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Submission + - Dutch authorities arrest OSS developer (cryptotimes.io)

Submitted by Dinosaurus
Dinosaurus writes: On August 10 the Dutch authorities arrested Alexey Pertsev, an open source software developer, suspected of working with Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixing service that only two days earlier was sanctioned by the US government for allegedly laundering money: https://www.theregister.com/20...
The arrest happened two days after Tornado Cash was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department. In reaction to the sanction, EFF wrote: "EFF is deeply concerned that the U.S. Treasury Department has included an open source computer project, Tornado Cash, on its list of sanctioned individuals. Tornado Cash is an open source software project and website that published a decentralized cryptocurrency mixer."
Tornado Cash's repository on GitHub is inaccessible.

Submission + - SPAM: Newly Discovered Molecule Fights Off Over 300 Kinds of Drug-Resistant Bacteria

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: “The molecule is called fabimycin, and further down the line it could be used to fight off some of the most stubborn infections that humans can get. The new potential treatment targets gram-negative bacteria, a group of hard-to-kill pathogens that are commonly behind infections of the urinary tract, lungs, and even the bloodstream.”
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Do Webb scope images suggest big bang theory is false? (iai.tv)

Submitted by Tablizer
Tablizer writes: To everyone who sees them, the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images of the cosmos are beautifully awe-inspiring. But to most professional astronomers and cosmologists, they are also extremely surprising—not at all what was predicted by theory. In the flood of technical astronomical papers published online since July 12, the authors report again and again that the images show surprisingly many galaxies, galaxies that are surprisingly smooth, surprisingly small and surprisingly old. Lots of surprises, and not necessarily pleasant ones. One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: “Panic!”

Submission + - 'Disturbing': Experts troubled by Canada's euthanasia laws (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After assisted suicide was legalized in Canada, many severely ill patients have found themselves effectively forced into "voluntary" euthanasia by healthcare costs, or even hospitals just refusing to treat them.

Euthanasia is now the sixth leading cause of death in Canada.

Submission + - Google Searches For "Firewood" In Germany Have Exploded (zerohedge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One month ago, we reported much to the shock of our European readers that in its assessment and preview of Germanys staggering energy crisis brought on by Russian sanctions, Deutsche Bank predicted that "wood will be used for heating purposes where possible."

You read that right: the largest European bank predicted that a growing number of German households will be using firewood for heating! Maybe allowing a petulant Scandinavian teenager to set the countrys energy policy was not the brightest idea after all.

So fast forwarding to today, when we find that European energy forward prices one year from today are now at staggering, record levels, implying one would need to part with at least an extra kidney to keep warm in the next year...

... it is no surprise that Deutsche Banks morbid forecast is gradually coming true and as Bloombergs Javier Blas shows in his "chart of the day", that google searches for fireword ("Brennholz") have exploded in the past couple of months now that electricity is no longer a staple, but a luxury few can afford.

Submission + - Flourish Brings Genius-Like Text Annotation Feature to Data Storytelling

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Flourish has added a new Text Annotator feature to its platform for data visualization and storytelling, allowing (premium) Flourish users to add definitions, explanations and notes to text. If you're familiar with how Genius works with song lyrics and other material, you've got the general idea. Indeed, Flourish's annotated take on Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech looks similar to a Genius user's annotated take on the same 1963 MLK speech, albeit without Genius's crowdsourced explanation capabilities (or ads).

So, what would you think about the use of similar text annotation features in other places, such as news sites, e-commerce sites, and — dare I even suggest this in jest — Slashdot?

Submission + - What takes years and costs $20K? A San Francisco trash can (apnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: That costly, boxy bin is among six trash cans hitting San Francisco’s streets this summer in the city’s long saga in search of the perfect can. Overflowing trash cans are a common sight in the Northern California city, along with piles of used clothes, shoes, furniture and other items strewn about on sometimes-impassable sidewalks.

City officials hired a Bay Area industrial firm to custom-design the pricey trash can along with two other prototypes that cost taxpayers $19,000 and $11,000 each. This summer, residents have the opportunity to evaluate them along with three off-the-shelf options added to the pilot program after officials faced criticism.

Submission + - Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Confirmed: California Team Achieved Ignition (newsweek.com)

Submitted by hesdeadjim99
hesdeadjim99 writes: A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been confirmed a year after it was achieved at a laboratory in California.
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL's) National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers now. LLNL's paper.

Submission + - Some of UK's NHS patient notes not available for weeks due to cyber attack (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: A cyber attack on a major supplier of IT systems to the NHS may leave hospitals without access to patients records for more than three weeks, according to an email to hospital staff.

'Oxford Health Foundation Trust, has declared a critical incident over the outage and has told staff the patient notes system may be down for longer than three weeks.

'In an email to staff, Oxford Health Foundation Trust said: “The cyber-attack targeted systems used to refer patients for care, including ambulances being dispatched, out-of-hours appointment bookings, triage, out of hours care, emergency prescriptions and safety alerts. It also targeted the finance system used by the Trust.'

The question I have is why it should take so long to restore the system from backups; 'weeks' is an unreasonable period. Anyone any thoughts?

Submission + - Linux Distro For Apple Silicon Macs Is Already Up and Running On M2 Chip (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Unlike Intel Macs, Apple silicon Macs were designed to run only Apple's software. But the developers on the Asahi Linux team have been working to change that, painstakingly reverse-engineering support for Apple's processors and other Mac hardware and releasing it as a work-in-progress distro that can actually boot up and run on bare metal, no virtualization required. The Asahi Linux team put out a new release today with plenty of additions and improvements. Most notably, the distro now supports the M1 Ultra and the Mac Studio and has added preliminary support for the M2 MacBook Pro (which has been tested firsthand by the team) and the M2 MacBook Air (which hasn't been tested but ought to work). Preliminary Bluetooth support for all Apple silicon Macs has also been added, though the team notes that it works poorly when connected to a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network because "Wi-Fi/Bluetooth coexistence isn't properly configured yet."

There are still many other things that aren't working properly, including the USB-A ports on the Studio, faster-than-USB-2.0 speeds from any Type-C/Thunderbolt ports, and GPU acceleration, but progress is being made on all of those fronts. GPU work in particular is coming along, with a "prototype driver" that is "good enough to run real graphics applications and benchmarks" already up and running, though it's not included in this release. The Asahi team has said in the past that it expects support for new chips to be relatively easy to add to Asahi since Apple's chip designers frequently reuse things and don't make extensive hardware changes unless there's a good reason for it. Adding basic support for the M2 to Asahi happened over the course of a single 12-hour development session, and just "a few days" of additional effort were needed to get the rest of the hardware working as well as it does with M1-based Macs.

Submission + - Github survey finds that the more you use Copilot the more you will love it. (infoworld.com)

Submitted by mm4902
mm4902 writes: For the statistics nerds: Github compared self-reported feelings of "Being more productive" against rates of code completion using Github Copilot, equivalent to Visual Studio AI-assisted Intellisense.

A GitHub study has found that the developers who report the greatest productivity gains from using GitHub Copilot, the company’s AI-based programming assistant, were those who accepted the most Copilot code suggestions. The study combined a survey of users’ perceived productivity with analysis of their Copilot usage. GitHub on July 14 said it had surveyed more than 2,000 developers who have been using Copilot, which suggests lines of code using an AI model that has been trained on billions of lines of open source code. Copilot users who reported “huge” productivity gains were those who had found nearly 30% of Copilot’s suggestions acceptable. At the other end of the spectrum, users who reported “modest” productivity gains had found only about 23% of Copilot’s suggestions acceptable. Users reporting “medium” and “high” productivity gains had accepted roughly 27% and 28% of Copilot’s suggestions, respectively.

Submission + - Brain-Computer Interface Startup Implants First Device in US Patient (yahoo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Synchron, a brain-computer interface startup, reportedly implanted its first device in a US patient earlier this month. The startup implanted a 1.5-inch device into the brain of an ALS patient at Mount Sinai West medical center in New York on July 6, Bloomberg first reported. The purpose of the device is to allow the patient to communicate — even after they have lost the ability to move — by using their thoughts to send emails and texts. Bloomberg reported that Synchron has already implanted the device in four patients in Australia who have been able to use the brain implant to send messages on WhatsApp and shop online.

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