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Comment Speculation (Score 1) 81

All of this is speculation except for what you could see: a 787 crashing with the RAT deployed. Audio from people videoing the crash doesn't have the sound of the engines spooling up to max thrust. Something or someone seriously was screwed up. Anything, including Boeing and Air India, is rash.

Let the investigation come to a preliminary state after examination of the flight data and cockpit recorders.

Submission + - Texas Instruments to Invest $60+ Billion to Make Semiconductors in the USA (ground.news)

walterbyrd writes: Texas Instruments will invest over $60 billion to expand its U.S. manufacturing footprint, according to the company.
The investment will build or expand seven chip-making facilities, creating 60,000 jobs, as stated by Texas Instruments.
Texas Instruments aims to strengthen the domestic supply chain and increase U.S. chip production.
Construction for two new factories in Sherman will start based on business demand, as announced by Texas Instruments.

Submission + - Napster and Sonos Sued for Millions in Unpaid Music Royalties (torrentfreak.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Napster, the brand synonymous with the music piracy boom of the early 2000s, has a new copyright challenge. Together with audio giant Sonos, Napster faces a lawsuit demanding over $3.4 million in alleged unpaid copyright royalties. Filed by collective rights management organization SoundExchange, the complaint (PDF) centers on missed payments related to the "Sonos Radio" service, which until 2023 was powered by Napster's music catalog. [...]

Sonos Radio launched in April 2020 with Napster as the authorized agent, submitting the required royalty reports and royalties to SoundExchange. While all went well initially, payments stopped around May 2022. At the time, Napster had been acquired by venture capital firms Hivemind and Algorand, with a focus on “web3” technologies, including cryptocurrencies and blockchain. According to the complaint, the takeover resulted in a “complete breakdown of reporting and payment for the Sonos Radio service.” The alleged payment problems eventually came to light during an audit initiated by SoundExchange in 2023, which concluded that Sonos and Napster owed millions in unpaid royalties.

Sonos and Napster are no longer partners in the radio service, as the audio equipment manufacturer switched to Deezer around April 2023. That appears to have solved the royalty issues, but SoundExchange still believes it is owed more than $3 million. “In total, Sonos, and its agent Napster, have failed to pay at least $3,423,844.41 comprising royalties owed for the period October 2022 to April 2023, interest, late fees, and auditor fee-shifting costs, and subtracting Sonos and Napster’s payments made to date. “Late fees and interest continue to grow,” SoundExchange adds, while requesting compensation in full. The complaint lists one count of “underpayment” of statutory royalties, and one count of “non-payment” of royalties, as determined by the audit. For both Copyright Act violations, SoundExchange requests damages of at least $3.4 million.

Submission + - Musk's X sues New York over disclosure law (courthousenews.com)

An anonymous reader writes: “The social media platform formerly known as Twitter accuses New York of attempting to pressure tech companies to restrict or censor constitutionally protected content on X that the state dislikes.”

Submission + - Universe's missing matter solved

An anonymous reader writes: Astronomers Just Solved the Mystery of the Universe’s Missing Matter

‘A new study reveals that 76% of all ordinary matter exists in the form of hot intergalactic gas.’

‘Astronomers .. have tracked down the universe’s “missing” matter. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) indicate that over three-quarters of ordinary matter, officially called baryonic matter, exists in the form of hot, low-density gas between galaxies.’

“The decades-old ‘missing baryon problem’ was never about whether the matter existed,” CfA astronomer Liam Connor said in a CfA statement. “It was always: Where is it? Now, thanks to FRBs, we know: three-quarters of it is floating between galaxies in the cosmic web.”

Submission + - Spain's Government Blames Huge Blackout On Grid Regulator and Private Firms (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The Spanish government has said that the national grid operator and private power generation companies were to blame for an energy blackout that caused widespread chaos in Spain and Portugal earlier this year. Shortly after midday on April 28, both countries were disconnected from the European electricity grid for several hours. Businesses, schools, universities, government buildings and transport hubs were all left without power and traffic light outages caused gridlocks. While schoolchildren, students and workers were sent home for the day, many other people were stuck in lifts or stranded on trains in isolated rural areas.

In the immediate aftermath, the left-wing coalition government did not provide an explanation, instead calling for patience as it investigated. Nearly two months after the unprecedented outage, the minister for ecological transition, Sara Aagesen, has presented a report on its causes. She said the partly state-owned grid operator, Red Electrica, had miscalculated the power capacity needs for that day, explaining that the "system did not have enough dynamic voltage capacity." The regulator should have switched on another thermal plant, she said, but "they made their calculations and decided that it was not necessary."

Aagesen also blamed private generators for failing to regulate the grid's voltage shortly before the blackout happened. "Generation firms which were supposed to control voltage and which, in addition, were paid to do just that did not absorb all the voltage they were supposed to when tension was high," she said, without naming any of the companies responsible. The day after the outage, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez suggested that private electricity companies might have played a role, saying that his government would demand "all the relevant accountability" from them. However, the new report on the blackout also raises questions about the role of Beatriz Corredor, president of Red Electrica and a former Socialist minister, who had previously insisted that the grid regulator had not been at fault.

Comment Re:same same. (Score 1) 214

Ubuntu LTS has "Pro" offerings that take it out that far, and Windows isn't free, so it seems fair to include their paid expanded support.

The reason I wouldn't use the RHEL/Alma/Rocky is that I am impatient for new features, but if I was a "I don't care I want to run this for 10 years", then I'd run it on my desktop. I think this is mostly the reason enthusiasts dislike them, which is an opposed concern to "not supported long enough". RHEL10 recently released based on Fedora 40, where desktop enthusiasts are running a Fedora edition a whole year newer.

For Fedora, the "click here to upgrade" is pretty similar to the Windows "click here to upgrade" experience. Unless you get adventurous in ways you couldn't have gotten adventurous in Windows.

Comment Re:Yeah but... (Score 1) 214

As a Fedora user, sometimes you have a period of software instability when they push something not yet baked. It may be for a reason, but that reason may be nearly impossible to discern.

It's not news because the community is broadly used to it and they generally accept it as the cost of getting stuff faster.

Fedora is not as bad as it used to be, but they are really aggressive and inflict oddities from time to time.

If I were really bothered, I could go run something extra conservative, like Debian Stable or Alma Linux, but I prefer the fast-ish delivery of Fedora even accepting that sometimes things can go a bit south.

Comment Re:same same. (Score 1) 214

What LTS editions only do 5 years? I just checked SUSE, Ubuntu, and RHEL.

RedHat is up to 13 years, with the the first 5 years being "full" including releasing for brand new hardware and backporting as needed with another 5 years of "you can keep running it on the hardware you have, but we aren't promising support for new hardware" and another available 3 years of paid extension. Note that Windows 10 pretty much went "maintenance" with the release of Windows 11, so the RHEL lifecycle largely imitates the Windows lifecycle.

SUSE is a bit more generous on paper, but roughly this is about all the LTSes.

However day to day users are not interested and go for the options that favor rapid delivery of new capability, so people don't talk about them as much.

Comment Re: Um (Score 2) 134

Exactly. Even if a technology might have a shot at being desirable, I often see seller interests trample the value and then the seller surprised that the customers didn't go for it after they did absolutely nothing to cater to the user base.

One company I worked at had this persistent issue and a strong warning sign was that they just absolutely worshipped the fictional Henry Ford quote about customers just wanting faster horses and the inventor knowing better than the customer about what the customer should want.

Submission + - Android Open Source Is Becoming a Controlled Experiment (reclaimthenet.org)

alternative_right writes: Google’s latest move to withhold crucial components from the Android 16 source release has sent ripples through the privacy and custom ROM communities, reviving fears that the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is being quietly hollowed out.

While the company insists AOSP isn’t being discontinued, its actions are telling a different story for developers who rely on Pixel devices as their foundation.

Comment Re:Political, not the humanitarian, getting cancel (Score 1) 361

No, that's not the "Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy". You can't even get that right lol.

Come on, tell us why there isn't a single contemporary record of any type of Jesus from the time in which he supposedly lived. Why is that?

Why is there's not a single carving, sculpture, story, poem, painting, drawing or mention of him from the time in which he supposedly lived? How is that even possible for such an incredibly influential figure like Jesus?

Face it: the whole bullshit story of Christianity comes from from a desert-dwelling peasant girl's lie about an affair that got way out of hand.

Submission + - Facial recognition error sees woman accused of theft (bbc.co.uk)

alanw writes: Home Bargains introduces facial recognition camers, woman pays for toilet rolls, Home Bargains mistakenly submits an allegation that she shoplifted them to Facewatch, next time she tries to enter an HB store she is escorted out with no reason given.

"As soon as I stepped my foot over the threshold of the door, they were radioing each other and they all surrounded me and were like 'you need to leave the store'," she said.

Madeleine Stone, senior advocacy officer at the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, said they had been contacted by more than 35 people who have complained of being wrongly placed on facial recognition watchlists.

"They're being wrongly flagged as criminals," Ms Stone said.

"They've given no due process, kicked out of stores. This is having a really serious impact."

"Historically in Britain, we have a history that you are innocent until proven guilty but when an algorithm, a camera and a facial recognition system gets involved, you are guilty."

Submission + - EdSurge Touts Minecraft for 'Creative Coding' in Microsoft-Sponsored Advertorial

theodp writes: In Coding, Creativity and the New Digital Fluency ("sponsored content from Minecraft Education"), EdSurge reports: "One example of creative coding comes from a curriculum that introduces computer science through game design and storytelling in Minecraft, a game-based learning platform used by millions of students worldwide. Developed by Urban Arts in collaboration with Minecraft Education, the program offers middle school teachers professional development, ongoing coaching and a 72-session curriculum built around game-based instruction. Designed for grades 6-8, the project-based program is beginner-friendly; no prior programming experience is required for teachers or students. It blends storytelling, collaborative design and foundational programming skills with a focus on creativity and equity."

The Urban Arts and Microsoft Creative Coders program touted by EdSurge was awarded a $3,999,988 Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant last year by the U.S. Dept. of Education "to create an engaging, game-based, middle school CS course using Minecraft tools" for 3,450 middle schoolers (6th-8th grades)." Interestingly, that federal funding may have been unlocked by Microsoft — in his 2019 book Tools and Weapons, Microsoft President Brad Smith credited a $50 million K-12 CS pledge made to Ivanka Trump by Microsoft as the key to getting Donald Trump to sign a 2017 presidential order "to ensure that federal funding [$1 billion over 5 years] from the Department of Education helps advance [K-12] computer science," including via EIR grants. At the 2022 grand opening of the Microsoft Garage in New York City, Urban Arts alums told Smith and NYC Mayor Eric Adams how game development education can prepare public school students for the modern workplace, a pitch that certainly seemed to work. Two weeks ago, the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) kicked off summer with the inaugural NYC Video Game Festival (NYCVGF), which included the annual Minecraft Education Battle of the Boroughs Esports Competition in partnership with NYC Public Schools.

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