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Comment Re:Has anyone noticed youtube altruism? (Score 1) 38

Those are probably on the TANSTAAFL combined with "Pay it forward" level - letting someone else pay. But for those that get the help it could be worth a lot compared to their income.

I have seen a few of the recoveries and they range from complicated to just giving advise to those that got stuck to let them work their vehicles free themselves. Teaching others how to get out of trouble is worth a lot.

Knowledge is invaluable, sharing knowledge is also improving your reputation. Some do share their work while still getting paid from those they help in most cases, like Ron Pratt. It's still sharing knowledge to the rest of us, operating a tow truck is a tough job, even tougher when the cargo owner says that the cargo can't be unloaded before recovery.

The other side of the coin is those that tries to maximize the profit with "Think of the share holders", "We sue you because you infringe our patents with your homebrew stuff that you share" or DMCA actions against those showing how to fix your car. That's like saying "Think of the poker players" in Las Vegas - it's all about greed.

Comment Re: Human (Score 1) 51

Not always the case, because it's only needed on the ground but at an altitude you only need to heat the air (The Concorde was an exception though).

If you have entered an aircraft during summer heat you probably have experienced that it's not very comfortable until you are up in the air. This is also India, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was even hotter in the aircraft than outside.

The older you are the more sensitive to heat you get.

AI

Browser Extension 'Slop Evader' Lets You Surf the Web Like It's 2022 (404media.co) 10

"The internet is being increasingly polluted by AI generated text, images and video," argues the site for a new browser extension called Slop Evader. It promises to use Google's search API "to only return content published before Nov 30th, 2022" — the day ChatGPT launched — "so you can be sure that it was written or produced by the human hand."

404 Media calls it "a scorched earth approach that virtually guarantees your searches will be slop-free." Slop Evader was created by artist and researcher Tega Brain, who says she was motivated by the growing dismay over the tech industry's unrelenting, aggressive rollout of so-called "generative AI" — despite widespread criticism and the wider public's distaste for it. "This sowing of mistrust in our relationship with media is a huge thing, a huge effect of this synthetic media moment we're in," Brain told 404 Media, describing how tools like Sora 2 have short-circuited our ability to determine reality within a sea of artificial online junk. "I've been thinking about ways to refuse it, and the simplest, dumbest way to do that is to only search before 2022...."

Currently, Slop Evader can be used to search pre-GPT archives of seven different sites where slop has become commonplace, including YouTube, Reddit, Stack Exchange, and the parenting site MumsNet. The obvious downside to this, from a user perspective, is that you won't be able to find anything time-sensitive or current — including this very website, which did not exist in 2022. The experience is simultaneously refreshing and harrowing, allowing you to browse freely without having to constantly question reality, but always knowing that this freedom will be forever locked in time — nostalgia for a human-centric world wide web that no longer exists.

Of course, the tool's limitations are part of its provocation. Brain says she has plans to add support for more sites, and release a new version that uses DuckDuckGo's search indexing instead of Google's. But the real goal, she says, is prompting people to question how they can collectively refuse the dystopian, inhuman version of the internet that Silicon Valley's AI-pushers have forced on us... With enough cultural pushback, Brain suggests, we could start to see alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo adding options to filter out search results suspected of having synthetic content (DuckDuckGo added the ability to filter out AI images in search earlier this year)... But no matter what form AI slop-refusal takes, it will need to be a group effort.

Comment Re:Not worth it *now* (Score 1) 145

By law, yes, it is public. And yes they still hand out scholarships. One way or the other, someone is going to pay for those college educations. It's either the taxpayer or the student. Take your pick. In the case of state universities, it's a bit of both (except for the people getting scholarships).

Businesses

AI Helps Drive Record $11.8B in Black Friday Online Spending (reuters.com) 27

Earlier this month MasterCard noted that even Walmart now allows its customers to make purchases through ChatGPT. And after polling more than 4,000 consumers in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and UAE, they found "more than four in 10 consumers already use AI tools to help them shop, including 61% of Gen Z and 57% of millennials." Many (50% of Gen Z and 49% of millennials) say they'd even let AI handle all their gift-buying if it meant avoiding stress. Younger shoppers trust AI's taste, with 51% of Gen Z and 55% of millennials relying on it to deliver unique and thoughtful recommendations (sometimes even more than they trust themselves). The most popular uses include getting personalized product recommendations, confirming the best deal before purchasing, and summarizing thousands of reviews instantly. The bottom line: Shoppers are embracing AI as their new personal assistant — one that knows their budget, style, and patience level...

If the 2025 holiday shopper could be summed up in one word, it's intentional. They're planning earlier, spending wiser and using technology to make every dollar and every gift count.

The first figures are now in for the traditional "Black Friday" shopping day after Thanksgiving, and U.S. shoppers "spent a record $11.8 billion online," reports Reuters, "up 9.1% from 2024 on the year's biggest shopping day, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks 1 trillion visits that shoppers make to online retail websites..."

And sure enough, this year shoppers were helped by AI: AI-powered shopping tools helped drive a surge in U.S. online spending on Black Friday, as shoppers bypassed crowded stores and turned to chatbots to compare prices and secure discounts amid concerns about tariff-driven price hikes... The AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites soared 805% compared to last year, Adobe said, when artificial intelligence tools such as Walmart's Sparky or Amazon's Rufus had not yet been launched. "Consumers are using new tools to get to what they need faster," said Suzy Davidkhanian, an analyst at eMarketer. "Gift giving can be stressful, and LLMs (large language models) make the discovery process feel quicker and more guided..." Globally, AI and agents influenced $14.2 billion in online sales on Black Friday, of which $3 billion came from the U.S. alone, according to software firm Salesforce.
There's another reason shoppers turned to AI. 2025's Black Friday arrived "amid tighter budgets, unemployment nearing a four-year high, U.S. consumer confidence sagging to a seven-month low and price tags that have shoppers watching every dollar," according to the article: Discount rates also remained flat when compared to 2024, with AI helping shoppers discover the best deals, and an increase in the price tags made deeper discounts difficult for retailers... Order volumes fell 1% as average selling prices rose 7%. Consumers also purchased fewer items at checkout, with units per transaction falling 2% on a year-over-year basis, Salesforce said.

The spending surge sets the stage for an even bigger Cyber Monday, projected to drive $14.2 billion in sales, up 6.3% on a year-over-year basis and the largest online shopping day of the year, Adobe said. Electronics are expected to see the deepest discounts on Cyber Monday, reaching 30% off list prices, along with strong deals on apparel and computers, Adobe said.

Comment Re:Godzillomycota Chernobilli Kosmonautikus (Score 1) 37

Further, looking for references on ionizing radiation as energy source in the cell metabolism, either direct or indirect (I'm not a specialist, so I don't know the field in detail) I come up with really nothing.

Apparently there is something called "radiogenic metabolism", which is mostly a speculative hypothesis:

https://ajcn.nutrition.org/art...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/...

Everything else I come across discusses, as expected, damage or coping mechanisms.

https://scholar.google.com/sch...

The few paywall literature review articles that I browsed basically confirm what's in the free one I provided upthread.

So, no, for now cells don't appear to "metabolize" ionizing radiation, they only cope with the damage it causes.

Comment Re:Godzillomycota Chernobilli Kosmonautikus (Score 1) 37

I see nothing in the article that explains how ionizing radiation may be a part of the, err, energy "food chain" of these small biomes.

Figure 2 of TFA lists the microbial metabolism pathways, notice the absence of "dissociation of H2 molecules by ionizing radiation". The same is true for the long section that expands on it titled "Factors influencing subsurface microbial community composition", where effects outside the metabolism reactions are discussed.

For example, there are several paragraphs that discuss ion and electron sources in those environments:

Microorganisms often make use of the molecules and ions available in the rocks they inhabit, either as electron sources or as sources of limiting minerals (Fig. 2). This includes metal sulfides like pyrite [115, 116], metals such as iron and manganese and their oxides [117], silicate rocks like feldspar that provide a source of phosphorus [118, 119], and gypsum-derived sulfate [68], which are not evenly distributed in all rocks [116]. Profiles of available electron donors in subsurface ecosystems correlate with microbial community composition [120]

Similarly, microbial communities within granite were dependent on mineral inclusions, especially those containing aluminum, silica, and calcium [122]. Another study showed that aquifer fluid type (e.g. gabbro, hyperalkaline peridotite, and alkaline peridotite) was correlated to microbial community composition [123]. Although a single geochemical parameter accounted for the correlation, differing pH, Eh, and availability of carbon and electron acceptors among rock types were predicted to be key factors [123]. As microorganisms use the minerals present in the rock, they chemically transform them.

I don't see any references to dissociation by ionizing radiation. Nor would I expect to see it for the reasons I already pointed out above.

Further on there is a discussion on purely accidental factors like tectonic activity and the mixing of deep groundwaters:

stochastic geological activity may play a role in microbial community structure and succession, with a stronger influence than environmental selection for deep hard rock aquifer systems [126]. The findings suggest that geological activity causing or changing fractures, which leads to the isolation or mixing of fracture fluids and the nutrients and microbial communities within, plays a significant role in microbial community turnover and the establishment of new microbial communities

The only context where radiation comes up is that study is needed to evaluate the impact of deep mining and nuclear waste storage, but the context isn't metabolism.

So, going by this article, ionizing radiation still doesn't seem to play a role in the metabolism of these microorganisms.

Comment Re:WTF are you talking about? (Score 1) 37

How are the words "we did not record any dosimetry due to our poor choice of detector" relevant to the subject of the article, which is "Effects of Ionizing Radiation on the Cultivation of the Godzillobacterium Radiophagus" Aboard the International Space Station"?

Why, boy, I don't know.

It used to be that when we set up an experiment we'll have a dependent variable (the effects on cultivation) and an independent variable (the ionizing radiation dose) and when we "studied" the second we'd also track the first.

But these days of booming "AI" you can, of course, know everything without ever bothering with an experiment, so indeed, why track your single most important independent variable?

Only grumpy old people from the days when measurements mattered will think it is important.

Operating Systems

Are There More Linux Users Than We Think? (zdnet.com) 20

"By my count, Linux has over 11% of the desktop market," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols: In StatCounter's latest US numbers, which cover through October, Linux shows up as only 3.49%. But if you look closer, "unknown" accounts for 4.21%. Allow me to make an educated guess here: I suspect those unknown desktops are actually running Linux. What else could it be? FreeBSD? Unix? OS/2? Unlikely. In addition, ChromeOS comes in at 3.67%, which strikes me as much too low. Leaving that aside, ChromeOS is a Linux variant. It just uses the Chrome web browser for its interface rather than KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, or another Linux desktop environment. Put all these together, and you get a Linux desktop market share of 11.37%...

If you want to look at the broader world of end-user operating systems, including phones and tablets, Linux comes out even better. In the US, where we love our Apple iPhones, Android — yes, another Linux distro — boasts 41.71% of the market share, according to StatCounter's latest numbers. Globally, however, Android rules with 72.55% of the market. Yes, that's right, if you widen the Linux end-user operating system metric to include PC, tablets, and smartphones, you can make a reasonable argument that Linux, and not Windows, is already the top dog operating system...

If you add Chrome OS (1.7%) and Android (15.8%), 23.3% of all people accessing the U.S. government's websites are Linux users. The Linux kernel's user-facing footprint is much larger than the "desktop Linux" label suggests.

The article lists reasons more people might be switching to Linux, including broader hardware support and "the increased viability of gaming via Steam and Proton" — but also the rise of Digital Sovereignty initiatives. (One EU group has even created EU OS.")

And finally, "not everyone is thrilled with Windows 11 being turned into an AI-agentic operating system."

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