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Comment Re:Stop complaining (Score 1) 45

by JustAnotherOldGuy (#66366842) Attached to: Alexa Can't Control the AUX Input On Amazon Echo Speakers Anymore

Yes, yes, they 'sold' it to you and you did pay real money for it, but don't confuse that with you 'owning' anything.

Think of it as the way you 'own' the faucet in your home. You do own the faucet but you don't own the water, even if you pay for every drop you use.

Alexa, Nest, Homepod, etc.... all these devices are basically empty boxes with an internet connection. What you 'own' is whatever they decide to provide and nothing else. (Although they might make decent paperweights.)

Submission + - First Nuclear Clocks Start Ticking in Vienna and Beijing (phys.org)

Submitted by necro81
necro81 writes: Two groups, one in Vienna and one in Beijing, have successfully demonstrated the world's first nuclear clocks. Standard atomic clocks, like the caesium clocks that define the second, operate by observing the transition of electrons between different orbits about the nucleus. The resulting radiation is usually in the microwave range, and can produce clocks accurate to one second in 100 billion years.

Nuclear clocks go a step further, and probe energy transitions within the nucleus itself. Nuclei can arrange their protons and neutrons into different configurations, called isomers. The isomer with the lowest energy is the one usually found; higher-energy ones are only metastable and decay quickly. Usually it takes serious energy — x-rays and gamma rays — to excite a nucleus into a higher-energy arrangement. It so happens that thorium-229 can be excited using UV light with a wavelength of 148 nm — just within the capabilities of some exotic lasers.

It's still been quite a challenge. For one thing, Th-229 is not found in nature; it must be extracted from the decay chain of uranium-235. The Beijing team used just a microgram mixed in a crystal of calcium fluoride.

Although these prototype nuclear clocks are not yet more accurate than existing atomic clocks (one second in millions, rather than billions, of years), they show the way towards what may be possible. Because the energy transition is in the nucleus, rather than the electron cloud, it is less susceptible to outside disturbances like magnetic fields. And the fundamental frequency is much higher (five orders of magnitude), which should yield more precise timing. This development could lead to smaller and more reliable time standards across the world (and solar system).

Submission + - Google, Unity Launch Platform to Create Video Games From Prompts (straitstimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Alphabet’s Google and gaming tools developer Unity Software announced a new platform that will allow people to create video games from simple text prompts, marking the latest incursion of generative artificial intelligence into artistic and creative industries. The initiative, called Playground, will “put game creation in the hands of millions of new creators, and bring new experiences to billions of players worldwide," the companies said in a statement on Oct 7.

With its debut, Playground will let people 18 and older generate and customize games using natural language prompts, “no coding required." Later in 2026, a new expanded creation experience called Unity Spark, will be integrated with Playground, providing “robust, professional-level” mechanics and high-fidelity 3D capabilities. Creators will be able to build “immersive, superlative experiences” with a simple text prompt, according to the release. Playground builds on Google’s push into world models, a type of AI that generates virtual environments in real time from text prompts, rather than just video.

Submission + - Auctioning IP packet sent via RFC1149 in 2001 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There is an actual RFC-1149 IP packet being auctioned off via Christie's auction house now until October 13, 2026. This is an IP packet you can actually touch, versus just being an abstraction in the ether.

It is one of the four that was sent and eventually received by the team in Norway that implemented the RFC in 2001 (https://blug.linux.no/rfc1149/)

https://onlineonly.christies.c...

Submission + - AI agents helped an attacker take over a server in under 24 hours (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: ReliaQuest researchers investigated a server takeover in which AI agents likely carried out substantial portions of the attack. An exposed job submission feature allowed the attacker to execute code, steal database credentials, and escalate privileges using public tools. No zero-day or new malware was required.

Researchers found a Cairn AI orchestration dashboard on the attacking host and command sequences that corrected earlier failures. They could not determine which model was used or how often a human approved actions. The incident raises questions about how agent automation could let attackers pursue more targets while reducing hands-on troubleshooting.

Submission + - UK vegetables 20-50% less nutritious than in the 1960s (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'The nutritional value of fruit and vegetables has fallen by up to 50pc since the Sixties because of declining soil quality, according to a new study.

'The study found that many crops had lost 20pc to 50pc of several key nutrients.

'Will Summers, a senior associate at the firm, said: “For 60 years we’ve measured food security in calories and tonnes per hectare.

'“On those measures we’ve done remarkably well. But we’ve been quietly hollowing out what’s inside our food.”

'The decrease in nutrient and vitamin value is thought to be down to declining soil quality and crops being selectively bred for their ability to grow quickly, rather than there being any focus on their health benefits.'

Submission + - Wisconsin U–Madison Prof Francis Halzen named 2026 Nobel laureate in physi (wisc.edu)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Halzen is the principal investigator of the NSF IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the world’s largest — and perhaps strangest — telescope. The U.S. National Science Foundation-funded observatory is operated by an international collaboration of scientists led by the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center based at UW–Madison.

Embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, IceCube uses thousands of light sensors to survey the universe for neutrinos, nearly massless particles that rarely interact with other matter. Neutrinos provide information about the workings of black holes, galaxies and other objects in the cosmos.

“IceCube is like no other telescope in the world,” says UW–Madison interim Chancellor Eric M. Wilcots. “And there is no other scientist quite like Francis Halzen, whose idea to create a neutrino detector under almost a mile of ice has led to a remarkable multinational and multi-institutional scientific collaboration and a fundamental shift in how we think about the universe.”

Submission + - Canadian Analysis: Permanent Daylight Saving Harms Sleep and Mental Health

Submitted by kbahey
kbahey writes: With the push to eliminate the twice yearly clock change, Permanent Daylight Savings Time has emerged as the favourite for most states/provinces.

An analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal

Key points: From the summary:
  • Permanent DST preserves later evening light that may facilitate commuting, recreation, social participation, and some economic activity, but it also prolongs darkness on winter mornings, with potential adverse effects on circadian alignment, sleep, mood, education, and productivity.
  • Permanent ST is more closely aligned with circadian biology, although earlier dusk may limit some evening activities.
  • Choosing pST is supported by accumulated evidence related to health and the recommendations of major sleep and chronobiology societies; if Canadian jurisdictions choose to adopt pDST, implementation should include anticipatory mitigation, protection for disproportionately affected groups, and transparent surveillance of population health impacts.

Sci.News also has a good overview.

Submission + - Cable Lobby to Sue Trump FCC Over Repeal of National TV Ownership Cap (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cable lobby groups notified the Federal Communications Commission that they will sue the agency to block its controversial repeal of the National Television Ownership Rule, which limits the number of broadcast TV stations a single company may own. The cable groups said that larger broadcast TV station groups will have leverage to demand higher retransmission fees from TV providers, resulting in “higher monthly TV bills for consumers.” They said the FCC repeal order “arbitrarily and capriciously ignores the harms that will surely follow from allowing broadcast station groups to exceed the National Cap.”

The cable lobby groups represent top providers Comcast, Charter, and various other cable operators. Top cable companies have also expanded through mergers. Charter completed a purchase of Cox in August after the FCC rejected protests by advocacy groups that said the cable deal “would create unchecked gatekeeper power over Internet distribution” and make it easier for the biggest cable companies to raise prices. [...] The TV ownership rule prohibits any single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of all TV households in the US. Congress directed the FCC to set the cap at 39 percent in 2004. On Friday, cable lobby groups submitted a petition asking the FCC to keep the TV ownership cap in place until litigation over the FCC’s authority to repeal the rule is over.

The cable groups’ filing said the FCC repeal of the TV ownership cap violates the 2004 action by US lawmakers. The decision by Congress to set the cap at a precise numerical threshold was unambiguous, the filing said. “Congress established the National Cap at 39 percent in the 2004 CAA [Consolidated Appropriations Act] in direct response to the FCC’s attempt to aggressively raise the Cap to 45 percent and made repeated references to the 39 percent Cap in the statute,” the petition said. The petition to the FCC is mainly a procedural step as the commission isn’t likely to stay its own order. The cable groups said they intend to sue the commission in a US appeals court once the FCC order is published in the Federal Register. After the lawsuit is filed, they can ask the court to issue a preliminary injunction that would keep the TV ownership cap in place pending the outcome of litigation.

[...] The cable groups’ petition said the FCC can’t change the cap because the 2004 law “references the 39 percent Cap as statutory, not regulatory.” A provision requiring divestiture of stations “specified that someone exceeding ‘the 39 percent national audience reach limitation in paragraph (1)(B)’ of ‘section 202(c)’ of ‘[t]he Telecommunications Act of 1996’ ‘shall have not more than 2 years to divest,’” the petition said. “Likewise, Congress singled out the Commission’s only mechanism for setting aside statutory requirements—the Commission’s forbearance authority under 47 U.S.C. 160—and made clear that it ‘shall not apply to any person or entity that exceeds the 39 percent national audience reach limitation,’” the cable lobby petition said. The FCC order argued that the agency’s “ability to forbear from enforcement of its rules is distinct from its power to alter or eliminate those rules,” and that the FCC forbearance authority doesn’t apply to regulation of broadcasters.

Submission + - Old Hearts Become Biologically Younger When Transplanted Into Younger People (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: It might be reasonable to think that there's an indelible link between the heart and the body it resides in â" the processes that affect one inevitably affect the other.

But a new preprint, uploaded to bioRxiv and yet to be peer-reviewed, suggests that this may only be true up to a point. Take the heart out of the body and put it in a new one, and something incredible happens.

The transplanted heart begins to take on the biological age of its new owner.

Older hearts transplanted into younger recipients appear to become biologically younger, while younger hearts placed in older bodies show signs of accelerated aging.

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