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Submission + - 'Tesla Is Not A Family Business': New York Official Blasts Musk's Pay Package (insideevs.com)

Submitted by theweatherelectric
theweatherelectric writes: The drama at Tesla appears to be unending. Following a disappointing first quarter of sales, mass layoffs, a major safety recall of the Cybertruck and concerns over the company's apparent pivot to robotaxis, another big flashpoint has been lingering for the Austin-headquartered company: CEO Elon Musk's $56 billion payday. In January, the Delaware Court of Chancery revoked a pay package for Musk originally approved in 2018. “The approval of Musk’s compensation plan was deeply flawed,” the post-trial opinion read. Tesla's board is now requesting investors to vote again in favor of Musk at the annual general meeting on June 13, along with several other proposals. The coalition opposing Musk's pay package includes the Comptroller of the City of New York, several NYC pension funds, and seven investment firms. New York City's Comptroller Brad Lander, an independently elected official who oversees the city's public pension funds and their investments in companies including Tesla, wrote an official letter urging his peers to vote against Musk's pay package.

Submission + - New Warp Drive Concept Does Twist Space, Doesn't Move Us Very Fast (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A team of physicists has discovered that it’s possible to build a real, actual, physical warp drive and not break any known rules of physics. One caveat: the vessel doing the warping can’t exceed the speed of light, so you’re not going to get anywhere interesting any time soon. But this research still represents an important advance in our understanding of gravity. [...] In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, [an international team of physicists led by Jared Fuchs at the University of Alabama in Huntsville] dug deep into relativity to explore if any version of a warp drive could work. The equations of general relativity are notoriously difficult to solve, especially in complex cases such as a warp drive. So the team turned to software algorithms; instead of trying to solve the equations by hand, they explored their solutions numerically and verified that they conformed to the energy conditions.

The team did not actually attempt to construct a propulsion device. Instead, they explored various solutions to general relativity that would allow travel from point to point without a vessel undergoing any acceleration or experiencing any overwhelming gravitational tidal forces within the vessel, much to the comfort of any imagined passengers. They then checked whether these solutions adhered to the energy conditions that prevent the use of exotic matter. The researchers did indeed discover a warp drive solution: a method of manipulating space so that travelers can move without accelerating. There is no such thing as a free lunch, however, and the physicality of this warp drive does come with a major caveat: the vessel and passengers can never travel faster than light. Also disappointing: the fact that the researchers behind the new work don’t seem to bother with figuring out what configurations of matter would allow the warping to happen.

Submission + - UK army rejects teen because of breast cancer gene risk (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'A 17-year-old has been rejected by the Army, despite passing all the selection tests, because two members of her family have had breast cancer.

'Carys Holmes, from Derbyshire, has a 50-50 chance of inheriting a gene fault from her mother but has not been tested for it yet.

'A lawyer says the Army’s actions could be discriminatory and a serious own goal.

'The Army said it was reviewing Carys’s case.'

The risk of discrimination based on genes has long been foreseen — now it's started to happen it, it seems.

Submission + - Crows Can 'Count' Out Loud, Study Shows (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A team of scientists has shown that crows can 'count' out loud – producing a specific and deliberate number of caws in response to visual and auditory cues. While other animals such as honeybees have shown an ability to understand numbers, this specific manifestation of numeric literacy has not yet been observed in any other non-human species. "Producing a specific number of vocalizations with purpose requires a sophisticated combination of numerical abilities and vocal control," writes the team of researchers led by neuroscientist Diana Liao of the University of Tübingen in Germany. "Whether this capacity exists in animals other than humans is yet unknown. We show that crows can flexibly produce variable numbers of one to four vocalizations in response to arbitrary cues associated with numerical values."

The ability to count aloud is distinct from understanding numbers. It requires not only that understanding, but purposeful vocal control with the aim of communication. Humans are known to use speech to count numbers and communicate quantities, an ability taught young. [...] "Our results demonstrate that crows can flexibly and deliberately produce an instructed number of vocalizations by using the 'approximate number system', a non-symbolic number estimation system shared by humans and animals," the researchers write in their paper. "This competency in crows also mirrors toddlers' enumeration skills before they learn to understand cardinal number words and may therefore constitute an evolutionary precursor of true counting where numbers are part of a combinatorial symbol system."

Submission + - SpaceX launches first satellites for new US spy constellation (yahoo.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: The spy network was revealed in a pair of Reuters reports earlier this year showing SpaceX is building hundreds of satellites for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, an intelligence agency, for a vast system in orbit capable of rapidly spotting ground targets almost anywhere in the world.

Submission + - Leaked Contract Shows Samsung Forces Repair Shop to Snitch on Customers (404media.co)

Submitted by samleecole
samleecole writes: In exchange for selling them repair parts, Samsung requires independent repair shops to give Samsung the name, contact information, phone identifier, and customer complaint details of everyone who gets their phone repaired at these shops, according to a contract obtained by 404 Media. Stunningly, it also requires these nominally independent shops to “immediately disassemble” any phones that customers have brought them that have been previously repaired with aftermarket or third-party parts and to “immediately notify” Samsung that the customer has used third-party parts.

"Company shall immediately disassemble all products that are created or assembled out of, comprised of, or that contain any Service Parts not purchased from Samsung,” a section of the agreement reads. “And shall immediately notify Samsung in writing of the details and circumstances of any unauthorized use or misappropriation of any Service Part for any purpose other than pursuant to this Agreement. Samsung may terminate this Agreement if these terms are violated."

The contract also requires the “daily” uploading of details of each and every repair that an independent company does into a Samsung database called G-SPN “at the time of each repair,” which includes the customer’s address, email address, phone number, details about what is wrong with their phone, their phone’s warranty status, details of the customer’s complaint, and the device’s IMEI number, which is a unique device identifier. 404 Media has verified the authenticity of the original contract and has recreated the version embedded at the bottom of this article to protect the source. No provisions have been changed.

The use of aftermarket parts in repair is relatively common. This provision requires independent repair shops to destroy the devices of their own customers, and then to snitch on them to Samsung.

Comment Re:How much blood... (Score 1) 47

Right now in Houston after canceling my amazon prime, if I order it for free (>$35) then it arrives in 6 days. It sits in the warehouse for 4 before they ship it. So they're using the same two day shipping, just sitting on the order for 4 days before shipping it.

An annoying an shady option is the non-prime shipping. During checkout I can get a one time 2 day shipping for $6.99, which is the default, not the free shipping I qualified for... and when changing the shipping to the free option, the checkout total shows they're giving me $8.50 worth of free shipping, not the earlier advertised price.

Comment Re:DisplayPort (Score 4, Informative) 114

by nugatory78 (#64278524) Attached to: HDMI Forum Rejects Open-Source HDMI 2.1 Driver Support Sought By AMD
I used to agree until I found Level One Tech. I use this, and I'm very happy switching my two DP monitors, and a USB hub with mic, speaker, camera, etc. Its supports both USB 3.0 and DisplayPort 1.4a and use it to switch between my work system and my gaming PC.

https://www.store.level1techs....

Comment Re:98 percent of its subscribers can get gig pro n (Score 1) 67

by nugatory78 (#64205706) Attached to: Comcast Reluctantly Agrees To Stop Its Misleading '10G Network' Claims
We've got Tachus in our neighborhood. $90/month for 1Gbps symmetrical fiber to the home. There is a $500 fee for running the fiber to the house, but its free if you stay for a min of 6 months (pay back prorated install cost if canceling early). Otherwise its a month to month deal, no contract, required modem is provided free of charge.

I'd like to switch, its half the price and more than twice the download speed, but they don't offer a business tier. I'm staying with Comcast Business, even though there is no SLA agreement, because call center wait times are much shorter, and you get much better techs on the line. I've only had one issue, and it was fixed within 30min. I can't risk the "regular isp" help line when my job requires consistent internet access.

Comment Re: The human brain does the same thing... (Score 1) 182

Actually, does it require new law? I've yet to find someone talking on this topic, referencing copyright in corporate training. I'm involved in creating new technical training material a few times a year. Even though this is only for internal educational, I can't just use anything from the internet as it automatically* has copyright, and we are not an "accredited learning institution".

I'm not a lawyer, but how is a company training a 'system' legally different from training an employee? both are to increase company profit. In each case (human training vs AI training) copyrighted work was required for training, which violates copyright law for training an employee, unless you get the copyright holders permission. At our company, there is a library of images, icons, audio, etc. that we can use for any corporate purpose, as we own rights to use them.

I am honestly asking: how can you use an image to legally train the AI, when you are violating copyright if you use the same image to train a human?

*yes I know I'm simplifying e.g. not everything gets an automatic copyright, but since an artists work does, I'm skipping details like this.

Comment Re: The human brain does the same thing... (Score 1) 182

"Anyway, when you put something online it becomes public domain, and thus fair game." No, it does not. Just because you post an image online or show it in a public space does not make it public domain.

"Most material found on the Internet is protected just like any other material (unless otherwise indicated). Text, charts, graphs, tables, photographs, music, movies, graphics, postings to news groups, blogs, e-mail messages, images, video clips, and computer software do not lose copyright protection simply because they are posted on the Internet." https://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/ac....

"When a photograph is in the public domain, it means that there is no copyright, and anyone may use, copy or distribute the photo for any purpose. There is nothing about posting photos online that inherently places them in the public domain." https://photocopyrightlaw.com/...

Comment Re:Idiocy (Score 2) 135

I don't see it as a negotiation ploy, just a regular business decision.

I've been involved as a subject matter expert with our R&D to determine the market potential of multiple products, platform support, upgrades, etc. If the estimate is that all of the work list requires 100k man hours, but the R&D team headcount and budget can only do 60k of man hours. You then have to prioritize what to do based upon existing customer support, road maps, technology releases, ROI, etc.

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