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Submission + - Google invests $40B in Texas for cloud, AI growth (kxan.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: On Friday, Google announced a $40 billion investment in Texas.

The funding was part of Google’s “Investing in America” initiative, which it said was to further American innovation.

“The investment will boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, with the development of data center facilities, programs to strengthen energy capacity and affordability, and workforce training in the state,” the Texas governor’s office said.

Gov. Greg Abbott joined Google leaders and state officials to announce the investment.

Submission + - Did Hitler have a micropenis? (yahoo.com)

Submitted by know-nothing cunt
know-nothing cunt writes: Researchers have analyzed a sample of DNA believed to belong to Adolf Hitler, which they say reveals the dictator of Nazi Germany had a genetic marker for a rare disorder that can delay puberty, according to a new documentary.

The research, which took more than four years to complete, was led by geneticist Turi King, a professor at the UK’s University of Bath who is known for identifying the remains of King Richard III. King said she verified that a piece of material taken from a couch in the bunker where Hitler shot himself in 1945 was soaked in the dictator’s blood by comparing a DNA sample recovered from the blood with a confirmed relative of Hitler’s.

The most striking finding from the team’s analysis was that Hitler had a mutation on a gene called PROK2. Variants in this gene are a cause of Kallmann syndrome and congenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, King said. In boys, these conditions can delay puberty and cause undescended testicles.

“Basically, they are characterized by low testosterone levels. You either don’t go through puberty or you go through a partial puberty... 5% of cases get associated with a micropenis, ” King said, referring to a small but normally structured penis.

Submission + - Is having children really cost-prohibitive? (washingtonexaminer.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Many couples don’t believe they can afford to start a family. As the cost of living continues to balloon, this affects a couple’s ability to raise children comfortably. For those contemplating whether to have children, the mere cost of child care, which is an average of $15,600 per year, provokes questions of whether it is even feasible.

This is not just future generation's problem. Catastrophic lack of affordability for housing, healthcare, and childcare results in fewer kids, this in turn means that in 20 years there will be less adults working and paying taxes, in turn bankrupting social nets. So today's childlessness crisis will translate to tomorrow destitute seniors crisis.

Submission + - Scientists Discover a Viral Cause of One of The Most Common Cancers (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The virus, known as beta-HPV, was thought in rare cases to contribute to skin cancer by worsening UV damage, but a recent study suggests it can actually hijack the body's cells to directly drive cancer growth.

A closer genetic analysis revealed something surprising: the beta-HPV had actually integrated itself into the DNA of the woman's tumor, where it was producing viral proteins that helped the cancer thrive.

Before now, beta-HPV had never been found to integrate into cellular DNA, let alone actively maintain a cancer.

Submission + - Thanks to a computer model, five Vietnam War MIAs come home (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: In the decades after the war, joint U.S., Laotian and Vietnamese teams mounted several expeditions to search the peak, recovering several of the men lost that day. But the dense vegetation, remote environs and possibility of unexploded munitions at the site, not to mention the sheer size of the mountain, complicated the search for the remaining missing Airmen.

With the expertise of Russell Quick, a Ph.D. graduate in anthropology from UIC and member of the CRIM team, the researchers scanned the mountain with drones to make a digital 3D model of the site. They used a remote sensing technology called LiDAR, which maps the terrain using laser beams aimed at the ground and measuring their reflection back to the aircraft.

The program, trained on images of tropical forests, will ping when it detects an area that looks different from the rest.

"It will not give any alarms to rocks or trees or what you see in a tropical forest. But if you have a belt or something like that, it's an unusual object, and it'll create an alert," said Cetin.

The researchers homed in on several areas of interest and submitted their findings to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

Submission + - ISRAEL UNVEILS âMILK WITHOUT COWSâ(TM)⦠WOULD YOU DRINK IT? (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: A new product called The New Milk is rolling out across Israel, produced through fermentation instead of farming. Remilk and Gad Dairies say it tastes and behaves exactly like traditional dairy, but contains no lactose, no cholesterol, and is certified kosher-pareve. Itâ(TM)s showing up first in cafés before heading to supermarkets in 2026. Supporters call it the future of dairy. Critics say itâ(TM)s science experiment milk.

Comment Re:That dog won't bring home Huntsman's Rewards (t (Score 2) 158

it will also hopefully change the whole "Business Class" airline travel landscape

currently, Business has become exorbitantly expensive. Recently United wanted $10K for a ticket from Buenos Aires to Tokyo. It's ridiculous, but this keeps happening due to rewards cards. I know very well that most people in those flights have NOT paid 10K out of pocket. Most are just upper-middle class with thousands of miles in CC rewards, or a company is paying for it.

I expect once those seats keep going empty, airlines will lower prices to a more sane level.

Submission + - Bombshell report exposes how Meta relied on scam ad profits to fund AI (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Documents showed that internally, Meta was hesitant to abruptly remove accounts, even those considered some of the “scammiest scammers,” out of concern that a drop in revenue could diminish resources needed for artificial intelligence growth.

Instead of promptly removing bad actors, Meta allowed “high value accounts” to “accrue more than 500 strikes without Meta shutting them down,” Reuters reported. The more strikes a bad actor accrued, the more Meta could charge to run ads, as Meta’s documents showed the company “penalized” scammers by charging higher ad rates. Meanwhile, Meta acknowledged in documents that its systems helped scammers target users most likely to click on their ads.

“Users who click on scam ads are likely to see more of them because of Meta’s ad-personalization system, which tries to deliver ads based on a user’s interests,” Reuters reported.

Internally, Meta estimates that users across its apps in total encounter 15 billion “high risk” scam ads a day. That’s on top of 22 billion organic scam attempts that Meta users are exposed to daily, a 2024 document showed. Last year, the company projected that about $16 billion, which represents about 10 percent of its revenue, would come from scam ads.

Submission + - Musk Wins $1 Trillion Pay Package, Creating Split Screen on Wealth in America (nytimes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Tesla shareholders approved a plan to grant Elon Musk shares worth nearly $1 trillion if he meets ambitious goals, including vastly expanding the company’s stock market valuation.

Much like an earlier pay plan that Tesla shareholders approved in 2018, this 12-step package asks Mr. Musk, the company’s chief executive, to vastly expand Tesla’s stock market valuation — to $8.5 trillion from around $1.4 trillion — while hitting a variety of other goals. Those include selling one million robots with humanlike qualities and 10 million paid subscriptions to the company’s self-driving software.

Submission + - New Drug Kills Cancer 20,000x More Effectively With No Detectable Side Effects (scitechdaily.com) 2

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: SciTechDaily is reporting that researchers at Northwestern University have redesigned the molecular structure of a well-known chemotherapy drug, greatly increasing its solubility, effectiveness, and safety.

For this study, the scientists created the drug entirely from scratch as a spherical nucleic acid (SNA), a nanoscale structure that incorporates the drug into DNA strands surrounding tiny spheres. This innovative design transforms a compound that normally dissolves poorly and works weakly into a highly potent, precisely targeted treatment that spares healthy cells from damage.

When tested in a small animal model of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), an aggressive and hard-to-treat blood cancer, the SNA-based version showed remarkable results. It entered leukemia cells 12.5 times more efficiently, destroyed them up to 20,000 times more effectively, and slowed cancer progression by a factor of 59, all without causing noticeable side effects.

“In animal models, we demonstrated that we can stop tumors in their tracks,” said Northwestern’s Chad A. Mirkin, who led the study. “If this translates to human patients, it’s a really exciting advance. It would mean more effective chemotherapy, better response rates and fewer side effects. That’s always the goal with any sort of cancer treatment.”

Comment Re:Offline Appliances (Score 1) 155

I just run Home Assistant with a ZigBee network. ZigBee is just completely offline and it works great. It's a mesh network too.

For other things, I run ESPHome which is a platform built on top of ESP8266/ESP32 MCUs to make "smart devices" very easily. my "smart floodlights" are just cheap floodlights with a ESP8266 and a relay. They're connected to wi-fi and I can turn them off and on remotely, for example, to turn the outside lights when i hear a noise at night

My camera system is ESP32-CAM boards. Under $5 will give you XGA resolution at around 15fps. Wi-Fi only but it's good enough for my needs. Any camera system I get has to support offline mode. Ideally with RTSP.

Submission + - Here Come the Robot Swarms (wsj.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Forget teaching robots to think like humans. A field called swarm robotics is taking inspiration from ants, bees and even slime molds—simple creatures that achieve remarkable feats through collective intelligence.

Unlike traditional robots that take orders from a central computer, swarm robots work like ant colonies. No single robot is in charge, but the swarm accomplishes complex tasks through simple interactions between neighbors. Each robot interacts only with those nearby, sometimes communicating with sounds or chemical signals in particles they release.

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