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Submission + - Why can't M$ get any UI/UX changes right? (pcmag.com)

Submitted by golem100
golem100 writes: A couple weeks ago PCMag, and others, wrote articles along the lines of: "Microsoft Finally Backs Down: The Windows 11 Taskbar Update You've Been Waiting For". This is currently implemented with CU KB5120998 and since M$ has elected to defer "activation" of this feature--some two weeks later for most users it still needs to be enabled by the ViVe tool: vivetool /enable /id:59213768,61090762

Um, No...

The fundamental set of [lost] attributes that this "We brought Movable TaskBar back" lacks:

You can not control the position of the TaskBar on each desktop monitor--example: I have four displays on my desktop, three Landscape & one of which is in a Portrait orientation for reading documents.

With Windows7/8/10 you could position the TaskBar so that it was "Out of the way" and each display--on the right side of the right-most Landscape, on the left for the left-most Landscape display, & on the top/bottom for the Portrait. [same as my desktop on my Linux workstation]
Now you still get the same Taskbar alignment on all desktops.

You can not "resize" the taskbar. (well, you can--it has three sizes: too big, too small, and really way too small) For the previous three generations of the OS you could "Drag-Select" and resize the TaskBar to be the correct size for your needs on your desktop. [...just as I can on my KDE Desktop!]
With this implementation, 1/3 of the Taskbar real estate is consumed with "TaskBar-Tray Notification Icons."

Nobody asked for a partial, broken, re-implementation. The ask was: "Put it Back as it was!"
Dealing with M$ is pretty much like getting your 15 year old to do their chores on garbage night.

Submission + - Hackers Stole Flockâ(TM)s Camera Software, Revealing How the Company Tracks (404media.co)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: While much of the automatic license plate readerâ(TM)s (ALPR) most sensitive storage remained encrypted and inaccessible, the joint analysis of the recovered data shows that software running on the device explicitly detects people as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles. The camera can produce dozens of images of a single passing vehicle and, according to several weeks of recovered logs, generated more than a million images. Its computer-vision software also sometimes isolated bumper stickers and other graphics, including, in one case, an American flag patch on a motorcyclistâ(TM)s saddlebag.

Submission + - China's Top Spy Chief Warns AI Is a Threat to Party Rule (gvwire.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: China’s top spy chief has warned that artificial intelligence could pose a direct threat to the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power, in what is the highest-level and most detailed articulation yet of how Beijing sees the technology’s security risks.

The unusually blunt assessment by Chen Yixin, the head of China’s Ministry of State Security, is in contrast to the warnings dominating the AI debate in the United States, which have focused on the possibility that AI could slip out of human control or pose a threat to humanity itself.

In an article published Sunday in the state-run magazine China Cyberspace, Chen called for more party control over AI and stricter government oversight. This, he said, was necessary to protect political stability at home; to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns from “hostile forces”; and to compete militarily with countries like the United States.

Submission + - European Cars Are Spying on Their Drivers. The Same Tech Could Be Coming to USA (reason.com) 3

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: As of July 7, all new passenger vehicles sold in the E.U. had to come equipped with "advanced driver distraction warning" systems that watch for signs of "distraction" and, upon detecting them, issue a visual and an audio or tactile warning. Cars will warn drivers whose gaze drifts for more than three to six seconds, depending on their speed.

To comply with this mandate, cars will have to fix cameras on drivers' faces at all times, turning private motor vehicles into efficient surveillance systems. The equipment is supposed to operate as a "closed-loop system," meaning it "shall only continuously record and retain data necessary for the system to function and operate." But it is not clear how that rule will be enforced.

Beyond privacy concerns, some critics worry that the system itself will become a dangerous distraction, issuing warnings every time a driver changes the radio station or glances at a passenger. Others have complained that the requirement will increase auto costs.

Submission + - CircuitPython Turbo brings native code to tiny boards (adafruit.com)

Submitted by ptorrone
ptorrone writes: Adafruit has published CircuitPython Turbo, a workflow that compiles selected Python functions into native machine code on a computer, then loads them onto compatible microcontroller boards. It builds on MicroPython's Native and Viper emitters. In a documented Metro RP2040 fixed-point Mandelbrot test, Viper cut computation time from 8.335 seconds to 0.423 seconds, a 19.71x speedup over bytecode. The rest of the application stays in Python. The guide includes benchmarks, source code and hardware demos. The speedup is for the measured computation, not the whole application.

Submission + - Independent review of NATS failure on Aug 28 2023

Submitted by Mirnotoriety
Mirnotoriety writes: Independent Review of NATS (En Route) Plc’s Flight Planning System Failure on 28 August 2023

A perfectly legitimate flight plan triggered a previously undiscovered software edge case. Both NATS's primary and backup flight-processing systems hit the same error and shut themselves down.

Once both systems were down, NATS's manual fallback could process only about 60 flight plans/hour, versus roughly 700–900/hour normally. That forced severe traffic restrictions.

What actually crashed? The failed component was FPRSA-R, NATS's flight-plan processing system at Swanwick. The flight was Los Angeles Paris Orly. Its flight plan contained a waypoint abbreviated DVL. DVL can refer to Deauville, France, but also Devil's Lake, North Dakota. Eurocontrol's processing had added additional waypoints to the flight plan.

FPRSA-R was trying to determine where the aircraft would leave UK airspace. It encountered the DVL abbreviation and interpreted the wrong DVL as the exit point. The result was logically impossible: the aircraft appeared to leave UK airspace before it had entered it. The software recognised this as an impossible situation and generated a critical exception. The primary system disconnected from the operational network and entered maintenance mode.

Submission + - Dark energy debunked? Cosmic acceleration may be an illusion (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A new analysis of more than 1,700 supernovae is questioning whether the universe is really accelerating at all. After accounting for the ages of the stars that produce these explosions, researchers found signs that cosmic expansion may actually be slowing. They also argue that the apparent acceleration changes with direction, which would be difficult to explain with dark energy. Other cosmologists dispute the conclusion, setting up a major test for upcoming observatories.

Submission + - Parents Demanding Tech Opt Outs Take Their Fight to Federal Court (edtech.law)

Submitted by Hasaf
Hasaf writes: On August 26, 2026, seven families from Lower Merion School District outside Philadelphia, PA, sued the District, the Superintendent, and certain members of the board, asserting violations of their Constitutional rights.

Plaintiffs allege that District leaders have presided over a digital free-for-all, where students of all ages can and do access online pornography, violent videos, gambling sites, and video games, including one in which the player’s goal is to escape from sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein’s private island. Instead of paying attention in class, students consume an endless stream of short-form videos, browse social media, and shop. They chat with strangers and bully each other. They frequently interact with AI chatbots, which not only help them cheat on their assignments and diminish what they have already learned, but have also sent grown adults into delusional spirals and have coached other young people to take their own lives. Lower Merion students do this and more at all hours of the day: on the bus, in class, at lunch, and during breaks, and also at home, late into the night, when their parents think they are doing homework.

The complaint, with exhibits, can be found there https://edtech.law/wp-content/...

The link to the complaints is also at the bottom of the article

Submission + - Road trip comparison - EV, hybrid, and gas (caranddriver.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Each car mostly followed the same route, but different lunch breaks and bathroom stops resulted in slightly different distances traveled. The Tesla covered 752 miles and consumed 243 kWh with four DC charging stops and two AC visits. Its total electricity bill was $85.70, or 11 cents per mile.

The Jetta GLI stayed closest to the highway for stops, making its total distance the shortest at 737 miles. It consumed 24.1 gallons of premium at a rate of 31 mpg, resulting in a $129.98 tab.

I found it surprising that for 700 mile trip EV was only cheaper by 44 dollars.

Submission + - US Military Disables Ad Trackers on Devices to Protect Troops (reuters.com) 1

Submitted by DeanonymizedCoward
DeanonymizedCoward writes: Reuters reports that the US Military is disabling ad tracking on devices, to prevent adversaries from buying publicly-available tracking data to assist in targeting troops. Military officials say that they have disabled trackers on a variety of computers and mobile devices, according to letters released on Friday by Sen. Ron Wyden, and following reports that commercially-available tracking data has been used to target troops in the Middle East.

This effort comes amid attempts by the military to impose tighter restrictions on use of personal devices in the field, and after it was reported that videos posted publicly by troops abroad have also been used by adversaries to target military facilities.

Wyden said in a statement that it was clear that the military's efforts "have not been effective at neutralizing this threat." U.S. Representative Pat Harrigan, a North Carolina Republican, said that U.S. enemies "should not be able to pull out a credit card and buy information that helps them track American troops."

Rep. Harrigan remains silent as to the larger question of whether the general public should be able to pull out a credit card and buy information that helps them track anyone they please.

Submission + - New York City 911 system missed 1700 calls due to software update

Submitted by belmolis
belmolis writes: Part of the New York City 911 emergency system was off-line from 3am to 10am on August 18th due to a software update according to Medical Daily. Of 5,659 calls to the Bronx call center, 1,700 calls connected but could not be heard by emergency operators. Some were rerouted to other call centers, but an estimated 400 human callers never got through. The potentially serious consequences of delayed response to emergencies are not yet known. The City did not notify the public and only released information when journalists inquired. How buggy software came to be installed on a running system is not yet known.

Submission + - Scientists may have figured out why dead brains don't always rot. (smithsonianmag.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Smithsonian magazine discusses a new study on how, under the right conditions — wet and oxygen-deprived — the same chemical reactions that cause tissue to break down can instead have the opposite effect on brain tissue and preserve it instead.

The brain is one of the first organs to begin decomposing after death. Yet archaeologists have discovered more than 4,400 preserved human brains around the world, some of which have remained intact for the last 12,000 years. In hundreds of cases, the brain was the only soft tissue left among otherwise skeletal remains.

But how and why do brains sometimes persist for millennia while all other types of soft tissue disappear? This preservation paradox has stumped scientists for years. Now, however, a team of researchers say they may have solved the mystery.

If a brain ends up in a wet, oxygen-starved environment, the processes that usually cause decay can have the opposite effect, researchers report in a study published in the August 7 issue of the Journal of Proteome Research.

“Under the right conditions, preservation actually arises from decay itself: The same reactions that degrade tissue can also weld the breakdown products together into something far tougher,” study co-author Alexandra Seviour, a paleobiologist at the University of Oxford in England, tells Live Science’s Victoria Atkinson.

Following experiments on 72 mouse carcasses (described in the article) the scientists think they know why. When oxygen is abundant, it triggers a cascading, chemical chain reaction that causes brain proteins to break down rapidly. This sequence hinges on free radicals, highly reactive, unstable molecules that “steal” electrons from nearby atoms and molecules. The process happens in the brains of living people too, and if left unchecked, can cause health problems.

In low-oxygen environments, however, this chemical sequence appears to play out differently. The researchers’ analyses hint that free radicals instead react and bond with nearby proteins, making the overall tissue tougher and more resistant to decomposition, Seviour tells Chemical and Engineering News’ Anirban Mukhopadhyay.

The findings show that “decay is not the opposite of preservation but, under specific chemical constraints, one of its mechanisms,” the researchers write in the paper.

Submission + - Scientists Turn Plastic Waste Into Edible Cookies (futurism.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: In the event we turn all arable land on this planet into a barren heath incapable of growing food, humankind may have to resort to reaping what we sowed by eating our own plastic pollution.

A team of researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale just demonstrated that this was possible by using specially engineered yeast to create tasty — and yes, edible — cookies which they 3D printed out of plastic waste.

The yeast breaks down the components of plastic compounds and agricultural byproducts like discarded plant stalks into proteins, fats, acids, and flavorings that we can eat. When these are combined together, the mixture is fed into a 3D printer that spits out cookies of any desired shape.

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