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Submission + - U.S. employee well-being hit new low in 2024, survey reveals (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The latest research confirms a decline in general employee well-being since 2020. In 2024, employees reported the lowest well-being scores on record, as opposed to 2020, when employees reported the highest well-being scores.

"In some cases, the lower scores represent a reduction in employee flexibility for either flexible hours or remote work," the latest research states. "In other cases, these scores could be related to challenges associated with greater economic shifts related to inflation or productivity needs."

"What we're seeing is a growing gap between how leaders and their teams experience the workplace," said Smith. "Managers may feel a return to normalcy, but that doesn't mean their employees do. Leaders must be cautious not to assume their own well-being reflects the broader workforce at their organization. The data shows a potential disconnect, and that's a signal for action."

Submission + - U.S. employee well-being hit new low in 2024, survey reveals (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The latest research confirms a decline in general employee well-being since 2020. In 2024, employees reported the lowest well-being scores on record, as opposed to 2020, when employees reported the highest well-being scores.

"In some cases, the lower scores represent a reduction in employee flexibility for either flexible hours or remote work," the latest research states. "In other cases, these scores could be related to challenges associated with greater economic shifts related to inflation or productivity needs."

"What we're seeing is a growing gap between how leaders and their teams experience the workplace," said Smith. "Managers may feel a return to normalcy, but that doesn't mean their employees do. Leaders must be cautious not to assume their own well-being reflects the broader workforce at their organization. The data shows a potential disconnect, and that's a signal for action."

Submission + - OnlyFans Institutes Criminal Background Checks for US Creators (xbiz.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: OnlyFans will screen creators in the United States for criminal convictions, CEO Keily Blair has announced in a post on LinkedIn.

“I am very proud to add our partnership with Checkr Trust to our onboarding process in the US,” Blair writes. “Checkr, Inc. helps OnlyFans to prevent people who have a criminal conviction that may impact our community's safety from signing up as a Creator on OnlyFans.”

Checkr is a screening service that bills itself as delivering “instant criminal and public record checks covering 99% of the U.S. population.” The company lists Uber, Instacart, DoorDash and Netflix among its clients.

Submission + - Moss spores survive 9 months outside International Space Station (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: To find out, Fujita's team subjected Physcomitrium patens, a well-studied moss commonly known as spreading earthmoss, to a simulated a space environment, including high levels of UV radiation, extreme high and low temperatures, and vacuum conditions.

They tested three different structures from the moss—protenemata, or juvenile moss; brood cells, or specialized stem cells that emerge under stress conditions; and sporophytes, or encapsulated spores—to find out which had the best chance of surviving in space.

The researchers found that UV radiation was the toughest element to survive, and the sporophytes were by far the most resilient of the three moss parts. None of the juvenile moss survived high UV levels or extreme temperatures. The brood cells had a higher rate of survival, but the encased spores exhibited ~1,000x more tolerance to UV radiation. The spores were also able to survive and germinate after being exposed to 196C for over a week, as well as after living in 55C heat for a month.

Submission + - Moss spores survive 9 months outside International Space Station (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: To find out, Fujita's team subjected Physcomitrium patens, a well-studied moss commonly known as spreading earthmoss, to a simulated a space environment, including high levels of UV radiation, extreme high and low temperatures, and vacuum conditions.

They tested three different structures from the moss—protenemata, or juvenile moss; brood cells, or specialized stem cells that emerge under stress conditions; and sporophytes, or encapsulated spores—to find out which had the best chance of surviving in space.

The researchers found that UV radiation was the toughest element to survive, and the sporophytes were by far the most resilient of the three moss parts. None of the juvenile moss survived high UV levels or extreme temperatures. The brood cells had a higher rate of survival, but the encased spores exhibited ~1,000x more tolerance to UV radiation. The spores were also able to survive and germinate after being exposed to 196C for over a week, as well as after living in 55C heat for a month.

Submission + - Misinformation investigation leads to a Google algorithm fix (pickr.com.au)

Submitted by Leighlo
Leighlo writes: Hey Slashdot team, thought you'd be interested in a piece I wrote following an investigation into misinformation and disinformation rising to the top of Google and its AI overviews in Australia. Essentially, someone is buying up old domains and running fake articles, which in turn is tricking and manipulating Google, and just about every search and AI engine.

I gave my findings to Google, and a good week or so later, it is applying fixes.

Submission + - White House Prepares Executive Order To Block State AI Laws (politico.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The White House is preparing to issue an executive order as soon as Friday that tells the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence, according to four people familiar with the matter and a leaked draft of the order obtained by POLITICO. The draft document, confirmed as authentic by three people familiar with the matter, would create an “AI Litigation Task Force” at the DOJ whose “sole responsibility” would be to challenge state AI laws.

Government lawyers would be directed to challenge state laws on the grounds that they unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce, are preempted by existing federal regulations or otherwise at the attorney general’s discretion. The task force would consult with administration officials, including the special adviser for AI and crypto — a role currently occupied by tech investor David Sacks.

The executive order, in the draft obtained by POLITICO, would also empower Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to publish a review of “onerous” state AI laws within 90 days and restrict federal broadband funds to states whose AI laws are found to be objectionable. It would direct the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether state AI laws that “require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models” are blocked by the FTC Act. And it would order the Federal Communications Commission to begin work on a reporting and disclosure standard for AI models that would preempt conflicting state laws.

Submission + - In the AI Race, Chinese Talent Still Drives American Research (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, unveiled the company’s Superintelligence Lab in June, he named 11 artificial intelligence researchers who were joining his ambitious effort to build a machine more powerful than the human brain. All 11 were immigrants educated in other countries. Seven were born in China, according to a memo viewed by The New York Times. Although many American executives, government officials and pundits have spent months painting China as the enemy of America’s rapid push into A.I., much of the groundbreaking research emerging from the United States is driven by Chinese talent.

Two new studies show that researchers born and educated in China have for years played major roles inside leading U.S. artificial intelligence labs. They also continue to drive important A.I. research in industry and academia, despite the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration and growing anti-China sentiment in Silicon Valley. The research, from two organizations, provides a detailed look at how much the American tech industry continues to rely on engineers from China, particularly in A.I. The findings also offer a more nuanced understanding of how researchers in the two countries continue to collaborate, despite increasingly heated language from Washington and Beijing.

Submission + - Chinese nuclear research outfit reports "breakthrough" in thorium fuel cycle (interestingengineering.com)

Submitted by Mr. Dollar Ton
Mr. Dollar Ton writes: China has announced a "major breakthrough" in "advanced nuclear" energy. It has successfully achieved the first-ever conversion of thorium into uranium fuel within a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR).

The Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) confirmed that it has secured valid experimental data after loading the reactor with thorium, as reported by Global Times.

The institute expects to have a working thorium-molten salt reactor in 100MW prototype in 10 years, beating fusion power expectations by a full decade.

Submission + - OpenAI's GPT-5 generates more secure code than past models, report finds (scworld.com)

Submitted by spatwei
spatwei writes: OpenAI’s GPT-5 reasoning models showed significant improvement in generating secure code compared with past models, while still only making secure coding choices about 70% of the time, Veracode reported Tuesday.

Veracode’s October 2025 GenAI Code Security Report revealed that no other large language models (LLMs) released since their previous report in July 2025 showed improved performance, while some models performed slightly worse than their predecessors.

However, GPT-5 and GPT-5-mini set new records for Veracode’s GenAI Code Security benchmark, making secure decisions for 70% and 72% of the benchmark’s 80 coding tasks, respectively. For comparison, previous OpenAI models o4-mini-high, o4-mini and GTP-4.1 scored 59% and GPT-4.1-nano scored 52%.

Submission + - US Backs Three Mile Island Nuclear Restart With $1 Billion Loan To Constellation (cnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Trump administration will provide Constellation Energy with a $1 billion loan to restart the Crane Clean Energy Center nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, Department of Energy officials said Tuesday. Previously known as Three Mile Island Unit 1, the plant is expected to start generating power again in 2027. Constellation unveiled plans to rename and restart the reactor in Sept. 2024 through a power purchase agreement with Microsoft to support the tech company’s data center demand in the region.

Three Mile Island Unit 1 ceased operations in 2019, one of a dozen reactors that closed in recent years as nuclear struggled to compete against cheap natural gas. It sits on the same site as Three Mile Island Unit 2, the reactor that partially melted down in 1979 in the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. The loan would cover the majority to the project’s estimated cost of $1.6 billion. The first advance to Constellation is expected in the first quarter of 2026, said Greg Beard, senior advisor to the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, in a call with reporters. The loan comes with a guarantee from Constellation that it will protect taxpayer money, Beard said.

Submission + - Who has the biggest footprint on the Web ?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: WokeGPT: In terms of digital environmental footprint, some websites like Pinterest, Docomo, and Office.com have notably high carbon emissions due to their traffic and data usage ..

Submission + - The AI Bubble That Isn't There (forbes.com)

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: Michael Burry recently said he believes the AI market is in a bubble. Why should anyone listen to him? He's the guy who famously predicted the subprime mortgage crisis and made $100 million for himself, and $725 million for his hedge fund investors, by shorting the mortgage bond market. Will he be right in his most recent prediction? Only time will tell, but according to Jason Alexander at Forbes, Burry, and many others, are looking at AI the wrong way. For him, there is no AI bubble. Instead, AI is following the pattern of the electrical grid, the phone system and yes, the internet, all of which looked irrational at the time. His belief is people are applying outdated models to the AI buildout which makes it seem an irrational bubble. His words:

The irony is that the “AI bubble” narrative is itself a bubble, inflated by people applying outdated analogies to a phenomenon that does not fit them. Critics point to OpenAI’s operating losses, its heavy compute requirements and the fact that its expenses dwarf its revenues.

Under classical software economics, these would indeed be warning signs. But AI is not following the cost structures of apps or social platforms. It is following the cost structures of infrastructure.

The early electrical grid looked irrational. The first telephone networks looked irrational. Railroads looked irrational. In every major infrastructural transition, society endured long periods of heavy spending, imbalance and apparent excess. These were not signs of bubbles. They were signs that the substrate of daily life was being rebuilt.

OpenAI’s spending is no more indicative of a bubble than Edison’s power stations or Bell’s early switchboards. The economics only appear flawed if one assumes the system they are building already exists.

What we are witnessing is not a speculative mania but a structural transformation driven by thermodynamics, power density and a global shift toward energy-based intelligence.

The bubble narrative persists because many observers are diagnosing this moment with the wrong conceptual tools. They are treating an energy-driven transformation as if it were a software upgrade.

Submission + - NASA Is Tracking a Vast Anomaly Growing in Earth's Magnetic Field (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: For years, NASA has monitored a strange anomaly in Earth's magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.

This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for decades, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers.

The space agency's satellites and spacecraft are particularly vulnerable to the weakened magnetic field within the anomaly, and the resulting exposure to charged particles from the Sun.

Submission + - Children With Autism, ADHD, And Anorexia Share a Common Microbe Imbalance (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A new, small study suggests children with autism, ADHD, and anorexia

share similarly disrupted gut microbiomes, which, by some measures, have more in common with each other than with their healthy, neurotypical peers.

Led by researchers from Comenius University in Slovakia, the study used stool samples to assess the gut microbiomes of 117 children.

The exploratory study included 30 boys with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 21 girls with anorexia nervosa, and 14 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The remaining samples were from age- and sex-matched healthy and neurotypical children, providing a control group.

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