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Submission + - Peter Neumann passes away (sri.com)

Submitted by ad1c
ad1c writes: Peter G. Neumann, former Principal Scientist in SRI’s Computer Science Laboratory, passed away this week after decades as one of computing’s most principled and far-sighted voices. He joined SRI as a computer scientist in 1971.

Dr. Neumann dedicated his career to the challenges that matter most: computer security, reliability, privacy, safety, and the integrity of democratic computing systems. Holding doctorates from Harvard and Darmstadt, he brought both intellectual rigor and a deep moral seriousness to questions the field often preferred to ignore. He moderated the ACM Risks Forum, chaired the ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, and co-founded People for Internet Responsibility. His book, Computer-Related Risks, remains a landmark in the field.

Submission + - The oral tradition that built software may not survive AI (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: Writing software is not just about knowing what to code. Verbally passing on knowledge of why something is done one way or the other, how to diagnose an issue, or what changes took place after implementation because no one documented those changes has been part of programming since day one. However, with the advent of AI, that institutional knowledge may be under threat.

It’s tempting therefore to imagine that generative AI will step into the breach and solve this for us. After all, even if you don’t want to turn a large language model (LLM) loose on a legacy code base—and there are plenty of reasons that you shouldn’t—having it generate documentation on the codebase itself might sound like a solution to the absence of other written information. LLMs can certainly summarize code back to you.

But hold up with that idea. Beyond hallucinations, there’s a deeper problem: Writing documentation is itself part of the thinking process. Whether I’m writing history or software, putting an approach into words helps refine it before I sink hours into implementation. Documentation also captures intent. An LLM may be able to summarize what a codebase does, but it cannot reliably explain why a developer chose one approach over another, or what trade-offs shaped that decision.

Moreover, it’s a chance for somebody else to understand why you did what you did. If they plan to change what I wrote (especially in a few years), they might understand why I needed to write it that way and what might be lost if you take it out. An LLM can read code that I’ve written. It might even scan a large codebase and accurately summarize what it’s doing. But it can’t assess authorial intent.

Comment Still obsessively refreshing (Score 1) 8

I'm still an avid reader who largely eschews the comments.

I don't have a good sense of how user engagement has changed. There seem to be plenty of submissions, and I assume that users still guide what bubbles up to the main page via the vote-ups. That process does a decent job of filtering out opinion injected by the submitter. I recall a few attempts to remake the look of /. that met with successful revolts from the user community. Remember the attempt to litter the stories with meaningless images (a la Hacker News)? I'm grateful that was pushed back.

I'm annoyed by the "From the Web" click-bait box in the side panel. I hope the /. readership is above that nonsense. (Remember, I don't indulge in the comments section ;-)

Submission + - Parker Solar Probe captures the first visible light images of Venus' surface (dpreview.com)

Submitted by dargaud
dargaud writes: NASA's Parker Solar Probe has captured its first images of Venus' surface in visible light. The images show distinctive areas on the planetary surface, including continental regions, plains and plateaus. The images were taken on the night side of the planet where the heat re-emitted by the various surface areas has differing characteristics.

Submission + - Transgenic Mosquitoes Transfer Genes into a Natural Population (nature.com)

Submitted by cccc828
cccc828 writes: Nature has an article about genetically modified mosquitoes that were supposed to reduce the mosquito population. However, instead of dying, some survived, spreading the new genes. Here the abstract:

In an attempt to control the mosquito-borne diseases yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and Zika fevers, a strain of transgenically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes containing a dominant lethal gene has been developed by a commercial company, Oxitec Ltd. If lethality is complete, releasing this strain should only reduce population size and not affect the genetics of the target populations. Approximately 450 thousand males of this strain were released each week for 27 months in Jacobina, Bahia, Brazil. We genotyped the release strain and the target Jacobina population before releases began for >21,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Genetic sampling from the target population six, 12, and 27–30 months after releases commenced provides clear evidence that portions of the transgenic strain genome have been incorporated into the target population. Evidently, rare viable hybrid offspring between the release strain and the Jacobina population are sufficiently robust to be able to reproduce in nature. The release strain was developed using a strain originally from Cuba, then outcrossed to a Mexican population. Thus, Jacobina Ae. aegypti are now a mix of three populations. It is unclear how this may affect disease transmission or affect other efforts to control these dangerous vectors. These results highlight the importance of having in place a genetic monitoring program during such releases to detect un-anticipated outcomes.

Submission + - Buzz Aldrin is looking forward, not back—and he has a plan to bring NASA a (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The famed science fiction author Robert Heinlein is credited with saying, “If you can get your ship into orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere.” The basic gist of this is that, for any space mission, getting off the surface of the Earth and into free fall around the planet consumes half of your energy cost.

For this reason, a lot of aerospace engineers have long argued that deep space missions should be staged out of low-Earth orbit. And as Aldrin has thought about the current state of NASA and private industry, he has come around to this way of thinking, too. He therefore envisions building the “Gateway” not near the Moon but rather in low-Earth orbit. From this gathering point, missions could be assembled to go to the Moon or elsewhere. Aldrin calls this a “TransWay Orbit Rendezvous,” or T.O.R., because it represents a point of transferring from one orbit around Earth to another.

“This T.O.R. plan may be the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Aldrin said.

Submission + - Researchers Created Reprogrammable Molecular Algorithms for DNA Computers (wired.com)

Submitted by dmoberhaus
dmoberhaus writes: In a major breakthrough for DNA computing, researchers from UC Davis, Caltech and Maynooth University developed a technique for creating molecular algorithms that can be reprogrammed. Prior to this research, molecular algorithms had to be painstakingly designed for specific purposes, which is "like having to build a new computer out of new hardware just to run a new piece of software,” according to the researchers. This new technique could blow open the door for a host of futuristic DNA computing applications--nanofactories, light-based computers, etc.-- that would've been impossible before.

Submission + - Lithuanian Pleads Guilty to Stealing $100 Million From Google, Facebook (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Evaldas Rimasauskas, a Lithuanian citizen, concocted a brazen scheme that allowed him to bilk Facebook and Google out of more than $100 million.The crime defrauded Google of $23 million and Facebook of $99 million.

Rimasauskas committed the crimes between 2013 to 2015, an indictment was issued in 2017, and he was formally indicted Wednesday in New York after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and three counts of money laundering.

"As Evaldas Rimasauskas admitted today, he devised a blatant scheme to fleece U.S. companies out of over $100 million, and then siphoned those funds to bank accounts around the globe," said U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman in a DoJ press release.

How did he do it? The indictment reveals that he simply billed the companies for the amounts and they paid the bills. Rimasauskas was able to trick company employees into wiring the money to multiple bank accounts that he controlled and had set up in institutions in Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Latvia.

Submission + - Florida citrus trees to be sprayed with thousands of kilograms of antiobiotics (nature.com)

Submitted by memnock
memnock writes: From the journal Nature: "In the next month or so, orange trees across Florida will erupt in white blossoms, signalling the start of another citrus season. But this year, something different will be blowing in the winds. Farmers are preparing to spray their trees with hundreds of thousands of kilograms of two common antibiotics to combat citrus greening, a bacterial disease that has been killing Florida citrus trees for more than a decade."

Submission + - NASA Making Plans for Interstellar Mission in 2069 (nypost.com) 2

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: The New York Post relays news from New Scientist that during the 2017 Geophysical Union Conference scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reveled that they are planning an interstellar exploration mission for the year 2069. The goal is to send a probe to Alpha Centauri some 4.3 light years away. NASA is working on technology to allow a spacecraft to reach 10% of the speed of light which might allow them to reach Alpha Centauri as soon as 44 years. A number of technologies are being explored, although there are many practical hurdles. The New Scientist article adds that the 2016 NASA budget directed NASA to study interstellar travel that could reach 10% of the speed of light by 2069.

Submission + - It Finally Happened: All TOP500 Supercomputers Now Run Linux! (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: Linux rules supercomputing. This day has been coming since 1998, when Linux first appeared on the TOP500 Supercomputer list. Today, it finally happened: All 500 of the world's fastest supercomputers are running Linux. The last two non-Linux systems, a pair of Chinese IBM POWER computers running AIX, dropped off the November 2017 TOP500 Supercomputer list.

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