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Comment Well, that was quick (Score 5, Funny) 40

by OtisSnerd (#65865283) Attached to: GitHub Is Going To Start Charging You For Using Your Own Hardware
FTA: (Wed 17 Dec 2025 // 17:26 UTC )

"UPDATED Following publication of our original article, GitHub reversed its decision. The Microsoft-owned developer site has taken to X to admit it might have made a mistake by unilaterally announcing plans to charge people for using their own hardware to host runners."

Submission + - Isaacman confirmed for NASA head (politico.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The Senate on Wednesday approved Jared Isaacman for the top job at NASA — an unprecedented comeback after President Donald Trump yanked his nomination this spring.

Trump renominated Isaacman for NASA administrator in November, after pulling his original nomination in May. He cited Isaacman’s relationship with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, with whom Trump had just had a falling out, as the rationale for his decision.

Isaacman’s surprise rebound followed months of political jockeying and help from high-profile figures in Trump’s orbit.

Submission + - Oh look, yet another Starship clone has popped up in China. (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The trend began with the Chinese government. In November 2024 the government announced a significant shift in the design of its super-heavy lift rocket, the Long March 9. Instead of the previous design, a fully expendable rocket with three stages and solid rocket boosters strapped to the sides, the country’s state-owned rocket maker revealed a vehicle that mimicked SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship.

Around the same time, a Chinese launch firm named Cosmoleap announced plans to develop a fully reusable “Leap” rocket within the next few years. An animated video that accompanied the funding announcement indicated that the company seeks to emulate the tower catch-with-chopsticks methodology that SpaceX has successfully employed.

But wait, there’s more. In June a company called Astronstone said it too was developing a stainless steel, methane-fueled rocket that would also use a chopstick-style system for first stage recovery. Astronstone didn’t even pretend to not copy SpaceX, saying it was “fully aligning its technical approach with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.”

And then, on Friday, the state-aligned China.com reported that a company called “Beijing Leading Rocket Technology” took things a step further. It has named its vehicle “Starship-1,” adding that the new rocket will have enhancements from AI and is billed as a “fully reusable AI rocket.”

Submission + - Researchers Build Quantum Antenna to Precisely Measure Terahertz Signals (scitechdaily.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: SciTechDaily is reporting that a research team has created a quantum antenna capable of precisely measuring terahertz frequency combs for the first time.

A research team from the Faculty of Physics and the Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies at the Centre of New Technologies, University of Warsaw has introduced a new approach for detecting extremely weak terahertz signals by using a “quantum antenna.” Their method relies on a specialized system that employs Rydberg atoms for radio wave detection, allowing them not only to capture these signals but also to accurately calibrate a frequency comb in the terahertz range.

This part of the electromagnetic spectrum was considered largely unexplored until recently, and the breakthrough, reported in Optica, offers a pathway toward highly sensitive spectroscopy and a new class of quantum sensors that can function at room temperature.

Terahertz (THz) radiation occupies a unique position within the electromagnetic spectrum, sitting between microwaves (such as those used in Wi-Fi) and infrared light at the intersection of electronics and optics. It promises a wide range of applications, including scanning packages without harmful X-rays, enabling ultra-fast 6G communication, and advancing spectroscopy and organic compound imaging.

Submission + - Ex-South Korea President found to Provoke Pyongyang with Drones (reuters.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Former President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, a democratic nation, tried to provoke North Korea, an authoritarian state, into mounting an armed aggression to justify his December 2024 martial law declaration and eliminate political opponents, a special prosecutor said on Monday. The prosecutor has confirmed an elaborate scheme allegedly masterminded by Yoon and his defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun, going back to October 2023 to suspend the powers of parliament and replace it with an emergency legislative body. "To create justification for declaring martial law, they tried to lure North Korea into mounting an armed aggression, but failed as North Korea did not respond militarily," special prosecutor, Cho Eun-seok said. The South Korean military flew drones over Pyongyang in October at the order of then Defense Minister Kim. North Korea responded the provocation by blowing up a symbolic road to the South to avoid starting a war. Yoon may have been compelled to act in part because of the unrelenting political pressure he was under stemming from allegations of bribery against his wife, but there was no evidence to suspect Kim was involved in the conspiracy, Park Ji-young, a spokesperson for the special prosecutor's team, said. North Korea has for long time been labeled North Korea as a great threat to world peace.

Submission + - Nvidia Has Acquired HPC Slurm Scheduler Developer Schedmd (nvidia.com)

Submitted by Gilmoure
Gilmoure writes: "NVIDIA today announced it has acquired SchedMD — the leading developer of Slurm, an open-source workload management system for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI — to help strengthen the open-source software ecosystem and drive AI innovation for researchers, developers and enterprises.

NVIDIA will continue to develop and distribute Slurm as open-source, vendor-neutral software, making it widely available to and supported by the broader HPC and AI community across diverse hardware and software environments."

Submission + - Google is killing customer service jobs with AI (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Googleâ(TM)s Gemini Live API is not just another customer support tool. It is a direct replacement for human workers at scale. By combining real time voice, vision, and text with low latency and emotional awareness, Google is giving enterprises a clear path to eliminate large portions of Tier 1 and Tier 2 customer service. When companies talk about removing ticketing workflows and deploying lifelike AI receptionists that book appointments and close sales, what they really mean is fewer people answering phones, chats, or video calls. This is automation that finishes the job earlier systems only started.

Customer service has long functioned as an economic pressure valve, offering accessible jobs and a path upward for millions of workers worldwide. Gemini Live API threatens to hollow that out. The remaining roles will be fewer, more specialized, and harder to enter, while entry level positions quietly vanish. Google frames this as better experiences and efficiency, but the labor impact is displacement, not assistance. As this technology becomes normalized, executives will ask an uncomfortable question. Why are humans still doing this at all? For an entire industry built around human availability, the answer may not matter anymore.

Submission + - Sniffing your own farts could boost brain power, fend off Alzheimer's: new study (nypost.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have found that hydrogen sulfide — the rotten egg-smelling chemical compound expelled when one breaks wind — could protect aging brain cells from cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s, which is diagnosed in roughly 500,000 new patients each year in the US.

Previous research has shown that female flatulence actually has a “significantly higher concentration” of hydrogen sulfide than farts from men — meaning women’s gas tends to have “greater odor intensity” than men’s.

Submission + - JetBrains discontinues Fleet IDE (infoworld.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: JetBrains is discontinuing its Fleet IDE, stating that it could not justify maintaining two general-purpose IDEs. The JetBrains flagship IDE is IntelliJ, and Fleet did not succeed as a standalone product, the company said. Intended to provide a lighter, architecture, a modern UI model, and flexibility, Fleet was a worthwhile experiment from both technical and design perspectives, JetBrains said. Many Fleet components now power JetBrains IDEs and several UX and UI concepts developed for Fleet were adopted throughout the JetBrains product line. But JetBrains found it could neither replace IntelliJ with Fleet nor define a differentiated niche for the Fleet IDE.

The company determined the best path forward was to strengthen the AI workflows developed for Fleet in other JetBrains IDEs. This new environment will ship as a new product with a new name, but the product identity and target market may evolve, JetBrains said.

Submission + - Young Journalists Drone, Expose Russian Ships Off Dutch-German Coasts (digitaldigging.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Seven German journalism students, as a continuation of their OSINT course project, tracked the movements of ships with Russian crews off the coasts of the Netherlands and Germany and linked them to swarms of drones appearing over European military airfields and other strategic sites.

The guys not only analyzed thousands of data points, but also used leaked documents, established connections with sources in European agencies, and drove 2,500 km across three countries chasing one of the ships – even launching their own drone to fly over it.

At the end of the article, there’s precise data on the vessels, so you can follow them yourself.

Submission + - Arkansas becoming 1st state to sever ties with PBS, effective July 1 (apnews.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Arkansas is becoming the first state to officially end its public television affiliation with PBS. The Arkansas Educational Television Commission, whose members are all appointed by the governor, voted to disaffiliate from PBS effective July 1, 2026, citing the $2.5 million annual membership dues as “not feasible.” The decision was also driven by the loss of a similar amount in federal funding after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was defunded by Congress.

PBS Arkansas is rebranding itself as Arkansas TV and will provide more local content, the agency’s Executive Director and CEO Carlton Wing said in a statement. Wing, a former Republican state representative, took the helm of the agency in September.

“Public television in Arkansas is not going away,” Wing said. “In fact, we invite you to join our vision for an increased focus on local programming, continuing to safeguard Arkansans in times of emergency and supporting our K-12 educators and students.”

“The commission’s decision to drop PBS membership is a blow to Arkansans who will lose free, over the air access to quality PBS programming they know and love,” a PBS spokesperson wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

The demise of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is a direct result of President Donald Trump’s targeting of public media, which he has repeatedly said is spreading political and cultural views antithetical to those the United States should be espousing. Trump denied taking a big should on television viewers.

Submission + - Germany covers nearly 56 percent of 2025 electricity use with renewables (cleanenergywire.org)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Renewable energy sources covered nearly 56 percent of Germany’s gross electricity consumption in 2025, according to preliminary figures by energy industry group BDEW and research institute ZSW. Despite a “historically weak” first quarter of the year for wind power production and a significant drop in hydropower output, the share of renewables grew by 0.7 percentage points compared to the previous year thanks to an increase in installed solar power capacity.

Solar power output increased by 18.7 percent over the whole year, while the strong growth in installed capacity from previous years could be sustained, with more than 17 gigawatts (GW) added to the system. With March being the least windy month in Germany since records began in 1950, wind power output, on the other hand, faced a drop of 5.2 percent compared to 2024.

Submission + - 97% Of Buildings On Earth 3D Mapped (nature.com)

Submitted by Gilmoure
Gilmoure writes: Imagine a video game with the world's buildings already mapped in basic spatial dimensions!

"Scientists have produced the most detailed 3D map of almost all buildings in the world . The map, called GlobalBuildingAtlas, combines satellite imagery and machine learning to generate 3D models for 97% of buildings on Earth.

The data set, published in the open-access journal Earth System Science Data on 1 December1, covers 2.75 billion buildings, each mapped with footprints and heights at a spatial resolution of 3 metres by 3 metres.

The 3D map opens new possibilities for disaster risk assessment, climate modelling and urban planning, according to study co-author Xiaoxiang Zhu, an Earth observation data scientist at the Technical University of Munich in Germany."

– nature.com

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