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Comment Re:I'm a bit suprised by this article (Score 2) 17

They must have run into very strange and unexpected artefacts to have to rely on machine learning to correct this...

Or someone developed a new deconvolution algorithm some time between feature freeze on the instrument package (2012, thereabouts?) and today, and it turned out to be particularly more useful with the AMI focussing-aid.

But it's on-the-ground post-processing, so it can be retrospectively applied by any researcher on their "proprietary" period data, and by anyone else to non-proprietary data in the STSI archive.

Comment Re:How is this anything new? (Score 1) 17

Do you have any idea how competitive the process of getting observation time on JWST is? Something approaching 10% of time requests get granted. The other 90% don't get granted.

Your sketched procedure fails at

1. Take lots of photos of the same shot

And again at

2. Repeat step 1 for a lot of overlapping images

Curiosity (and Perseverance) are in a different situation - while the arm/ drill/ XRF tools are nose-up on a rock doing one set of analyses, the cameras can be more-or-less independently pursuing the sort of photographic oversampling you're talking about. The data from, say, an hour of XRF scanning is going to use a lot less bandwidth to Earth than an hour of imaging data.

Comment Re: Increased surface exposure. (Score 1) 12

Building design tends to go for a 2:1 safety margin between expected loads and design strengths. Bridges tend to be a lot more conservative 6:1 or 8:1 between design strength : expected load.

There are good arguments you can have whether a design (and construction process) should have an 8:1 safety margin, or a 6: 1 margin, into which you can easily get a 60% materials cost. If you can justify the lower safety factor and lower cost.

As the Forth road bridge example I just mentioned upthread illustrates, changes in vehicle design can seriously impact the expectations for a structure. The introduction through the 1980s of increased lorry weights from 28 tonnes when the bridge was designed and built to a maximum of 44 tonnes when a replacement bridge was commissioned lead to increased rates of wire breakages in the suspension cables and ... well you (and the bridge managers) can see where that's going to end up.

Comment Re: Increased surface exposure. (Score 1) 12

So, order of a hundred years?

Note : you asked about "bones", not fossils. The process of turning a bone (any tissue, really, but most often a bone or a tooth, for a vertebrate) into a fossil is a subject of it's own, stretching in effects from forensic science, through archæology and into regular palæontology Look up "taphonomy".

A 100 year lifetime isn't at all unreasonable for a structure. No structure is eternal (though the Pyramids are making a decent attempt - they'll probably not make it beyond their half-million).

I was driving over the new Forth road bridge recently, eyeballing the 140-odd year old riveted cast iron of the Rail Bridge, and the old road suspension bridge (which made it past it's 50 year design life but didn't make it's century because of increases in vehicle loads and counts leading to accelerating wear rates). I wonder how they're going to bring the old road bridge down? Dismantling, or dynamite? There are enough ships using that channel that dynamite has a *lot* of difficulties.

Comment Re:Not surprising (Score 1) 112

How many people drive a pickup with a huge cargo bed that only gets used a couple times a year?

In this country? I can't remember seeing one that didn't have a company's logos down the side. Oh - tell a lie ; one of my neighbours uses one. It's a day-to-day load shifter for his building work business, but he doesn't waste money on vinyls for it. He has a normal car too, and they alternate on the street outside his apartment.

China

China Confirms Solar Panel Projects Are Irreversibly Changing Desert Ecosystems (glassalmanac.com) 77

An anonymous reader shares a report: China's giant solar parks aren't just changing the power mix -- they may be changing the ground beneath them. Fresh field data point to cooler soils, extra moisture, and pockets of greening, though lasting ecological shifts will hinge on design and long-term care.

[...] A team studying one of the largest photovoltaic parks in China, the Gonghe project in the Talatan Desert, found a striking difference between what was happening under the panels and what lay just beyond. They used a detailed framework measuring dozens of indicators -- everything from soil chemistry to microbial life -- and discovered that the micro-environment beneath the panels was noticeably healthier. The reasons track with physics: shade cools the surface and slows evaporation, letting scarce soil moisture linger longer; field experiments in western China report measurable soil-moisture gains beneath shaded arrays.

Simple shade from panel rows can create a gentler microclimate at ground level, cutting wind stress and helping fragile seedlings establish. In other desert locations like Gansu and the Gobi, year-round field data tell a similar story. Soil temperatures beneath arrays tend to be cooler during the day and a bit warmer at night than surrounding ground, with humidity patterns shifting in tandem -- conditions that can make harsh surfaces more habitable when paired with basic land care. Even small shifts like these can help re-establish vegetation -- if combined with erosion control and water management. These aren't wildflowers blooming overnight, but they are signs that utility-scale solar can double as a modest micro-restorer.

EU

One-Man Spam Campaign Ravages EU 'Chat Control' Bill (politico.eu) 54

An anonymous reader shares a report: A website set up by an unknown Dane over the course of one weekend in August is giving a massive headache to those trying to pass a European bill aimed at stopping child sexual abuse material from spreading online.

The website, called Fight Chat Control, was set up by Joachim, a 30-year-old software engineer living in Aalborg, Denmark. He made it after learning of a new attempt to approve a European Union proposal to fight child sexual abuse material (CSAM) -- a bill seen by privacy activists as breaking encryption and leading to mass surveillance.

The site lets visitors compile a mass email warning about the bill and send it to national government officials, members of the European Parliament and others with ease. Since launching, it has broken the inboxes of MEPs and caused a stir in Brussels' corridors of power. "We are getting hundreds per day about it," said Evin Incir, a Swedish Socialists and Democrats MEP, of the email deluge.

Submission + - Scientists seek to turbocharge a natural process that cools the Earth (msn.com)

fjo3 writes: Across vast stretches of farmland in southern Brazil, researchers at a carbon removal company are attempting to accelerate a natural process that normally unfolds over thousands or millions of years.

The company, Terradot, is spreading tons of volcanic rock crushed into a fine dust over land where soybeans, sugar cane and other crops are grown. As rain percolates through the soil, chemical reactions pull carbon from the air and convert it into bicarbonate ions that eventually wash into the ocean, where the carbon remains stored.

The technique, known as “enhanced rock weathering,” is emerging as a promising approach to lock away carbon on a massive scale. Some researchers estimate the method has the potential to sequester billions of tons of carbon, helping slow global climate trends. Other major projects are underway across the globe and have collectively raised over a quarter-billion dollars.

EU

EU Lawmakers Push To Ban Plant-Based Food Terms (theguardian.com) 193

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: MEPs voted on Wednesday by 355 in favor to 247 against to reserve names such as "steak", "burger" and "sausage" exclusively for products derived from meat, a longstanding demand of farm unions. In order to come into effect, the idea would have to be approved by a majority of the EU's 27 member states, which is far from certain. The vote is a victory for the French centre-right MEP Celine Imart, who drafted the amendment to legislation intended to strengthen the position of farmers in the food supply chain.

Imart, who is also a cereals farmer in north-west France, said: "A steak, an escalope or a sausage are products from our livestock, not laboratory art nor plant products. There is a need for transparency and clarity for the consumer and recognition for the work of our farmers." She argues the proposal is in line with EU rules that already ban the use of terms such as "milk" and "yoghurt" for non-dairy products.

The European parliament rejected a ban on meaty names for plant-based products in 2020, but the 2024 elections shifted the parliament to the right, bringing in more lawmakers who seek close ties with farmers. Opposition was led by Green MEPs, who decried what they saw as a populist move to rename plant-based foods. "Veggie burgers, seitan schnitzel and tofu sausage do not confuse consumers, only rightwing politicians," Thomas Waitz, an Austrian Green MEP, said after the vote. "This tactic is a diversion and a pathetic smokescreen. No farmer will earn more money or secure their future with this ban."

Businesses

Cory Doctorow Explains Why Amazon is 'Way Past Its Prime' (theguardian.com) 116

"It's not just you. The internet is getting worse, fast," writes Cory Doctorow. Sunday he shared an excerpt from his upcoming book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.

He succinctly explains "this moment we're living through, this Great Enshittening" using Amazon as an example. Platforms amass users, but then abuse them to make things better for their business customers. And then they abuse those business customers too, abusing everybody while claiming all the value for themselves. "And become a giant pile of shit."

So first Amazon subsidized prices and shipping, then locked in customers with Prime shipping subscriptions (while adding the chains of DRM to its ebooks and audiobooks)... These tactics — Prime, DRM and predatory pricing — make it very hard not to shop at Amazon. With users locked in, to proceed with the enshittification playbook, Amazon needed to get its business customers locked in, too... [M]erchants' dependence on those customers allows Amazon to extract higher discounts from those merchants, and that brings in more users, which makes the platform even more indispensable for merchants, allowing the company to require even deeper discounts...

[Amazon] uses its overview of merchants' sales, as well as its ability to observe the return addresses on direct shipments from merchants' contracting factories, to cream off its merchants' bestselling items and clone them, relegating the original seller to page umpty-million of its search results. Amazon also crushes its merchants under a mountain of junk fees pitched as optional but effectively mandatory. Take Prime: a merchant has to give up a huge share of each sale to be included in Prime, and merchants that don't use Prime are pushed so far down in the search results, they might as well cease to exist. Same with Fulfilment by Amazon, a "service" in which a merchant sends its items to an Amazon warehouse to be packed and delivered with Amazon's own inventory. This is far more expensive than comparable (or superior) shipping services from rival logistics companies, and a merchant that ships through one of those rivals is, again, relegated even farther down the search rankings.

All told, Amazon makes so much money charging merchants to deliver the wares they sell through the platform that its own shipping is fully subsidised. In other words, Amazon gouges its merchants so much that it pays nothing to ship its own goods, which compete directly with those merchants' goods.... Add all the junk fees together and an Amazon seller is being screwed out of 45-51 cents on every dollar it earns there. Even if it wanted to absorb the "Amazon tax" on your behalf, it couldn't. Merchants just don't make 51% margins. So merchants must jack up prices, which they do. A lot... [W]hen merchants raise their prices on Amazon, they are required to raise their prices everywhere else, even on their own direct-sales stores. This arrangement is called most-favoured-nation status, and it's key to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's antitrust lawsuit against Amazon...

If Amazon is taxing merchants 45-51 cents on every dollar they make, and if merchants are hiking their prices everywhere their goods are sold, then it follows you're paying the Amazon tax no matter where you shop — even the corner mom-and-pop hardware store. It gets worse. On average, the first result in an Amazon search is 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. Click any of the top four links on the top of your screen and you'll pay an average of 25% more than you would for your best match — which, on average, is located 17 places down in an Amazon search result.

Doctorow knows what we need to do:
  • Ban predatory pricing — "selling goods below cost to keep competitors out of the market (and then jacking them up again)."
  • Impose structural separation, "so it can either be a platform, or compete with the sellers that rely on it as a platform."
  • Curb junk fees, "which suck 45-51 cents on every dollar merchants take in."
  • End its most favoured nation deal, which forces merchants "to raise their prices everywhere else, too.
  • Unionise drivers and warehouse workers.
  • Treat rigged search results as the fraud they are.

These are policy solutions. (Because "You can't shop your way out of a monopoly," Doctorow warns.) And otherwise, as Doctorow says earlier, "Once a company is too big to fail, it becomes too big to jail, and then too big to care."

In the mean time, Doctorow also makes up a new word — "the enshitternet" — calling it "a source of pain, precarity and immiseration for the people we love.

"The indignities of harassment, scams, disinformation, surveillance, wage theft, extraction and rent-seeking have always been with us, but they were a minor sideshow on the old, good internet and they are the everything and all of the enshitternet."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot readers mspohr and fjo3 for sharing the article.


Businesses

Americans Increasingly See Legal Sports Betting as a Bad Thing For Society and Sports (pewresearch.org) 81

Pew Research: Public awareness of legal sports betting has grown in recent years -- and so has the perception that it is a bad thing for society and sports, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Today, 43% of U.S. adults say the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the country is a bad thing for society. That's up from 34% in 2022. And 40% of adults now say it's a bad thing for sports, up from 33%.

Despite these increasingly critical views of legal sports betting, many Americans continue to say it has neither a bad nor good impact on society and on sports. Fewer than one-in-five see positive impacts. Meanwhile, the share of Americans who have bet money on sports in the past year has not changed much since 2022.

Today, 22% of adults say they've personally bet money on sports in the past year. That's a slight uptick from 19% three years ago. This figure includes betting in any of three ways:
1. With friends or family, such as in a private betting pool, fantasy league or casual bet
2. Online with a betting app, sportsbook or casino
3. In person at a casino, racetrack or betting kiosk
Further reading: Filipinos Are Addicted to Online Gambling. So Is Their Government.

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