Artist Keith Thomson is a modern (and whimsical) Edward Hopper. And Apple TV says he created the "festive artwork" shared on X by Apple CEO Tim Cook on Christmas Eve, "made on MacBook Pro."

Its intentionally-off picture of milk and cookies was meant to tease the season finale of Pluribus. ("Merry Christmas Eve, Carol..." Cook had posted.)

But others were convinced that the weird image was AI-generated.

Tech blogger John Gruber was blunt. "Tim Cook posts AI Slop in Christmas message on Twitter/X, ostensibly to promote 'Pluribus'." As for sloppy details, the carton is labeled both "Whole Milk" and "Lowfat Milk", and the "Cow Fun Puzzle" maze is just goofily wrong. (I can't recall ever seeing a puzzle of any kind on a milk carton, because they're waxy and hard to write on. It's like a conflation of milk cartons and cereal boxes.)
Tech author Ben Kamens — who just days earlier had blogged about generating mazes with AI — said the image showed the "specific quirks" of generative AI mazes (including the way the maze couldn't be solved, expect by going around the maze altogether). Former Google Ventures partner M.G. Siegler even wondered if AI use intentionally echoed the themes of Pluribus — e.g., the creepiness of a collective intelligence — since otherwise "this seems far too obvious to be a mistake/blunder on Apple's part." (Someone on Reddit pointed out that in Pluribus's dystopian world, milk plays a key role — and the open spout of the "natural" milk's carton does touch a suspiciously-shining light on the Christmas tree...)

Slashdot contacted artist Keith Thomson to try to ascertain what happened...

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) warns that while most adults recognize the importance of wiping personal data from old devices, nearly 30% don't know how, and a significant number of young people either don't care or find it too cumbersome. The Register reports: Clearing personal data off an old device is an important step before ditching it or handing it on to another user. However, almost three in ten (29 percent) of adults don't know how to remove the information, according to a survey of 2,170 members of the UK public. Seventy-one percent agreed that wiping a device was important, but almost a quarter (24 percent) reckoned it was too arduous. This means that the drawer of dusty devices is set to swell -- three-quarters of respondents reported hanging on to at least one old device, and a fifth did so because they were worried about their personal information. [...]

More than one in five (21 percent) of young people in the survey didn't think it was important to wipe personal data, while 23 percent said they didn't care about what might happen to that data. Fourteen percent of people aged 18-34 said they wouldn't bother wiping their devices at all, compared to just 4 percent of people over 55. On the plus side, the majority (84 percent) of respondents said they would ensure data was erased before disposing of a device. Alternatively, some might not worry about it and stick it in that special drawer alongside all the cables that might be needed one day. The survey also found that more than a quarter (27 percent) of UK adults were planning to treat themselves to a new device over the festive season [...].

Long-time Slashdot AmiMoJo quotes this report from EcoWatch: Record wind-generated electricity across Northern Ireland and Scotland Tuesday night pushed Britain's power prices below zero.

Wind output peaked at a record high 22.4 gigawatts (GW), breaking the previous high set [last] Sunday evening, the national system operator said, as Bloomberg reported. The record output provided more than 68 percent of the country's power.

From 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the half-hourly price fell to 6.57 pounds per megawatt-hour, according to data from European power exchange Epex Spot.

"Setting another clean electricity generation record just four days after the previous high shows the pivotal role wind is playing in keeping the country powered up during the festive season," said Dan McGrail, chief executive of RenewableUK, as . "This is also demonstrated by today's official figures which reveal that renewables have generated more than half our electricity for four quarters in a row."
The article adds that energy prices with negative numbers "have been recorded for 131 hours in the UK this year, an increase of 45 hours over 2023...

"Wind power was the largest source of energy in the UK from January to September of 2024."

Remember that cheery corporate video Internet Brands tried announcing their new (non-negotiable) hybrid return-to-office policy (with the festive song "Iko Iko" playing in the background)? They've now pulled the video from Vimeo.

Could that signal a larger shift in attitudes about working from home? The Washington Post reports: Now, new research from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh suggests that office mandates may not help companies' financial performances, but they can make workers less satisfied with their jobs and work-life balance... "We will not get back to the time when as many people will be happy working from the office the way they were before the pandemic," said Mark Ma, co-author of the study and associate professor at the Katz Graduate School of Business. Additionally, mandates make workers less happy, therefore less productive and more likely to look for a new job, he said.

The study analyzed a sample of Standard & Poor's 500 firms to explore the effects of office mandates, including average change in quarterly results and company stock price. Those results were compared with changes at companies without office mandates. The outcome showed the mandates made no difference. Firms with mandates did not experience financial boosts compared with those without. The sample covered 457 firms and 4,455 quarterly observations between June 2019 and January 2023...

"There are compliance issues universally," said Prithwiraj Choudhury, a Harvard Business School professor who studies remote work. "Some companies are issuing veiled threats about promotions and salary increases ... which is unfortunate because this is your talent pool, your most valuable resource...." Rather than grappling with mandates as a means of boosting productivity, companies should instead focus on structuring their policies on a team basis, said Choudhury of Harvard. That means not only understanding the frequency and venue in which teams would be most productive in-person, but also ensuring that in-person days are structured for more collaboration. Requiring employees to work in-office to boost productivity in general has yet to prove itself out, he added.

"Return-to-office is just a knee-jerk reaction trying to make the world go back to where it was instead of recognizing this as a point for fundamental transformation," he said. "I call them return-to-the-past mandates."
The article cites US Bureau of Labor Statics showing movement in the other directionRoughly 78% of workers ages 16 and older "worked entirely on-site in December 2023, down from 81% a year earlier" — and for tech workers only 34% worked entirely on-site last month compared with 38% last year.

"Still, some companies are going all in on mandates, reminding workers and sometimes threatening promotions and job security for noncompliance. Leaders are unlikely to backtrack on mandates once they have been implemented because that could be viewed as admitting they made a mistake, said Ma."

An anonymous reader shares a report: It may be the season of loving and giving, but doctors have warned against embracing this spirit too enthusiastically -- at least where sexual relations are concerned. They have discovered that the Christmas period is associated with a significantly increased risk of penile fractures -- a medical emergency in which the erection-producing regions of the penis snap, usually as a result of forceful bending during over-enthusiastic sexual intercourse. "This injury tends to occur during wild sex -- particularly in positions where you're not in direct eye contact [with your partner], such as the reverse cowgirl," said Dr Nikolaos Pyrgides, a urologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, who led the research.

The fractures are often heralded by an audible crack, followed by severe pain, rapid loss of erection and severe swelling and bruising. "When [patients] present to their doctor their penis often looks like an eggplant," Pyrgides said. Suspecting that the intimacy and euphoria of the festive season might be a risk factor for this type of injury, Pyrgides and his colleagues examined hospital data for 3,421 men who sustained penile fractures in Germany between 2005 and 2021. The study -- the first to explore seasonal patterns for this type of injury -- found that such injuries were indeed more common over Christmas. In fact, "if every day was like Christmas, 43% more penile fractures would have occurred in Germany from 2005 on," Pyrgides said. The research, which was published in the British Journal of Urology International, also found the risk increased at weekends and over the summer holidays. However, New Year's Eve was not associated with an increased incidence of penis injuries.

It was November 23rd of the year 1963 that Doctor Who first premiered on the BBC. And the many years since then have wrought their changes, writes the BBC: Events on screen and off have shaped the character's personality, their face changing to reflect Britain itself, and every version building on what has gone before. To truly understand Who, you have to know your history...

[T]he series was originally intended to teach children history as much as thrill them... [T]he Daleks were shouty miniaturised tanks, terrifying to a nation that had lived through World War 2... Scripts by the likes of Douglas Adams (who wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) leaned into the show's inherent strangeness... Interestingly, the new specials and series involve Marvel-owner Disney, who will stream it outside the UK and Ireland, in turn helping boost the budget.
The article handily summarizes the last 60 years. ("Perhaps the most shocking revelation of [2010 showrunner Steven Moffat's] tenure was a hitherto unseen, past version of the Doctor, played by John Hurt. Other writers would take this idea and run with it...") The article ends with the words, "Only time will tell."

And elsewhere another BBC article notes that today "the TARDIS is set to return to BBC One and iPlayer." With David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor and Catherine Tate reprising her role as Donna Noble the popular duo will make their spectacular return to mark the show's 60th anniversary with three special episodes running each Saturday from the 25th November...

Neil Patrick Harris as the Toymaker [is] set to cause all kinds of mayhem. It's going to be an unmissable cosmic adventure, all before Ncuti Gatwa gets the keys to the TARDIS over the festive season.
Thanks to Alain Williams (Slashdot reader #2,972) for sharing the article.

schwit1 writes: China and the United States are in a race to develop the newest, hottest technologies of the 21st century as a technological decoupling looms. But the effects won't be felt equally -- according to a new report from one of China's most prestigious think tanks, a full-blown tech decoupling will be even worse for China in the end. The Peking University Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IISS) published its findings just days before the new year -- China's biggest holiday -- and the beginning of the 2022 Beijing Olympics. The introspective report clashed with the festive vibes spreading across the country, as it concluded China will come out worse than the U.S. as tech competitions continue to escalate between the two nations. "Both the U.S. and China will lose from 'decoupling,'" the researchers wrote. "And at this point, it looks like China's loss may be greater." The report was pulled from the internet within a few days of its publication, but by then, the text of the piece, titled, "U.S.-China Strategic Competition in Technology," had already circulated widely on the Chinese internet. The IISS didn't respond to Protocol's request for comment.

Covid-19's knock-on effects have delayed development so much that most games we thought we'd be playing now have drifted into next year. From a report: I'm Keza MacDonald, the Guardian's video games editor. I have been a video games journalist for 16 years, and my extended family only recently stopped asking me when I was going to get a real job over Christmas dinner. I guess they've given up on me now. This December, as usual, the release calendar has been as sparse as the hairs on Agent 47's head. Last year we at least had Cyberpunk 2077's fiasco of a launch to distract us from the end-of-2020 doldrums; you can only hope that it will fare better when the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions are, finally, released in the spring. On the plus side, right now there is actually time to catch up on things without the distraction of shiny new things coming out every week. Absorbing myself in a video game has always been a good way to stave off end-of-year ennui in the festive perineum between Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Those Christmas games loom large in the memory -- one year it was Mass Effect 2, which I played for days straight wrapped in a duvet in my freezing cold Edinburgh flat; one Christmas as a teenager I persuaded my parents to get me Animal Crossing on US import and spent the subsequent days completely ignoring my family in favour of my new weird animal neighbours. (I've got my own kids now, and last year I did the same in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Some things don't change.) It's been a strange year for games, partly because the knock-on effects of Covid-19 have delayed the process of game development so much that most of the things we thought we'd be playing now have drifted into next year. Game development is an extraordinarily collaborative endeavour, especially when there are 100 or more people on a team, and working from home has slowed things down massively at a lot of studios with whom I've spoken.

I Programmer writes: December 1st is much anticipated among those who like programming puzzles. It is time to start collecting stars by solving small puzzles on the Advent of Code website with the goal of amassing 50 stars by Christmas Day, December 25th. Raku has also opened its advent calendar and there's a brand new Bekk Christmas blog with informational content on multiple topics... At the time of writing we are only 10.5 hours into Advent of Code's Day 1, almost 50,000 users have completed both puzzles and another 8,484 have completed the first. [Some programmers are even livestreaming their progress on Twitch, or sharing their thoughts (and some particuarly creative solutions) in the Advent of Code subreddit.]

We can credit Perl with pioneering the idea of a programming advent calendar with daily articles with a festive theme and the Raku Advent Calendar now continues the tradition. Now in its 13th year, but only the third with its new name this year's first advent post solves a problem faced by Santa of creating thumbnails of approaching 2 billion images...
Smashing magazine has pulled together its own exhaustive list of additional geek-themed advent calendars. Some of the other highlights:

• The beloved site "24 Pull Requests" has relaunched for 2021, daring participants to make 24 pull requests before December 24th. (The site's tagline is "giving back to open source for the holidays.") Over the years 26,465 contributors (as well as 25,738 organizations) have already participated through the site.

• The Advent of JavaScript and Advent of CSS sites promise 24 puzzles delivered by email (though you'll have to pay if you also want them to email you the solutions!)

• This year also saw daily challenges from the sixth annual Code Security advent calendar being announced on Twitter, while TryHackMe.com has its own set of cybersecurity puzzles (and even a few prizes).

Jio Platforms, run by India's richest man (Mukesh Ambani), and Google on Thursday unveiled the JioPhone Next, an affordable Android smartphone, as the top Indian telecom operator and the American giant make further push to expand their reach in the world's second largest internet market. From a report: The Indian firm, which secured $4.5 billion investment from Google (and another $15.5 billion from Facebook and others) last year and shared plans to work on low-cost smartphones, said the JioPhone Next is aimed at helping roughly 300 million users in India who are still on 2G network upgrade their gadget to access faster networks. The phone, which is "powered by extremely optimized Android" mobile operating system, will first launch in India on September 10 ahead of the festive season in the country, and will eventually be made available outside of India, said Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, at its annual general meeting Thursday. The JioPhone Next will be an "ultra-affordable 4G smartphone," claimed Ambani, though he didn't reveal the price or the hardware specifications of the handset.

U.S. consumers spent more online this holiday season than they ever have before, according to a new report from Mastercard. From a report: Digging into the report, Reuters found e-commerce sales contributed 14.6 percent of total retail and were up 18.8 percent from 2018. This is despite a later Thanksgiving, which cut six days from the festive shopping window. Physical retailers are under increasing pressure from Amazon, which continues to offer ever more attractive ways to shop from the sofa, including same-day delivery in some cities and free returns on an ever-widening catalog of goods. The online retailer is so aggressive in its efforts to speed up delivery, in fact, it's taking a worrying toll on those making the deliveries.

Stephen Follows, a writer and producer who also researches data and statistics on the film industry, writes: Today we're going to use data to answer the question "Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?" Along the way, we're going to test Die Hard's Christmas bona fides against all movies in US cinemas for the past thirty years, using a variety of methods. I have put details of my sources and methodology at the end of the article. The short story is that unless I say otherwise, the data for 'all movies' relates to all movies shown in US cinemas between 1988 (ie the year of our Lord John McClane) and 2017.

Part 1 - Creative: Let's start by assessing the artistic work of Die Hard (as opposed to the commercial product or cultural icon). We'll do this by measuring the Christmas references in the script, on-screen and in the soundtrack. By going back to the film's script we are able to see what the screenwriters saw as part of their vision. The word "Christmas" appears 18 times in the script, which is more than the words "explode" (4), "die" (5), "hard" (11), "shoot" (12), "kill" (13) and "blood" (13), although far fewer times than "gun" (73), "terrorist" (51) and "suddenly" (45). [...] There are a total of 21 distinct Christmassy elements in the movie, ranging from Santa hats and Christmas Trees to festive treats and a pivotal piece of "Christmas Greetings" tape.

[...] Audible references: Let's turn to a cultural measure of Christmasification for which we can get large-scale data: songs. I gathered song listings for three-quarters of all movies released over the past thirty years and identified the songs culturally associated with Christmas. Of these films, 95.5% did not feature any Christmas songs at all. Shame. The prevalence of Christmas songs in modern movies varies considerably but in most years it ends up that between 3% and 7% of movies have at least one such ditty. This means that having even one Christmas song makes a film unusually Christmassy compared to most other releases. Die Hard features Christmas in Hollis, Winter Wonderland, a whistled section of Jingle Bells and a rousing rendition of Let It Snow over the end credits. This means that audibly, Die Hard is more Christmasy than 99.2% of all movies released over the past thirty years. Follows makes several more points in his argument. You can read them here.

AmiMoJo quotes the BBC: The next series of Doctor Who won't start until 2020, it's been confirmed. Series 11 ended on Sunday night, but after the festive special on New Year's Day, Jodie Whittaker won't be seen in the Tardis again next year.

Showrunner Chris Chibnall said work on the new series had already begun... The first episode of the series, the first to feature a female Doctor, drew a record audience. It saw the highest launch viewing figures for the sci-fi stalwart in a decade, with 10.9 million people tuning in. The series has been considered a ratings success, with viewing figures above those of the last two series when Peter Capaldi starred in the title role.

Google.org gives nonprofits roughly $100 million each year. But now the Register argues that festive giving "has become a 'Googlicious' sales push." Among other things, The Register criticizes the $30 million in grant funding that Google.org gave this Christmas "to nonprofits to bring phones, tablets, hardware and training to communities that can benefit from them most," some of which utilized the crowdfunding site DonorsChoose (which tacks a fee of at least $30 fee onto every donation). "The most critical learning resources that teachers need are often exercise books, pen and paper, but incentives built into the process steer educators to request and receive Google hardware, rather than humble classroom staples," claims the Register. theodp writes: [O]ne can't help but wonder if Google.org's decision to award $18,130 to teachers at Timberland Charter Academy for Chromebooks to help make students "become 'Google'licious" while leaving another humbler $399 request from a teacher at the same school for basic school supplies -- pencils, paper, erasers, etc. -- unfunded is more aligned with Google's interests than the Christmas spirit. Google, The Register reminds readers, lowered its 2015 tax bill by $3.6 billion using the old Dutch Sandwich loophole trick, according to new regulatory filings in the Netherlands.
The article even criticizes the "Santa's Village" site at Google.org, which includes games like Code Boogie, plus a game about airport security at the North Pole. Their complaint is its "Season of Giving" game, which invites children to print out and color ornaments that represent charities -- including DonorsChoose.org. The article ends by quoting Slashdot reader theodp ("who documents the influence of Big Tech in education") as saying "Nothing says Christmas fun more than making ornaments to celebrate Google's pet causes..."

Google is updating their "Popular Times" feature in Search and Maps with real-time data that will be able to tell you how busy a place is in real time. PC Magazine reports: "Just in time for the Black Friday swarms, we're adding a real-time look at how crowded a place is right now, to help you decide where and when to go," Google Product Manager Jamie Aspinall wrote in a blog post. "Whether you're rushing to pick up a last-minute gift or seeking a lively bar for some festive spirit, check Popular Times for a sneak preview of what to expect when you arrive." If you're one of those people who always needs a plan, you're going to love the next new feature. You can now see how long people typically stay at a given location, so you can "plan your itinerary to the minute." "After all, you want to be sure you leave enough time to enjoy a cup of hot chocolate at your local sweets shop before heading to your dinner reservations," Aspinall pointed out. In addition, Google will be able to deliver more accurate business hours for your favorite establishments. "You'll know what time to pop by the pharmacy..., when food delivery begins at a nearby restaurant..., and what the service hours are at the auto dealership," Aspinall wrote.

In honor of Women's Equality Day, an anonymous reader shares with us a festive report from Fortune: More than two months after the White House first announced its Equal Pay Pledge for the private sector, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and other major industry players have signed on. By taking the pledge, which was first introduced at the United State of Women Summit in June of this year, companies promise to help close the national gender pay gap, conduct annual, company-wide pay analyses, and review hiring and promotion practices. The new signees were announced in a White House statement on Friday -- which also happens to be Women's Equality Day, the anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Apple, which announced earlier this year that it has no pay gap, released a statement promising to dig even deeper into compensation. "We're now analyzing the salaries, bonuses, and annual stock grants of all our employees worldwide. If a gap exists, we'll address it," the company said in a statement. Twenty-nine companies signed the pledge on Friday, bringing the total number of signatories to 57. The pledge is part of a $50-million, White House-led initiative to expand opportunities for and improve the lives of women and girls. The consortium members issued a statement via Whitehouse.gov's press release: "The Employers for Pay Equity consortium is comprised of companies that understand the importance of diversity and inclusion, including ensuring that all individuals are compensated equitably for equal work and experience and have an equal opportunity to contribute and advance in the workplace. We are committed to collaborating to eliminate the national pay and leadership gaps for women and ethic minorities. Toward that end, we have come together to share best practices in compensation, hiring, promotion, and career development as well as develop strategies to support other companies' efforts in this regard. By doing so, we believe we can have a positive effect on our workforces that, in turn, makes our companies stronger and delivers positive economic impact." The consortium members include: Accenture, Airbnb, BCG, Care.com, CEB, Cisco, Deloitte, Dow, Expedia, EY, Glassdoor, GoDaddy, Jet.com, L'Oreal USA, Mercer, PepsiCo, Pinterest, Rebecca Minkoff, Salesforce, Spotify, Staples, Stella McCartney, and Visa.

An anonymous reader writes: For over a decade, Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights have been a festive online holiday tradition for millions of Internet users world-wide, so it was sadly the end of an era last year, when the Griswold wanna-be hung up his Santa Hat in 2014. But with the "Internet of Things" being the rage these days, it didn't take long for another Griswold to emerge from the North Pole, or at least pretty darn close to it. Ken Woods from Fairbanks, Alaska has his house online 24 hours a day with a dozen ON/OFF buttons that Internet users can use to toggle his lights with a click of a mouse. Here's a video of it in action and he uses Amazon EC2 to power it online. (While that all looks real, low-UID /.'ers will remember that Alek did a simulation from 2002-2004 using Perl code to switch between a series of images. Looks like the prankster dusted off that code for the Control Christmas Lights.com website.) I, for one, welcome our new Griswold Overlords with a big HO-HO-HO.

Cochonou writes: Analysis of the black boxes of the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) which derailed on Saturday revealed that the accident resulted from excessive speed and late braking. The test train entered a 945m-radius curve at a speed of 265 km/h, far over the maximum speed of 176 km/h. The French national railway company ruled out any other cause, such as mechanical failure or track mishap.

During test runs, a number of security features are disabled, in particular parts of the TVM system, which would have prevented any overspeed during normal service. This leaves the train speed under the sole responsibility of the driver.

The accident, which killed 11 people, occurred on the last run of the scheduled trials on the new high-speed line between Paris and Strasbourg. As more details on the accident surface, it becomes evident that this last run was performed in a festive spirit, with relatives (including children) of the employees on board, and seven people present in the train cab instead of train. This casts a shadow on the security procedures of the French national railway company: it appears that the high-speed train technology is considered so safe that the risks inherent to trials runs were somehow neglected. The two drivers and the traction inspector have been suspended pending possible criminal charges. Other changes in the management structure will probably follow.

The idea of a white Christmas may seem magical for many of us, but Science Daily asks you to "spare a thought for a team of scientists forgoing the festive season to take part in a novel campaign being carried out in one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth to support ESA's CryoSat mission." Plenty of people cooped up in the upside-down parts seem to find good ways to amuse themselves; I am especially fond of this introduction to Condition One weather, and Cops McMurdo. If anyone is reading this down there, I hope you're having a nice holiday.

OSCON isn't just a gathering for talks on topics like Creating Location-aware Web 2.0 Applications on an Open Source Geospatial Platform and fightin' words from the stage; it's also an excuse for some interesting social gatherings, like this year's Community Choice awards (organized and sponsored by the corporate overlords at SourceForge, as you might recall, and with Slashdot's own special category), at which, among other festive activities, attendees were offered the chance to get open-source-related tattoos. There are shots of some of these up on the SourceForge Community pages, and — with some overlap — even more in this set at Flickr. (My pasty bicep^h^h^h^h^h shoulder is the one now adorned with a circled head of a happy Tux ala IBM; I was expecting it to hurt more than it actually did.) Anyone with techie tattoos, please disclose below.