An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: There's a valley in rural southwest Utah that's become a hub for renewable energy. Dozens of tall white wind turbines whoosh up in the sky. A sea of solar panels glistens in the distance. But the new kid on the block is mostly hidden underground. From the surface, Fervo Energy's Cape Station looks more or less like an oil derrick, with a thin metal tower rising above the sagebrush steppe. But this $2 billion geothermal project, which broke ground last year, is not drilling for gas. It's drilling for underground heat that CEO Tim Latimer believes holds the key to generating carbon-free power -- lots of it.

"Just these three well pads alone will produce 100 megawatts of electricity. Around-the-clock, 24/7 electricity," he said. Latimer stood overlooking the project, which is currently under construction, on one of the drill rig's metal platforms 40 feet off the ground. This well is one of the 24 Fervo is in the process of completing at Cape Station to harness the Earth's natural heat and generate electricity. This isn't the type of geothermal that's already active in volcanic hot spots like Iceland or The Geysers project in California. It's called an enhanced geothermal system. Cold water goes down into a well that curves like a hockey stick as it reaches more than 13,000 feet underground. Then the water squeezes through cracks in 400-degree rock. The water heats up and returns to the surface through a second well that runs parallel to the first. That creates steam that turns turbines to produce electricity, and the water gets sent back underground in a closed loop.

This horizontal well technique has been pioneered at a $300 million federal research project called Utah FORGE located in this same valley, which has paved the way for private companies to take the tech and run with it. Recent innovations like better drill bits -- made with synthetic diamonds to eat through hard subterranean granite -- have helped Fervo drill its latest well in a quarter of the time that it took just a couple of years ago. That efficiency has meant an 80% drop in drilling costs, Latimer said. Last year, Fervo's pilot project in Nevada used similar techniques to begin sending electricity to a Google data center. And the company's early tests at Cape Station in Utah show the new project can produce power at triple the rate of its Nevada pilot. "This is now a proven tech. That's not a statement you could have made two or three years ago," Latimer said. "Now, it just comes down to how do we get more of these megawatts on the grid so we have a bigger impact?" The report notes that Fervo signed a landmark deal with Southern California Edison, one of the country's largest electric utilities with 15 million customers. "It will send the first 70 megawatts of geothermal juice to the grid in 2026," reports NPR. "By the time the project is fully completed in 2028, this Utah plant will deliver 320 megawatts total -- enough to power 350,000 homes. The project's full output will be 400 megawatts."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: During an interview with Sequoia Capital's Training Data podcast published last Tuesday, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott doubled down on his belief that so-called large language model (LLM) "scaling laws" will continue to drive AI progress, despite some skepticism in the field that progress has leveled out. Scott played a key role in forging a $13 billion technology-sharing deal between Microsoft and OpenAI. "Despite what other people think, we're not at diminishing marginal returns on scale-up," Scott said. "And I try to help people understand there is an exponential here, and the unfortunate thing is you only get to sample it every couple of years because it just takes a while to build supercomputers and then train models on top of them."

LLM scaling laws refer to patterns explored by OpenAI researchers in 2020 showing that the performance of language models tends to improve predictably as the models get larger (more parameters), are trained on more data, and have access to more computational power (compute). The laws suggest that simply scaling up model size and training data can lead to significant improvements in AI capabilities without necessarily requiring fundamental algorithmic breakthroughs. Since then, other researchers have challenged the idea of persisting scaling laws over time, but the concept is still a cornerstone of OpenAI's AI development philosophy. Scott's comments can be found around the 46-minute mark.

Slashdot reader biobricks shares this report from the New York Times. (Alternate URLs here and here.) When Merav Vonshak wanted to identify the gelatinous blob she had photographed floating in a shallow pool of water on a family vacation, she bypassed a wildlife-related website too often beset by bickering. She gave no consideration to brand-name social media platforms known for snark or misinformation.

Instead she uploaded the picture to a site called iNaturalist, where strangers have come together to pursue a very specific type of truth: the correct scientific classification for the living things they photograph in the wild or the backyard. They have so far processed about 90 million, with at least a quarter completed in 2022 alone.... Like many iNaturalist users, Dr. Vonshak, 45, invokes utopian metaphors not typically associated with social media to describe the platform. ("It reminds me of "Star Trek," you know? Our society as I would wish it would be.") Indeed, while examining mud snakes and mosses, it has dawned on many of the iNaturalist faithful that maybe they are on to something much bigger — a model for using the web that is governed by cooperation, not combat....

A not-for-profit initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society, iNaturalist says it aims to connect people to nature through technology. And the site's species-level identifications have been cited in thousands of scientific papers. But in a moment that can feel like everything is subject to dispute — the cause of inflation, the nature of gender, the legitimacy of an election — iNaturalist has also gained recognition as a rare place on the internet where people with different points of view manage to forge agreement on what constitutes reality.... And some social network scholars say its growth holds lessons for improved communication....

With help from a computer-vision algorithm, users who upload an observation typically suggest an identification. Others can then add their own nomination in the comments. As soon as a two-thirds majority emerges, the record receives a "community ID," which can be overwritten anytime the majority shifts.... The growth of iNaturalist has been fueled in part by technologies that have democratized the act of documenting and identifying species. Its machine-learning algorithm, trained on the identifications of iNaturalist users over the last decade, now reliably recognizes some 70,000 types of organisms and provides real-time suggestions. Better smartphone cameras have helped, as have inexpensive macro-lens attachments and the ubiquity of wireless internet access.
But the article also applauds the site's "explicit aim of collaboration and consensus" — 120 million "observations" have been posted just this year — each a chance to experience one more small collective triumph.

In the article one 32-year-old describes the site as "the place where I feel like I interact with strangers and work towards the common good."

The first European contact with indigenous Maori ended with four sailors killed and a hasty retreat. But it led to an identity for this South Pacific country: Nieuw Zeeland in Dutch, or New Zealand when it later became part of the British Empire. Now, some lawmakers want New Zealanders to drop a name that harks back to an era of colonization and adopt another -- Aotearoa, a Maori word referring to the clouds that indigenous oral history says helped early Polynesian navigators make their way here. From a report: Around the world, several countries are rethinking their identities to address resentment at their colonial past and forge a new future. In some cases, that involves changing the head of state, such as Barbados's severing of ties to the British monarchy. In others, it has meant changing its official name, as Eswatini did in 2018 when its absolute ruler decided it should no longer be known as Swaziland. Australia in recent years tweaked its national anthem because it didn't reflect its Aboriginal history. In New Zealand, the issue is coming to a head because a petition to rename the country Aotearoa -- pronounced 'au-te-a-ro-uh' -- garnered more than 70,000 signatures and will be considered by a parliamentary committee that could recommend a vote in Parliament, put it to a referendum or take no further action.

A cryptocurrency affiliated with the popular free-to-play blockchain game Axie Infinity has been hacked in one of the largest crypto heists in history. From a report: The Ronin network is a blockchain launched in February 2021 to make interacting with the Ethereum-based Axie Infinity a little less costly. Whereas doing anything at all on Ethereum costs fees, Ronin allows 100 free transactions per day, per user. Axie Infinity is popular in the Philippines, for example, where users work playing the game in exchange for tokens, often on behalf of individuals or firms that may employ dozens or hundreds of so-called "scholars."

In a blog post published on Tuesday, Ronin revealed it had fallen victim to a security breach that has drained half a billion dollars in crypto. Hackers were able to exploit the Ronin bridge and make off with 173,600 ETH (worth about $591,242,019) and $25.5 million worth of the stablecoin USDC in two separate transactions by taking over the blockchain's validator nodes. Validator nodes verify and approve transactions in Ronin's Proof-of-Authority (PoA) model, which differs from the decentralized mining and approval process employed by Bitcoin. Ronin has nine validator nodes, five of which were needed to approve any particular deposit or withdrawal. According to the blog, the hackers "used hacked private keys in order to forge fake withdrawals." The attackers found a backdoor in the gas-free RPC node run by Sky Mavis -- the company that owns Axie Infinity -- allowing them to gain control over a validator node linked to the Axie DAO after it helped Sky Mavis distribute free transactions in November 2021 during an overload of users, according to the Ronin blog post. With Axie DAO's validator node and the four controlled by Sky Mavis, the attackers were able to approve the two transactions.

U.S. scientists helped devise the Crispr biotechnology tool. First to test it in humans are Chinese doctors (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative link). WSJ reports: In a hospital west of Shanghai, Wu Shixiu since March has been trying to treat cancer patients using a promising new gene-editing tool. U.S. scientists helped devise the tool, known as Crispr-Cas9, which has captured global attention since a 2012 report said it can be used to edit DNA. Doctors haven't been allowed to use it in human trials in America. That isn't the case for Dr. Wu and others in China. In a quirk of the globalized technology arena, Dr. Wu can forge ahead with the tool because he faces few regulatory hurdles to testing it on humans. [...] There is little doubt China was first out of the block testing Crispr on humans. Nine trials in China are listed in a U.S. National Library of Medicine database. The Wall Street Journal found at least two other hospital trials, including one beginning in 2015 -- a year earlier than previously reported. Journal reporting found at least 86 Chinese patients have had their genes edited.

HughPickens.com writes AP reports that in an effort to undercut Apple's hit service Apple Pay, Google is teaming up with three wireless carriers by building its payment service into Android smartphones sold by AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA. Besides trying to make it more convenient to use Wallet, Google also is hoping to improve the nearly 4-year-old service. Toward that end, Google is buying some mobile payment technology and patents from Softcard, a 5-year-old venture owned by the wireless carriers. Financial terms weren't disclosed but Apple Pay's popularity probably helped forge the unlikely alliance between Google and the wireless carriers. Google traditionally has had a prickly relationship with the carriers, largely because it doesn't believe enough has been done to upgrade wireless networks and make them cheaper so more people can spend more time online.

The biggest challenge however is one that both Apple and Google face: Only a small fraction of the 10 million or so retail outlets in the U.S.–220,000 at last count–have checkout readers that can accept payments from either system. Both wallets use a radio technology called Near Field Communication to send payment, and it's expected to take years for most stores to be upgraded. What's at play? The big tech companies and carriers seem convinced that our phones will eventually replace our wallets. For carriers, that could make mobile wallet technology table stakes over the next few years as they compete for consumers.

The launch of Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001 vaulted Bungie to the top of the game development industry and helped provide a stable foundation for the success of the original Xbox. Nine years later, having completed a trilogy and a standalone expansion for the Halo universe, Bungie has returned to the IP one last time for a prequel called Halo: Reach. They clearly wanted to do right by the fans and the franchise with their final sendoff, and the effort they put into the game reflects that. Read on for the rest of my thoughts.

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A woman sued Yahoo because they wouldn't remove a page created by her ex-boyfriend pretending to be her and soliciting strangers for sex. What would be an effective system for large companies like Yahoo to handle 'impostor' complaints, without getting bogged down by phony complaints and unrelated disputes? This is a harder problem than it seems because of the several possible cases that have to be considered. One possible solution is given here." Read on for Bennett's analysis.

juuri sends in an NPR article about the consensus created among scientists that some birds actually dance to music. "The results of this study are reported in the journal Current Biology, along with another scientific paper inspired by YouTube videos of dancing animals. Adena Schachner is a graduate student in the psychology department of Harvard University. She says she was familiar with the idea that some people had made videos of birds supposedly dancing. ... She and her colleagues eventually analyzed more than 5,000 videos. 'Imagine watching YouTube eight hours a day for a month,' she says. 'That's pretty much what we did. It was amusing for perhaps the first couple of hours.'" juuri adds, "While this makes them somewhat unique in the animal world, as only three animals are now known to dance by verifiable proofs, what struck me more was that this was the first time YouTube had helped forge a new scientific understanding. Given the explosive growth of uploading videos and people watching them, what other new understandings and popular misconceptions will be proven or disproved due to this emerging media?"

Here are the answers to your questions for Major General William T. Lord, who runs the just-getting-off-the ground Air Force Cyber Command. Before you ask: yes, his answers were checked by both PR and security people. Also, please note that this interview is a "first," in that Generals don't typically take questions from random people on forums like Slashdot, and that it is being watched all the way up the chain of command into the Pentagon. Many big-wigs will read what you post here -- and a lot of them are interested in what you say and may even use your suggestions to help set future recruiting and operational policies. A special "thank you" goes to Maj. Gen. Lord for participating in this experiment, along with kudos to the (necessarily anonymous) people who helped us arrange this interview.

Thanks to a rather interesting string of e-mails (Thanks Evan!), today's feature writer is none other than David Brin. Brin's bio is after his piece, but suffice it to say he's one of the most interesting writers, IMHO, out there today. This piece, one of his essay's, deals with why George Marshall should be Man of the Century. (Another one of Brin's essays that many of you will remember is his work dealing with Star Wars, Episode One.)

As some of you might know, Jon Katz, one of our own has recently had his latest book published, Running to The Mountain. I've read an advance copy of the book, and was impressed (as I usually am) with Katz' take on life, spirituality, and what it means to be human. As he is obviously one of our own here, I won't even pretend to be able to give an objective review-I leave that to others-including the print version of USAToday, a rave review. For the reading benefit of the audience, I've included an excerpt from the new book below, along with the book cover. Read it-it's worth time. Update: 02/18 11:39 by H : The USA Today review is online.Update: 02/18 02:08 by H :Katz has written some words talking about this-look above the review to read it.