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Comment Drama (Score 4, Interesting) 10

by Grady Martin (#65816219) Attached to: Pebble Goes Fully Open Source

This piqued my interest, so I looked into it.

In summary, there seems to be a bit of drama regarding governance of this project. The dust has yet to settle, and the person currently attempting to position himself as BDFL is the same person who previously sold off the company for $23 million. Meanwhile, the community version that emerged from those ashes nickel-and-dimes for things like weather reports and “a warm fuzzy feeling”?

I think I'll wait and see.

Submission + - Could satellite-beaming planes and airships make SpaceX's Starlink obsolete? (space.com)

Submitted by ZipNada
ZipNada writes: A new generation of stratospheric balloons and high-altitude uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) could soon connect the world's unconnected with high-speed internet at a fraction of the prices commanded by operators of satellite megaconstellations such as SpaceX's Starlink.

High-altitude platform stations, or HAPS, have been around for a while, but the technology hasn't fully taken off yet. Google spent 10 years trying to develop balloons that would hover in the stratosphere above remote rural areas and beam internet to residents but abandoned that project, called Loon, in 2021, concluding that it couldn't be made sustainable.

Four years later, companies such as World Mobile Stratospheric and Sceye say they are on the verge of making internet-beaming from the stratosphere, the layer of Earth's atmosphere roughly 6 miles to 31 miles (10 to 50 kilometers) above the planet, a reality. Moreover, they claim that their offerings will be better and cheaper than that of satellite megaconstellations in low Earth orbit (LEO), which too have been developed with the promise of connecting the world's unconnected.

Submission + - An ancient planet smashed into Earth. We now know its origin (dw.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Space scientists are largely agreed that about 4.5 billion years ago, Earth, then a hot ball of molten iron and other elements, was hit by another Mars-sized protoplanet. This hypothetical world is called Theia, named for a titaness of Greek mythology.

Theia was completely destroyed by this impact, but likely lives on beneath our feet, as fragments from this doomed world fused with the early Earth.

Comment Re:...but Trump Says (Score 3, Interesting) 70

by Grady Martin (#65712048) Attached to: Renewables Overtake Coal As World's Biggest Source of Electricity

One thing that ChatGPT does well is fact-checking.

Could someone living in Pennsylvania theoretically reduce property taxes by 15% by "upgrading" an oil furnace to a coal one?

That’s a really interesting and creative idea — but no, someone living in Pennsylvania could not reduce their property taxes by 15% by switching from oil to coal heating.

It then delves into minutae of Pennsylvanian tax law, a furnace's impact on assessed property value, and how not even coal refuse (as opposed to ordinary coal) could affect property tax.

Perhaps your grandmother miscommunicated or was even deceived or misled. Are you able to provide any more details?

Submission + - China Is Sending Its World-Beating Auto Industry Into a Tailspin (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On the outskirts of this city of 21 million, a showroom in a shopping mall offers extraordinary deals on new cars. Visitors can choose from some 5,000 vehicles. Locally made Audis are 50% off. A seven-seater SUV from China’s FAW is about $22,300, more than 60% below its sticker price. These deals – offered by a company called Zcar, which says it buys in bulk from automakers and dealerships – are only possible because China has too many cars. Years of subsidies and other government policies have aimed to make China a global automotive power and the world’s electric-vehicle leader. Domestic automakers have achieved those goals and more – and that’s the problem.

China has more domestic brands making more cars than the world’s biggest car market can absorb because the industry is striving to hit production targets influenced by government policy, instead of consumer demand, a Reuters examination has found. That makes turning a profit nearly impossible for almost all automakers here, industry executives say. Chinese electric vehicles start at less than $10,000; in the U.S., automakers offer just a few under $35,000. Most Chinese dealers can’t make money, either, according to an industry survey published last month, because their lots are jammed with excess inventory. Dealers have responded by slashing prices. Some retailers register and insure unsold cars in bulk, a maneuver that allows automakers to record them as sold while helping dealers to qualify for factory rebates and bonuses from manufacturers.

Unwanted vehicles get dumped onto gray-market traders like Zcar. Some surface on TikTok-style social-media sites in fire sales. Others are rebranded as "used" – even though their odometers show no mileage – and shipped overseas. Some wind up abandoned in weedy car graveyards. These unusual practices are symptoms of a vastly oversupplied market – and point to a potential shakeout mirroring turmoil in China’s property market and solar industry, according to many industry figures and analysts. They stem from government policies that prioritize boosting sales and market share – in service of larger goals for employment and economic growth – over profitability and sustainable competition. Local governments offer cheap land and subsidies to automakers in exchange for production and tax-revenue commitments, multiplying overcapacity across the country.

Submission + - Shared genetic mechanisms underpin social life in bees and humans, study suggest (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: In social species, there is individual variation in sociability—some individuals are highly social and well-connected within their society, whereas others prefer less social interaction. This variation can be driven by many factors, including mood, social status, previous experience, and genetics. However, the genetic and molecular mechanisms that influence sociability are poorly understood.

Sociability is a complex characteristic, controlled by many genes, but these shared genomic features suggest there are ancient molecular building blocks of social life that have been conserved through millions of years of evolution, even if humans and bees evolved social life independently, the authors say.

The authors add, "It is a central feature of all societies that group members often engage with one another, but vary in their tendency to do so. Combining automated monitoring of social interactions, DNA sequencing, and brain transcriptomics in honey bee colonies, we identified evolutionarily conserved molecular roots of sociability shared across phylogenetically distinct species, including humans."

Submission + - Color-changing organogel stretches 46 times its size and self-heals (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Scientists from Taiwan have developed a new material that can stretch up to 4,600% of its original length before breaking. Even if it does break, gently pressing the pieces together at room temperature allows it to heal, fully restoring its shape and stretchability within 10 minutes.

Comment Second Only to Arch (Score 2, Interesting) 9

by Grady Martin (#65664450) Attached to: Fedora Linux 43 Beta Released

I have used Fedora on my work machine for three years, having chosen it because my organization deploys our web application to dnf/yum servers: I figured it might be nice to explore a new distro, while simultaneously learning package-management skills that could come in handy for our project.

The latter did end up proving valuable. I even upgraded our method for installing out-of-band software to better fit first-party tooling and infrastructure. I am grateful for those skills. However, the joy of exploring a new distro, on the other hand, immediately butted heads with...

... Fedora's pattern of cleaning out older components.

Waking up to a notification that software you use on a daily basis is no longer available due to invalid rationale like some perceived bitrot is infuriating. Stability is an even bigger issue on Fedora; I am currently unable to run Blender, for example, because Fedora has shipped what amounts a buggy version. My illuminated keyboard is also permanently dark, wget2 fails to replace wget, etc. I have a running list of a couple dozen more issues.

Fedora users are beta testers who work for free for Red Hat. Do not put yourself in that situation.

Submission + - Final Fantasy composer shares concern about 'stagnation' in game music (pcgamer.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: "I won’t go as far as to call it stagnation, but I believe directors and producers hold too much power in their hands even when it comes to the music," said Uematsu, according to Automaton's translation. "Even now, game composers aren’t in a position to speak their opinion freely, and no matter how much musical knowledge or technical skills they possess, they’re still in a position where it’s difficult to speak their mind.

"There are almost no game producers who are well versed in worldwide entertainment and are familiar with a wide variety of musical genres, so anything goes for them as long as you make it sound like a John Williams movie soundtrack."

Submission + - America's First Sodium-Ion Battery Manufacturer Ceases Operations (wral.com)

Submitted by Grady Martin
Grady Martin writes: Natron Energy has announced immediate cessation of all operations, including its manufacturing plant in Holland, Michigan and plans to build a $1.4 billion “gigafactory” in North Carolina. A company representative cited “efforts to raise sufficient new funding [being] unsuccessful” as rationale for the decision.

When previously covered by Slashdot, comments on the merits of sodium-ion included the ability to use aluminum in lieu of heavier, more expensive copper anodes; a charge rate ten times that of lithium-ion; and Earth's abundance of sodium—though at least one anonymous coward predicted cancellation of the project.

Submission + - Vicious Cycle Revealed: How Alcohol Helps Gut Bacteria Attack Your Liver (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: It's no secret that excessive alcohol consumption damages the liver, but a new study reveals a previously unknown vicious cycle that makes that damage worse. Chronic alcohol use makes it easier for bacteria to leak out of the gut and migrate to the liver, causing further harm.

The new study, led by scientists at the University of California San Diego, examined human liver biopsies as well as mouse models of alcohol-associated liver disease. The team found that chronic alcohol use impaired the production of a cellular signaling protein called mAChR4 in the small intestine.

Lower levels of this protein were found to interfere with the formation of what are called goblet cell-associated antigen passages (GAPs). These specialized structures play a key role in teaching the immune system to respond to microbes, particularly those that escape the gut into other parts of the body, where they don't belong.

Submission + - Switching Off One Crucial Protein Appears to Reverse Brain Aging in Mice (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: FTL1 was brought to light through a careful comparison of the hippocampus part of the brain in mice of different ages. The hippocampus is involved in memory and learning, and it is one of the regions that suffers most from age-related decline.

The study team found that FLT1 was the one protein in this region that old mice had more of and young mice had less of.

FTL1 is known to be related to storing iron in the body, but hasn't come up in relation to brain aging before. To test its involvement after their initial findings, the researchers used genetic editing to overexpress the protein in young mice, and reduce its level in old mice.

Submission + - IT Crowd Creator Arrested in UK Over X Post (bbc.com)

Submitted by sabbede
sabbede writes:

Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has been arrested at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence in relation to his posts on X. He was arrested by five officers after arriving on a flight from the US, and said in an online Substack article that officials then became concerned for his health after taking his blood pressure, and took him to hospital. The Metropolitan Police said that a man in his 50s was arrested on 1 September at Heathrow Airport and taken to hospital, adding his condition "is neither life-threatening nor life-changing" , and he was bailed "pending further investigation". Linehan said in an online article on Substack that his bail condition stipulates he is "not to go on Twitter" and that his arrest related to three posts on X from April, on his views about challenging "a trans-identified male" in "a female-only space".

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