Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission + - Scientists uncover hidden gut 'sense' that talks to your brain (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Your gut may be talking to your brain in ways we never imagined. Scientists have discovered a “neurobiotic sense” — a rapid-response system where colon cells detect microbial proteins and instantly send appetite-suppressing messages to the brain. This breakthrough reveals how our gut microbes might shape not just digestion, but behavior, mood, and even mental health.

Submission + - The uproar over Vogue's AI-generated ad isn't just about fashion (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Sarah Murray recalls the first time she saw an artificial model in fashion: It was 2023, and a beautiful young woman of color donned a Levi’s denim overall dress. Murray, a commercial model herself, said it made her feel sad and exhausted.

The iconic denim company had teamed up with the AI studio Lalaland.ai to create “diverse” digital fashion models for more inclusive ads. For an industry that has failed for years to employ diverse human models, the backlash was swift, with New York Magazine calling the decision “artificial diversity.”

“Modeling as a profession is already challenging enough without having to compete with now new digital standards of perfection that can be achieved with AI,” Murray told TechCrunch.

Two years later, her worries have compounded. Brands continue to experiment with AI-generated models, to the consternation of many fashion lovers. The latest uproar came after Vogue’s July print edition featured a Guess ad with a typical model for the brand: thin yet voluptuous, glossy blond tresses, pouty rose lips. She exemplified North American beauty standards, but there was one problem — she was AI generated.

The internet buzzed for days, in large part because the AI-generated beauty showed up in Vogue, the fashion bible that dictates what is and is not acceptable in the industry. The AI-generated model was featured in an advertisement, not a Vogue editorial spread. And Vogue told TechCrunch the ad met its advertising standards.

To many, an ad versus an editorial is a distinction without a difference.

TechCrunch spoke to fashion models, experts, and technologists to get a sense of where the industry is headed now that Vogue seems to have put a stamp of approval on technology that’s poised to dramatically change the fashion industry.

Submission + - Using AI to write degrades your mental performance (arxiv.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Brain-to-LLM users exhibited higher memory recall and activation of occipito-parietal and prefrontal areas, similar to Search Engine users. Self-reported ownership of essays was the lowest in the LLM group and the highest in the Brain-only group. LLM users also struggled to accurately quote their own work. While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.

Submission + - Existing EV batteries may last up to 40% longer than expected (stanford.edu)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Consumers’ real-world stop-and-go driving of electric vehicles benefits batteries more than the steady use simulated in almost all laboratory tests of new battery designs, according to a Stanford-SLAC study – published in Nature Energy and discussed in a Stanford Report article.

The batteries of electric vehicles subject to the normal use of real-world drivers – like heavy traffic, long highway trips, short city trips, and mostly being parked – could last about a third longer than researchers have generally forecast, according to scientists working in the SLAC-Stanford Battery Center, a joint center between Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

This suggests that the owner of a typical EV may not need to replace the expensive battery pack or buy a new car for several additional years.

Almost always, battery scientists and engineers have tested the cycle lives of new battery designs in laboratories using a constant rate of discharge followed by recharging. They repeat this cycle rapidly many times to learn quickly if a new design is good or not for life expectancy, among other qualities. The study finds that this is not a good way to predict the life expectancy of EV batteries, especially for people who own EVs for everyday commuting.

Submission + - Pairwise authentication of humans.

Submitted by Kernel Kurtz
Kernel Kurtz writes: Picked up on this article from Bruce Schneier's most recent Cryptogram newsletter;

Bad actors can now digitally impersonate someone you love, and trick you into doing things like paying a ransom. Here is an easy system for two humans to remotely authenticate to each other, so they can be sure that neither are digital impersonations. As it becomes more and more difficult to trust anything you see or hear online, this is a simple elegant solution to an emerging problem.

Submission + - Musk-led group makes $97.4bn bid for ChatGPT maker OpenAI (bbc.com)

Submitted by SigmaTao
SigmaTao writes: !--l. 10-->

A consortium led by Elon Musk has made a $97.4 billion bid to take over OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. The bid is the latest development in a long-standing dispute between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the future of the company.

Key Points:
  • The bid is backed by Musk's AI company xAI and several private equity firms.
  • OpenAI is valued at $300 billion, according to recent talks over a funding round.
  • Musk's attorney has stated that the consortium is prepared to consider matching or exceeding any higher bid.
  • Musk is also teaming up with Oracle, a Japanese investment firm, and an Emirati sovereign wealth fund to build $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the US through the Stargate Project.

Submission + - Google joins firms dropping diversity recruitment goals (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Alain Williams
Alain Williams writes: Google has become the latest big US firm to scrap its goals to recruit more workers from underrepresented groups, BBC News understands.

The decision to abandon the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) recruitment targets comes after the company carried out an annual review of its corporate policies.

The technology giant is also reviewing some of its other DEI programmes.

Submission + - DECLASSIFICATION OF RECORDS CONCERNING THE ASSASSINATIONS OF JFK, RFK and MLK (whitehouse.gov) 4

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Policy and Purpose. More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events. Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.

Submission + - Tesla brand value shed $15 billion in 2024 with aging lineup, Musk at helm (cnbc.com)

Submitted by theweatherelectric
theweatherelectric writes: The value of Tesla’s brand fell by 26% in 2024, a second straight annual decline, with factors including an aging lineup of vehicles, and CEO Elon Musk’s “antagonism,” according to research and consulting firm Brand Finance. Tesla’s brand value now stands at an estimated $43 billion, down from $58.3 billion at the beginning of 2024 and $66.2 billion at the start of 2023, the firm said in its annual ranking. Toyota is the most valuable brand in autos at $64.7 billion, with Mercedes close behind at $53 billion, the researchers found.

Submission + - A chilling AI warning (axios.com)

Submitted by Mr_Blank
Mr_Blank writes: Jake Sullivan — with three days left as White House national security adviser, with wide access to the world's secrets — delivered a chilling, "catastrophic" warning for America and the incoming administration: The next few years will determine whether artificial intelligence leads to catastrophe — and whether China or America prevails in the AI arms race.

America must quickly perfect a technology that many believe will be smarter and more capable than humans. We need to do this without decimating U.S. jobs, and inadvertently unleashing something with capabilities we didn't anticipate or prepare for. We need to both beat China on the technology and in shaping and setting global usage and monitoring of it, so bad actors don't use it catastrophically. Oh, and it can only be done with unprecedented government-private sector collaboration — and probably difficult, but vital, cooperation with China.

This is beyond uncharted waters. It's an unexplored galaxy — "a new frontier," in his words. And one, he warns, where progress routinely exceeds projections in advancement. Progress is now pulsing in months, not years.

There won't be one winner in this AI race. Both China and the U.S. are going to have very advanced AI. There'll be tons of open-source AI that many other nations will build on, too. Once one country has made a huge advance, others will match it soon after. What they can't get from their own research or work, they'll get from hacking and spying. (It didn't take long for Russia to match the A-bomb and then the H-bomb.)

Steve Bannon and other MAGA originals believe AI is evil at scale — a job-killer for the very people who elected Trump. But for now, Bannon is a fairly lonely voice shouting against AI velocity. Trump and the AI gods hold the stage.

Submission + - XMQ/HTMQ A better html than html? (libxmq.org) 3

Submitted by anjara
anjara writes: HTML and XML are the perhaps mostl widely used computer languages in the world. Alas, they are also hard to pretty print. In fact, it is nigh impossible to pretty print HTML without potentially introducing significant whitespace.

The XMQ language (https://libxmq.org) language can store XML/HTML (and JSON) documents and always be pretty printed. Use the xmq tool to pretty print any XML/HTML/JSON into XMQ which is much easier to read and can be syntax colored in your terminal or in your browser.

You can also convert back and forth between XMQ and XML, HTML and JSON, taking advantage of both XML toolchains and JSON toolchains.

Here is an excerpt from the XMQ homepage:

XML can be human readable/editable if it is used for markup of longer human language texts, ie books, articles and other documents etc. In these cases the xml-tags represent a minor part of the whole xml-file.

However XML is often used for data storage and configuration files (eg pom.xml). In such files the xml-tags represent a major part of the whole xml-file. This makes the data storage and config files hard to read and edit directly by hand. Today, the tags are a major part of html files as well, which is one reason why html files are hard to read and edit.

XMQ solves the verbosity of tags by using braces to avoid closing xml-tags and parentheses to surround the attributes. XMQ solves the whitespace confusion by requiring all intended whitespace to be quoted.

You can try it now on GNU/Linux, MacOS and Windows!

Submission + - Behind Closed Doors: The Spy-World Scientists Who Argued Covid Was a Lab Leak (wsj.com) 1

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

FBI experts argued that a thesis by Yu Ping, a young scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, indicated that the type of coronavirus that was responsible for the pandemic was indigenous to the mountainous Yunnan province in western China and wasn’t found in Hubei province where the city of Wuhan is located. If Covid-19 had spread naturally from a bat to a host animal and then a human, as proponents of the zoonotic theory argued, early cases should have also been detected in the vast area between Yunnan and Wuhan, a distance of more than 1,500 kilometers. That region, which has a population of hundreds of millions of people, contains thousands of live animal markets.

It might take a while, but more and more information will come out.

Submission + - DOGE has its first scalp. 'Global Engagement Center' shuts its doors (foxnews.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "The Global Engagement Center will terminate by operation of law [by the end of the day] on December 23, 2024," a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. "The Department of State has consulted with Congress regarding next steps."

Lawmakers had originally included funding for the GEC in its continuing resolution (CR), or bill to fund the government beyond a Friday deadline. But conservatives balked at that iteration of the funding bill, and it was rewritten without money for the GEC and other funding riders.

The agency had a budget of around $61 million and 120 people on staff.

The GEC, according to reporter Matt Taibbi, "funded a secret list of subcontractors and helped pioneer an insidious — and idiotic — new form of blacklisting" during the pandemic.

Submission + - Nuclear-diamond battery could power devices for 1000s of years. (livescience.com) 1

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Live Science has a report about the world's first nuclear-diamond battery using carbon-14, which has a half-life of 5,700 years, to power devices.

The nuclear battery uses the reaction of a diamond placed close to a radioactive source to spontaneously produce electricity, scientists at the University of Bristol in the U.K. explained in a Dec. 4 statement. No motion — neither linear nor rotational — is required. That means no energy is needed to move a magnet through a coil or to turn an armature within a magnetic field to produce electric current, as is required in conventional power sources.

The diamond battery harvests fast-moving electrons excited by radiation, similar to how solar power uses photovoltaic cells to convert photons into electricity, the scientists said.

The researchers chose carbon-14 as the source material because it emits short-range radiation, which is quickly absorbed by any solid material — meaning there are no concerns about harm from the radiation. In addition, while carbon-14 is extremely toxic to touch or ingest, the surrounding diamond also provides maximal protection.

A single nuclear-diamond battery containing 0.04 ounce (1 gram) of carbon-14 could deliver 15 joules of electricity per day. For comparison, a standard alkaline AA battery, which weighs about 0.7 ounces (20 grams), has an energy-storage rating of 700 joules per gram. It delivers more power than the nuclear-diamond battery would in the short term, but it would be exhausted within 24 hours.

By contrast, the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730 years, which means the battery would take that long to be depleted to 50% power. This is close to the age of the world's oldest civilization. As another point of comparison, a spacecraft powered by a carbon-14 diamond battery would reach Alpha Centauri — our nearest stellar neighbor, which is about 4.4 light-years from Earth — long before its power were significantly depleted.

The battery, which was built on a plasma deposition rig near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in the U.K. by a team from the University of Bristol and the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), has no moving parts and thus requires no maintenance, nor does it have any carbon emissions.

Slashdot Top Deals

"An open mind has but one disadvantage: it collects dirt." -- a saying at RPI

Close