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Submission + - Swarms of tiny robots remove microplastics from soil and water (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Scientists from the Czech Republic have created microscopic cleanup robots that successfully removed microplastics from both soil and aquatic environments in the lab. Details of their work are published in the journal npg Asia Materials.

To build the robots, researchers started with microscopic MXene particles made of ultrathin, stacked layers. The material has a large surface area and surface chemistry that help it attract and hold plastic. They then coated the particles with magnetic nickel nanoparticles so rotating magnetic fields could drive the tiny robots.

Then came the testing phase. The team placed swarms of these microbots into water and soil samples contaminated with plastic. The externally generated magnetic fields made the robots spin and tumble through the liquid and squeeze through tiny water-filled gaps in the soil.

Submission + - Freenet: Apps Without Platforms

Submitted by Sanity
Sanity writes: Earlier this year Slashdot covered the launch of the completely redesigned Freenet. I recently gave a talk about what we've been building since then. Unlike traditional web applications, apps on Freenet have no central server or database, with application state instead distributed across the network. These now include decentralized group chat, publishing, search, and fully decentralized Git hosting. The talk also gets into some of Freenet's internals, including how we use machine learning for network routing.

Submission + - Smart Glasses are now Cheap (rnz.co.nz)

Submitted by hadleyburg
hadleyburg writes: Radio New Zealand reports that "Privacy experts warn of gaps in NZ law, as camera glasses hit Kmart shelves".

Historically there has been an appreciation of "street photography" where unwitting members of the public are photographed on the street, in a candid fashion, capturing a feeling at a particular moment. It can capture history and create art.

But as the photography of the public has become more pervasive, with smart phones, and now cheap smart glasses, issues of privacy start to be weighed up against the rights of the artist.

Submission + - New flapping robot swims and flies like a diving bird (mit.edu)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Loons, gulls, puffins, and petrels are some of the 100 species of birds that can both fly and swim. These diving birds can plunge in water to swim after prey, and leap back into the air to fly away.

Inspired by these naturally aquatic aviators, engineers at MIT and EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, have designed a robot that can swim underwater, then flap out of the water to continue flying through air, much like diving birds, reports MIT News.

The “flapping-wing aerial-aquatic vehicle,” or FAAV, weighs less than 300 grams (about half a pound) and is designed to help scientists study the mechanics that enable diving birds to fly through air and water.

The new robot roughly resembles a bird, with a body, two wings, and a tail. The body contains a battery and waterproof electric motor that drives a crankshaft, which in turn pumps the wings up and down at preset frequencies. The wings are made of thin membranes that are coated with hydrophobic nanoparticles to help wick away water. And the tail is motorized, enabling it to change its angle to help the robot fly up or dive down.

The paper appears in the journal Science, and, more accessibly, from MIT Libraries.

Comment Mod parent up not down! (Score 1) 66

This is Slashdot where expecting high tech literacy used to be standard. (Note the OP UID.)

I do similar and find using multiple OS quite convenient rather than burdensome. I don't "switch", I "add" instead and have done so since I was new to Slashdot at the turn of this century.

An OS is just a tool to run applications and the more one chooses the be comfortable with the more choices they have. Learning Linux hasn't been difficult for decades.

With VMs and other options it's trivial to have any or many OS at hand (one reason the "home lab" enthusiasts often have rackfulls of SFF and tiny PCs easily remoted into from their main machine or any other).

Submission + - Roseville, CA Study Finds 71% Error Rate for Flock Cameras (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by Cognitive Dissident
Cognitive Dissident writes: According the Business Insider, a study by Roseville, CA has found a 71% error rate in Flock License Plate Reader reports to the city police department. And the errors go far beyond the ALPR.

Business Insider filed public-records requests to obtain email correspondence, data, meeting notes, contracts, and other records that reveal the extensive back-and-forth between Roseville and Flock over repeated errors by Flock's system. The cameras regularly missed vehicles, captured blurry images, misread license plate characters and states, and sent delayed alerts to police about vehicles possibly connected to crimes, the records show.

But this is not a unique situation, as the story goes on to give more examples of very high error rates and the serious consequences of those errors in many other communities across the country.

Submission + - This 'adversarial' pattern can prevent surveillance cameras from detecting you (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by ZipNada
ZipNada writes: Bill Swearingen has spent the past year running largely the same test, over and over again. The goal was to produce a computer-generated pattern that could block the surveillance cameras lining America’s streets from detecting it.

Some 31 million tests later, Swearingen says he can now produce patterns on-demand that, when applied to clothing and objects, prevent some of the most commonly deployed license plate readers and surveillance cameras from detecting whatever the pattern covers, from people to vehicles.

His project, which he calls noRecognition, allows people to escape the automatic detection and algorithmic surveillance used across the U.S. and beyond.

Comment Encouraging MSFT to improve Windows is a bad idea. (Score 1) 133

by couchslug (#66280352) Attached to: RAMageddon? 2027 Memory Capacity Reportedly Sold Out

When proprietary software makes FOSS more attractive that's to be encouraged so companies have more incentive not less to support Linux. The worse Windows gets the better.

Games are trifles compared to freedom and FOSS is critical to freedom of communication and computing now and in future. Pretending to be a cartoon character is fun but gaming is hardly critical to quality of life.

Submission + - Short-Form Attention Fragmentation Syndrome (SAFS)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Short-Form Attention Fragmentation Syndrome (SAFS)

Definition: A condition associated with prolonged, habitual consumption of rapidly changing short-form videos, characterized by a brain increasingly optimized for novelty, rapid switching, and immediate reward at the expense of sustained, internally directed attention.
--

You are about to load a page from psypost.org. If you are a psypost.org logged-in user, information about your identity might be acquired by slashdot.org.

Submission + - Saharan dust cloud the size of the continental US is impacting summer weather (thehill.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: The Saharan Air Layer, often referred to as Saharan dust, is a 2.5-mile thick “layer cake” that starts about a mile up in the atmosphere, explained Jason Dunion, a University of Miami meteorologist who works closely with NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division.

“They roll off of Africa in the summertime every three to five days, and they’re huge. They’re about the size of the lower 48 states as they cross the Atlantic,” Dunion said.

The Saharan dust season usually peaks between mid-June and mid-August and it’s currently impacting weather around the U.S. in ways you may not have even realized. The layer of warm, dry, dusty air tends to break up the development of thunderstorms and hurricanes.

Submission + - Frequent short-video viewers show altered brain function (psypost.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Platforms such as TikTok present a rapid stream of brief, attention-grabbing videos, often selected by personalized recommendation systems. Greater use has previously been associated with anxiety, depression, loneliness, and problematic use, but an association does not necessarily mean that the platforms cause these difficulties.

While participants rested in a scanner, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measured fluctuations in blood flow associated with brain activity. The researchers examined activity in individual regions, communication within and between brain networks, and the overall organization of connections across the brain.

At the whole-brain level, higher-use participants had greater global and local efficiency, greater clustering of neighboring regions, and shorter communication paths across the brain. One interpretation for this is that intensive exposure to fast-paced audiovisual material changes brain systems involved in sensory processing and attention. The authors also acknowledged that greater efficiency is not automatically evidence of damage: similar patterns have sometimes been connected with intelligence and working-memory performance.

Submission + - Terrifying crashes, baffling trips, broken traffic laws yet no tickets for Waymo (nypost.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Waymo robotaxis have escaped a single enforcement notice in Los Angeles during the first month California police were given the power to cite autonomous vehicle companies for traffic violations.

This is despite a string of viral incidents showing the driverless cars blocking roads, trapping motorists and breaking traffic laws.

Submission + - Houston man arrested for threatening Gov. Abbott's office over anime (abc13.com) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A man from Houston was arrested and charged after making terroristic threats to Gov. Greg Abbott's office in July, court records show.

The court documents show that the threatening voicemail was apparently about anime and the recent Texas law requiring age verification for certain websites, such as pornographic and obscene content. The voicemail to the Governor's Constituent Communications line read in part:

"I don't know which one of you sons of (expletive) passed this (expletive) bill to get this damn (expletive) blocking my (expletive) anime, but you whole (expletive) (expletive) need to unpass this (expletive). Y'all are (expletive) ridiculous with your (expletive) (expletive). My Google account says I'm (expletive) over the age of 18, and your (expletive) is passing these (expletive) laws. I'm a (expletive) stab every (expletive) one of you (expletive). Unlock my (expletive) anime."

Submission + - New Orleans will use AI to answer 911 calls instead of a human (shreveporttimes.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: If you call 911 in New Orleans, you may hear the sound of an artificial intelligence (AI) agent answering your call instead of a human voice.

The Orleans Parish Communication District (OPCD) is changing the way dispatch calls are handled in New Orleans with the implementation of new technology.

Submission + - VA Gov Spanberger Working to Stop the Dominion-NextEra Merger (archive.is)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: NextEra Energy, a Florida-based utility company, has filed paperwork to buy Dominion Energy for about $67 billion, creating the largest regulated electric utility in the world. Virginia’s State Corporation Commission is the regulatory body tasked with reviewing the application, and the SCC’s commissioners will ultimately decide whether to approve, deny or impose new conditions on any potential merger.

As a Virginian, I am deeply skeptical about whether selling our primary state-regulated utility to an out-of-state company is good for the commonwealth. I have serious questions about what this deal would mean for us. And as governor, I intend to get answers and be a voice for Virginians in the process.

That is why I will be taking the legal step of “intervening” in this proposed merger, which means that as governor, I will formally request to be a party to the case.

I know this action is unprecedented by a Virginia governor — but so, too, is the size of this proposed merger and its potential impact on the commonwealth. Virginians deserve to know that their leaders are laser-focused on ensuring that their needs are part of the SCC review.

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