 'best practices') — will also "help your organization to share knowledge effectively and be more agile by ensuring that your users work only with content that's current and relevant to them." However, former Microsoft Researcher Jonathan Grudin (coincidentally a UW affiliate professor) found plenty of pushback on the idea of improving-knowledge-by-deleting-communications when the company unsuccessfully tried to make Microsoft employees eat their own retention policy dogfood that the company was selling to other organizations. Grudin explained in a 2021 interview:

"Now I'll describe a couple unpublished projects. One was an email system. Someone said, 'We call it email retention but really it's email deletion.' We were told that starting the next April, all email a year old would be automatically deleted. IBM had such a system and some of our customers wanted it. I contacted friends at IBM who described it as a nightmare. [...] Why did we think it would be a good idea to use it internally at Microsoft? Some guessed storage costs, but those were dropping daily. Well, companies might have bodies that they'd like to remain buried, conversations that they would prefer not to surface. But you can't legally destroy inculpatory evidence, and an embarrassing remark that makes headlines generally has little weight in court where they look for patterns of behavior over time. The real reason turned out to be discovery costs. Microsoft and many companies are involved in far more legal proceedings than you read about. They have to pay attorneys to read all subpoenaed emails. It reportedly came to about $30 million a year. A team of about 10 people were managing the email deletion project. Some had given up other jobs to work on it, because they loved this idea. Most had information management backgrounds. They believed that only records with business value should be kept. Seeing big email folders 'makes my skin crawl,' one remarked. This view came from an era of paper documents and Rolodexes when filing and finding documents was manual. It was really difficult. It was expensive. Whereas for me and others, email is a Rolodex as well as a source of a lot of information whose future value we don't know."

"I learned that 1000 Microsoft employees were testing the software, a process referred here to as eating dogfood. I asked how it was going for these folks. An information manager beamed and said, 'It's working!' [...] I asked, 'What do the employees using it, think about it?' This surprised the team. It never occurred to them to ask. They were sure that the employees would see the value of email deletion for the company. They were really curious. They did realize that a survey and interview might uncover gripes, but they wanted to find out. [...] The interviews, which of course did find ingenious and time-consuming ways that people were dodging deletion. [...] So what did we find? Well, the cost to the company, in lost time and effort from email deletion, would easily exceed $30 million annually. [..] The deployment was canceled. [...] A partner in a San Francisco law firm heard about my findings and called up. He said that some companies would use email deletion software, whatever the cost. He explained, 'Phillip Morris is in the business of addicting people to something that will kill them. They'll pay what they need to as long as the business is profitable. Once it stops being profitable, they'll stop.'"

Submission + - MIT Congressman Introduces Patent Reform Legislation (house.gov)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Representative Thomas Massie (a dual-degree holder from MIT) announces the introduction of patent reform legislation designed to restore to Americans a patent system "as the Constitution of the United States originally envisioned it." Massie's legislation, HR 8134, the "Restoring America's Leadership in Innovation Act of 2024" (RALIA), reverses several harmful changes to patent law that arose from Supreme Court rulings and the enactment of the Leahy-Smith "America Invents Act." Among the significant reforms contained in Massie's legislation is a return to the "first to invent" standard to ensure patent protection for America's inventors.

"The RALIA legislation restores to Americans a patent system as the Constitution of the United States originally envisioned it," said Congressman Massie. "In Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers gave Congress the authority to protect the discoveries of inventors. Specifically, they created a patent system to 'promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.' Regrettably, Congress's 2011 enactment of the Leahy-Smith 'America Invents Act' has worked in concert with several Supreme Court decisions to erode this protection's strength and value."

"As the Constitution intends, RALIA restores patent protection to inventors by awarding patents on a 'first to invent' basis rather than the more recently adopted 'first to file' standard," Congressman Massie continued. "A return to a 'first to invent' patent protection system ensures that inventors and the investors who back them can be confident that their innovative work and ideas will be safeguarded. Patents should protect those who innovate, not those who win the race to the patent office."

In addition to restoring patent protections to a "first to invent" standard, RALIA contains other important reforms to the patent system. Notably, RALIA affirms that a patent secures private property rights, allows inventors to get injunctions again against intellectual property thieves, restores inventors' rights to defend their inventions in court by abolishing the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and ends the automatic publication of patent applications unless a patent is granted.

Congressman Massie's RALIA legislation is supported by organizations including AMAC Action, American Policy Center, Americans for Limited Government, Center for American Principles, Conservatives for Property Rights, Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, IEEE-USA, Less Government, Let Freedom Ring, 60 Plus Association, the Small Business Technology Council, Taxpayers Protection Alliance, Tea Party Patriots Action, The Committee for Justice, Tradition Family Property Inc., U.S. Business & Industry Council, US Inventor, and Veterans Intellectual Property.

In offering their endorsement of the bill, the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund wrote, "a wide range of reforms, such as those contained in the Restoring America's Leadership in Innovation Act, are required if the U.S. patent system is to secure private property rights, promote progress of science and useful arts, and ensure that America remains the world's leader in innovation."

The original cosponsors of RALIA are bipartisan and include Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX), Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV), Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), and Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL).

Submission + - Methane Emissions From Gas Flaring Being Hidden From Satellite Monitors (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Oil and gas equipment intended to cut methane emissions is preventing scientists from accurately detecting greenhouse gases and pollutants, a satellite image investigation has revealed. Energy companies operating in countries such as the US, UK, Germany and Norway appear to have installed technology that could stop researchers from identifying methane, carbon dioxide emissions and pollutants at industrial facilities involved in the disposal of unprofitable natural gas, known in the industry as flaring. Flares are used by fossil fuel companies when capturing the natural gas would cost more than they can make by selling it. They release carbon dioxide and toxic pollutants when they burn as well as cancer-causing chemicals. Despite the health risks, regulators sometimes prefer flaring to releasing natural gas – which is 90% methane – directly into the atmosphere, known as “venting”.

The World Bank, alongside the EU and other regulators, have been using satellites for years to find and document gas flares, asking energy companies to find ways of capturing the gas instead of burning or venting it. The bank set up the Zero Routine Flaring 2030 initiative at the Paris climate conference to eradicate unnecessary flaring, and its latest report stated that flaring decreased by 3% globally from 2021 to 2022. But since the initiative, “enclosed combustors” have begun appearing in the same countries that promised to end flaring. Experts say enclosed combustors are functionally the same as flares, except the flame is hidden. Tim Doty, a former regulator at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said: “Enclosed combustors are basically a flare with an internal flare tip that you don’t see. Enclosed flaring is still flaring. It’s just different infrastructure that they’re allowing.

“Enclosed flaring is, in truth, probably less efficient than a typical flare. It’s better than venting, but going from a flare to an enclosed flare or a vapour combustor is not an improvement in reducing emissions.” The only method of detecting flaring globally is by using satellite-mounted tools called Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite of detectors (VIIRS), which find flares by comparing heat signatures with bright spots of light visible from space. But when researchers tried to replicate the database, they saw that the satellites were not picking up the enclosed flares. Without the satellite data, countries were forced to rely mostly on self-disclosed reporting from oil and gas companies, researchers said. Environmentalists fear the research community’s ability to understand pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector could be jeopardised.

Submission + - Company Offers $206M in Secured Notes Backed by IPv4 Addresses (circleid.com)

Submitted by penciling_in
penciling_in writes: Cogent (CCOI) recently announced that it was offering secured notes for $206M. The unusual part is what it’s using as security: some of its IPv4 addresses and the leases on those IPv4 addresses.

The notes are expected to be repaid in five years. It’s important that Cogent is creating a special-purpose, bankruptcy-remote subsidiary for this security. The registry in charge of IPv4 records in North America is ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, and while they allow transfers, they are only allowed if the recipient can demonstrate need, or if the recipient owns the entire organization or network that holds the addresses.

Submission + - Automated Emergency Braking mandated by 2029 (caranddriver.com) 2

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

However, automated emergency braking systems will be a federally mandated standard . . . by 2029. Following the finalization of a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is announcing the new safety standard for all passenger cars and light trucks by September 2029.

This technology requires forward-facing camera, which makes both the price and cost of maintenance and repair more expensive. In my view, it does not pass cost vs. benefit analysis.

Comment Distro choice is subjective, try a few in VMs. (Score 2) 155

Distro choice is so personal I don't advocate one but suggest trying a variety in VMs then choosing what suits your use case. Free prebuilt VM free abound online. VMs are a fine way to sample distros and keep a Windows install where useful. Of course you can run Windows VM on your Windows host for testing versions like LTSC.

I mostly have Linux hosts (I use Xubuntu LTS) with Windows guests which is a very convenient way to install Windows as one may revert to the clean install snapshot I take after install. I sample other distros as VM and when I upgrade make a VM of my old install as a very convenient backup.

For example you might try Linuxes in VMs on your Windows host, then choose a distro for bare metal. To retain your familiar Windows install on the same machine or anywhere you like (including external drives) you could make a VM of it.

LTS releases are normally best for reliability but if you need something bleeding edge for a specific task it can live in a VM instead of being the host OS.

Submission + - German police bust Europe's 'largest' scam call center (dw.com)

Submitted by Plumpaquatsch
Plumpaquatsch writes: Investigators teamed up with colleagues from the Balkans and Lebanon in raids set up by months of intense surveillance. Authorities say the operation thwarted over €10 million in damages and led to 21 arrests.

Dubbed "Operation Pandora," the sting began in Germany in December 2023, after a suspicious bank teller contacted police when a 76-year-old customer from Freiburg sought to hurriedly withdraw €120,000 ($128,232) from her savings account to hand over to a fake police officer.

When real police investigators tracked the internet-based telephone number that had been used to lure the woman, they discovered a veritable goldmine.

Rather than shutting down the number, authorities instead went on the offensive, setting up their own call center in which hundreds of officers from Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin and Saxony worked around the clock monitoring some 1.3 million calls in real time, as the number from the initial scam was tied to an entire network of fraud call centers.

Police were able to trace and record data from the calls, as well as warn potential victims of what was in fact happening, in turn winning valuable time to put together the April 18 sting.

Police say their efforts allowed them to thwart some €10 million in damages in roughly 6,000 cases of attempted fraud.

Submission + - Breakthrough in imaging 3D chemistry at nanometer resolution (phys.org) 1

Submitted by Hovden
Hovden writes: A recent leap in our ability to see the chemistry of matter in three-dimensions at the nanoscale was achieved, allowing scientists to understand how nanomaterials are chemically arranged. Measuring the 3D distribution of chemistry at the nanoscale is a longstanding challenge for metrological science. Traditionally, seeing matter at the smallest sizes requires too many high-energy electrons for 3D chemical imaging. The high beam exposure that destroys the specimen before an experiment is completed. Even larger doses are required to achieve high resolution. Thus, chemical mapping in 3D has been unachievable except at lower resolution with the most radiation-hard materials.

High-resolution 3D chemical imaging is now achievable near or below one-nanometer resolution by a team from Dow Chemical and the University of Michigan. Using a newly introduced method, called multi-modal data fusion, high-resolution chemical tomography provides 99% less dose by linking information encoded within both elastic and inelastic scattered signals. The researches show sub-nanometer 3D resolution of chemistry is measurable for a broad class of geometrically and compositionally complex materials.

Submission + - 30 MiB webpage complains about Mastodon-triggered high server load (itsfoss.com)

Submitted by nunojsilva
nunojsilva writes: Yesterday, the "It's FOSS News" website published an article, available in a webpage that pulled more than 10 MB in the first minutes after being opened (~30 uncompressed, and this with no user interaction), and which some minutes later managed to reach 35 MB of downloaded data (>100 MB uncompressed, also without interaction).

The webpage that loaded more than 100 MB complains that sharing links to their site on the Mastodon platform causes them increased server load, because of how Mastodon generates blurbs with a thumbnail and description.

I don't know what to say, except maybe: Don't open this story's link with javascript enabled. Maybe if they want to complain about Slashdot effect, it'd be good if their pages didn't pull, like, 100 MB in the first place...

Submission + - Tesla retreats from next-generation 'gigacasting' manufacturing process (reuters.com)

Submitted by theweatherelectric
theweatherelectric writes: Norihiko Shirouzu and Giulio Piovaccari for Reuters write, "Tesla has backed away from an ambitious plan for innovations in gigacasting, its pioneering manufacturing process, according to two sources familiar with the matter, in another sign that the electric-vehicle maker is retrenching amid falling sales and rising competition. Tesla has been a leader in gigacasting, a cutting-edge technique that uses huge presses with thousands of tons of clamping pressure to die-cast large sections of the car’s underbody. On a typical vehicle, the underbody can consist of hundreds of individual parts.

"Last year, as Tesla developed a new small-vehicle platform, it aimed to punch out the underbody in a single piece. But Tesla has since halted the effort, opting to stick with its more proven method of casting vehicle underbodies in three pieces: two gigacasted front and rear sections and a midsection made of aluminum and steel frames to store batteries, according to the two sources familiar with the matter."

Submission + - China Launches World's Largest Electric Container Ship (techtimes.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: China has reached a major landmark in green transportation with the launch of the world's largest fully electric container ship. Developed and manufactured by China Ocean Shipping Group (Cosco), the vessel is now operating a regular service route between Shanghai and Nanjing, aiming to reduce emissions significantly along its journey.

The Greenwater 01, an all-electric container ship, is positioning itself to be a shipping industry pioneer. Equipped with a main battery exceeding 50,000 kilowatt-hours, the vessel can accommodate additional battery boxes for longer voyages. These battery boxes, each containing 1,600 kilowatt-hours of electricity and similar in size to standard 20-foot containers, provide flexibility in extending the ship's travel range. With 24 battery boxes onboard, the Greenwater 01 can complete a journey consuming 80,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. This is equivalent to saving 15 tonnes of fuel compared to a standard container ship, highlighting the efficiency of electric propulsion systems.

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