Comment Won't somebody think of the NoSQL (Score 1) 16
I thought relational SQL databases were dead and NoSQL was taking over.
Comment But who will administer the apps? (Score 4, Insightful) 47
In order for 200 people to do actual work, around 1000 employees are needed to administer Jira, Confluence, a bunch of HR and time tracking apps that don't integrate but were adopted by someone in between making their "day in the life of" videos, and a number "product management" apps chosen by various former employees because they saw a pop-up ad for the apps and thought they looked a "cute and fun" way to coordinate daily stand-ups.
Comment Is the workshop RAID 1? (Score 2) 47
If so then the counterfeiting will continue
Comment The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Score 1) 30
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a 2007 movie about Jean-Dominique Bauby learning to communicate by blinking his eye, watching this film is a wonderful experience.
Comment Suckers game (Score 4, Insightful) 123
In an attempt to be isolated from outages, Individual households will spend large amounts of money installing solar and batteries, but the utilities will take over those household batteries whenever they want to supply power to stupid AI datacenters.
Comment Re:It's not dangerous...for Linus Torvalds (Score 2) 70
No matter who is in the succession fight, the successor will be Tom Wambsgans.
Comment Re:Why is this even here? (Score 1) 66
Agree, slashdot is flying towards irrelevance.
Submission + - In Barcelona, certain buses run on biomethane produced from human waste (lemonde.fr)
alternative_right writes: Odorless, quiet, sustainable. On the last day of July, passengers boarded Barcelona's V3 bus line with no idea where its fuel came from. Written in large letters on the bus façade, just below its name "Nimbus," a sign clearly stated: "This bus runs on biomethane produced from eco-factory sludge." Still, the explanation was likely too vague for most to grasp its full meaning. The moist matter from wastewater treated at the Baix Llobregat treatment plant was used to produce the biomethane. In other words: the human waste of more than 1.5 million residents of the Catalan city.
Submission + - Microsoft is TOO F---ing aggressive
J. L. Tympanum writes: I keep getting popups on my peecee saying "Microsoft phone link has stopped working."
1. What is this thing, and why do I care if it has stopped working?
2. After some surfing I find out it is some code (no doubt badly written and full of bugs and security holes) that connects the peecee to my phone.
3. I neither asked for this feature nor do I want it.
4. A little more surfing and I find out how to disable "phone link".
5. I still keep getting this damn popup. Obviously, whatever is detecting that "phone link" is not working doesn't bother to determine if the user (i.e., me) WANTS it to be not working.
6. After I lot more surfing I still don't know how to suppress this damn popup.
7. MS needs to be suppressed.
1. What is this thing, and why do I care if it has stopped working?
2. After some surfing I find out it is some code (no doubt badly written and full of bugs and security holes) that connects the peecee to my phone.
3. I neither asked for this feature nor do I want it.
4. A little more surfing and I find out how to disable "phone link".
5. I still keep getting this damn popup. Obviously, whatever is detecting that "phone link" is not working doesn't bother to determine if the user (i.e., me) WANTS it to be not working.
6. After I lot more surfing I still don't know how to suppress this damn popup.
7. MS needs to be suppressed.
Submission + - Security flaws in carmaker's web portal let a hacker remotely unlock cars (techcrunch.com)
schwit1 writes: A security researcher said flaws in a carmaker’s online dealership portal exposed the private information and vehicle data of its customers, and could have allowed hackers to remotely break into any of its customers’ vehicles.
Eaton Zveare, who works as a security researcher at software delivery company Harness, told TechCrunch the flaw he discovered allowed the creation of an admin account that granted “unfettered access” to the unnamed carmaker’s centralized web portal.
With this access, a malicious hacker could have viewed the personal and financial data of the carmaker’s customers, tracked vehicles, and enrolled customers in features that allow owners — or the hackers — to control some of their cars’ functions from anywhere.
Zveare said he doesn’t plan on naming the vendor, but said it was a widely known automaker with several popular sub-brands.
He said while the security flaws in the portal’s login system was a challenge to find, once he found it, the bugs let him bypass the login mechanism altogether by permitting him to create a new “national admin” account.
Eaton Zveare, who works as a security researcher at software delivery company Harness, told TechCrunch the flaw he discovered allowed the creation of an admin account that granted “unfettered access” to the unnamed carmaker’s centralized web portal.
With this access, a malicious hacker could have viewed the personal and financial data of the carmaker’s customers, tracked vehicles, and enrolled customers in features that allow owners — or the hackers — to control some of their cars’ functions from anywhere.
Zveare said he doesn’t plan on naming the vendor, but said it was a widely known automaker with several popular sub-brands.
He said while the security flaws in the portal’s login system was a challenge to find, once he found it, the bugs let him bypass the login mechanism altogether by permitting him to create a new “national admin” account.
Submission + - AI Is Talking Behind Our Backs About Glue-Eating and Killing Us All (vice.com)
fjo3 writes: A study released July 20 on arXiv by Anthropic and Truthful AI shows that large language models can slip subliminal messages to one another. They don’t need to literally spell things out. A string of numbers or lines of code is enough to pass along biases, preferences, and some disturbingly violent suggestions.
Comment Don't tell Malcolm Tucker (Score 1) 20
Massive irretrievable data loss really sets him off https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Submission + - Peak Energy just shipped the US's first grid-scale sodium-ion battery (electrek.co)
AmiMoJo writes: Peak Energy shipped out its first sodium-ion battery energy storage system, and the New York-based company says it’s achieved a first in three ways: the US’s first grid-scale sodium-ion battery storage system; the largest sodium-ion phosphate pyrophosphate (NFPP) battery system in the world; and the first megawatt-hour scale battery to run entirely on passive cooling – no fans, pumps, or vents.
That’s significant because removing moving parts and ditching active cooling systems eliminates fire risk. According to the Electric Power Research Institute, 89% of battery fires in the US trace back to thermal management issues. Peak’s design doesn’t have those issues because it doesn’t have those systems.
Instead, the 3.5 MWh system uses a patent-pending passive cooling architecture that’s simpler, more reliable, and cheaper to run and maintain. The company says its technology slashes auxiliary power needs by up to 90%, saves about $1 million annually per gigawatt hour of storage, and cuts battery degradation by 33% over a 20-year lifespan.
That’s significant because removing moving parts and ditching active cooling systems eliminates fire risk. According to the Electric Power Research Institute, 89% of battery fires in the US trace back to thermal management issues. Peak’s design doesn’t have those issues because it doesn’t have those systems.
Instead, the 3.5 MWh system uses a patent-pending passive cooling architecture that’s simpler, more reliable, and cheaper to run and maintain. The company says its technology slashes auxiliary power needs by up to 90%, saves about $1 million annually per gigawatt hour of storage, and cuts battery degradation by 33% over a 20-year lifespan.
Submission + - Early universe's 'little red dots' may be black hole stars (science.org)
sciencehabit writes: It’s as if the baby universe had caught a case of measles. Since NASA’s JWST observatory began peering into the distant universe in 2022, it has discovered a rash of “little red dots”—hundreds of them, shining within the first billion years of the 13.8-billion-year-old universe, so small and red that they defied conventional explanation. Only in the past few months has a picture begun to emerge. The little red dots, astronomers say, may be an entirely new type of object: a colossal ball of bright, hot gas, larger than the Solar System, powered not by nuclear fusion, but by a black hole.
“I think we’re closing in on an answer,” says Jenny Greene, an astrophysicist at Princeton University. The objects, which some astronomers are calling “black hole stars,” could be a missing link in the evolution of galaxies and help explain the rapid growth of supermassive black holes that lie at their hearts. “The big breakthrough of the past 6 months is actually the realization that we can throw out all these other models we’ve been playing with before,” says astronomer Anna de Graaff of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.
Given how common little red dots appear to be in the early universe, theorists are beginning to wonder whether this giant-ball-of-gas phase is an essential part of black hole growth and the evolution of galaxies. “We’re probably looking at kind of a new phase of black hole growth that we didn’t know about before,” de Graaff says. Greene agrees: “I can totally imagine that the Milky Way was a little red dot that got its black hole started and then kind of piddled along for the rest of cosmic time.”
If the red dots do turn out to be black hole stars, it will be precisely the sort of breakthrough expected from JWST—and the kind of discovery astronomers live for. Unraveling the mystery of little red dots has “been the most fun I’ve ever had in my career,” Greene says.
“I think we’re closing in on an answer,” says Jenny Greene, an astrophysicist at Princeton University. The objects, which some astronomers are calling “black hole stars,” could be a missing link in the evolution of galaxies and help explain the rapid growth of supermassive black holes that lie at their hearts. “The big breakthrough of the past 6 months is actually the realization that we can throw out all these other models we’ve been playing with before,” says astronomer Anna de Graaff of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.
Given how common little red dots appear to be in the early universe, theorists are beginning to wonder whether this giant-ball-of-gas phase is an essential part of black hole growth and the evolution of galaxies. “We’re probably looking at kind of a new phase of black hole growth that we didn’t know about before,” de Graaff says. Greene agrees: “I can totally imagine that the Milky Way was a little red dot that got its black hole started and then kind of piddled along for the rest of cosmic time.”
If the red dots do turn out to be black hole stars, it will be precisely the sort of breakthrough expected from JWST—and the kind of discovery astronomers live for. Unraveling the mystery of little red dots has “been the most fun I’ve ever had in my career,” Greene says.
Submission + - Peacock feathers can be lasers (science.org) 2
sciencehabit writes: Peacocks have a secret hidden in their brightly colored tail feathers: tiny reflective structures that can amplify light into a laser beam. After dyeing the feathers and energizing them with an external light source, researchers discovered they emitted narrow beams of yellow-green laser light. They say the study, published this month in Scientific Reports, offers the first example of a laser cavity in the animal kingdom.
Scientists have long known that peacock feathers also exhibit “structural color”—nature’s pigment-free way to create dazzling hues. Ordered microstructures within the feathers reflect light at specific frequencies, leading to their vivid blues and greens and iridescence. But Florida Polytechnic University physicist Nathan Dawson and his colleagues wanted to go a step further and see whether those microstructures could also function as a laser cavity.
After staining the feathers with a common dye and pumping them with soft pulses of light, they used laboratory instruments to detect beams of yellow-green laser light that were too faint to see with the naked eye. They emerged from the feathers’ eyespots, at two distinct wavelengths. Surprisingly, differently colored parts of the eyespots emitted the same wavelengths of laser light, even though each region would presumably vary in its microstructure.
Just because peacock feathers emit laser light doesn’t mean the birds are somehow using this emission. But there are still ramifications, Dawson says. He suggests that looking for laser light in biomaterials could help identify arrays of regular microstructures within them. In medicine, for example, certain foreign objects—viruses with distinct geometric shapes, perhaps—could be classified and identified based on their ability to be lasers, he says.
The work also demonstrates how biological materials could one day yield lasers that could be put safely into the human body to emit light for biosensing, medical imaging, and therapeutics. “I always like to think that for many technological achievements that benefit humans,” Dawson says, “some organism somewhere has already developed it through some evolutionary process.”
Scientists have long known that peacock feathers also exhibit “structural color”—nature’s pigment-free way to create dazzling hues. Ordered microstructures within the feathers reflect light at specific frequencies, leading to their vivid blues and greens and iridescence. But Florida Polytechnic University physicist Nathan Dawson and his colleagues wanted to go a step further and see whether those microstructures could also function as a laser cavity.
After staining the feathers with a common dye and pumping them with soft pulses of light, they used laboratory instruments to detect beams of yellow-green laser light that were too faint to see with the naked eye. They emerged from the feathers’ eyespots, at two distinct wavelengths. Surprisingly, differently colored parts of the eyespots emitted the same wavelengths of laser light, even though each region would presumably vary in its microstructure.
Just because peacock feathers emit laser light doesn’t mean the birds are somehow using this emission. But there are still ramifications, Dawson says. He suggests that looking for laser light in biomaterials could help identify arrays of regular microstructures within them. In medicine, for example, certain foreign objects—viruses with distinct geometric shapes, perhaps—could be classified and identified based on their ability to be lasers, he says.
The work also demonstrates how biological materials could one day yield lasers that could be put safely into the human body to emit light for biosensing, medical imaging, and therapeutics. “I always like to think that for many technological achievements that benefit humans,” Dawson says, “some organism somewhere has already developed it through some evolutionary process.”
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