Comment The public are as lazy at socializing... (Score 1) 30
....a Slashdot "editors" are at picking content.
Comment "Well loved'?? Who by? The Verge? (Score 1) 19
Turning off Pocket in Firefox is normal decluttering.
Submission + - Scientists Built Cancer Kill Switch That Turns On With Flash of Light (studyfinds.com)
fjo3 writes: Cancer has a dirty trick: it can put itself to sleep. When tumor cells slip into a kind of biological hibernation, they become hard to kill, shrugging off treatment and lying low until conditions improve, then waking up and bringing the disease back. For decades, researchers have struggled to shut down this hiding strategy without causing serious harm elsewhere in the body. A team in Switzerland has now built a molecule that flips on and off with flashes of light, giving scientists a precise new way to probe, and possibly disrupt, the way sleeping cancer cells hide.
Behind this cellular sleep state, at least in certain cancers, sits a protein called the glucocorticoid receptor, a sensor inside cells that reacts to stress hormones. When it switches on, it can push cancer cells, especially in some solid tumors such as lung cancer, into a drug-resistant, dormant state. The obvious fix would be to destroy the receptor outright, but there is a catch: the same receptor does important jobs all over the body, including calming inflammation. Removing it everywhere would cause real damage. What was needed was a way to hit the receptor inside a tumor and leave the rest of the body alone.
Behind this cellular sleep state, at least in certain cancers, sits a protein called the glucocorticoid receptor, a sensor inside cells that reacts to stress hormones. When it switches on, it can push cancer cells, especially in some solid tumors such as lung cancer, into a drug-resistant, dormant state. The obvious fix would be to destroy the receptor outright, but there is a catch: the same receptor does important jobs all over the body, including calming inflammation. Removing it everywhere would cause real damage. What was needed was a way to hit the receptor inside a tumor and leave the rest of the body alone.
Comment Re: How did this article even get published? (Score -1) 200
Maintaining the low quality of Slashdot is a mysterious choice by its owners whose replacement by AI would be an upgrade.
Comment Why does his age matter? (Score 1) 66
Why was it somehow important to state his age?
A young adult criminal should surprise no one even in this era of grotesquely extended childish behavior.
Comment Re:Nuclear is a dead and dangerous technology (Score 1) 178
Those are the numbers that AI spits out as a percentage of USA budget spending
Actually those numbers are from OMB. I didn't ask AI. And, yes, they're percentages of spending.
Comment Re:Nuclear is a dead and dangerous technology (Score 1) 178
This is as bad as Europeans crowing about "free" healthcare or higher education. It's not free. They paid for it with their tax euros.
...and wouldn't it be nice to get something in return for our tax dollars? Other than billion-dollar ballrooms and pointless wars, I mean?
On a percentage basis, mostly what we get for our tax dollars is entitlements, like social security (22%), medicare (14%) and medicaid (10%), plus interest (14%).
Submission + - Video Game History Foundation Says Piracy Remains the Only Preservation Method (techspot.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi recently supported claims that piracy is the only effective way to preserve video games. The comments lay the blame squarely on game companies' refusal to keep legacy content available or allow archivists to build legal repositories. Sony's announcement that all PlayStation games will be digital-only from 2028 onward has sparked concern that titles will become harder to preserve and more easily vanish, since the company's servers will become the sole point of distribution. In an official statement, Cifaldi noted that the end of physical PlayStation games has surprisingly little impact on the Foundation's efforts because the majority of games from the last two decades are already digital-only.
According to the Foundation, most games nowadays are not released for consoles, let alone on physical discs. Furthermore, many discs for major titles require downloading updates before they are playable, although the DoesItPlay database reveals that, even today, most are playable offline out of the box. Cifaldi claimed that the true reason piracy remains the best option for preservation is that the Entertainment Software Association, which lobbies for game publishers, has closed off other routes. For example, in 2018, the Association opposed efforts to grant copyright exemptions for museums, libraries, and archives to retain copies of abandoned online games for research.
This is the same organization that recently helped defeat a proposed California bill to preserve premium-priced online-only games by falsely claiming that community servers are illegal. The Foundation accused the ESA of repeatedly blocking attempts by cultural heritage institutions to reform DRM legislation. Cifaldi also described the Library of Congress' outdated software preservation process, which currently only requires tiny snippets of source code. For example, Capcom once asked the Foundation to provide the LoC with "the first and last ten pages of code" for a Mega Man game. Unable to discern where digital records began and ended, the group simply chose random segments. Platform holders' habit of closing online storefronts and removing media from users' accounts is also unhelpful.
According to the Foundation, most games nowadays are not released for consoles, let alone on physical discs. Furthermore, many discs for major titles require downloading updates before they are playable, although the DoesItPlay database reveals that, even today, most are playable offline out of the box. Cifaldi claimed that the true reason piracy remains the best option for preservation is that the Entertainment Software Association, which lobbies for game publishers, has closed off other routes. For example, in 2018, the Association opposed efforts to grant copyright exemptions for museums, libraries, and archives to retain copies of abandoned online games for research.
This is the same organization that recently helped defeat a proposed California bill to preserve premium-priced online-only games by falsely claiming that community servers are illegal. The Foundation accused the ESA of repeatedly blocking attempts by cultural heritage institutions to reform DRM legislation. Cifaldi also described the Library of Congress' outdated software preservation process, which currently only requires tiny snippets of source code. For example, Capcom once asked the Foundation to provide the LoC with "the first and last ten pages of code" for a Mega Man game. Unable to discern where digital records began and ended, the group simply chose random segments. Platform holders' habit of closing online storefronts and removing media from users' accounts is also unhelpful.
Comment Re:So basically... (Score 1) 181
Yeah, Musk could definitely drive the whole thing sideways. I'm afraid he might be getting increasingly detached from reality. I'm not so worried about the lack of focus on the chomper; it seems to me that the real issues facing Starship are all about how to handle re-entry heat. Also engine re-lights, but I have little concern they can solve that; it's been done many times before, including by SpaceX. If they can solve the rapid reuse after reentry problem, something no one else has done, ever, building various form factors will be a simple matter of engineering.
Comment Re:Oh, right! (Score 2) 73
Yes, it was all super entertaining, especially with PJ covering all of it, and rarely missing a trick. Good times for those of us watching from the cheap seats. A huge waste of time and resources for IBM.
Comment Re:"Left the labor force" (Score 4, Informative) 172
720,000 people left the labor force
This is the blandest, most watered-down way to say "lost their job" yet. Quite nauseating.
That's absolutely not what it means.
"Left the labor force" doesn't mean "they lost their job" it means "they aren't looking for a job". Examples of cases where people "leave the labor force" include (but aren't limited to):
* Retired.
* Had a child and decided to become a stay-at-home parent.
* Decided to spend their time caring for an elderly relative.
* Decided to go back to school.
* Gave up on working after being unable to find a job.
* Had a financial windfall and decided to stop working.
And so on. The "gave up after being unable to find a job" is not particularly likely in a job market where only 4.2% of people who want a job don't have one, though I suppose some may choose not to work rather than work in a less-desirable job than they had before.
Also, it's July 2. June employment numbers are basically worthless at this point. Give them a quarter or so to get more data and correct the numbers. The initial numbers are based on only on employer reporting data, which skews it in various ways. The government uses several other data sources including surveys, but it takes time for that data to come in, which is why these numbers are generally corrected 2-3 months after they come out.
Comment Re:So basically... (Score 5, Informative) 181
... it's just another pack of lies like everything else Musk hypes up.
Counterargument: Who would have predicted a few years ago that one private company would dominate global launch, launching more by every metric than the rest of the world combined, and -- all by itself -- triple the number of satellites in orbit in 7 years.
Sure, 200Xing the satellite count is a lot harder than tripling the satellite count, about 66 times harder. But if Starship is successful (by no means a given, also far from impossible), SpaceX will reduce per-kg launch costs by 100X, maybe more.
I'm skeptical... but I would also not just write it off as a "pack of lies". The things SpaceX is actively working on should make the launch part of it feasible. Will it be cost-effective? That's a harder question, and heat dissipation is the core thing that may make it infeasible.
Also, the final paragraph of the summary seems to be confused:
So, why are the hyperscalers hyping orbital data centers? Answer: because it's lucrative. "The Elon Musk part of it is honestly genius because he's got xAI building the data centers, SpaceX sending them to space, and Tesla building solar panels," Genkina says. "It's almost like he's paying himself."
Yes, SpaceX will be incredibly lucrative if it owns the whole vertical stack, building, launching and powering -- but only if it works. If it doesn't work, and if orbital compute isn't cheaper than planet-bound compute, then SpaceX will have no buyers.
The other possibility is that it's just a pump and dump, but that's not how Musk has ever worked in the past. Yes, he makes crazy promises, and delivers only half of them, and delivers years after the promised date, but those half-realized, years-late results are still often world-changing.
Comment Re:Loophole (Score 1) 126
We all know you ain't bankrolling it yourself, and the people you seem to think will pay for all this wont.
Doesn't really matter because it has to be done, unless we want to pay the much, much higher costs of just living with the hotter planet. We're all going to pay, one way or the other. It's just a question of whether we want it to be expensive or really, really expensive.
Comment Re:US senators ae shiteaters who swallow (Score 1) 131
The use-case for Concorde on trans-Atlantic passage was cemented for me when my uncle explained that every time he flew from NYC to London to talk to investors about his company, the stock price went up far more than the cost of his trip on the Concorde, and he could be back in time to sleep in his own bed the same day.
Seems like a no-brainer to me. I'm pretty sure (as others have pointed out) that if it weren't for the Continental-caused accident, the Concorde would likely have flown an additional decade.
Looking at current travel, there is enough demand to pack planes on BOS/NYC-SFO, SFO-HND, etc. routes that I'm sure there's enough business money to pay for supersonic service.
Comment Re:Loophole (Score 1) 126
I'm not sure you'd need to pay much. Already I've seen power prices go negative in TX on ERCOT's site. I expect that is somewhat accounting only. I thought some power is priced ahead and committed at a given price and then there is the "open market" which covers surprises. So if wind/solar has a better than expected day, there are days they get nothing for it. So I'd expect those days they'd take a ten bucks a MWH and be ahead.
Right, and it will have extremely good days because of seasonal variation. If we size our systems to provide most of the winter load, there will be a lot of excess power in the summer, and while batteries will continue to get cheaper, I don't think they'll get cheap enough to timeshift from summer to winter. Long-distance power transmission also doesn't do much to address that problem, unless it's really long distance.
