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Submission + - 9.7 Million Cubans Hit With a Nationwide Blackout (cnn.com)

Submitted by Charlotte Web
Charlotte Web writes: Cuba [population 9.7 million] suffered a nationwide blackout on Monday as it faces an ongoing energy crisis, worsened by an effective US blockade on fuel shipments.

Cuba’s energy ministry said the national electrical grid had suffered a total collapse. The country’s grid operator said it is investigating the cause.

Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said officials were working to restore energy and that they’ve already activated emergency “microsystems” that power vital services... The country’s power crisis worsened this year after the US forced Cuba’s main suppliers to stop oil shipments. In March, it had at least two total blackouts within a week.

Comment Re:Good for her! (Score 4, Insightful) 154

What if instead of that red light, Meta's smartglasses blared out "Alert! Alert! I am filming you!" every time you filmed someone... No one would want to film people, right?

And that's the point. It's understood everywhere that you can film people secretly, without their consent, using these glasses.

Secrecy is what changes the whole equation. Imagine a woman sitting next to a man on a subway. The man pulls a giant TV camera out from under his seat, and starts filming her. "Stop filming me," she says. "It's legal!" he replies. "Because it's a public place!"

The truth is, no one would try that TV camera stunt, because it's so clearly wrong. (Someone would call the train's security phone saying "There's some creep here filming women against their will...") But if you can film in secret with your Meta smartglasses...

Comment Re:Isn't it fair that public money (Score 4, Informative) 64

The public money was for nothing but security work - specifically tools for automatically checking new Python packages for malware.

What was irrelevant was the new-this-year requirement that even different work (not funded by any public money) would now also have to stop if (in the administration's view) it promoted inclusion.

Submission + - Some Angry GitHub Users are Rebelling Against GitHub's Forced Copilot Features (theregister.com)

Submitted by Charlotte Web
Charlotte Web writes: Among the software developers who use Microsoft's GitHub, the most popular community discussion in the past 12 months has been a request for a way to block Copilot, the company's AI service, from generating issues and pull requests in code repositories. The second most popular discussion – where popularity is measured in upvotes – is a bug report that seeks a fix for the inability of users to disable Copilot code reviews. Both of these questions, the first opened in May and the second opened a month ago, remain unanswered, despite an abundance of comments critical of generative AI and Copilot...

The author of the first, developer Andi McClure, published a similar request to Microsoft's Visual Studio Code repository in January, objecting to the reappearance of a Copilot icon in VS Code after she had uninstalled the Copilot extension... "I've been for a while now filing issues in the GitHub Community feedback area when Copilot intrudes on my GitHub usage," McClure told The Register in an email. "I deeply resent that on top of Copilot seemingly training itself on my GitHub-posted code in violation of my licenses, GitHub wants me to look at (effectively) ads for this project I will never touch. If something's bothering me, I don't see a reason to stay quiet about it. I think part of how we get pushed into things we collectively don't want is because we stay quiet about it."

It's not just the burden of responding to AI slop, an ongoing issue for Curl maintainer Daniel Stenberg. It's the permissionless copying and regurgitation of speculation as fact, mitigated only by small print disclaimers that generative AI may produce inaccurate results. It's also GitHub's disavowal of liability if Copilot code suggestions happen to have reproduced source code that requires attribution. It's what the Servo project characterizes in its ban on AI code contributions as the lack of code correctness guarantees, copyright issues, and ethical concerns. Similar objections have been used to justify AI code bans in GNOME's Loupe project, FreeBSD, Gentoo, NetBSD, and QEMU... Calls to shun Microsoft and GitHub go back a long way in the open source community, but moved beyond simmering dissatisfaction in 2022 when the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) urged free software supporters to give up GitHub, a position SFC policy fellow Bradley M. Kuhn recently reiterated.

Submission + - US Senate Finally Passes Its Massive Climate Bill

Submitted by Charlotte Web
Charlotte Web writes: At 3:02 p.m. EST, vice president Kamala Harris began presiding over the U.S. Senate. After a vote on the very last proposed amendment, the Senate heard these final remarks from Democrat Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer on what he called "the boldest climate package in US history."

"It's been a long, tough, and winding road. But at last — at last — we have arrived. I know it's been a long day and long night, but we've gotten it done...."

"It's a game changer. It's a turning point. And it's been a long time coming.

"To Americans who have lost faith that Congress can do big things, this bill is for you... And to the tens of millions of young Americans who spent years marching, rallying, demanding that Congress act on climate change, this bill is for you. The time has come to pass this historic bill."

One by one, Senators delivered their votes for the official tally, and at 3:18 PST Harris announced that "On this vote, the yeas are 50, the nays are 50." And with the vice president casting deciding votes in an equally-divided Senate, "the bill as amended is passed."

And the Senate broke into sponateous applause.

The bill now goes to the U.S. House of Representatives, which is expected to vote on it Friday.

Comment Epoch Times = lies (Score 1) 1

Epoch Times is far-right site, owned by the Falun Gong, that "spread conspiracy theories such as QAnon and anti-vaccine misinformation, and false claims of fraud in the 2020 United States presidential election," according to Wikipedia.

In 2020, The New York Times called it a "global-scale misinformation machine."

Submission + - Survey Finds Highest Developer Interest in Blockchain Apps, Cryptocurrencies, an (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Charlotte Web
Charlotte Web writes: A recent survey of 20,000 developers found a third (34%) were learning about cryptocurrencies, ZDNet reports — and 16% even said they were actively working on crypto-related projects. (And 11% said they were actively working on NFT technology, while 32% said they were learning more about NFTs.)

30% also said they were learning about blockchain technologies other than cryptocurrencies (with just 12% currently working on blockchain projects — just 1% higher than in a 2021 survey).

Citing the survey, ZDNet adds that "The next most popular technologies were the metaverse and AI-assisted software development: 28% of developers are learning about these technologies."

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