"Envy the lumberjacks, for they perform the happiest, most meaningful work on earth," the Washington Post wrote almost two years ago, after analyzing more than 13,000 journals from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' time-use survey. (For the first time the surveys asked how workers felt during the day.) And outdoor forestry jobs "look awesome by that metric, dangerous as they often are in the long run," the Post wrote in a recent follow-up. [Alternate URL.]

But is that really the right metric? "Readers kept reminding us that there's more to a fulfilling job than how happy you are while doing it." What about those wanting jobs where they're meaningfully impacting the world? We didn't have a stellar way to measure other feelings about work, but we kept our eye on an often-overlooked federal data provider: AmeriCorps. The independent agency, which CEO Michael D. Smith described to us as "bite-sized" but "punching well above our weight," funds the Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement, part of the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey... In 2021 and again in 2023, the researchers behind the CEV asked if you agree or disagree with these four statements:

- I am proud to be working for my employer.
- My main satisfaction in life comes from work.
- My workplace contributes to the community.
- I contribute to the community through my work....


The workers most likely to say they're proud to be working for their employer and that they gain satisfaction from work are — surprise! — the self-employed. The self-employed who are incorporated — a group that often includes small-business owners — are almost twice as likely as private-sector, for-profit workers to strongly profess pride in their employer.

Government and nonprofit workers fall somewhere in the middle on those questions. But they rank at the very top on "My workplace contributes to the community" and "I contribute to the community through my work." Local government workers, who include teachers, take the top spot for strong agreement on both, followed by nonprofit workers. Private-sector, for-profit workers once again lag behind. The jobs that do worse on these measures tend to be in manufacturing or other blue-collar production and extraction jobs, or at the lower-paid end of the service sector. Folks in food services (e.g., bartenders and food prep), janitorial roles and landscaping, and personal services (e.g., barbershops, laundry and hotels) all struggle to find greater meaning in their work. Though some better-paid service jobs also struggle by some measures — think sales, engineering or software development.

On the questions regarding pride in your employer and life satisfaction, we see managers and our old friends in agriculture and forestry take the top spots. But right behind them — and actually in the lead in the other question — lurks the real standout, a set of jobs we'd classify as "care and social services." That includes, most notably, religious workers. Looking a bit deeper at about 100 occupations for which we have detailed data, we see clergy were most likely to strongly agree on every question.
Other observations from the article:

• "As a rule, you feel better about your job as you get older. Presumably, it's some mix of people who love their work delaying retirement, people job-hopping until they find meaningful employment, and people learning to love whatever hand they've been dealt."

• "Most measures of satisfaction also rise with education, often quite sharply. Someone with a graduate degree is twice as likely as a high school dropout to strongly agree their workplace contributes to the community."

• But... "More-educated folks are actually a bit less likely to strongly agree that work is their main satisfaction in life."

Slashdot covered shrinkwrap licenses on software back in 2000 and 2002. But now ewhac (Slashdot reader #5,844) writes: The user Wraithe on the Mastodon network is reporting that a bottle of Vital Proteins(TM) collagen peptides purchased at Costco came with a shrinkwrap contract. Collagen peptides are often used as an anti-aging nutritional supplement. The top of the Vital Proteins bottle has a pull-to-open seal. Printed on the seal is the following: "Read This: By opening and using this product, you agree to be bound by our Terms and Conditions, fully set forth at vitalproteins.com/tc, which includes a mandatory arbitration agreement. If you do not agree to be bound, please return this product immediately."

So-called "shrinkwrap contracts" have been the subject of controversy and derision for decades since their first widespread appearance in the 1970's, attempting to alter the terms of sale after the fact, impose unethical and onerous restrictions on the purchaser, and absolving the vendor of all liability. Most such contracts appear on items involving copyrighted works (computer software, or any item containing computer software). The alleged "validity" of such contracts supposedly proceeds from the (alleged) need that the item requires a copyright license from the vendor to use (because the right to use/read/listen/view/execute is somehow not concomitant with purchase), and that the shrinkwrap contract furnishes such license.

The application of such a contract to a good where copyright has no scope, however, is something new. The alleged contract itself governs consumers' use of, "the VitalProteins.com website and any other applications, content, products, and services (collectively, the "Service")...," contains the usual we're-not-responsible-for-anything indemnification paragraph, and unilaterally removes your right to seek redress in court of law and imposes binding arbitration involving any disputes that may arise between the consumer and the company. Indeed, the arbitration clause is the first numbered section in the alleged contract.
The same contract has been spotted by numerous others — including someone who posted about it on Reddit two years ago. ("When I opened it, encountered a vacuum seal with the following 'READ THIS: by opening and using this product, you agree to...'") But the same verbiage still appears in online listings today for the product from Albertsons, Walgreens, and CVS.

Shrinkwrap contracts. They're not just for software any more...

More workers feeling anxious, stressed or blue have a new place to go for mental-health help: a digital app. Chatbots that hold therapist-like conversations and wellness apps that deliver depression and other diagnoses or identify people at risk of self-harm are snowballing across employers' healthcare benefits. From a report: "The demand for counselors is huge, but the supply of mental-health providers is shrinking," said J. Marshall Dye, chief executive officer of PayrollPlans, a Dallas-based provider of benefits software used by small and medium-size businesses, which began providing access to a chatbot called Woebot in November. PayrollPlans expects about 9,400 employers will use Woebot in 2024. Amazon about a year ago gave employees free access to Twill, an app that uses artificial intelligence to track the moods of users and create a personalized mental-health plan. The app offers games and other activities that the workers can play, as well as live chats with a human "coach."

The app "allows you to address mental health concerns the moment they arise and can be used as a supplement to your daily well-being routine," the company said in a blog post. Amazon declined to comment. About a third of U.S. employers offer a "digital therapeutic" for mental-health support, according to a survey of 457 companies this past summer by professional services company WTW. An additional 15% of the companies were considering adding such an offering in 2024 or 2025. Supporters say the mental-health apps alleviate symptoms such as anxiety, loneliness and depression. Because they are available at any time, the apps can also reach people who might not be able to fit traditional therapy into their schedules or can't find a therapist who has an opening. Yet some researchers say there isn't sufficient evidence the programs work, and the varied security and safety practices create a risk that private information could be leaked or sold.

An algorithm that takes just seconds to scan a paper for duplicated images racks up more suspicious images than a person. Nature: Scientific-image sleuth Sholto David blogs about image manipulation in research papers, a pastime that has exposed him to many accounts of scientific fraud. But other scientists "are still a little bit in the dark about the extent of the problem," David says. He decided he needed some data. The independent biologist in Pontypridd, UK, spent the best part of several months poring over hundreds of papers in one journal, looking for any with duplicated images. Then he ran the same papers through an artificial-intelligence (AI) tool. Working at two to three times David's speed, the software found almost all of the 63 suspect papers that he had identified -- and 41 that he'd missed. David described the exercise last month in a preprint, one of the first published comparisons of human versus machine for finding doctored images.

The findings come as academic publishers reckon with the problem of image manipulation in scientific papers. In a 2016 study, renowned image-forensics specialist Elisabeth Bik, based in San Francisco, California, and her colleagues reported that almost 4% of papers she had visually scanned in 40 biomedical-science journals contained inappropriately duplicated images. Not all image manipulation is done with nefarious intent. Authors might tinker with images by accident, for aesthetic reasons or to make a figure more understandable. But journals and others would like to catch images with alterations that cross the line, whatever the authors' motivation. And now they are turning to AI for help.

Some 200 universities, publishers and scientific societies already rely on Imagetwin, the tool that David used for his study. The software compares images in a paper with more than 25 million images from other publications -- the largest such database in the image-integrity world, according to Imagetwin's developers. Bik has been using Imagetwin regularly to supplement her own skills and calls it her "standard tool," although she emphasizes that the AI has weaknesses as well as strengths -- for instance, it can miss duplications in images with low contrast.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York Times: It is powered into flight by a rocket engine. It can fly a distance equal to the width of China. It has a stealthy design and is capable of carrying missiles that can hit enemy targets far beyond its visual range. But what really distinguishes the Air Force's pilotless XQ-58A Valkyrie experimental aircraft is that it is run by artificial intelligence, putting it at the forefront of efforts by the U.S. military to harness the capacities of an emerging technology whose vast potential benefits are tempered by deep concerns about how much autonomy to grant to a lethal weapon.

Essentially a next-generation drone, the Valkyrie is a prototype for what the Air Force hopes can become a potent supplement to its fleet of traditional fighter jets, giving human pilots a swarm of highly capable robot wingmen to deploy in battle. Its mission is to marry artificial intelligence and its sensors to identify and evaluate enemy threats and then, after getting human sign-off, to move in for the kill... The emergence of artificial intelligence is helping to spawn a new generation of Pentagon contractors who are seeking to undercut, or at least disrupt, the longstanding primacy of the handful of giant firms who supply the armed forces with planes, missiles, tanks and ships. The possibility of building fleets of smart but relatively inexpensive weapons that could be deployed in large numbers is allowing Pentagon officials to think in new ways about taking on enemy forces.

It also is forcing them to confront questions about what role humans should play in conflicts waged with software that is written to kill...
The article adds that the U.S. Air Force plans to build 1,000 to 2,000 AI drones for as little as $3 million apiece. "Some will focus on surveillance or resupply missions, others will fly in attack swarms and still others will serve as a 'loyal wingman' to a human pilot....

"A recently revised Pentagon policy on the use of artificial intelligence in weapons systems allows for the autonomous use of lethal force — but any particular plan to build or deploy such a weapon must first be reviewed and approved by a special military panel."

"Pagliacci Pizza is partnering with drone company Zipline to begin drone delivery to customers in the Seattle area," reports the Seattle Times, citing a statement this week from Zipline.

"If all goes well, the company expects to deliver pizzas in 2024," reports local news outlet KUOW, noting that Zipline has battery-powered drones that hover above a customer's location "and lowers the delivery on a tethered droid." "Obviously, it seems pretty sci-fi and a lot of customers think this is totally insane when they first hear about it," said Keller Cliffton, cofounder and CEO of Zipline, a delivery drone company. "But what has really struck us is that there are about seven days of sci-fi magical amazement, and then on day eight people are basically bored of it — bored of it in the way that there's no way they're ever going back to the old way of receiving things... Anybody can pull out a phone, press a button on that phone, and place an order that can then be delivered autonomously to the home in a way that is 10 times as fast, half the cost, and fully zero emission compared to the way we do instant delivery today."

Scenes of hot pizzas lowering out the sky onto Seattle porches are contingent on Zipline receiving approval from the FAA for an operations and safety plan. That plan is in the works but not yet submitted to the agency. The FAA may impose restrictions tailored to Seattle's busy airspace such as on flight altitudes, hours of operation and places to avoid...

The plans don't end with pizzas. Last year, Zipline announced a separate effort to deliver medical products and lab samples for the MultiCare Health System around Tacoma... As with the pizza proposal, the earliest estimates for medical deliveries around Tacoma are sometime in 2024. Zipline has also made delivery deals with supplement retailer GNC in Salt Lake City, and with Associated Couriers in Long Island, New York to deliver medications... [Zipline] has already been delivering some products for Walmart to customers in the Bentonville, Arkansas area and prescription drugs for some health care providers in parts of North Carolina and Utah. But the Washington state plans would involve newer types of drones, which the company calls Platform 2 Zips.
Pagliacci Pizza's co-owner told the news outlet that the drones "will enable us to scale our deliveries sustainably with up to 97% fewer emissions than cars." They told CNET drones would deliver pizzas "while they're still hot," and told the Seattle Times that drone deliveries will make it possible to deliver pizzas to further away or difficult-to-reach locations. ("The Zipline drones can deliver goods to customers in a 10-mile service radius," according to the newspaper, with drones flying more than 300 feet above the ground while remaining 'nearly silent, designed to sound like rustling leaves in the wind,' according to Zipline.)

Local news station KIRO notes that Zipline's current system uses larger drones and small parachutes "for Walmart and other customers around the world." And Pagliacci Pizza told them that since there's no driver, tips offered during drone delivery would go to the kitchen staff.

Wednesday Zipline also announced a deal with wellness brand GNC, according to CNET, which "will begin with customers in Salt Lake City, with other cities to follow... Zipline is also announcing a partnership with Associated Couriers to begin delivering prescription medications to patients at long-term care facilities in Long Island, New York. Associated Couriers plans to expand the service across the US and then internationally. The delivery company has already completed more than 600,000 deliveries to customers since 2016 using its previous iteration of drones....

Zipline is far from being the only company experimenting with drone delivery — Walmart, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon and startups like Flyby Robotics and Manna have also run trials and performed delivery services.

Jeffrey M. Perkel, writing for Nature: Perched atop the Cerro Pachon ridge in the Chilean Andes is a building site that will eventually become the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). When it comes online in 2022, the telescope will generate terabytes of data each night as it surveys the southern skies automatically. And to crunch those data, astronomers will use a familiar and increasingly popular tool: the Jupyter notebook. Jupyter is a free, open-source, interactive web tool known as a computational notebook, which researchers can use to combine software code, computational output, explanatory text and multimedia resources in a single document. Computational notebooks have been around for decades, but Jupyter in particular has exploded in popularity over the past couple of years. This rapid uptake has been aided by an enthusiastic community of user-developers and a redesigned architecture that allows the notebook to speak dozens of programming languages -- a fact reflected in its name, which was inspired, according to co-founder Fernando Perez, by the programming languages Julia (Ju), Python (Py) and R.

[...] For data scientists, Jupyter has emerged as a de facto standard, says Lorena Barba, a mechanical and aeronautical engineer at George Washington University in Washington DC. Mario Juric, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle who coordinates the LSST's data-management team, says: "I've never seen any migration this fast. It's just amazing." Computational notebooks are essentially laboratory notebooks for scientific computing. Instead of pasting, say, DNA gels alongside lab protocols, researchers embed code, data and text to document their computational methods. The result, says Jupyter co-creator Brian Granger at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, is a "computational narrative" -- a document that allows researchers to supplement their code and data with analysis, hypotheses and conjecture. For data scientists, that format can drive exploration.

The Finnish Broadcasting Corporation reports: Simo Karppinen, Unit Head at the Finnish Transport and Safety Agency Trafi, says it plans to roll out an app that will function as a free digital driving license by the end of summer. The agency said it expects many Finns to take up the use of the digital driving license as soon as it is released. The digital license has been in use by a test group who report successfully using the app where proof of identity is required, such as picking up postal packages. Other uses for the digital license include informing the owner of license renewal dates... The digital driving license will not record the location of its user or serve as a tracking device.
Slashdot reader Kiuas writes that it's being used as a supplement for traditional card licenses rather than a replacement, because "Current Finnish law mandates that all driver's licenses are handed out in a physical form. So everyone will still get a physical driver's license, but those who wish to do so can now leave their card at home and use the app instead.

Walmart is expanding a shelf-scanning robot trial to 50 additional stores, including some in its home state of Arkansas. "Machines from Bossa Nova Robotics will roam the aisles to check for stock levels, pricing and misplaced items, saving human staffers the hassle of checking everything themselves," reports Engadget. The robots will be fully autonomous, though technicians will be available in case things go awry. They employ 3D imaging to dodge obstacles and make notes to return later if their path is completely blocked. From the report: Walmart stresses that the robots are there to supplement humans, not replace them -- to eliminate drudgery and the expenses that go with it. This helps workers get to the task of filling empty shelves, and that's a job that the company doesn't see ending any time soon given the difficulty robots still have when grabbing objects. "Store associates will always be better at that," Walmart's Martin Hitch told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. And the chief of Bossa Nova rival Simbe Robotics, Brad Bogolea, added that shelf checks can cost a major retailer hundreds of millions of dollars per year. However expensive the robots may be, they could pay for themselves very quickly. Whether or not the robots see wider use will, unsurprisingly, hinge on the success of this wider trial. Walmart posted a video about the shelf-scanning robots on its YouTube page.

Since it passed a new policy against fake news, Google has banned 200 publishers from its AdSense network, an ad placement service that automatically serves text and display ads on participating sites based on its audience. "The ban was part of an update to an existing policy that prohibits sites that mislead users with their content," reports Recode. From the report: Not all 200 publishers were swept up as part of the effort to root out fake news sites. Publishers were banned in November and December and included sites that impersonate real news organizations through shortened top-level domains, according to Google's 2016 "bad ads" report, normally released at the beginning of each year. So-called fake news publishers will sometimes take advantage of ".co" domains by appearing similar to legitimate news sites that would normally end in ".com." Google declined to provide a listing of the banned sites. Separately, the annual report on violations of advertising policy also included data on ads removed by Google. The company reported that in 2016 it took down 1.7 billion ads for violations, compared to 780 million in 2015. Google attributes the increase in ad removals to a combination of advertiser behavior and improvements in technology to detect offending ads. Also among those the removed ads were what Google calls "tabloid cloakers." These advertisers run what look like links to news headlines, but when the user clicks, an ad for a product such as a weight loss supplement pops up. Google suspended 1,300 accounts engaged in tabloid cloaking in 2016.

You asked, he answered! The creator of Apple's Swift programming language (and a self-described "long-time reader/fan of Slashdot") stopped by on his way to a new job at Tesla just to field questions from Slashdot readers. Read on for Chris's answers...

Press2ToContinue writes: Forging a bold step in the right direction, Stack Overflow announced today that they don't care if you use an ad blocker when you visit their site. "The truth is: we don't care if our users use ad blockers on Stack Overflow. More accurately: we hope that they won't, but we understand that some people just don't like ads. Our belief is that if someone doesn't like them, and they won't click on them, any impressions served to them will only annoy them-- plus, serving ads to people who won't click on them harms campaign performance. ... Publishers can't win by forcing ads — especially low-quality ads — in people's faces. Think scantily-clad women selling flight deals, weight-loss supplement promos or wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube-men promoting car dealerships." It's possible that this declaration by SO might help to clarify to advertisers that it is the overabundance of low quality ads that practically force the public to seek out ad blockers. But seriously, what is the likelihood of that?

Toe, The writes "The New York Police Department has quietly installed about 200 temporary surveillance cameras in midtown Manhattan to help spot trouble along 'Super Bowl Boulevard,' a 13-block street fair on Broadway that's expected to draw large crowds during the windup to the game. The temporary cameras for the Super Bowl festivities will supplement a system of thousands of permanent cameras covering midtown and Wall Street that the NYPD monitors from a command center in lower Manhattan. The department has pioneered analytical software that allows it to program the cameras to detect suspicious activity, such as a bag or other objects left in one place for a long time. Hazmat and bomb squads will be on standby. Others officers will patrol with bomb-sniffing dogs. Still more will watch from rooftops and from police helicopters. At a recent security briefing at the stadium, police chiefs and other officials said success will be measured in part by how well authorities conceal all the concern over potential threats." Now it's a proven tradition: Superbowl crowds are a good place to test people-watching gear.

chicksdaddy writes "To paraphrase a quote attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald: 'Rich countries aren't like everyone else. They have less malware.' That's the conclusion of a special Security Intelligence Report from Microsoft, anyway. The special supplement, released on Wednesday, investigated the links between rates of computer infections and a range of national characteristics including the relative wealth of a nation, observance of the rule of law and the rate of software piracy. The conclusion: cyber security (by Microsoft's definition: low rates of malware infection) correlated positively with many characteristics of wealthy nations – high Gross Income Per Capita, higher broadband penetration and investment in R&D and high rates of literacy. It correlated negatively with characteristics common in poorer nations – like demographic instability, political instability and lower levels of education.'"

Muad writes "Maik Schmidt is our guide in the Pragmatic Bookshelf's venture into the world of electronics. This is a compact work, like all others in the series, it goes straight to applicable examples and makes you get your hands dirty with real work. The Arduino platform has been described in many ways, but the best I have heard so far insightfully labels it 'The 555 of the future,' referring to the ubiquitous timer chip so many simple electronic projects make use of. If you haven't been hiding under a rock for the past few years, you have doubtlessly seen the plethora of material on the subject that's out there: even O'Reilly, which usually does not ship multiple titles on a single subject, has a variety of them. Most of these works are rather similar, the ones I prefer are Massimo Banzi's Getting Started with Arduino (O'Reilly, 2008), by one of the original developers of the platform, and the strongly related Getting started with Processing by Casey Reas and Ben Fry. These are brief books in the 100-page range, not exhaustive works, but covering the core philosophy and basic operation of the tools is sometimes the best way to jump into a new subject. Read below the rest of Federico's review

snydeq writes "Google has launched the Google Apps Marketplace, providing a venue for third-party, cloud-based applications to supplement Google's own online applications. The program enables integrations with such applications as Google Gmail, Documents, Sites, and Calendar. All told, the effort begins with 50 vendors participating, including Atlassian, NetSuite, Skytap, and Zoho. Participation in Google Apps Marketplace is open to customers of the Premier, Standard, and Education editions of Google Apps. Applications are linked to the marketplace via REST Web services and APIs including OpenID and OAuth."

Last week we asked for interview questions to help supplement our face-to-face interviews at Blizzcon. Over the course of the two-day con we were able to sit down with StarCraft II's Dustin Browder, Diablo III's Leonard Boyarsky, WoW's J. Allen Brack, and Battle.net expert Rob Pardo to answer a few questions on each of the four major camps in Blizzard at the moment. Since this wasn't a usual Slashdot-style interview, we tried to use as many of your suggestions as possible, but the conversation often took us in a unique direction once it got rolling.

Ben Rothke writes "The goal of security metrics is to replace fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) with a more formalized and meaningful system of measurement. The FUD factor is the very foundation upon which much of information security is built, and the outcome is decades of meaningless statistics and racks of snake oil products. Let's hope that Andrew Jaquith succeeds, but in doing so, he is getting in the way of many security hardware and software vendors whose revenue streams are built on FUD." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.

Stan Schroeder writes "Waiting for GoogleOS? Why not try some of the WebOS applications that are already available? Believe it or not, there's already over 15 of them, and here you can find a review of the 10 most promising WebOSes. Most of them might not make you want to ditch your desktop OS just yet, but some are very good and can be used on a day-to-day basis. Highlights include DesktopTwo, Goowy, YouOS, EyeOS and Glide. You can find the whole bunch here." Note: for the purposes of this article, "WebOS" is defined as "a set of applications running in a web browser that together mimic, replace or largely supplement a desktop OS environment."

MattSparkes writes "Researchers claim to have produced software that automatically generates timely video news bulletins, presented by computer-animated characters, which could revolutionise current affairs broadcasting. The system, called News at Seven, takes RSS news feeds and does some formatting before passing it to an avatar from Half-Life 2 to read out. Based on keywords, the system also draws in video from YouTube and images from Flickr to supplement the speech."