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Comment Re:Windows is crashing because? (Score 1) 186

by OrangeTide (#66070024) Attached to: Windows PCs Crash Three Times As Often As Macs, Report Says

tl;dr - research before you buy.

For people reading this thread. I'd recommend searching online about how well the suspend-resume works on Linux for the laptop model(s) you are interested in purchasing. Also worth looking into issues with very short battery life while in Linux. Because a lot of the power management ends up buried in some OEM options for the chipset windows drivers rather than properly expressed in the BIOS/UEFI.
Science

Scientists Shocked To Find Lab Gloves May Be Skewing Microplastics Data (sciencedaily.com) 7

Posted by BeauHD from the false-positives dept.
Researchers found that common nitrile and latex lab gloves can shed stearate particles that closely resemble microplastics, potentially "increasing the risk of false positives when studying microplastic pollution," reports ScienceDaily.

"We may be overestimating microplastics, but there should be none," said Anne McNeil, senior author of the study and U-M professor of chemistry, macromolecular science and engineering. "There's still a lot out there, and that's the problem." From the report: Researchers found that these gloves can unintentionally transfer particles onto lab tools used to analyze air, water, and other environmental samples. The contamination comes from stearates, which are not plastics but can closely resemble them during testing. Because of this, scientists may be detecting particles that are not true microplastics. To reduce this issue, U-M researchers Madeline Clough and Anne McNeil recommend using cleanroom gloves, which release far fewer particles.

Stearates are salt-based, soap-like substances added to disposable gloves to help them separate easily from molds during manufacturing. However, their chemical similarity to certain plastics makes them difficult to distinguish in lab analyses, increasing the risk of false positives when studying microplastic pollution. "For microplastics researchers who have these impacted datasets, there's still hope to recover them and find a true quantity of microplastics," said researcher and recent doctoral graduate Madeline Clough. "This field is very challenging to work in because there's plastic everywhere," McNeil said. "But that's why we need chemists and people who understand chemical structure to be working in this field."

The findings have been published in the journal Analytical Methods.

Comment Re:Oh but it works very well (Score 1) 38

This is so true, so true.

And it's not even US specific. In the wake of the Ukraine war, German parliament voted to give itself 100 billion of additional taxpayer money (i.e. debt) to spend on defense. Recently a report came out of all the money spent so far, 90% did not go towards the intended purpose.

Why any of the jokers in charge of our governments are still not in jail baffles me more and more every year. Oh yes, it's because they make the rules, sorry, my bad.

Comment Re:Enshitification of Github Proceeds Apace (Score 1) 66

by Tom (#66069996) Attached to: Microsoft Copilot Is Now Injecting Ads Into Pull Requests On GitHub

I was hoping someone would eventually address the monopoly. Neither party does anything.

That's what campaign donations get you, if they are large enough.

This is why congress occasionally bullies the big tech companies. We all think they might want to have some regulation or to punish them. Oh sweetie... they're saying "nice company you have there... would be a shame if something happened to it..."

Submission + - US Paves Way For Private Assets To Be Included In 401(k) Retirement Plans (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Trump administration on Monday issued a long-awaited proposed rule to open up retirement plans to alternative assets, paving the way for private equity and cryptocurrencies to be added to 401(k) accounts. The measure, announced by the U.S. Department of Labor, is intended to ease longstanding barriers to incorporating these less liquid and less transparent assets into American retirement plans. It follows an executive order from President Donald Trump last summer and could clear the way for alternative asset management firms to tap a large new source of capital.

Industry groups have argued private market investments can enhance long-term returns and diversification for retirement savers, while skeptics warn higher fees, complexity and limited liquidity could limit those gains and pose risks for retail investors. Some private market funds that are already available to wealthier individual investors have shown signs of strain in recent months. Private credit funds known as business development companies have seen a wave of withdrawals. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the proposed rule was "an initial step" and aimed to be "mindful of the importance of protecting retirement assets."

The guidance lays out how plan trustees, who have a legal fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of members, can incorporate these assets. They would have to "objectively, thoroughly, and analytically consider, and make determinations on factors including performance, fees, liquidity, valuation, performance benchmarks, and complexity," the DOL said. Trustees who abide by them will be granted safe harbor that protects them from lawsuits, it added. The Supreme Court agreed earlier this year to hear one such case filed in 2019 by a former Intel employee claiming trustees made "imprudent" decisions by investing in hedge funds and private equity funds.
AI

AI Data Centers Can Warm Surrounding Areas By Up To 9.1C 25

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: Andrea Marinoni at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues saw that the amount of energy needed to run a data centre had been steadily increasing of late and was likely to "explode" in the coming years, so wanted to quantify the impact. The researchers took satellite measurements of land surface temperatures over the past 20 years and cross-referenced them against the geographical coordinates of more than 8400 AI data centers. Recognizing that surface temperature could be affected by other factors, the researchers chose to focus their investigation on data centers located away from densely populated areas.

They discovered that land surface temperatures increased by an average of 2C (3.6F) in the months after an AI data center started operations. In the most extreme cases, the increase in temperature was 9.1C (16.4F). The effect wasn't limited to the immediate surroundings of the data centers: the team found increased temperatures up to 10 kilometers away. Seven kilometers away, there was only a 30 percent reduction in the intensity. "The results we had were quite surprising," says Marinoni. "This could become a huge problem."

Using population data, the researchers estimate that more than 340 million people live within 10 kilometers of data centers, so live in a place that is warmer than it would be if the data centre hadn't been built there. Marinoni says that areas including the Bajio region in Mexico and the Aragon province in Spain saw a 2C (3.6F) temperature increase in the 20 years between 2004 and 2024 that couldn't otherwise be explained. University of Bristol researcher Chris Preist said the findings may be more complicated than they look. "It would be worth doing follow-up research to understand to what extent it's the heat generated from computation versus the heat generated from the building itself," he says. For example, the building being heated by sunlight may be part of the effect.

The findings of the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, can be found on arXiv.

Submission + - AI Data Centers Can Warm Surrounding Areas By Up To 9.1C (newscientist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Andrea Marinoni at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues saw that the amount of energy needed to run a data centre had been steadily increasing of late and was likely to “explode” in the coming years, so wanted to quantify the impact. The researchers took satellite measurements of land surface temperatures over the past 20 years and cross-referenced them against the geographical coordinates of more than 8400 AI data centres. Recognizing that surface temperature could be affected by other factors, the researchers chose to focus their investigation on data centers located away from densely populated areas.

They discovered that land surface temperatures increased by an average of 2C (3.6F) in the months after an AI data center started operations. In the most extreme cases, the increase in temperature was 9.1C (16.4F). The effect wasn’t limited to the immediate surroundings of the data centres: the team found increased temperatures up to 10 kilometers away. Seven kilometers away, there was only a 30 percent reduction in the intensity. “The results we had were quite surprising,” says Marinoni. “This could become a huge problem.”

Using population data, the researchers estimate that more than 340 million people live within 10 kilometers of data centers, so live in a place that is warmer than it would be if the data centre hadn’t been built there. Marinoni says that areas including the Bajío region in Mexico and the Aragon province in Spain saw a 2C (3.6F) temperature increase in the 20 years between 2004 and 2024 that couldn’t otherwise be explained.
Windows

Microsoft Plans To Build 100% Native Apps For Windows 11 (techspot.com) 53

Posted by BeauHD from the change-in-direction dept.
Microsoft is reportedly shifting Windows 11 app development back toward fully native apps. Rudy Huyn, a Partner Architect at Microsoft working on the Store and File Explorer, said in a post on X that he is building a new team to work on Windows apps. "You don't need prior experience with the platform.. what matters most is strong product thinking and a deep focus on the customer," he wrote. "If you've built great apps on any platform and care about crafting meaningful user experiences, I'd love to hear from you." Huyn later said in a reply on X that the new Windows 11 apps will be "100% native." TechSpot reports: The description stands out at a time when many of Microsoft's built-in tools, including Clipchamp and Copilot, rely on web technologies and Progressive Web App architectures. The company's commitment to native performance suggests that some long-standing frustrations around responsiveness, memory use, and interface consistency could finally be addressed.

For Windows developers, Huyn's comments hint at a change in direction. Microsoft's recent development priorities have leaned heavily on web-based approaches, with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) replacing or supplementing many native programs. [...] Exactly which applications will be rebuilt, or how strictly "100% native" will be enforced, remains unclear. Some current Microsoft apps classified as native still depend on WebView for specific features. But the renewed emphasis already has developers paying attention.

Comment IBM: The origins of THINK (Score 1) 60

by Paul Fernhout (#66069660) Attached to: Life With AI Causing Human Brain 'Fry'

https://www.ibm.com/history/th...
"An ad hoc lecture [from 1915] from IBMâ(TM)s future CEO spawned a slogan to guide the company through a century and beyond"

https://humancenteredlearning....
"And we must study through reading, listening, discussing, observing and thinking. We must not neglect any one of those ways of study. The trouble with most of us is that we fall down on the latter -- thinking -- because it's hard work for people to think. And, as Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler said recently, 'all of the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think.' (Thomas Watson, IBM)"

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/...
"All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work. (Nicholas Murray Butler, often misattributed to Thomas J. Watson)"

So, yeah, echoing your point, make programmers do the hardest parts of their job all the time -- especially reviewing code from inconsistent-to-put-it-politely AI contributors -- and no wonder they feel "fried".

Does AI support for programming need to be this way? I might hope not, but we are also mainly hearing about AI used within a short-term-profit-maximizing hyper-competitive corporate social context. Like I say in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."
The Military

After 16 Years and $8 Billion, the Military's New GPS Software Still Doesn't Work (arstechnica.com) 38

Posted by BeauHD from the not-a-good-look dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last year, just before the Fourth of July holiday, the US Space Force officially took ownership of a new operating system for the GPS navigation network, raising hopes that one of the military's most troubled space programs might finally bear fruit. The GPS Next-Generation Operational Control System, or OCX, is designed for command and control of the military's constellation of more than 30 GPS satellites. It consists of software to handle new signals and jam-resistant capabilities of the latest generation of GPS satellites, GPS III, which started launching in 2018. The ground segment also includes two master control stations and upgrades to ground monitoring stations around the world, among other hardware elements.

RTX Corporation, formerly known as Raytheon, won a Pentagon contract in 2010 to develop and deliver the control system. The program was supposed to be complete in 2016 at a cost of $3.7 billion. Today, the official cost for the ground system for the GPS III satellites stands at $7.6 billion. RTX is developing an OCX augmentation projected to cost more than $400 million to support a new series of GPS IIIF satellites set to begin launching next year, bringing the total effort to $8 billion.

Although RTX delivered OCX to the Space Force last July, the ground segment remains nonoperational. Nine months later, the Pentagon may soon call it quits on the program. Thomas Ainsworth, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, told Congress last week that OCX is still struggling. The GAO found the OCX program was undermined by "poor acquisition decisions and a slow recognition of development problems." By 2016, it had blown past cost and schedule targets badly enough to trigger a Pentagon review for possible cancellation.

Officials also pointed to cybersecurity software issues, a "persistently high software development defect rate," the government's lack of software expertise, and Raytheon's "poor systems engineering" practices. Even after the military restructured the program, it kept running into delays and overruns, with Ainsworth telling lawmakers, "It's a very stressing program" and adding, "We are still considering how to ensure we move forward."
Android

Samsung Is Bringing AirDrop-Style Sharing to Older Galaxy Devices (androidcentral.com) 3

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
Samsung is reportedly planning to roll out AirDrop-style file sharing for older Galaxy phones via a Quick Share update. Early reports suggest the feature is appearing on devices from the Galaxy S22 through the S25, though it is not actually working yet. Android Central reports: As spotted by Reddit users (via Tarun Vats on X), a Quick Share app update is rolling out via the Galaxy Store on older Samsung devices that appears to add support for AirDrop file sharing with Apple devices. Users report seeing the same new "Share with Apple devices" section we first saw on Galaxy S26 devices in the Settings app after updating Quick Share.

The update is reportedly showing up on Galaxy models ranging from the Galaxy S22 to last year's Galaxy S25 series. The catch, however, is that the feature doesn't seem to be working yet. It's appearing on devices running One UI 8 as well as the One UI 8.5 beta, but enabling the toggle doesn't activate the functionality for now.

Users say that turning on the feature doesn't make their device visible to Apple devices, and no Apple devices show up in Quick Share either. It's possible Samsung or Google still needs to enable it server-side, but it does confirm that broader rollout to older Galaxy devices is coming. The feature could arrive fully with the One UI 8.5 update.
The Courts

OkCupid Settles FTC Case On Alleged Misuse of Its Users' Personal Data (engadget.com) 7

Posted by BeauHD from the trust-issues dept.
OkCupid and parent company Match Group settled an FTC case dating back to 2014 over allegations that the dating app shared users' photos and other personal data with a third party without proper disclosure or opt-out rights. Engadget reports: According to the FTC, OkCupid's privacy policy at the time noted that the company wouldn't share a user's personal information with others, except for some cases including "service providers, business partners, other entities within its family of businesses." However, the lawsuit accused OkCupid of sharing three million photos of its users to Clarifai, which the FTC claims is a "unrelated third party" that didn't fall under the allowed entities. On top of that, the lawsuit alleged that OkCupid didn't inform its users of this data sharing, nor give them a chance to opt out.

Moving forward, the settlement would "permanently prohibit" Match Group, which owns OkCupid, and Humor Rainbow, which operates OkCupid, from misrepresenting what kind of personal information it collects, the purpose for collecting the data and any consumer choices to prevent data collection. Even after the 2014 incident, OkCupid was found with security flaws that could've exposed user account info but, which were quickly patched in 2020.

Submission + - After 16 Years and $8 Billion, Military's New GPS Software Still Doesn't Work (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last year, just before the Fourth of July holiday, the US Space Force officially took ownership of a new operating system for the GPS navigation network, raising hopes that one of the military’s most troubled space programs might finally bear fruit. The GPS Next-Generation Operational Control System, or OCX, is designed for command and control of the military’s constellation of more than 30 GPS satellites. It consists of software to handle new signals and jam-resistant capabilities of the latest generation of GPS satellites, GPS III, which started launching in 2018. The ground segment also includes two master control stations and upgrades to ground monitoring stations around the world, among other hardware elements.

RTX Corporation, formerly known as Raytheon, won a Pentagon contract in 2010 to develop and deliver the control system. The program was supposed to be complete in 2016 at a cost of $3.7 billion. Today, the official cost for the ground system for the GPS III satellites stands at $7.6 billion. RTX is developing an OCX augmentation projected to cost more than $400 million to support a new series of GPS IIIF satellites set to begin launching next year, bringing the total effort to $8 billion.

Although RTX delivered OCX to the Space Force last July, the ground segment remains nonoperational. Nine months later, the Pentagon may soon call it quits on the program. Thomas Ainsworth, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, told Congress last week that OCX is still struggling.

Comment Re:Geo-fencing? (Score 1) 88

Wouldn't building GPS into vapes make them much more expensive, especially for something that doesn't work inside buildings? That being said, Google does a fairly good job of triangulating your position from nearby WiFi access points, but WiFi would be even more expensive than GPS.

TFS says the vape would use Bluetooth to connect with the phone/app. The vape won't work w/o the app, so they'd build any extra functionality into the app, like ads, tracking and geo-fencing. See my other post Why stop there?

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