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Submission + - Mozilla releases local machine translation tools (mozilla.org)

Submitted by Artem S. Tashkinov
Artem S. Tashkinov writes: In January of 2019, Mozilla joined the University of Edinburgh, Charles University, University of Sheffield and University of Tartu as part of a project funded by the European Union called Project Bergamot. The ultimate goal of this consortium was to build a set of neural machine translation tools that would enable Mozilla to develop a website translation add-on that operates locally, i.e. the engines, language models and in-page translation algorithms would need to reside and be executed entirely in the user’s computer, so none of the data would be sent to the cloud, making it entirely private.

The result of this work is the translations add-on that is now available in the Firefox Add-On store for installation on Firefox Nightly, Beta and in General Release. It currently supports 14 languages. You can test the translation engine without installing the add-on.

Submission + - Science is getting harder (substack.com)

Submitted by Artem S. Tashkinov
Artem S. Tashkinov writes: One of the most famous recent papers in the economics of innovation is "Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?" It showed that more and more R&D effort is necessary to sustain the present rates of technological progress, whether we are talking about Moore’s law, agricultural crop yields, healthcare, or other proxies for progress. Other papers that look into this issue have found similar results. While it is ambiguous whether the rate of technological progress is actually slowing down, it certainly seems to be getting harder and harder to keep up the pace.

What about in science?

A basket of indicators all seem to document a trend similar to what we see with technology. Even as the number of scientists and publications rises substantially, we do not appear to be seeing a concomitant rise in new discoveries that supplant older ones. Science is getting harder.

Submission + - CISA: Dominion Voting Software Vulnerable in Some States (usnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman, who wrote the report on which the advisory is based, has long argued that using digital technology to record votes is dangerous because computers are inherently vulnerable to hacking and thus require multiple safeguards that aren’t uniformly followed. He and many other election security experts have insisted that using hand-marked paper ballots is the most secure method of voting and the only option that allows for meaningful post-election audits.

“These vulnerabilities, for the most part, are not ones that could be easily exploited by someone who walks in off the street, but they are things that we should worry could be exploited by sophisticated attackers, such as hostile nation states, or by election insiders, and they would carry very serious consequences,” Halderman told the AP.

Submission + - Tesla purges remote job openings after Elon Musk edict (techtarget.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: Until Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc., ended remote work this week, the automaker advertised about 100 remote jobs on its career site. But by the end of Wednesday, a search for remote jobs turned up none. Some of the remote job openings now list Austin as the location. By Thursday morning, Tesla continued to offer remote work options for jobs in Canada and Europe. Musk ordered an end to remote work in a memo with the subject head, "Remote work is no longer acceptable." His disdain for remote work runs deep. In a tweet, he said that remote workers "should pretend to work somewhere else." Experts say that Musk's decision will cost the firm retention and recruiting. Gartner, an analyst group, says only 19% of firms now require employees to work entirely from the office.

Submission + - Surveillance Tech Didn't Stop the Uvalde Massacre (gizmodo.com) 6

Submitted by awfgakgn
awfgakgn writes: The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, of which Robb is a member, followed this conventional wisdom and embraced modern security solutions at its schools. Indeed, the district had actually doubled its security budget over the past several years to invest in a variety of recommended precautions.

According to UCISD’s security page, the district employed a safety management system from security vendor Raptor Technologies, designed to monitor school visitors and screen for dangerous individuals. It also used a social media monitoring solution, Social Sentinel, that sifted through children’s online lives to scan for signs of violent or suicidal ideation. Students could download an anti-bullying app (the STOP!T app) to report abusive peers, and an online portal at ucisd.net allowed parents and community members to submit reports of troubling behavior to administrators for further investigation. As has been noted, UCISD also had its own police force, developed significant ties to the local police department, and had an emergency response plan. It even deployed “Threat Assessment Teams” that were scheduled to meet regularly to “identify, evaluate, classify and address threats or potential threats to school security.”

And yet, none of the new security measures seemed to matter much when a disturbed young man brought a legally purchased weapon to Robb and committed the deadliest school shooting in the state’s history. The perpetrator wasn’t a student and therefore couldn’t be monitored by its security systems.

Trolling through students’ online lives to look for signs of danger is now a routine procedure in many districts. In fact, legislators have discussed mandating such surveillance features for schools across the country. UCISD employed one such company, but Gov. Abbott said Wednesday that “there was no meaningful forewarning of this crime.” The shooter sent private messages threatening the attack via Facebook Messenger half an hour before it occurred, but they were private and therefore would have been invisible to outside observers.

Facial recognition is another technology that has been offered to schools as a basic safety mechanism. The number of schools that have adopted face recording solutions has risen precipitously in recent years (Clearview AI announced this week that it has its sights on cracking into the market). However, despite their growing popularity, there is little evidence that these security apparatuses actually do anything to stop school shootings. Even supporters of facial recognition admit that the systems probably won’t do much once a shooter’s on school property.

“Whether it’s facial recognition, monitoring software on school devices, cameras—all these types of surveillance have become extremely ubiquitous,” said Jason Kelley, digital strategist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an interview with Gizmodo. “The companies that sell these tools are trying to do something positive—they’re trying to minimize tragedy,” he said. Yet not only can these products ultimately be ineffective, they can also end up having negative side-effects on the children they’re meant to protect, Kelley offered. The intrusiveness of the tools are such that students may grow up feeling as if they have to be surveilled to be safe—even if the surveillance isn’t actually keeping them safe.

Some studies suggest that what surveillance actually provides is punishment rather than protection. The cameras and software can turn schools into little panopticons, where student behavior is constantly analyzed and assessed, and where minor infractions can be spotted and disciplined.

Submission + - 70-Year-Old Naval Technology Could Pave a Path for a Nuclear Energy Revolution (thedailybeast.com) 4

Submitted by WindBourne

Submission + - SPAM: Analysis: Russia prepares to seize western firms looking to leave

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The law to seize the property of foreign investors follows an exodus of western companies, such as Starbucks (SBUX.O), McDonald’s (MCD.N) and brewer AB InBev (ABI.BR), and increases pressure on those still there.

It comes as the Russian economy, increasingly cut-off due to western sanctions, plunges into recession amid double-digit inflation. read more

Italian lender UniCredit (CRDI.MI), Austrian bank Raiffeisen (RBIV.VI), the world’s biggest furniture brand, IKEA, fast food chain Burger King, and hundreds of smaller firms still have businesses in Russia. Any that try to leave face this tougher line.

The bill paves the way for Russia to appoint administrators over companies owned by foreigners in “unfriendly” countries, who want to quit Russia as the conflict with Ukraine drags down its economy.

Moscow typically refers to countries as “unfriendly” if they have imposed economic sanctions on Russia, meaning any firms in the European Union or United States are at risk.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Hyundai to build $7B electric vehicle plant near Savannah, Georgia (apnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The plant could grow to include 8,500 employees and would be built on a 2,200-acre (890-hectare) site that state and local governments own near the hamlet of Ellabell, Georgia, said two people familiar with Georgia’s talks with Hyundai.

It would be the second massive electric vehicle plant announced in Georgia in less than a year. Rivian Automotive in December announced it would build a $5 billion, 7,500-job electric truck plant about 45 miles (70 kilometers) east of Atlanta.

Submission + - Twitter deal 'on hold' after spam/fake account report (theverge.com)

Submitted by Third Position
Third Position writes: Elon Musk says his deal to buy Twitter is “temporarily on hold” after the social network reported that false or spam accounts comprised less than 5 percent of its 226 million monetizable daily active users. The Tesla CEO, who offered to buy twitter for $44 billion, tweeted a link to a May 2nd Reuters report on Twitter’s filing, saying he wants to see the company’s calculations.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted.

Submission + - San Francisco Police Are Using Driverless Cars as Mobile Surveillance Cameras (vice.com)

Submitted by BeerFartMoron
BeerFartMoron writes: For the last five years, driverless car companies have been testing their vehicles on public roads. These vehicles constantly roam neighborhoods while laden with a variety of sensors including video cameras capturing everything going on around them in order to operate safely and analyze instances where they don't.

While the companies themselves, such as Alphabet’s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise, tout the potential transportation benefits their services may one day offer, they don’t publicize another use case, one that is far less hypothetical: Mobile surveillance cameras for police departments.

“Autonomous vehicles are recording their surroundings continuously and have the potential to help with investigative leads,” says a San Francisco Police department training document obtained by Motherboard via a public records request. “Investigations has already done this several times.”

Submission + - Elon Musk praises Chinese workers for 'burning the 3am oil' (theguardian.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: On Tuesday, the Tesla boss praised Chinese factory workers for pulling extreme hours while taking a shot at American workers. “There is just a lot of super talented hardworking people in China who strongly believe in manufacturing,” the billionaire said. “They won’t just be burning the midnight oil, they will be burning the 3am oil, they won’t even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all.”

Musk’s comment comes as Tesla’s massive Shanghai “Giga-factory” pushes its workers to the limit to meet production targets amid an ongoing pandemic lockdown.

In April, Tesla restricted its Shanghai workers from leaving the factory under a so-called “closed-loop” system originally developed by Chinese authorities to contain Beijing Olympics participants. While locked inside, the workers were reportedly made to work 12-hour shifts, six days in a row, and to sleep on factory floors. Production at the plant was forced to halt this week due to parts shortages, the company said.

Submission + - Hawley introducing measure to strip Disney of copyright protections (thehill.com) 1

Submitted by jcdick1
jcdick1 writes: Senator Josh Hawley (R)-MO introduced legislation — the Copyright Clause Restoration Act — on Tuesday that would reduce copyright from its current "Life plus ..." period to a mere 28 years, with a single 28 year extension, if applied for. This would be made retroactive. It would only apply to copyright holders with a market cap of $150,000,000,000 or more. His argument is that allowing large "woke" media corporations to continue to hold out on the common good is a huge corporate handout by government. From the article:

“Thanks to special copyright protections from Congress, woke corporations like Disney have earned billions while increasingly pandering to woke activists,” Hawley said in a statement. “It’s time to take away Disney’s special privileges and open up a new era of creativity and innovation.”

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