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Submission + - The internet works thanks to a shared infrastructure that nobody owns (elpais.com) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: In the 21st century, every government should understand that ensuring software sovereignty and security is part of its job, not only for themselves but also for businesses, society, and researchers. In the 21st century, software is the invisible infrastructure of our everyday life, like roads and bridges. Everything runs on software, and a significant portion of this is made possible by open source, which is maintained by people selflessly. If this open source breaks down, it’s as if a road or bridge collapses: everything else becomes much more complicated and dangerous.

Comment Specially theway the USoAns handle their Degrees (Score 1) 180

Of course everyone with half a brain will say it is not worth the cost. Specially if you decide to have your degree on Bachelor of arts in history with a minor on "the social and historical circumstances of the people southwest of the Ural mountains in the 15th century", I fail to see employability or a return on investment soon.

Also, the way the education has been privatized in the USoA, if you want to graduate with a paper that says "harvard, yale, MIT or GeorgiaTech" it makes more sense and is cheaper to look in your state for the best state university that allows you to transfer as many credist as possible to any of those, do your fisrt three years there, then transfer as many credits as possible to your ultimate taget, and do your last 1.5~2 years there. It will be significantly cheaper, so less economic burden on you.

And, do not get me started on people that, after 2 years on a super-costly university discover that, after all, they did not want to study a BA in history with a minor on "the social and historical circumstances of the people southwest of the Ural mountains in the 15th century", but instead, want to study a BA on Geography with a minor on "the specific geography of the indonesian achipelago", wasting 2 years of supper expensive tuition, because they went straight to the super-costly university instead of reamining in-state, so the change of heart comes with a reduced price-tag. I mean, nothing wrong with realizing that you made a mistake with your career choice. Is worse even to realize you made a mistake and yet continue because of a sunken cost falacy, or family/social/peer pressure. Everything wrong with making the change of heart more costly than it should have been.

TL;DR: If you want to pursue a 4 year degre, look for high employability high return careers (within your calling) and do your first 3 years in state (so less student debt for you), in an institution that allows you to transfer as many cradits as possible to your final target, it will be cheaper overall, and, in case of a change of heart, the change of direction will be cheaper as well.

JM2C
YMMV

Full disclosure: My country (Venezuela) gave me university education for free (I consider a tuition of U$D 10 per year free), but my country did not pay for room, board, or books and materials. This was the top notch university for engineering in my country, and the academic level was nice indeed. As I was inmature (I entered university @ 16), a career that should have taken 5 years took me 7, nonetheless, I got an honorific mention on my thesis, so I was able to mend the ship once I became a more mature person. My country was generous and forgiving, and I was very fortunate, priviledged even.

Submission + - 'Slop Evader' Lets You Surf the Web Like It's 2022 (404media.co)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: AI slop feels inescapable — whether you’re watching TV, reading the news, or trying to find a new apartment.

That is, unless you’re using Slop Evader, a new browser tool that filters your web searches to only include results from before November 30, 2022 — the day that ChatGPT was released to the public.

The tool is available for Firefox and Chrome, and has one simple function: Showing you the web as it was before the deluge of AI-generated garbage. It uses Google search functions to index popular websites and filter results based on publication date, a scorched earth approach that virtually guarantees your searches will be slop-free.

Submission + - Ion-based cooling technique could make computer chips more powerful (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: [R]esearchers at The University of Osaka have developed a strategy to enhance cooling by driving the flow of ions through nanoscale channels. This ionothermoelectric strategy is analogous to the Peltier technique, in which passing an electric current through a material results in heating or cooling. This compelling invention is published in ACS Nano.

"We fabricated a nanosized pore in a semiconductor membrane and surrounded the nanopore with a 'gate,' in the form of a nanowire. Applying a voltage to the gate induced the flow of ions through the nanopore," explains lead author, Makusu Tsutsui. "Varying the voltage modulated the surface charge of the nanopore."

A negative applied voltage resulted in a negatively charged nanopore that was only permeable to positively charged ions, or cations. Consequently, each ion drags a certain quantity of heat along with its charge. The team created a concentration gradient in saltwater around the nanopore to drive cation transport in one direction, effectively pumping heat out of the nanopore. Reversing the applied voltage made the nanopore surface positive and permeable only to negative ions, or anions, therefore switching the system from cooling to heating.

Comment Re:Support deadlines are arbitrary (Score 4, Interesting) 55

Ubuntu just extended their LTS to 15 years. Microsoft could do it too if they wanted. When they realize no one wants ClippyPilot they will be forced to provide a traditional version of Windows again.

LTS kernels are supported for two years. The Linux Civil Infrastructure Group support (just barely) certain LTS kernels for 10 years... I am dying to see who will support the kernel of ubuntu for 15 years.

Or they will change the kernel at the end of the 10 years, which in turn means changes on the hardware and the upper layers of the software, while keeping the name of the distro the same, but you will end up doing an "upgrade that is not called an upgrade" and paying extra for the priviledge to call the upgrade the same fancy adjective-animal + version number as the old OS you had.

Comment unfair comparison from dell (Score 1) 55

As they are comparin end of support of Win7 to end of support from Win10. Thing is, when support for Win7 ended, there was no ESU for users, and what's more, there was no Free-ish ESU for users. Meanwhile, Win10 has a (Free-ish) ESU for users.

So, the real comparison is to compare adoption of Win10 when Win7 reached end of support to adoption of Win11 when Win10's Free-ish ESU runs out, that is to say: Nov 2026

Submission + - X Update Shows Foreign Origin for Many Political Accounts (apnews.com)

Submitted by skam240
skam240 writes: Elon Musk’s X unveiled a feature Saturday that lets users see where an account is based. Online sleuths and experts quickly found that many popular accounts posting in support of the MAGA movement to thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, are based outside the United States — raising concerns about foreign influence on U.S. politics.

Researchers at NewsGuard, a firm that tracks online misinformation, identified several popular accounts — purportedly run by Americans interested in politics – that instead were based in Eastern Europe, Asia or Africa.

The accounts were leading disseminators of some misleading and polarizing claims about U.S. politics, including ones that said Democrats bribed the moderators of a 2024 presidential debate.

Submission + - Crime Rings Enlist Hackers to Hijack Trucks (archive.is)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: By breaking into carriers’ online systems, cyber-powered criminals are making off with truckloads of electronics, beverages and other goods

In the most recent tactics identified by cybersecurity firm Proofpoint, hackers posed as freight middlemen, posting fake loads to the boards. They slipped links with malicious software into email exchanges with bidders such as trucking companies. By clicking on the links, trucking companies unwittingly downloaded remote-access software that lets the hackers take control of their online systems.

Once inside, the hackers used the truckers’ accounts to bid on real shipments, such as electronics and energy drinks, said Selena Larson, a threat researcher at Proofpoint. “They know the business,” she said. “It’s a very convincing full-scale identity takeover.”

Submission + - Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Trolls 4

Submitted by Nicholas Grayhame
Nicholas Grayhame writes: The Daily Beast reports: Elon Musk’s social media site X has rolled out a new feature in an effort to increase transparency—and unwittingly revealed that many of the site’s top MAGA influencers are actually foreign actors. The new “About This Account” feature, which became available to X users on Friday, allows others to see where an account is based, when they joined the platform, how often they have changed their username, and how they downloaded the X app. Upon rollout, rival factions began to inspect just where their online adversaries were really based on the combative social platform—with dozens of major MAGA and right-wing influencer accounts revealed to be based overseas....

Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria. In one example, the account MAGANationX—with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We The People”—is actually based in Eastern Europe. An Ivanka Trump fan account, IvankaNews, has 1 million followers and frequently posts about the dangers of Islam, the threat of illegal immigration and support for Trump. That account is based in Nigeria. ...

Donald Trump and several close associates were investigated for conspiracy or coordination with Russia during the 2016 election. Two of Trump’s campaign members were indicted. Certain content creators are paid for tweets that drive engagement on the site formerly known as Twitter, which gives them a financial incentive to cash in on the divisive nature of U.S. politics. For those in countries like Nigeria or Bangladesh, the American dollars paid by X for their work can make a big difference to their lives. X payouts are calculated on the basis of engagement from verified premium accounts with content on X.

Comment Re:You aren't seeing the forest for the trees (Score 1) 63

So take all the companies you view as viable competitors to Amazon. [...] Yeah technically Walmart and Target compete with Amazon.

The '90s called, and want their Amazon back. Amazon in 2025 competes in various fronts.

If the laid off engineers worked in the "Tat-Bazaar" competitors exist beyond Target and Walmart and include the websites Costco, BJ's, and for Amazon Engineers located in LatAm, Sites like Mercado Libre.

If the fired engineers worked in Amazon Prime Video, the doors are wide open at Netfilx, Apple TV (plus or not plus, I do not remember), Disney+, HBO Max, Peackcok/Universal+, and plenty of other streamers worldwide.

In Cloud, engineers fired could go seek employment in competitors like Microsoft Cloud, oracle cloud, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, OVH, Hetzner, and plenty of companies offering OpenStack clouds. Heck, since netflix (and many other large companies) runs on top of amazon clud, maybe they want some engineers with intimate knowledge of how things work inside the "black box"

Were those engineers working at AI efforts at Amazon? OpenAI, anthropic, Google, Grok, meta and many more are there waiting.

Were said engineers working with gadgets like alexa? plenty of consumer electronics companies looking for good engineers

I see plenty of competition for Amazon engineers, if all these companies were also not reducing and re-aligning their engineering efforts.

And please, I/we do not buy the argument that the Ilumminati are sitting on the boards of all the large companies, in tall leather chairs, with cigars and cognac, plotting the end of the peasants class.

Again, in this particular case, is not lack of competition, but lack of unionization.

Comment Re:Wanna stop layoffs? (Score 1) 63

Companies would normally be terrified to fire this many engineers because they'd be snapped up by competitors.
Only there aren't any, because we keep voting for people that won't enforce anti-trust law.

I do not think there are no competitors. There are plenty of competitors, but said competitors have ALSO been firing engineers left, right and centre. And that "synchronized firing of engineers" can not be stoped by anti-trust laws, but it can be slowed down by unionization.

Comment A few clarifications (Score 5, Informative) 104

by williamyf (#65809547) Attached to: HP and Dell Disable HEVC Support Built Into Their Laptops' CPUs

1.) DELL and HP-ink* DID NOT kill codec support retroactively. Unlike Synology (also mentioned in the article), who removed the codecs RETROACTIVELY FOR ALL MODELS PAST AND PRESENT, probably because they could not be arsed to keep different versions of their DSM 7.3 OS with or without the codecs depending on the HW model, and also, because the oldest models could not for the life of them keep doing the transcoding with all the extra stuff that was dumped on them form DSM 5 all the way to DSM 7.3.

2.) The thing is, if you had a DELL or HP-ink computer model XYZ-rev1 from early 2025 you had the codec, and then all of the sudden, when you buy a second computer model XYZ-rev02 from late 2025 with pretty much the same hardware, sudenly, you do not have said codecs, even if the hardware encoder/decoder is still there.This baffled some customers, and offered untold click-bait-rage potential for tech news outlets everywhere.

3.) DELL and HP-ink want to either save the price of the olive** by not paying the 24cents for the codec royalties going forward, or upsell you to a higher priced fuller featured laptop. Either way, is money in their pocket.

4.) Cue people developing scripts to re-inject support by automaticaly downloading and extracting drivers and miscelaneous files (like .inf files) from older computers from DELL and HP-ink website (or failing that, downloading them from the generic driver packs from Intel and AMD iGPU drivers), complementing them with FFMPEG 8, and making some registry and other tweaks in 3... 2... 1...

5.) Again, this is not retroactive to older models, if the laptop you bought a few quarters back had the codecs active then, it still has the codecs active now. Is models within the same series, with very similar hardware and model numbers the ones that now ship without said codecs that are causing confusion.

* A few years ago HP split into HPe (e for enterprise) for servers, networking and datacenter stuff, and HP Inc for PCs and Laptops and Printers. HP-ink is a pun.

** https://www.forbes.com/sites/m...

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 + - 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.

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