An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by John Timmer: [P]art of the software stack that companies are developing to control their quantum hardware includes software that converts abstract representations of quantum algorithms into the series of commands needed to execute them. IBM's version of this software is called Qiskit (although it was made open source and has since been adopted by other companies). Recently, IBM made a couple of announcements regarding Qiskit, both benchmarking it in comparison to other software stacks and opening it up to third-party modules. [...] Right now, the company is supporting six third-party Qiskit functions that break down into two categories.

The first can be used as stand-alone applications and are focused on providing solutions to problems for users who have no expertise programming quantum computers. One calculates the ground-state energy of molecules, and the second performs optimizations. But the remainder are focused on letting users get more out of existing quantum hardware, which tends to be error prone. But some errors occur more often than others. These errors can be due to specific quirks of individual hardware qubits or simply because some specific operations are more error prone than others. These can be handled in two different ways. One is to design the circuit being executed to avoid the situations that are most likely to produce an error. The second is to examine the final state of the algorithm to assess whether errors likely occurred and adjust to compensate for any. And third parties are providing software that can handle both of these.

One of those third parties is Q-CTRL, and we talked to its CEO, Michael Biercuk. "We build software that is really focused on everything from the lowest level of hardware manipulation, something that we call quantum firmware, up through compilation and strategies that help users map their problem onto what has to be executed on hardware," he told Ars. (Q-CTRL is also providing the optimization tool that's part of this Qiskit update.) "We're focused on suppressing errors everywhere that they can occur inside the processor," he continued. "That means the individual gate or logic operations, but it also means the execution of the circuit. There are some errors that only occur in the whole execution of a circuit as opposed to manipulating an individual quantum device." Biercuk said Q-CTRL's techniques are hardware agnostic and have been demonstrated on machines that use very different types of qubits, like trapped ions. While the sources of error on the different hardware may be distinct, the manifestations of those problems are often quite similar, making it easier for Q-CTRL's approach to work around the problems.

Those work-arounds include things like altering the properties of the microwave pulses that perform operations on IBM's hardware, and replacing the portion of Qiskit that converts an algorithm to a series of gate operations. The software will also perform operations that suppress errors that can occur when qubits are left idle during the circuit execution. As a result of all these differences, he claimed that using Q-CTRL's software allows the execution of more complex algorithms than are possible via Qiskit's default compilation and execution. "We've shown, for instance, optimization with all 156 qubits on [an IBM] system, and importantly -- I want to emphasize this word -- successful optimization," Biercuk told Ars. "What it means is you run it and you get the right answer, as opposed to I ran it and I kind of got close."

A New York federal court has ordered (PDF) the operators of shadow library LibGen to pay $30 million in copyright damages to publishers. The default judgment also comes with a broad injunction that affects third-party services including domain registries, browser extensions, CDN providers, IPFS gateways, advertisers, and more. These parties must restrict access to the pirate site. An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon granted the default judgment without any changes. The anonymous LibGen defendants are responsible for willful copyright infringement and their activities should be stopped. "Plaintiffs have been irreparably harmed as a result of Defendants' unlawful conduct and will continue to be irreparably harmed should Defendants be allowed to continue operating the Libgen Sites," the order reads. The order requires the defendants to pay the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work, a total of $30 million, for which they are jointly and severally liable. While this is a win on paper, it's unlikely that the publishers will get paid by the LibGen operators, who remain anonymous.

To address this concern, the publishers' motion didn't merely ask for $30 million in damages, they also demanded a broad injunction. Granted by the court yesterday, the injunction requires third-party services such as advertising networks, payment processors, hosting providers, CDN services, and IPFS gateways to restrict access to the site. [...] The injunction further targets "browser extensions" and "other tools" that are used to provide direct access to the LibGen Sites. While site blocking by residential Internet providers is mentioned in reference to other countries, ISP blocking is not part of the injunction itself. In addition to the broad measures outlined above, the order further requires domain name registrars and registries to disable or suspend all active LibGen domains, or alternatively, transfer them to the publishers. This includes Libgen.is, the most used domain name with 16 million monthly visits, as well as Libgen.rs, Libgen.li and many others.

At the moment, it's unclear how actively managed the LibGen site is, as it has shown signs of decay in recent years. However, when faced with domain seizures, sites typically respond by registering new domains. The publishers are aware of this risk. Therefore, they asked the court to cover future domain names too. The court signed off on this request, which means that newly registered domain names can be taken over as well; at least in theory. [...] All in all, the default judgment isn't just a monetary win, on paper, it's also one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions we've seen from a U.S. court.

Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away, as administrators using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) will soon find out. From a report: Windows Server 2025 remains in preview, but Microsoft has been busy letting users know what is set for removal and what will be deprecated in the release. WSUS fits into the latter category -- still there for now, but no longer under active development. This is a big deal for many administrators who rely on the feature to deploy and manage the distribution of updates and features in an enterprise environment.

It'll even work on a network disconnected from the internet -- download the patches to a connected computer, stick them on some removable media, import the patches to a WSUS server on the disconnected network, and away you go. A tame administrator told El Reg: "We are migrating to Intune. It's a lot more complicated than WSUS, and it takes a lot longer to get set up."

"Such is progress!" he sighed. Microsoft's advice is, unsurprisingly, to migrate to cloud tools. As well as the aforementioned Intune, there is also Windows Autopatch for client update management or Azure Update Manager for server update management. And there are plenty of third-party tools out there too, such as Ansible. Microsoft's announcement has attracted comment. One user said: "Congratulations, you just made centralized automated patching subject to internal politics and budget constraints. "I survived the era of Melissa, SQL Slammer, and other things that were solved when we no longer had to choose between paid patch management or trusting admins of every server to do the right thing. For those of you that did not live through that, buckle up!"

The government of Bhutan is currently holding over $828 million in bitcoin, according to onchain data by Arkham Intelligence. From a report: "Unlike most governments, Bhutan's BTC does not come from law enforcement asset seizures, but from bitcoin mining operations, which have ramped up dramatically since early 2023," the crypto intelligence firm explained. Crypto intelligence firm Arkham highlighted the Kingdom of Bhutan's bitcoin holdings on social media platform X last week. Bhutan is a small, landlocked kingdom located in the eastern Himalayas, bordered by China to the north and India to the south. The country currently has a population of less than 800,000 people. We learned last year that Bhutan had been secretly mining bitcoin using its abundant hydroelectric resources since around 2019. The operation, which began when bitcoin was priced at approximately $5,000, aims to harness the country's vast renewable energy reserves to power mining rigs.

Hydroelectricity already accounts for 30% of Bhutan's GDP and powers nearly all of its 800,000 residents. The government claimed last year that mining profits are used to subsidize power and hardware costs. This revelation makes Bhutan one of the few countries globally to run a state-owned bitcoin mine, alongside El Salvador.

At over $800 million in Bitcoin holdings, the reserve accounts for nearly a third of Bhutan's 2022-calculated GDP.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Scharon Harding: TCL has come under scrutiny this month after testing that claimed to examine three TCL TVs marketed as quantum dot TVs reportedly showed no trace of quantum dots. [...] Earlier this month, South Korean IT news publication ETNews published a report on testing that seemingly showed three TCL quantum dot TVs, marketed as QD TVs, as not having quantum dots present. Hansol Chemical, a Seoul-headquartered chemicals company, commissioned the testing. SGS, a Geneva-headquartered testing and certification company, and Intertek, a London-headquartered testing and certification company, performed the tests. The models examined were TCL's C755, said to be a quantum dot Mini LED TV, the C655, a purported quantum dot LED (QLED) TV, and the C655 Pro, another QLED. None of those models are sold in the US, but TCL sells various Mini LED and LED TVs in the US that claim to use quantum dots. According to a Google translation, ETNews reported: "According to industry sources on the 5th, the results of tests commissioned by Hansol Chemical to global testing and certification agencies SGS and Intertek showed that indium... and cadmium... were not detected in three TCL QD TV models. Indium and cadmium are essential materials that cannot be omitted in QD implementation." The testing was supposed to detect cadmium if present at a minimum concentration of 0.5 mg per 1 kg, while indium was tested at a minimum detection standard of 2 mg/kg or 5 mg/kg, depending on the testing lab. [...]

In response to the results from SGS and Intertek, a TCL representative told ETNews and The Korea Times that TCL is "manufacturing TV sets with QD films supplied by three companies" and that "the amount of quantum dots... in the film may vary depending on the supplier, but it is certain that cadmium is included." TCL also published testing results on May 10 commissioned by Guangdong Region Advanced Materials, one of TCL's quantum dot film suppliers. Interestingly, SGS, one of the companies that found that TCL's TVs lacked quantum dots, performed the tests. This time, SGS detected the presence of cadmium in the TV films at a concentration of 4 mg/kg (an image of the results can be seen via ETNews here). TCL also said that it "confirmed the fluorescent characteristics of QD," per Google's translation, and provided a spectrogram purportedly depicting the presence of quantum dots in its TVs' quantum dot films. [...]

TCL obviously has reason to try to push results that show the presence of cadmium. However, some analysts and publications have pointed out that Hansol could have reason to push results claiming the opposite. As mentioned above, Hansol is in the chemical manufacturing and distribution business. It notably does not sell to TCL but does have a customer in TCL rival Samsung. Taking a step back further, Hansol is headquartered in Seoul and is considered a chaebol. TV giants Samsung and LG are also chaebols, and the South Korean government has reported interest in Samsung and LG continuing to be the world's biggest TV companies—titles that are increasingly challenged by Chinese brands. It has previously been reported that the South Korean government urged Samsung and LG to meet with each other to help ensure their leadership. The talks resulted in a partnership between the two companies reportedly centered on counteracting high prices that Samsung was facing for TV components sold by Chinese companies. With this background in mind, Hansol could be viewed as a biased party when it sought testing for TCL quantum dot TVs. "I'm really puzzled by Hansol's results," said Eric Virey, principal displays analyst at Yole Intelligence. "I have a very hard time believing that TCL would go through the troubles of making ... 'fake' QD films without QDs: this would cost almost as much as making a real QD films but without the performance benefits."

Ars Technica concludes: "As previously stated, it's possible that TCL is indeed using quantum dots but is using them in a small amount alongside phosphor. If true, the performance may not be as high as it would be with other designs, but it would also mean that TCL's quantum dot TVs aren't bogus. As it stands, the situation could benefit from more, preferably third-party, testing..."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Scientists who helped pioneer artificial intelligence are warning that countries must create a global system of oversight to check the potentially grave risks posed by the fast-developing technology. The release of ChatGPT and a string of similar services that can create text and images on command have shown how A.I. is advancing in powerful ways. The race to commercialize the technology has quickly brought it from the fringes of science to smartphones, cars and classrooms, and governments from Washington to Beijing have been forced to figure out how to regulate and harness it. In a statement on Monday, a group of influential A.I. scientists raised concerns that the technology they helped build could cause serious harm. They warned that A.I. technology could, within a matter of years, overtake the capabilities of its makers and that "loss of human control or malicious use of these A.I. systems could lead to catastrophic outcomes for all of humanity."

If A.I. systems anywhere in the world were to develop these abilities today, there is no plan for how to rein them in, said Gillian Hadfield, a legal scholar and professor of computer science and government at Johns Hopkins University. "If we had some sort of catastrophe six months from now, if we do detect there are models that are starting to autonomously self-improve, who are you going to call?" Dr. Hadfield said. On Sept. 5-8, Dr. Hadfield joined scientists from around the world in Venice to talk about such a plan. It was the third meeting of the International Dialogues on A.I. Safety, organized by the Safe AI Forum, a project of a nonprofit research group in the United States called Far.AI. Governments need to know what is going on at the research labs and companies working on A.I. systems in their countries, the group said in its statement. And they need a way to communicate about potential risks that does not require companies or researchers to share proprietary information with competitors. The group proposed that countries set up A.I. safety authorities to register the A.I. systems within their borders. Those authorities would then work together to agree on a set of red lines and warning signs, such as if an A.I. system could copy itself or intentionally deceive its creators. This would all be coordinated by an international body.

Among the signatories was Yoshua Bengio, whose work is so often cited that he is called one of the godfathers of the field. There was Andrew Yao, whose course at Tsinghua University in Beijing has minted the founders of many of China's top tech companies. Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneering scientist who spent a decade at Google, participated remotely. All three are winners of the Turing Award, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for computing. The group also included scientists from several of China's leading A.I. research institutions, some of which are state-funded and advise the government. A few former government officials joined, including Fu Ying, who had been a Chinese foreign ministry official and diplomat, and Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland. Earlier this year, the group met in Beijing, where they briefed senior Chinese government officials on their discussion.

For 30 days, 17,000 AT&T workers in nine different states from the CWA union went on strike. As it began one North Carolina newspaper noted some AT&T customers "report prolonged internet outages." Last week an Emory University economist told NPR that "If it wasn't disruptive or it didn't have any kind of negative element towards customers, then AT&T, I suspect, wouldn't feel any kind of pressure to negotiate."

The 30-day strike was "the longest telecommunications strike in the region's history," according to the union — announcing today that they'd now negotiated "strong tentative contract agreements" and that workers would report to work for their scheduled shifts tomorrow. The new contract in the Southeast covers 17,000 workers technicians, customer service representatives and others who install, maintain and support AT&T's residential and business wireline telecommunications network in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Wages and health care costs were key issues at the bargaining table, and the five-year agreement includes across the board wage increases of 19.33%, with additional 3% increases for Wire Technicians and Utility Operations. The health care agreement holds health care premiums steady in the first year and lowers them in the second and third years, with modest monthly increases in the final two years.
The statement adds that "CWA members and retirees from every region and sector of our union mobilized in support of our bargaining teams, including by distributing flyers with information about the strike at AT&T Wireless stores." CWA District 3 Vice President Richard Honeycutt added "We know that our customers have faced hardship during the strike as well. We are happy to be getting back to work keeping our communities safe and connected."

There's also a separate four-year agreement covering 8,500 AT&T West workers in California and Nevada. "Union members will meet to review the tentative agreements, before holding ratification votes in each region."

AT&T's chief operating officer said the Southeast agreement will "support our competitive position in the broadband industry where we can grow and win against our mostly non-union competitors."

The New York Times looks at "a third-generation family firm" in Paraguay "with 280 workers that packages hot sauce, soy beans...and seven kinds of salt for sale in Paraguayan supermarkets."

Its mascot — on t-shirts, coffee cups, and "in heavy demand at Paraguayan weddings" — is a mouse named Mickey. 51-year-old Viviana Blasco — one of five siblings who run the business — told the Times that it all began back in 1935: Ms. Blasco's grandfather, Pascual, the son of Italian immigrants, saw an opportunity to spread some joy — and turn a profit. He opened a tiny shop selling fruit and homemade gelato. It was called Mickey... Pascual, she said, often vacationed in Buenos Aires — Argentina's cosmopolitan capital... "On one of his trips, he must have seen the famous mouse," Ms. Blasco said... A few years later, Pascual opened the Mickey Ice Cream Parlor, Café and Confectioners. By 1969, Mickey was selling rice, sugar and baking soda in packages now decorated with the eponymous mouse.
"Mickey resonates with Paraguayans' sense of nostalgia, said Euge Aquino, a TV chef and social media influencer who uses its ingredients to make comfort food like pastel mandi'o (yuca and beef empanadas)... Mickey's popularity, she said, also has a lot to do with the mascot handing out candy outside the factory gates every Christmas: a tradition dating back to 1983." By now, a "peaceful coexistence" reigns between Mickey and its United States doppelgänger, said Elba Rosa Britez, 72, the smaller company's lawyer. This truce was hard-won. In 1991, Disney filed a trademark violation claim with Paraguay's Ministry of Business and Industry that was rejected. The company then filed a lawsuit, but in 1995 a trademark tribunal ruled in Mickey's favor. There, one judge agreed that Paraguayans could easily confuse the Disney Mickey and the Paraguayan Mickey. But Disney didn't reckon on a "legal loophole," Ms Britez explained. The Mickey trademark had been registered in Paraguay since at least 1956 — and Pascual's descendants had since renewed it — without protest from the multinational. In 1998, Paraguay's Supreme Court issued its final ruling. Through decades of uninterrupted use, Mickey had acquired the right to be Mickey.

"I jumped for joy," Ms Britez said. Mickey's legal immunity in Paraguay, Ms. Blasco acknowledged, might not extend to selling its products abroad. "We've never tried."
"Some lining up to meet the mascot said Mickey's David-vs-Goliath triumph against Disney filled them with national pride..."

It was one year ago that "an odd seismic signal appeared at scientific stations around the globe," reports the Washington Post. "A day passed, and the slow tremor still reverberated. When it continued for a third day, scientists worldwide began assembling..." Some initially thought the seismic instruments recording the signal were broken, but that was quickly nixed. Maybe it was a new volcano emerging before their eyes, others said. One jokingly ruled out an alien party. As theories were checked off, the scientists dubbed the signal an "Unidentified Seismic Object," or USO... Nine days later, the vibrations greatly dissipated. But the mystery of the USO lasted much longer.

A year later, the puzzle has been solved, according to a study published in the journal Science on Thursday. It took about 70 people from 15 different countries and more than 8,000 exchanged messages (long enough for a 900-page detective novel) to crack the case. The short answer: A mega-tsunami created waves that sloshed back and forth in a fjord in Greenland, creating vibrations that traveled around the world.
Extra heat from global warming "thinned a glacier in eastern Greenland over time so much that it could no longer support the mountain rock above it," according to the article. A mile-long avalanche "plunged into the Dickson Fjord, triggering a 650-foot-high tsunami — one of the highest seen in recent history." Like the rhythmic waves in a bathtub, "the mega-tsunami wave traveled back and forth in the inlet," which "radiated seismic waves globally, shaking the planet for nine days before it petered out."

In August a German research team had studied the megatsunami, concluding that climate change was speeding the melt of Greenland's glaciers and increasing the chance of landslide-driven megatsunamis. The article reports that an author of that study said when comparing it to this one, "The methods chosen by the teams are different, but the results agree well."

Cybersecurity giant Fortinet has confirmed it suffered a data breach after a threat actor claimed to steal 440GB of files from the company's Microsoft Sharepoint server. From a report: Fortinet is one of the largest cybersecurity companies in the world, selling secure networking products like firewalls, routers, and VPN devices. The company also offers SIEM, network management, and EDR/XDR solutions, as well as consulting services.

Early this morning, a threat actor posted to a hacking forum that they had stolen 440GB of data from Fortinet's Azure Sharepoint instance. The threat actor then shared credentials to an alleged S3 bucket where the stolen data is stored for other threat actors to download. The threat actor, known as "Fortibitch," claims to have tried to extort Fortinet into paying a ransom, likely to prevent the publishing of data, but the company refused to pay. In response to our questions about incident, Fortinet confirmed that customer data was stolen from a "third-party cloud-based shared file drive."

A Google executive told colleagues the goal for the company's then-nascent online advertising business in 2009 was to "crush" rival advertising networks, according to evidence prosecutors presented at the tech titan's antitrust trial on Wednesday. From a report: The statements underscored the U.S. Department of Justice's claim that Google has sought to monopolize markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks, and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges which sit in the middle. On the third day of the trial, prosecutors began to introduce evidence of how Google employees thought about the company's products at the time when the government alleges it set out to dominate the ad tech market.

"We'll be able to crush the other networks and that's our goal," David Rosenblatt, Google's former president of display advertising, said of the company's strategy in late 2008 or early 2009, according to notes shown in court. Google denies the allegations, saying it faces fierce competition from rival digital advertising companies. Rosenblatt came to Google in 2008 when it acquired his former ad tech company, DoubleClick, and left the following year. The notes of his talk showed him discussing the advantages of owning technology on both sides and the middle of the market. "We're both Goldman and NYSE," he said, he said, according to the notes, referring to one of the world's biggest stock exchanges at the time and one of its biggest market makers. "Google has created what's comparable to the NYSE or London Stock Exchange; in other words, we'll do to display what Google did to search," Rosenblatt said.

Waymo's driverless cars have a much lower crash rate than human drivers, with fewer than one injury-causing crash per million miles driven, compared to an estimated 64 crashes by human drivers over the same distance. As Ars Technica's Timothy B. Lee notes, a significant portion of Waymo's most severe crashes involved human drivers rear-ending the Waymo vehicles. From the report: Twenty injuries might sound like a lot, but Waymo's driverless cars have traveled more than 22 million miles. So driverless Waymo taxis have been involved in fewer than one injury-causing crash for every million miles of driving -- a much better rate than a typical human driver. Last week Waymo released a new website to help the public put statistics like this in perspective. Waymo estimates that typical drivers in San Francisco and Phoenix -- Waymo's two biggest markets -- would have caused 64 crashes over those 22 million miles. So Waymo vehicles get into injury-causing crashes less than one-third as often, per mile, as human-driven vehicles.

Waymo claims an even more dramatic improvement for crashes serious enough to trigger an airbag. Driverless Waymos have experienced just five crashes like that, and Waymo estimates that typical human drivers in Phoenix and San Francisco would have experienced 31 airbag crashes over 22 million miles. That implies driverless Waymos are one-sixth as likely as human drivers to experience this type of crash. The new data comes at a critical time for Waymo, which is rapidly scaling up its robotaxi service. A year ago, Waymo was providing 10,000 rides per week. Last month, Waymo announced it was providing 100,000 rides per week. We can expect more growth in the coming months.

So it really matters whether Waymo is making our roads safer or more dangerous. And all the evidence so far suggests that it's making them safer. It's not just the small number of crashes Waymo vehicles experience -- it's also the nature of those crashes. Out of the 23 most serious Waymo crashes, 16 involved a human driver rear-ending a Waymo. Three others involved a human-driven car running a red light before hitting a Waymo. There were no serious crashes where a Waymo ran a red light, rear-ended another car, or engaged in other clear-cut misbehavior.

Digital rights activists want device manufacturers to disclose a "guaranteed minimum support time" for devices — and federal regulations ensuring a product's core functionality will work even after its software updates stop.

Influential groups including Consumer Reports, EFF, the Software Freedom Conservancy, iFixit, and U.S. Pirg have now signed a letter to the head of America's Consumer Protection bureau (at the Federal Trade Commision), reports The Register: In an eight-page letter to the Commission (FTC), the activists mentioned the Google/Levis collaboration on a denim jacket that contained sensors enabling it to control an Android device through a special app. When the app was discontinued in 2023, the jacket lost that functionality. The letter also mentions the "Car Thing," an automotive infotainment device created by Spotify, which bricked the device fewer than two years after launch and didn't offer a refund...

Environmental groups and computer repair shops also signed the letter... "Consumers need a clear standard for what to expect when purchasing a connected device," stated Justin Brookman, director of technology policy at Consumer Reports and a former policy director of the FTC's Office of Technology, Research, and Investigation. "Too often, consumers are left with devices that stop functioning because companies decide to end support without little to no warning. This leaves people stranded with devices they once relied on, unable to access features or updates...."

Brookman told The Register that he believes this is the first such policy request to the FTC that asks the agency to help consumers with this dilemma. "I'm not aware of a previous effort from public interest groups to get the FTC to take action on this issue — it's still a relatively new issue with no clear established norms," he wrote in an email. "But it has certainly become an issue" that comes up more and more with device makers as they change their rules about product updates and usage.
"Both switching features to a subscription and 'bricking' a connected device purchased by a consumer in many cases are unfair and deceptive practices," the groups write, arguing that the practices "infringe on a consumer's right to own the products they buy." They're requesting clear "guidance" for manufacturers from the U.S. government. The FTC has a number of tools at its disposal to help establish standards for IoT device support. While a formal rulemaking is one possibility, the FTC also has the ability to issue more informal guidance, such as its Endorsement Guides12 and Dot Com Disclosures.13 We believe the agency should set norms...
The groups are also urging the FTC to:

• Encourage tools and methods that enable reuse if software support ends.

• Conduct an educational program to encourage manufacturers to build longevity into the design of their products.

• Protect "adversarial interoperability"... when a competitor or third-party creates a reuse or modification tool [that] adds to or converts the old device.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Z00L00K for sharing the article.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: "The Impact of AI on Computer Science Education" recounts an experiment Eric Klopfer conducted in his undergrad CS class at MIT. He divided the class into three groups and gave them a programming task to solve in the Fortran language, which none of them knew. Reminiscent of how The Three Little Pigs used straw, sticks, and bricks to build their houses with very different results, Klopfer allowed one group to use ChatGPT to solve the problem, while the second group was told to use Meta's Code Llama LLM, and the third group could only use Google. The group that used ChatGPT, predictably, solved the problem quickest, while it took the second group longer to solve it. It took the group using Google even longer, because they had to break the task down into components.

Then, the students were tested on how they solved the problem from memory, and the tables turned. The ChatGPT group "remembered nothing, and they all failed," recalled Klopfer. Meanwhile, half of the Code Llama group passed the test. The group that used Google? Every student passed.

"This is an important educational lesson," said Klopfer. "Working hard and struggling is actually an important way of learning. When you're given an answer, you're not struggling and you're not learning. And when you get more of a complex problem, it's tedious to go back to the beginning of a large language model and troubleshoot it and integrate it." In contrast, breaking the problem into components allows you to use an LLM to work on small aspects, as opposed to trying to use the model for an entire project, he says. "These skills, of how to break down the problem, are critical to learn."

Volvo now says it will push back its deadline to sell only electric vehicles by 2030, citing the need for stronger government support. "The new plans call for 90 to 100% of global sales to be electrified, including EVs and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs)," reports Electrek. "The other up to 10% will be "a limited number of hybrids" if needed. By 2025, Volvo expects 50 to 60% of sales to be electrified." From the report: Volvo was one of the first automakers to set a 100% EV sales goal by 2030. The announcement was made over three years ago in March 2021. The plan was to sell only fully electric cars while phasing out "any car in its global portfolio with an internal combustion engine, including hybrids." [...]

Volvo has already launched five all-electric models: the EX40, EC40, EX30, EM90, and the EX90. After delivering its first model in January, the Volvo EX30 is already the third best-selling EV in Europe. Another five EVs are in development. However, Volvo said the shift comes as the charging infrastructure rollout has been out slower than expected, and government incentives have been withdrawn. Volvo is calling for stronger and more stable government policies to support the transition to EVs.

Volvo also adjusted its CO2 reduction goal. The company aims to reduce CO2 emissions per car by 65% to 75% by 2030 (using 2018 as a baseline). That's down from the previous 75% reduction target. Next year, Volvo aims for a 30 to 35% reduction (with 2018 as a baseline), down from 40%. The company is still working with suppliers to cut CO2 emissions across its value chain. "We are resolute in our belief that our future is electric," said Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan. "An electric car provides a superior driving experience."

Despite this, "it is clear that the transition to electrification will not be linear, and customers and markets are moving at different speeds of adoption," Rowan explained.

More than 25,000 Python developers from nearly 200 countries took the 7th annual Python Developers Survey between November 2023 and February 2024, with 85% saying Python was their main language.

Some interesting findings:

• Though Python 2 reached "end-of-life" status in April of 2020, last year's survey found 7% of respondents were still using Python 2. This year's survey found that number has finally dropped... to 6%.
  
  "Almost half of Python 2 holdouts are under 21 years old," the survey results point out, "and a third are students. Perhaps courses are still using Python 2?"

• Meanwhile, 73% are using one of the last three versions of Python (3.10, 3.11, or 3.12)

• "The share of developers using Linux as their development environment has decreased through the years: compared with 2021, it's dropped by 8 percentage points." [The graphic is a little confusing, showing 55% using Linux, 55% using Windows, 29% on MacOS, 2% on BSD, and 1% on "Other."]

• Visual Studio Code is the most popular IDE (22%), followed by Jupyter Notebook (20%) and Vim (17%). The next-most popular IDEs were PyCharm Community Edition (13%), JupyterLab (12%), NotePad++ (11%) and Sublime Text (9%). Interestingly, just 23% of the 25,000 respondents said they only used one IDE, with 38% saying they used two, 21% using three, and 19% using four or more. [The annual survey is a collaboration between the Python Software Foundation and JetBrains.]

• 37% said they'd contributed to open-source projects within the last year. (77% of those contributed code, while 38% contributed documentation, 35% contributed governance/leadership/maintainer duties, and 33% contributed tests...)

• For "age range," nearly one-third (32%) said 21-29 (with another 8% choosing 18-20). Another 33% said 30-39, while 16% said 40-49, 7% said 50-59, and 3% chose "60 or older."
  
  49% of respondents said they had less than two years of programming experience, with 33% saying "less than 1 year" and 16% saying "1-2 years." (34% of developers also said they practiced collaborative development.)

And here's how the 25,000 developers answered the question: how long have you been programming in Python?

• Less than 1 year: 25%
• 1-2 years: 16%
• 3-5 years: 26%
• 6-10 years: 19%
• 11+ years: 13%

So what are they doing with Python? Among those who'd said Python was their main language:

• Data analysis: 44%
• Web development: 44%
• Machine learning: 34%
• Data engineering: 28%
• Academic research: 26%
• DevOps / Systems administration / Writing automation scripts 26%
• Programming of web parsers / scrapers / crawlers: 25%

62% were "fully employed by a company," while the next-largest category was "student" (12%) with another 5% in "working student". There were also categories for "self-employed" (6%), "freelancer" (another 6%), and "partially employed by a company" (4%). Another 4% said they were unemployed.

In other news, the Python Software Foundation board has also "decided to invest more in connecting and serving the global Python community" by hosting monthly "office hours" on their Discord channel.

CSO Online reports that North Korea "is actively infiltrating Western companies using skilled IT workers who use fake identities to pose as remote workers with foreign companies, typically but not exclusively in the U.S."

Slashdot reader snydeq shares their report, which urges information security officers "to carry out tighter vetting of new hires to ward off potential 'moles' — who are increasingly finding their way onto company payrolls and into their IT systems." The schemes are part of illicit revenue generation efforts by the North Korean regime, which faces financial sanctions over its nuclear weapons program, as well as a component of the country's cyberespionage activities.

The U.S. Treasury department first warned about the tactic in 2022. Thosands of highly skilled IT workers are taking advantage of the demand for software developers to obtain freelance contracts from clients around the world, including in North America, Europe, and East Asia. "Although DPRK [North Korean] IT workers normally engage in IT work distinct from malicious cyber activity, they have used the privileged access gained as contractors to enable the DPRK's malicious cyber intrusions," the Treasury department warned... North Korean IT workers present themselves as South Korean, Chinese, Japanese, or Eastern European, and as U.S.-based teleworkers. In some cases, DPRK IT workers further obfuscate their identities by creating arrangements with third-party subcontractors.

Christina Chapman, a resident of Arizona, faces fraud charges over an elaborate scheme that allegedly allowed North Korean IT workers to pose as U.S. citizens and residents using stolen identities to obtain jobs at more than 300 U.S. companies. U.S. payment platforms and online job site accounts were abused to secure jobs at more than 300 companies, including a major TV network, a car manufacturer, a Silicon Valley technology firm, and an aerospace company... According to a U.S. Department of Justice indictment, unsealed in May 2024, Chapman ran a "laptop farm," hosting the overseas IT workers' computers inside her home so it appeared that the computers were located in the U.S. The 49-year-old received and forged payroll checks, and she laundered direct debit payments for salaries through bank accounts under her control. Many of the overseas workers in her cell were from North Korea, according to prosecutors. An estimated $6.8 million were paid for the work, much of which was falsely reported to tax authorities under the name of 60 real U.S. citizens whose identities were either stolen or borrowed...

Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, 27, of Kyiv, was separately charged over a years-long scheme to create fake accounts at U.S. IT job search platforms and with U.S.-based money service transmitters. "Didenko sold the accounts to overseas IT workers, some of whom he believed were North Korean, and the overseas IT workers used the false identities to apply for jobs with unsuspecting companies," according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Didenko, who was arrested in Poland in May, faces U.S. extradition proceedings...

How this type of malfeasance plays out from the perspective of a targeted firm was revealed by security awareness vendor KnowBe4's candid admission in July that it unknowingly hired a North Korean IT spy... A growing and substantial body of evidence suggests KnowBe4 is but one of many organizations targeted by illicit North Korean IT workers. Last November security vendor Palo Alto reported that North Korean threat actors are actively seeking employment with organizations based in the U.S. and other parts of the world...

Mandiant, the Google-owned threat intel firm, reported last year that "thousands of highly skilled IT workers from North Korea" are hunting work. More recently, CrowdStrike reported that a North Korean group it dubbed "Famous Chollima" infiltrated more than 100 companies with imposter IT pros.
The article notes the infiltrators use chatbots to tailor the perfect resume "and further leverage AI-created deepfakes to pose as real people." And the article includes this quote from a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Air Force turned cybersecurity strategist at Sysdig. "In some cases, they may try to get jobs at tech companies in order to steal their intellectual property before using it to create their own knock-off technologies."

The article closes with its suggested "countermeasures," including live video-chats with prospective remote-work applicants — and confirming an applicant's home address.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Every day for the last four years, dozens of people have shown up in the comments of one particular YouTube, declaring their love and appreciation for the content. The content: two minutes and six seconds of deep, low buzzing, the kind that makes your phone vibrate on the table, underscoring a vaguely trippy animation of swirled stained glass. It's not a good video. But it's not meant to be. The video is called "Sound To Remove Water From Phone Speaker ( GUARANTEED )." [...] If you believe the comments, about half the video's 45 million views come from people who bring their phone into the shower or bathtub and trust that they can play this video and everything will be fine.

The theory goes like this: all a speaker is really doing is pushing air around, and if you can get it to push enough air, with enough force, you might be able to push droplets of liquid out from where they came. "The lowest tone that that speaker can reproduce, at the loudest level that it can play," says Eric Freeman, a senior director of research at Bose. "That will create the most air motion, which will push on the water that's trapped inside the phone." Generally, the bigger the speaker, the louder and lower it can go. Phone speakers tend to be tiny. "So those YouTube videos," Freeman says, "it's not, like, really deep bass. But it's in the low range of where a phone is able to make sound."

The best real-world example of how this can work is probably the Apple Watch, which has a dedicated feature for ejecting water after you've gotten it wet. When I first reached out to iFixit to ask about my water-expulsion mystery, Carsten Frauenheim, a repairability engineer at the company, said the Watch works on the same theory as the videos. "It's just a specific oscillating tone that pushes the water out of the speaker grilles," he said. "Not sure how effective the third-party versions are for phones since they're probably not ideally tuned? We could test."

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Ars Technica, written by John Timmer: While solar power is growing at an extremely rapid clip, in absolute terms, the use of natural gas for electricity production has continued to outpace renewables. But that looks set to change in 2024, as the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) has run the numbers on the first half of the year and found that wind, solar, and batteries were each installed at a pace that dwarfs new natural gas generators. And the gap is expected to get dramatically larger before the year is over.

According to the EIA's numbers, about 20 GW of new capacity was added in the first half of this year, and solar accounts for 60 percent of it. Over a third of the solar additions occurred in just two states, Texas and Florida. There were two projects that went live that were rated at over 600 MW of capacity, one in Texas, the other in Nevada. Next up is batteries: The US saw 4.2 additional gigawatts of battery capacity during this period, meaning over 20 percent of the total new capacity. (Batteries are treated as the equivalent of a generating source by the EIA since they can dispatch electricity to the grid on demand, even if they can't do so continuously.) Texas and California alone accounted for over 60 percent of these additions; throw in Arizona and Nevada, and you're at 93 percent of the installed capacity.

The clear pattern here is that batteries are going where the solar is, allowing the power generated during the peak of the day to be used to meet demand after the sun sets. This will help existing solar plants avoid curtailing power production during the lower-demand periods in the spring and fall. In turn, this will improve the economic case for installing additional solar in states where its production can already regularly exceed demand. Wind power, by contrast, is running at a more sedate pace, with only 2.5 GW of new capacity during the first six months of 2024. And for likely the last time this decade, additional nuclear power was placed on the grid, at the fourth 1.1 GW reactor (and second recent build) at the Vogtle site in Georgia. The only other additions came from natural gas-powered facilities, but these totaled just 400 MW, or just 2 percent of the total of new capacity.

The EIA expects a bit over 60 GW of new capacity to be installed by the end of the year, with 37 GW of that coming in the form of solar power. Battery growth continues at a torrid pace, with 15 GW expected, or roughly a quarter of the total capacity additions for the year. Wind will account for 7.1 GW of new capacity, and natural gas 2.6 GW. Throw in the contribution from nuclear, and 96 percent of the capacity additions of 2024 are expected to operate without any carbon emissions. Even if you choose to ignore the battery additions, the fraction of carbon-emitting capacity added remains extremely small, at only 6 percent."

Bruce66423 shares a report from the Los Angeles Times: In a milestone breakthrough, more than half of Caltech's incoming undergraduate class this fall will be women (source paywalled; alternative source) for the first time in its 133-year history. The class of 113 women and 109 men comes 50 years after Caltech graduated its first class of undergraduate women, who were admitted in 1970. "What this means for young women is that we are a place that can be representative of them and their experiences ... where they can grow and thrive and excel and become really impressive, extraordinary scientists and engineers and go on to make a difference in this really research-heavy profession," said Ashley Pallie, dean of admissions

Gloria L. Blackwell, chief executive of the American Assn. of University Women, lauded Caltech's achievement as critical progress in reducing the substantial gap of women in science, technology, engineering and math. Although women hold about 60% of degrees in biological sciences, they represent only about 18% in computer science and 20% in engineering, Blackwell said. Research has shown that boys are not better at math and science than girls, but a persistent message in society says otherwise -- and especially discourages Latinas and Black girls from pursuing the fields because they face discrimination and have less access to role models, resources and opportunities, the AAUW says. The report notes that Caltech isn't the first educational institution to reach gender parity in STEM. Harvey Mudd College, a small private institution in Claremont, "enrolled more women than men in 2010 for the first time in its history and in 2014 graduated more women than men in engineering," reports the LA Times. "Today, women make up 52.8% of majors in computer science, 50.5% in engineering and 68.2% in mathematical and computational biology."

UC Berkeley is another powerful producer of STEM graduates, with "nearly half of students majoring in those fields [identifying] as women or nonbinary." However, the report notes that the field they enter varies significantly. "They make up more than two-thirds of students in biological and biomedical sciences, but about one-third in engineering, computer and informational sciences, and mathematics and statistics."