Comment Re: The real shape of online retail (Score 1) 10
Thanks, but even looking at the full context and with that definition, I'm missing the joke. So why haven't the moderators rated it Funny already?
Comment Re:Some get scans for free (Score 1) 74
I have to disagree regarding the human cloning. However I think it is being hidden quite carefully because it is illegal.
Having said that, I think the most interesting clone candidate would actually be John Henry. I'm sure there are some gene samples available since he didn't die until 2007.
Comment Re:The real shape of online retail (Score 1) 10
Pretty sure "gyre" is intended as a joke, but websearch failed me [just] now. Care to clarify the joke?
The "future shape" I was thinking of actually involved smartphone-enhanced clothing. Still don't understand why no one (that I know of) is making clothing with suitable adaptations for smartphones. Also shower proof pouches for people who worry about missing a message when they are in the shower...
The Rarest of All Diseases Are Becoming Treatable (msn.com) 35
In February, a six-month-old baby named KJ Muldoon became the first person ever to receive a CRISPR gene-editing treatment customized specifically for his unique genetic mutation, a milestone that researchers say marks a turning point in how medicine might approach the thousands of rare diseases that collectively affect 30 million Americans. Muldoon was born with a type of urea-cycle disorder that gives patients roughly a 50% chance of surviving infancy and typically requires a liver transplant; he is now a healthy 1-year-old who recently took his first steps.
The treatment's significance extends beyond one child. Scientists at UC Berkeley's Innovative Genomics Institute and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia are now planning clinical trials that would use Muldoon's therapy as a template, tweaking the molecular "address" in the CRISPR system to target different mutations in other children with urea-cycle disorders. Last month, FDA officials Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad announced a new drug pathway designed to accelerate approvals for such personalized treatments -- a framework inspired in large part by Muldoon's case. Current gene-editing delivery mechanisms limit treatments to disorders in the blood and liver. Many families will still go without bespoke therapies.
The treatment's significance extends beyond one child. Scientists at UC Berkeley's Innovative Genomics Institute and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia are now planning clinical trials that would use Muldoon's therapy as a template, tweaking the molecular "address" in the CRISPR system to target different mutations in other children with urea-cycle disorders. Last month, FDA officials Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad announced a new drug pathway designed to accelerate approvals for such personalized treatments -- a framework inspired in large part by Muldoon's case. Current gene-editing delivery mechanisms limit treatments to disorders in the blood and liver. Many families will still go without bespoke therapies.
'Colleges Oversold Education. Now They Must Sell Connection' (msn.com) 127
A tenured USC professor is arguing that universities need to fundamentally rethink their value proposition as AI rapidly closes the gap on human instruction and a loneliness epidemic grips the generation most likely to be sitting in their lecture halls. Eric Anicich, an associate professor at USC's Marshall School of Business, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that nearly three-quarters of 16- to 24-year-olds now report feeling lonely, young adults spend 70% less time with friends in person compared to two decades ago, and a growing majority of Gen Z college graduates say their degree was a "waste of money."
Anicich points to a recent Harvard study finding that students using an AI tutor learned more than twice as much as those in traditional active-learning classes, and did so in less time. The implication is stark: if instruction becomes abundant and cheap, colleges must sell what remains scarce -- genuine human community. He notes that his doctoral training included zero coursework on teaching, a norm he says persists across academia. His proposal: fund student life as seriously as research labs, hire professional "experience designers," and treat rituals and collaborative projects as core curriculum rather than amenities.
Anicich points to a recent Harvard study finding that students using an AI tutor learned more than twice as much as those in traditional active-learning classes, and did so in less time. The implication is stark: if instruction becomes abundant and cheap, colleges must sell what remains scarce -- genuine human community. He notes that his doctoral training included zero coursework on teaching, a norm he says persists across academia. His proposal: fund student life as seriously as research labs, hire professional "experience designers," and treat rituals and collaborative projects as core curriculum rather than amenities.
Science Journal Retracts Study On Safety of Monsanto's Roundup (theguardian.com) 36
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology has formally retracted a sweeping scientific paper published in 2000 that became a key defense for Monsanto's claim that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate don't cause cancer. Martin van den Berg, the journal's editor in chief, said in a note accompanying the retraction that he had taken the step because of "serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented."
The paper, titled Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, concluded that Monsanto's glyphosate-based weed killers posed no health risks to humans -- no cancer risks, no reproductive risks, no adverse effects on development of endocrine systems in people or animals. Regulators around the world have cited the paper as evidence of the safety of glyphosate herbicides, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in this assessment (PDF). [...]
In explaining the decision to retract the 25-year-old research paper, Van den Berg wrote: "Concerns were raised regarding the authorship of this paper, validity of the research findings in the context of misrepresentation of the contributions by the authors and the study sponsor and potential conflicts of interest of the authors." He noted that the paper's conclusions regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate were solely based on unpublished studies from Monsanto, ignoring other outside, published research. "The retraction of this study is a long time coming," said Brent Wisner, one of the lead lawyers in the Roundup litigation and a key player in getting the internal documents revealed to the public. Wisner said the study was the "quintessential example of how companies like Monsanto could fundamentally undermine the peer-review process through ghostwriting, cherrypicking unpublished studies, and biased interpretations."
"This garbage ghostwritten study finally got the fate it deserved,â Wisner added. "Hopefully, journals will now be more vigilant in protecting the impartiality of science on which so many people depend."
The paper, titled Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, concluded that Monsanto's glyphosate-based weed killers posed no health risks to humans -- no cancer risks, no reproductive risks, no adverse effects on development of endocrine systems in people or animals. Regulators around the world have cited the paper as evidence of the safety of glyphosate herbicides, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in this assessment (PDF). [...]
In explaining the decision to retract the 25-year-old research paper, Van den Berg wrote: "Concerns were raised regarding the authorship of this paper, validity of the research findings in the context of misrepresentation of the contributions by the authors and the study sponsor and potential conflicts of interest of the authors." He noted that the paper's conclusions regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate were solely based on unpublished studies from Monsanto, ignoring other outside, published research. "The retraction of this study is a long time coming," said Brent Wisner, one of the lead lawyers in the Roundup litigation and a key player in getting the internal documents revealed to the public. Wisner said the study was the "quintessential example of how companies like Monsanto could fundamentally undermine the peer-review process through ghostwriting, cherrypicking unpublished studies, and biased interpretations."
"This garbage ghostwritten study finally got the fate it deserved,â Wisner added. "Hopefully, journals will now be more vigilant in protecting the impartiality of science on which so many people depend."
Evidence That Humans Now Speak In a Chatbot-Influenced Dialect Is Getting Stronger (gizmodo.com) 79
Researchers and moderators are increasingly concerned that ChatGPT-style language is bleeding into everyday speech and writing. The topic has been explored in the past but "two new, more anecdotal reports, suggest that our chatbot dialect isn't just something that can be found through close analysis of data," reports Gizmodo. "It might be an obvious, every day fact of life now." Slashdot reader joshuark shares an excerpt from the report: Over on Reddit, according to a new Wired story by Kat Tenbarge, moderators of certain subreddits are complaining about AI posts ruining their online communities. It's not new to observe that AI-armed spammers post low-value engagement bait on social media, but these are spaces like r/AmItheAsshole, r/AmIOverreacting, and r/AmITheDevil, where visitors crave the scintillation or outright titillation of bona fide human misbehavior. If, behind the scenes, there's not really a grieving college student having her tuition cut off for randomly flying off the handle at her stepmom, there's no real fun to be had. The mods in the Wired story explain how they detect AI content, and unfortunately their methods boil down to "It's vibes." But one novel struggle in the war against slop, the mods say, is that not only are human-written posts sometimes rewritten by AI, but mods are concerned that humans are now writing like AI. Humans are becoming flesh and blood AI-text generators, muddying the waters of AI "detection" to the point of total opacity.
As "Cassie" an r/AmItheAsshole moderator who only gave Wired her first name put it, "AI is trained off people, and people copy what they see other people doing." In other words, Cassie said, "People become more like AI, and AI becomes more like people." Meanwhile, essayist Sam Kriss just explored the weird way chatbots "write" for the latest issue of the New York Times Magazine, and he discovered along the way that humans have accidentally taken cues from that weirdness. After parsing chatbots' strange tics and tendencies -- such as overusing the word "delve" most likely because it's in a disproportional number of texts from Nigeria, where that word is popular -- Kriss refers to a previously reported trend from over the summer. Members of the U.K. Parliament were accused of using ChatGPT to write their speeches.
The thinking goes that ChatGPT-written speeches contained the phrase "I rise to speak," an American phrase, used by American legislators. But Kriss notes that it's not just showing up from time to time. It's being used with downright breathtaking frequency. "On a single day this June, it happened 26 times," he notes. While 26 different MPs using ChatGPT to write speeches is not some scientific impossibility, it's more likely an example of chatbots, "smuggling cultural practices into places they don't belong," to quote Kriss again. So when Kriss points out that when Starbucks locations were closing in September, and signs posted on the doors contained tortured sentences like, "It's your coffeehouse, a place woven into your daily rhythm, where memories were made, and where meaningful connections with our partners grew over the years," one can't state with certainty that this is AI-generated text (although let's be honest: it probably is).
As "Cassie" an r/AmItheAsshole moderator who only gave Wired her first name put it, "AI is trained off people, and people copy what they see other people doing." In other words, Cassie said, "People become more like AI, and AI becomes more like people." Meanwhile, essayist Sam Kriss just explored the weird way chatbots "write" for the latest issue of the New York Times Magazine, and he discovered along the way that humans have accidentally taken cues from that weirdness. After parsing chatbots' strange tics and tendencies -- such as overusing the word "delve" most likely because it's in a disproportional number of texts from Nigeria, where that word is popular -- Kriss refers to a previously reported trend from over the summer. Members of the U.K. Parliament were accused of using ChatGPT to write their speeches.
The thinking goes that ChatGPT-written speeches contained the phrase "I rise to speak," an American phrase, used by American legislators. But Kriss notes that it's not just showing up from time to time. It's being used with downright breathtaking frequency. "On a single day this June, it happened 26 times," he notes. While 26 different MPs using ChatGPT to write speeches is not some scientific impossibility, it's more likely an example of chatbots, "smuggling cultural practices into places they don't belong," to quote Kriss again. So when Kriss points out that when Starbucks locations were closing in September, and signs posted on the doors contained tortured sentences like, "It's your coffeehouse, a place woven into your daily rhythm, where memories were made, and where meaningful connections with our partners grew over the years," one can't state with certainty that this is AI-generated text (although let's be honest: it probably is).
Denmark Posts Its Last Letters as Hallowed National Mail Ends (thetimes.com) 63
Denmark's postal service, established by King Christian IV four centuries ago as one of Europe's first modern mail systems, will stop delivering letters on December 30, ending a tradition that once saw riders given a maximum of 45 minutes to cover each 10-kilometer stretch of routes running from Hamburg to Norway.
PostNord, the postal service Denmark has shared with Sweden since 2009, started removing its 1,500 remaining red post boxes in June; a handful will go to museums. Letter volumes collapsed from nearly 1.5 billion in 2000 to 110 million last year. A standard stamp now costs 29 Danish kroner ($4.52). A private logistics firm called DAO will take over letter delivery. PostNord will continue handling parcels. The decision has rattled postal services elsewhere in Europe. Deutsche Post in Germany, still delivering 61 million letters daily, has warned it faces the same trends.
PostNord, the postal service Denmark has shared with Sweden since 2009, started removing its 1,500 remaining red post boxes in June; a handful will go to museums. Letter volumes collapsed from nearly 1.5 billion in 2000 to 110 million last year. A standard stamp now costs 29 Danish kroner ($4.52). A private logistics firm called DAO will take over letter delivery. PostNord will continue handling parcels. The decision has rattled postal services elsewhere in Europe. Deutsche Post in Germany, still delivering 61 million letters daily, has warned it faces the same trends.
How the Dollar-Store Industry Overcharges Cash-Strapped Customers While Promising Low Prices (theguardian.com) 105
Dollar General and Family Dollar stores have collectively failed more than 6,400 government price-accuracy inspections since January 2022, charging customers more at checkout than the prices displayed on shelves for everything from frozen pizzas to puppy food, according to an investigation by the Guardian. The review examined records from 45 states and more than 140 counties and cities. Dollar General stores failed over 4,300 inspections across 23 states, and Family Dollar failed more than 2,100 in 20 states. Error rates at the worst-performing locations reached staggering levels -- 76% at a Dollar General in Hamilton, Ohio and 68% at a Family Dollar in Bound Brook, New Jersey. A Family Dollar in Provo, Utah failed 28 consecutive inspections.
Industry watchers, employees and lawsuits attribute the discrepancies to minimal staffing. Registers update automatically when prices change, but shelf labels require manual replacement, and workers often lack the time. State attorneys general have pursued settlements -- Arizona reached a $600,000 deal with Family Dollar in May, Colorado settled with Dollar General for $400,000 in October and Ohio secured $1 million from Dollar General after finding error rates as high as 88%. Both companies declined interview requests but said they remain committed to pricing accuracy.
Industry watchers, employees and lawsuits attribute the discrepancies to minimal staffing. Registers update automatically when prices change, but shelf labels require manual replacement, and workers often lack the time. State attorneys general have pursued settlements -- Arizona reached a $600,000 deal with Family Dollar in May, Colorado settled with Dollar General for $400,000 in October and Ohio secured $1 million from Dollar General after finding error rates as high as 88%. Both companies declined interview requests but said they remain committed to pricing accuracy.
Comment Re:Fukushima Volume 2? (Score 1) 28
ACK, and I was also probably wrong about the location. I had just had my first look at a tiny map and I didn't realize how much farther north the tsunami zone was. Only about a three-meter tsunami, which is quite small compared to March 11th.
Comment Re:In other news (Score 1) 92
Mod parent funny.
And Ponzi schemes are sure to collapse.
Comment Fukushima Volume 2? (Score 4, Interesting) 28
Thanks for the heads up. Middle of the night here, but if you want to follow it in English, https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworl... has a live feed. I'm watching it now. Haven't seen the epicenter, but the tsunami warning zone indicates the same area as the quake in 2011 that killed 20 thousand people and led to the Fukushima #1 fiasco.
Journal Journal: Is this a test or a circus?
The #JLPT (Japanese Language Proficient Test) was actually quite hilarious this year, at least in my testing room. Call it the fiasco of new Rule 12. Or perhaps better to call it a circus?
Comment Re:Never buy any product that... (Score 1) 98
That's kind of my take on the story, but my wording would be more along the lines of "What are the success criteria?" Or perhaps "Would I donate to support this?" (Surely I would not donate on the basis of the description here and not even feeling motivated to learn more.)
But that's also why I wouldn't donate to support the project. You could think of it as a kind of paradox of choice. There are LOTS of things I could donate money to, but in general the success criteria are almost never clear. Whatever I donate to, it's likely that I could have had "more success" donating somewhere else.
Disclaimer needed? I was weird enough to pay for some freely distributed software. Long time ago, and usually for educational purposes for me or my students. One of the results I was hoping for was that the software would continue to exist with support and possibly even improvements, but can't recall any cases where that actually happened. Later donations often had more clear objectives, but my batting average for "wins" was so low that I mostly stopped donating...
Comment Re:Tablets are a mistake obviously (Score 1) 48
Deserves the Funny, but it's also too true in a sad way. In those days the machines were basic enough that you could actually figure out what was going on. Now they are entirely black boxes at every level and from every perspective.
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