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Comment Re:Why does this "biggest city" story matter? (Score 1) 20

Again I disagree. Not that the moderation system isn't broken--I suspect we agree about that--but rather that I fantasize that a "constructive" moderation system could "encourage" more positive social interactions. In particular I'd mostly like to see more humor, but I don't do funny--and I also didn't get such a mod. But such anti-social behavior problems are certainly not merely local or confined to Slashdot.

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

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)

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:Stop now [and just give up] (Score 1) 115

Mostly the ACK, but I largely see it as a motivational problem. The people who want money are strongly motivated and the people who just want to get along or even just want to help other people are relatively weakly motivated. It sort of worked when their ambitions for more money were sane, but at this point they have fallen off the edge of insanity.

Leading to my (crazy) conclusion of the incommensurables:

infinity << money << time << infinity

Comment Re:what AI (Score 1) 98

My main delusion remains solutions. For example, what if negative moderation reduced the moderator's likelihood of getting more mod points to squander in driving the mood into the mud? More difficult to implement, but comments with constructive suggestions or encouragement should make it more likely that identity will receive mod points to bestow. I think it would be nice to lighten the mood around here. (Then again, perhaps dark moods are the only reasonable reactions to the age of Donaldian Decadence?)

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

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.

Comment Re:This feels like a band-aid solution (Score 1) 67

More like an anti-solution to me. I almost never use File Explorer. On those rare occasions, it does not bother me to wait for a few seconds while it loads.

Me thinks that the real reason for making it resident is the greater convenience of Microsoft. Probably for some secretive tool that is harvesting my PI for Microsoft's greater glory and profit. Not visibly, of course, but using File Explorer in the background. (Any other comments along such lines?)

Comment Why does this "biggest city" story matter? (Score 1, Offtopic) 20

Better than the usual FP contribution from an AC, but I'm not getting your point and sure wouldn't moderate the FP interesting or funny (if'n I ever had a mod point to give). Perhaps you care to clarify (and even offer a more focused title)?

I do have some complicated thoughts on the topic. Maybe I'm even qualified as a resident of Tokyo to care about the problem? Calls for my ancient and little used sociologist's hat, however... But I really wish I had studied more psychology.

But I can reduce my answer to my stomach. I like Indian/Nepali food and I like trying new restaurants. I also like "atmospheric" coffee shops. (And sometimes I like to try something else.) I'm pretty sure I'm never going to run out of new places to try in Tokyo. However I'm pretty sure that would be true for many of the largest cities in the world... (AI angle via reviews?)

So how about the flip side of the coin? Why are so many people so strongly motivated to move into large cities? And on that side of the ledger things look really strange in Japan...

A few days ago there was a major fire that consumed about 170 buildings. That was in a small town far from Tokyo. However many of the buildings were empties. They call that an "akiya" for empty house. I've heard an estimate of around 100 empties destroyed in the fire. It's not just that no one wanted to live those vacant homes, and that there are places that will actively encourage people to live in vacant homes, but in this case it's worse. If those empty homes had been removed the rest of the community would still be there. Apparently they were the main source of kindling that made the fire so bad.

Another angle on the extreme demographic concentration. From the central part of Tokyo it is possible to walk to a suburb named West Tokyo. Takes about an hour on foot. Not long ago a bear was sighted in West Tokyo... Yesterday's news included a story about capturing (and killing) an extremely large bear near another town... Kind of like a war now, though I don't trust my (AI) source for this next item: Have the few remaining (and mostly quite elderly) bear hunters actually killed more than 4,200 bears in Japan this year? Actually seems quite possible. Nothing else to stop the bear population from increasing. They only look cute and fuzzy when they are quite young. But there was another story on the news about eating bear meat...

Combining the three branches? At least the bears rarely break into empty houses. No food smells. And so far I haven't heard of any bear sightings in the central parts of Tokyo... So in conclusion lots of people move to Tokyo because they like food and dislike bears?

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

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

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.

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