Global telecom operators are struggling to shut down aging 2G networks despite pressure to free up spectrum for 4G and 5G services, as the transition threatens to exclude millions of vulnerable users.

While Vietnam successfully decommissioned 2G in November 2024 by providing free 4G phones to low-income users, countries like South Africa and India have delayed shutdowns over concerns about cutting off phone access for millions. According to GSMA Intelligence, 61 countries have planned or initiated 2G network shutdowns to enhance bandwidth and reduce maintenance costs. For 2.5 billion people worldwide, smartphones cost about 30% of monthly income, keeping basic phones essential despite declining global feature phone sales.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/07/1817251/why-most-countries-are-struggling-to-shut-down-2g?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The spectacular collapse of fintech middleman Synapse has left $200 million in customer money frozen and up to $95 million missing, with no clear answers about where the funds went. After Synapse, a financial technology company connecting other fintechs to banks, filed for bankruptcy in April 2024, customers of apps like Yotta, Juno, and Copper found themselves locked out of their savings.

Founded in 2014 by Sankaet Pathak, Synapse connected consumer-facing fintech platforms with banks holding customer deposits. The disaster unfolded after relationships with regional bank Evolve and unicorn client Mercury deteriorated, triggering a chain reaction through the financial infrastructure. Nearly a year later, Fortune reports that a Department of Justice criminal investigation is underway, while the bankruptcy's court-appointed trustee called the situation an "awful, awful" mess. The debacle, the outlet writes, exposes the risks lurking beneath popular financial apps operating in a regulatory frontier where customer funds travel across an invisible bridge of intermediaries.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/07/1825257/the-spectacular-synapse-collapse?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, music labels sought to add nearly 500 more sound recordings to a lawsuit accusing the Internet Archive (IA) of mass copyright infringement through its Great 78 Project, which seeks to digitize all 3 million three-minute recordings published on 78 revolutions-per-minute (RPM) records from about 1898 to the 1950s. If the labels' proposed second amended complaint is accepted by the court, damages sought in the case -- which some already feared could financially ruin IA and shut it down for good -- could increase to almost $700 million. (Initially, the labels sought about $400 million in damages.) IA did not respond to Ars' request for comment, but the filing noted that IA has not consented to music labels' motion to amend their complaint. [...]

Some sound recording archivists and historians also continue to defend the Great 78 Project as a critical digitization effort at a time when quality of physical 78 RPM records is degrading and the records themselves are becoming obsolete, with very few libraries even maintaining equipment to play back the limited collections that are available in physical archives. They push back on labels' claims that commercially available Spotify streams are comparable to the Great 78 Project's digitized recordings, insisting that sound history can be lost when obscure recordings are controlled by rights holders who don't make them commercially available. [...] David Seubert, who manages sound collections at the University of California, Santa Barbara library, told Ars that he frequently used the project as an archive and not just to listen to the recordings.

For Seubert, the videos that IA records of the 78 RPM albums capture more than audio of a certain era. Researchers like him want to look at the label, check out the copyright information, and note the catalogue numbers, he said. "It has all this information there," Seubert said. "I don't even necessarily need to hear it," he continued, adding, "just seeing the physicality of it, it's like, 'Okay, now I know more about this record.'" [...] Nathan Georgitis, the executive director of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC), told Ars that you just don't see 78 RPM records out in the world anymore. Even in record stores selling used vinyl, these recordings will be hidden "in a few boxes under the table behind the tablecloth," Georgitis suggested. And in "many" cases, "the problem for libraries and archives is that those recordings aren't necessarily commercially available for re-release."

That "means that those recordings, those artists, the repertoire, the recorded sound history in itself -- meaning the labels, the producers, the printings -- all of that history kind of gets obscured from view," Georgitis said. Currently, libraries trying to preserve this history must control access to audio collections, Georgitis said. He sees IA's work with the Great 78 Project as a legitimate archive in that, unlike a streaming service, where content may be inconsistently available, IA's "mission is to preserve and provide access to content over time." "That 'over time' part is really the key function, I think, that distinguishes an archive from maybe a streaming service in a way," Georgitis said. "The Internet Archive is not hurting the revenue of the recording industry at all," Seubert suggested. "It has no impact on their revenue." Instead, he suspects that labels' lawsuit is "somehow vindictive," because the labels perhaps "don't like the Internet Archive's way of pushing the envelope on copyright and fair use."

"There are people who, like the founder of the Internet Archive, want to push that envelope, and the media conglomerates want to push back in the other direction," Seubert said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/07/221238/music-labels-will-regret-coming-for-the-internet-archive-sound-historian-says?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Broadcom's VMware acquisition has significantly boosted revenue, largely driven by high-priced VMware Cloud Foundation bundles adopted by the majority of its top customers. The Register reports: Broadcom's acquisition of VMware appears to be a big success, on the balance sheet at least, after the company announced a big majority of its top 10,000 customers have decided to acquire its Cloud Foundation stack and posted strong growth. The chips-and-code company today announced its results for the quarter ended February 2nd, its first for FY 2025. Revenue of $14.92 billion represented 25 percent year-on-year growth. Net income of $5.5 billion was a 315 percent increase on the result from Q1 2024.

Broadcom no longer breaks out VMware revenue: sales of Virtzilla's wares are all now lumped into its infrastructure software business unit, which posted $6.7 billion revenue for Q1, up from $4.55 billion for the same quarter last year. Direct comparisons of those numbers are not wise as Broadcom owned VMware for four fifths of Q1 2024. Consider, instead, the $1.97 billion Q4 2023 and $7.6 billion FY 2023 software revenue that Broadcom recorded before it acquired VMware.

Know, also, that Broadcom's software sales grew by just three percent in FY 2023 and four percent in FY 2022. That slow growth means the jump from $1.97 billion software revenue in Q4 2023 to $6.7 billion in Q1 2025 is likely due to VMware, which in its last quarter as an independent company reported $3.4 billion revenue. It therefore looks a lot like Broadcom has added around $1 billion to quarterly VMware revenue in a little over a year.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/03/07/229224/70-of-large-vmware-customers-bought-broadcoms-biggest-bundle?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

President Trump has signed an executive order to establish a strategic reserve of cryptocurrencies by using tokens already owned by the government. Reuters reports: A "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve" will be capitalized with bitcoin owned by the federal government that was seized as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, the White House crypto czar, billionaire David Sacks, said in a post on social media platform X. The order kept open the possibility of the government buying bitcoin in future. The U.S. commerce and treasury secretaries "are authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided that those strategies impose no incremental costs on American taxpayers," a factsheet on the White House website said. "This is the most underwhelming and disappointing outcome we could have expected for this week," Charles Edwards, founder of bitcoin-focused hedge fund Capriole Investments, wrote in a post on X. "No active buying means this is just a fancy title for Bitcoin holdings that already existed with the Govt. This is a pig in lipstick."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/03/07/2224215/trump-signs-order-to-establish-strategic-bitcoin-reserve?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies' scheduled release dates. According to a US Department of Justice press release, Steven Hale worked at the DVD company and allegedly stole "numerous 'pre-release' DVDs and Blu-rays" between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly "ripped" the movies, "bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying" and shared copies widely online. He also supposedly sold the actual stolen discs on e-commerce sites, the DOJ alleged.

Hale has been charged with "two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods," the DOJ said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years for the former, and 10 years for the latter. Among blockbuster movies that Hale is accused of stealing are Dune, F9: The Fast Saga, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Godzilla v. Kong, and, perhaps most notably, Spider-Man: No Way Home. The DOJ claimed that "copies of Spider-Man: No Way Home were downloaded tens of millions of times, with an estimated loss to the copyright owner of tens of millions of dollars."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/03/07/2242250/feds-arrest-man-for-sharing-dvd-rip-of-spider-man-movie-with-millions-online?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

New submitter grandrollerz writes: Despite streaming online since the RealAudio days of the late 1990s, the BBC has announced that most of its radio stations will become unavailable to international users later this year. Starting in Spring 2025, only talk news stations BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4 will remain accessible outside the UK. This change is due to rights issues and the launch of a new BBC audio website and app that will replace BBC Sounds for international users. The BBC Sounds app will be available exclusively to UK audiences, although UK users traveling abroad for short periods will still be able to use it. This move has disappointed many long-time international listeners who will lose access to their favorite BBC radio stations. It follows a similar move to further commercialize its services where in 2024 the BBC and Amazon Music struck a global deal to make BBC podcasts available on Amazon Music outside the UK, but only for subscribers to Amazon's Prime and Amazon Music Unlimited services.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/07/2250209/bbc-radios-streaming-changes-leave-long-time-listeners-in-the-lurch?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Signal President Meredith Whittaker warned at SXSW that agentic AI poses significant privacy and security risks, as these AI agents require extensive access to users' personal data, likely processing it unencrypted in the cloud. TechCrunch reports: "So we can just put our brain in a jar because the thing is doing that and we don't have to touch it, right?," Whittaker mused. Then she explained the type of access the AI agent would need to perform these tasks, including access to our web browser and a way to drive it as well as access to our credit card information to pay for tickets, our calendar, and messaging app to send the text to your friends. "It would need to be able to drive that [process] across our entire system with something that looks like root permission, accessing every single one of those databases -- probably in the clear, because there's no model to do that encrypted," Whittaker warned.

"And if we're talking about a sufficiently powerful ... AI model that's powering that, there's no way that's happening on device," she continued. "That's almost certainly being sent to a cloud server where it's being processed and sent back. So there's a profound issue with security and privacy that is haunting this hype around agents, and that is ultimately threatening to break the blood-brain barrier between the application layer and the OS layer by conjoining all of these separate services [and] muddying their data," Whittaker concluded.

If a messaging app like Signal were to integrate with AI agents, it would undermine the privacy of your messages, she said. The agent has to access the app to text your friends and also pull data back to summarize those texts. Her comments followed remarks she made earlier during the panel on how the AI industry had been built on a surveillance model with mass data collection. She said that the "bigger is better AI paradigm" -- meaning the more data, the better -- had potential consequences that she didn't think were good. With agentic AI, Whittaker warned we'd further undermine privacy and security in the name of a "magic genie bot that's going to take care of the exigencies of life," she concluded. You can watch the full speech on YouTube.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/03/07/2310205/signal-president-calls-out-agentic-ai-as-having-profound-security-and-privacy-issues?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft is reportedly developing its own large language model series capable of rivaling OpenAI and Anthropic's models. SiliconANGLE reports: Sources told Bloomberg that the LLM series is known as MAI. That's presumably an acronym for "Microsoft artificial intelligence." It might also be a reference to Maia 100, an internally-developed AI chip the company debuted last year. It's possible Microsoft is using the processor to power the new MAI models. The company recently tested the LLM series to gauge its performance. As part of the evaluation, Microsoft engineers checked whether MAI could power the company's Copilot family of AI assistants. Data from the tests reportedly indicates that the LLM series is competitive with models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

That Microsoft evaluated whether MAI could be integrated into Copilot hints the LLM series is geared towards general-purpose processing rather than reasoning. Many of the tasks supported by Copilot can be performed with a general-purpose model. According to Bloomberg, Microsoft is currently developing a second LLM series optimized for reasoning tasks. The report didn't specify details such as the number of models Microsoft is training or their parameter counts. It's also unclear whether they might provide multimodal features.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/0018225/microsoft-reportedly-develops-llm-series-that-can-rival-openai-anthropic-models?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Many of us have been guilty of binning a mushy, overripe banana -- but now scientists say they have a solution with the launch of a genetically engineered non-browning banana. The product is the latest in a series of gene-edited fruits and vegetables designed to have a longer shelf life. Scientists say the technology is emerging as a powerful new weapon against food waste, which occurs globally on an epic scale. The banana, developed by Tropic, a biotech company based in Norwich, is said to remain fresh and yellow for 12 hours after being peeled and is less susceptible to turning brown when bumped during harvesting and transportation.

The company has also developed a slow-ripening banana that has been approved in several countries, which it plans to launch later in the year. Other research teams are working on lettuce that wilts more slowly, bruise-resistant apples and potatoes and identifying the genes that determine how quickly grapes and blueberries shrivel. [...] The company worked out how to disable a gene responsible for the production of an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase, which causes browning. The same gene is silenced in Arctic apples, a genetically modified variety, which has been sold in the US since 2017, and blocking the production of polyphenol oxidase has been shown to work in tomatoes, melon, kiwifruits and mushrooms. In the bananas, Tropic made precise changes to existing genes without introducing foreign genetic material. The report notes that an estimated 33% of the produce that is harvested worldwide is never consumed due to the short shelf-life of many fruit and vegetable products. Bananas are among the most thrown-away foods, with some 5 billion bananas tossed in the U.S. each year.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/0140247/gene-edited-non-browning-banana-could-cut-food-waste-scientists-say?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Athena lunar lander from Intuitive Machines has prematurely ended its mission after tipping onto its side shortly after touching down near the moon's south pole, failing to fully accomplish its planned water-searching objectives. From a report: Athena was expected to operate for about 10 days before powering down as lunar night fell over the spacecraft's landing site at Mons Mouton, a plateau that lies about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the south pole. But photographs delivered by the lander before it powered down confirmed the vehicle is lying on its side. "With the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge," the company said in a statement. "The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission."

Intuitive Machines, however, highlighted that, although Athena did not operate as intended, the lander was able to briefly operate and transmit data after touchdown. That made the mission the "southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved." Intuitive Machines also said that Athena was "able to accelerate several program and payload milestones, including NASA's PRIME-1 suite, before the lander's batteries depleted." PRIME-1, which includes a drill that was expected to dig into the lunar surface to hunt for water, was able to move, according to a statement from NASA that states the device "demonstrated the hardware's full range of motion in the harsh environment of space."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/0145217/athena-spacecraft-declared-dead-after-toppling-over-on-moon?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

NASA's SPHEREx observatory (short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) is set to launch this week to map 450 million galaxies in infrared, providing insights into galaxy formation, the origins of water, and testing theories about the universe's rapid expansion following the Big Bang. The two-year mission will repeatedly survey the entire sky and help scientists understand fundamental cosmic processes. NBC News reports: The launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California is scheduled to occur Friday, during a window that opens at 10:09 p.m. ET. Liftoff was initially planned for Feb. 27, but NASA rescheduled it several times, first to "complete vehicle processing and prelaunch checkouts," and because of availability at the California launch site.

The cone-shaped spacecraft -- along with four suitcase-sized satellites that NASA will deploy at the same time on a separate mission to study the sun -- will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The $488 million SPHEREx mission, which has been in development for about a decade, is designed to map the celestial sky in 102 infrared colors -- more than any other mission before it, according to NASA.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/0152240/nasas-spherex-is-poised-to-launch-mission-to-map-450-million-galaxies-in-color?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google has introduced a Debian Linux terminal app for Android in its ongoing effort to transform Android into a versatile desktop OS. It's initially available on Pixel devices running Android 15 but will be expanded to "all sufficiently robust Android phones" when Android 16 arrives later this year," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Today, Linux is only available on the latest Pixel devices running Android 15. When Android 16 arrives later this year, it's expected that all sufficiently robust Android phones will be able to run Linux. Besides a Linux terminal, beta tests have already shown that you should be able to run desktop Linux programs from your phone -- games like Doom, for example. The Linux Terminal runs on top of a Debian Linux virtual machine. This enables you to access a shell interface directly on your Android device. And that just scratches the surface of Google's Linux Terminal. It's actually a do-it-all app that enables you to download, configure, and run Debian. Underneath Terminal runs the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF). These are the APIs that enable Android devices to run other operating systems.

To try the Linux Terminal app, you must activate Developer Mode by navigating to Settings - About Phone and tapping the build number seven times. I guess Google wants to make sure you want to do this. Once Developer Mode is enabled, the app can be activated via Settings - System - Developer options - Linux development environment. The initial setup may take a while because it needs to download Debian. Typically this is a 500MB download. Once in place, it allows you to adjust disk space allocation, set port controls for network communication, and recover the virtual machine's storage partition. However, it currently lacks support for graphical user interface (GUI) applications. For that, we'll need to wait for Android 16.

According to Android specialist Mishaal Rahman, 'Google wants to turn Android into a proper desktop operating system, and in order to do that, it has to make it work better with traditional PC input methods and display options. Therefore, Google is now testing new external display management tools in Android 16 that bring Android closer to other desktop OSes.'

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/0158226/google-introduces-debian-linux-terminal-app-for-android?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader invisik saw this story on Yahoo News:

Comedian and voice actor George Lowe, who is well-known as the voice of Space Ghost on "Space Ghost Coast to Coast," died on March 2. He was 67...
He did some voice-over work for TBWS and Cartoon Network in the 1980s to mid-1990s before getting his lead role of Space Ghost in 1994 with the premiere of "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" on Cartoon Network. Space Ghost was a parody of talk shows with live-action celebrity guests, hosted by the Hanna Barbera character Space Ghost, which aired from 1994 to 1999 on Cartoon Network. The show later returned in 2001, airing on Adult Swim's late-night programming block until 2004, Deadline reported.

When animation pioneer William Hanna died in 2001, Slashdot founder CmdrTaco posted "the thing that I respect most about Hanna is the fact that a show like Space Ghost Coast to Coast was allowed to take their characters and do something truly unique with them. He even lent his voice to the show in one episode. Not a lot of people would be willing to allow one of their creations to be twisted like that, but the original Space Ghost was one of my childhood staples, and Space Ghost Coast to Coast stands in a class all its own proving that creativity isn't dead on TV."

"Adult Swim would not be the network it is today without Space Ghost Coast to Coast," argues ComicBook.com. (And as a tribute to Lowe, Adult Swim posted five minutes of surreal outtakes from Space Ghost Coast to Coast's 10th Anniversary celebration.)

A headline at Vulture.com makes the case that "Space Ghost Coast to Coast Only Worked Because of George Lowe." They've rounded up a collection of videos with surreal titles like "Marrying Bjork" and "Guesting on a MF DOOM track" (plus that time Lowe did a live interview — in his Space Ghost costume — with C-SPAN).

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/0740211/remembering-space-ghost-voice-actor-george-lowe?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Equuleus42 (Slashdot reader #723) brings word that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is sharing a new tool for fighting back against cellphone surveillance by Stingray cell-site simulators.

Android Authority reports:

"Rayhunter" uses an open-source software package designed to look for evidence of IMSI catchers in action, running on an old Orbic Speed RC400L mobile hotspot. The great thing about that choice is that you can pick one up for practically nothing — we're seeing them listed for barely over $10 on Amazon, and you can find them even cheaper on eBay. There's an installation script for Macs and Linux to automate getting set up, but once the Orbic is flashed with the Rayhunter software, it should be ready go, collecting data about sketchy-looking "cell towers" it picks up.

Right now, much of the use of IMSI catchers is still shrouded in mystery, with the groups who regularly employ them extremely hesitant to disclose their methods. As a result, a big focus of this EFF project is just getting more info on how and where these are actually used, giving protestors a better sense of the steps they'll need to take if they want to protect their privacy.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/0346250/rayhunter-a-cheap-new-tool-from-eff-to-detect-cellular-spying?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Open Source Initiative's Board of Directors election "has become embroiled in controversy..." writes Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at The New Stack.

"The real issue is the community's opposition to the open source AI definition (OSAID), which the organization released last October," he adds — but "the election process has been criticized because the OSI has refused to accept the candidacy of Debian developer Luke Faraone, citing a missed application deadline."
Faraone claims they submitted their application around 9 p.m. PST on Feb. 17, while the OSI maintains the deadline was 11:59 p.m. UTC (3:59 p.m. PST) on the same day.

The dispute has raised a firestorm about the clarity of communication regarding deadlines and time zones. Critics argue that the deadline's time zone was not clearly specified on the OSI's public-facing website. Tracy Hinds, chair of OSI, acknowledged this oversight but stated that full members received multiple emails with the correct time zone information. "Everyone who is qualified to run for elections (full members of OSI) received emails with the time zone," wrote Hinds, in an email to The New Stack. "The public-facing web page did not have the time zone, and we've now updated it for clarity going forward.

"Extending the deadline would be unfair to the other candidates...."
On LinkedIn, Bruce Perens, one of the OSI's founders wrote, "Open Source Initiative invents rule at the last minute to deny opposition candidate's nomination for their board election."
There are three board sets up for election in March, the article points out. "Two well-known figures in the open source world — Richard Fontana, Red Hat's principal commercial counsel and a former OSI board member, and [Bradley] Kuhn, policy fellow and hacker-in-residence at the Software Freedom Conservancy — are running on a joint platform of repealing the open source AI definition."

Faraone wrote on his blog that he would've had a similar platform (also supporting a repeal of the definition) — had his candidacy not been rejected.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/0652240/open-source-initiative-ai-debate-roils-board-elections?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Sam Bankman-Fried — one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party — "was convicted of fraud, sentenced to 25 years in prison and mostly went silent," reports the Wall Street Journal. "Until recently..."

Now, from behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, Bankman-Fried is orchestrating an extraordinary public-relations blitz that looks very much like a campaign to make the most audacious trade of his career: support for President Trump's agenda in return for a presidential pardon...

There is little downside to Bankman-Fried's long-shot effort to secure a pardon. As the appeal that he filed last year works its way through the courts, Bankman-Fried, 33, is staring down a prison sentence that could extend until his 50s... The crowning touch of his campaign came on Thursday, when Bankman-Fried gave a jailhouse interview to "The Tucker Carlson Show," which was released on social-media channels including X and YouTube. Appearing on video in a brown jumpsuit, he criticized Washington bureaucrats and crypto regulators — and suggested that he went to prison out of political retribution... [Carlson's title for the interview? "Sam Bankman-Fried on Life in Prison With Diddy, and How Democrats Stole His Money and Betrayed Him."]

The interview hadn't been approved by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, according to a person familiar with the matter. Bankman-Fried spoke with Carlson through a link that is typically used by inmates to communicate with their lawyers, the person said. After the interview, Bankman-Fried was placed in solitary confinement, but he was out by Friday afternoon, according to a person familiar with the matter... Bankman-Fried is trying to highlight in media appearances and in any interaction with Trump's team that FTX customers are set to be made whole with interest through the bankruptcy proceedings — at least in dollar terms. Many of those creditors remain furious that they missed out on bitcoin's rally since November 2022.
Bankman-Fried "wants to set the record straight on his political beliefs, which he believes have been misconstrued," according to the article. "While he has given heavily to Democrats, he has also donated to Republican causes, including the contribution of millions to a group supporting Senator Mitch McConnell."

But the New York Times, citing "people with knowledge" of his pardon-seeking efforts, reported that "So far, the push does not appear to have gained traction."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/183254/sam-bankman-fried-gives-a-jailhouse-interview-seeking-a-pardon?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Butterflies "are vanishing from U.S. landscapes at an alarming rate," reports CBS News:

A comprehensive study, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that 22% of butterflies in the United States disappeared between 2000 and 2020... The researchers behind the Science study used data from more than 12.6 million butterflies spanning 342 individual species, drawing from 76,000 surveys across 35 nationwide monitoring programs. Funded by the U.S. Geological Survey, the study was the first to integrate such a vast dataset, its authors said.

The findings revealed that 33% of butterfly species have experienced significant population declines over the past two decades, with 107 out of the 342 species examined losing more than half of their population — including 22 species that declined by more than 90%. Meanwhile, only 3% of species showed population increases...

Ultimately, the butterfly decline is part of a larger global trend of insect population loss, with insects declining by about 1-2% annually, the study's authors said. Butterflies play an essential role in ecosystems, pollinating flowers, crops, and other plants. Their decline could have far-reaching impacts on plant reproduction and the health of ecosystems.
Just three months ago the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said America's western migratory populations of monarch butterflies had declined by more than 95% since the 1980s, putting them "at greater than 99% chance of extinction by 2080." (America's eastern migratory population were estimated to have declined by approximately 80%.)

This latest study found that one factor is climate change, according to CBS News, which reduces food sources, disrupts breeding cycles and increases habitat stress. (Another factor is pesticide use, which fortunately can be adjusted with various policy interventions and farming practices.)

And one of the study's co-authors tells CBS News that "the things we do in our own backyards actually make a difference." They recommend allowing backyard to "grow wild" with native plants (and reducing pesticide use) — even creating "habitat spaces" for insects like small piles of brush. "Even simple actions — like leaving a strip of wildflowers or planting species that support pollinators — can provide crucial resources for butterflies and other insects."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/0523212/america-lost-22-of-its-butterflies-within-two-decades?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"The ubiquitous ESP32 microchip made by Chinese manufacturer Espressif and used by over 1 billion units as of 2023 contains an undocumented 'backdoor' that could be leveraged for attacks," writes BleepingComputer.
"The undocumented commands allow spoofing of trusted devices, unauthorized data access, pivoting to other devices on the network, and potentially establishing long-term persistence."

This was discovered by Spanish researchers Miguel Tarascó Acuña and Antonio Vázquez Blanco of Tarlogic Security, who presented their findings yesterday at RootedCON in Madrid. "Tarlogic Security has detected a backdoor in the ESP32, a microcontroller that enables WiFi and Bluetooth connection and is present in millions of mass-market IoT devices," reads a Tarlogic announcement shared with BleepingComputer. "Exploitation of this backdoor would allow hostile actors to conduct impersonation attacks and permanently infect sensitive devices such as mobile phones, computers, smart locks or medical equipment by bypassing code audit controls...."

Tarlogic developed a new C-based USB Bluetooth driver that is hardware-independent and cross-platform, allowing direct access to the hardware without relying on OS-specific APIs. Armed with this new tool, which enables raw access to Bluetooth traffic, Targolic discovered hidden vendor-specific commands (Opcode 0x3F) in the ESP32 Bluetooth firmware that allow low-level control over Bluetooth functions. In total, they found 29 undocumented commands, collectively characterized as a "backdoor," that could be used for memory manipulation (read/write RAM and Flash), MAC address spoofing (device impersonation), and LMP/LLCP packet injection.

Espressif has not publicly documented these commands, so either they weren't meant to be accessible, or they were left in by mistake.

Thanks to Slashdot reader ZipNada for sharing the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/2027216/undocumented-backdoor-found-in-chinese-bluetooth-chip-used-by-a-billion-devices?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"PepsiCo is launching a new product, Simply Ruffles Hot & Spicy, which uses natural ingredients like tomato powder and red chile pepper instead of artificial dyes," reports Bloomberg. But it's part of a larger trend:

In one of the final acts of President Joe Biden's administration, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned Red No. 3, effective in January 2027 for food, one of a handful of synthetic colors that have become something of a symbol of all that is wrong with the American food system and the ultraprocessed foods that dominate it. Putting Red No. 3 aside, the rest of the colors remain legal, and they're used in tens of thousands of supermarket and convenience-store products in the United States, according to NielsenIQ data. The recent campaign against them became one of the pillars of the "Make America Healthy Again" movement championed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The criticism follows what health advocates have been saying for years: The synthetic colors add nothing to taste, nutritional value or shelf life but make unhealthy foods more visually appealing. Worst of all, there are concerns that the dyes may be carcinogenic or trigger hyperactivity in some kids.
[Ian Puddephat, vice president of research and development for food ingredients at PepsiCo] says PepsiCo is "on a mission to get them out of the portfolio as much as we can"... PepsiCo has a dozen brands, including Simply, that don't have the artificial dyes, and the company is working to pull them out of an additional eight brands in the next year.
Other companies are trying too, according to the article. Though Ironically, "the supply chain for colors like a radish's red or annatto's orange is not as robust as that for Red No. 40 or Yellow No. 6."

But there's also been some success stories:

In 2016, Kraft Heinz Foods Co. announced that it'd made good on an earlier promise to get artificial dyes out of its recipe — and apparently, nobody noticed. "We just haven't told that story," says Carlos Abrams-Rivera, Kraft Heinz's CEO. (The lack of artificial dyes is more prominent on the boxes now...)

Thanks to long-time Slashdot schwit1 for haring the article.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/033219/snack-makers-are-removing-fake-colors-from-processed-foods?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Axiom Space and Red Hat will collaborate to launch Data Center Unit-1 (AxDCU-1) to the International Space Station this spring. It's a small data processing prototype (powered by lightweight, edge-optimized Red Hat Device Edge) that will demonstrate initial Orbital Data Center (ODC) capabilities.

"It all sounds rather grand for something that resembles a glorified shoebox," reports the Register.
Axiom Space said: "The prototype will test applications in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning (AI/ML), data fusion and space cybersecurity."

Space is an ideal environment for edge devices. Connectivity to datacenters on Earth is severely constrained, so the more processing that can be done before data is transmitted to a terrestrial receiving station, the better. Tony James, chief architect, Science and Space at Red Hat, said: "Off-planet data processing is the next frontier, and edge computing is a crucial component. With Red Hat Device Edge and in collaboration with Axiom Space, Earth-based mission partners will have the capabilities necessary to make real-time decisions in space with greater reliability and consistency...."

The Red Hat Device Edge software used by Axiom's device combines Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Red Hat Ansible Platform, and MicroShift, a lightweight Kubernetes container orchestration service derived from Red Hat OpenShift. The plan is for Axiom Space to host hybrid cloud applications and cloud-native workloads on-orbit. Jason Aspiotis, global director of in-space data and security, Axiom Space, told The Register that the hardware itself is a commercial off-the-shelf unit designed for operation in harsh environments... "AxDCU-1 will have the ability to be controlled and utilized either via ground-to-space or space-to-space communications links. Our current plans are to maintain this device on the ISS. We plan to utilize this asset for at least two years."
The article notes that HPE has also "sent up a succession of Spaceborne computers — commercial, off-the-shelf supercomputers — over the years to test storage, recovery, and operational potential on long-duration missions." (They apparently use Red Hat Enterprise Linux.) "At the other end of the scale, the European Space Agency has run Raspberry Pi computers on the ISS for years as part of the AstroPi educational outreach program."

Axiom Space says their Orbital Data Center is deigned to "reduce delays traditionally associated with orbital data processing and analysis."

By utilizing Earth-independent cloud storage and edge processing infrastructure, Axiom Space ODCs will enable data to be processed closer to its source, spacecraft or satellites, bypassing the need for terrestrial-based data centers. This architecture alleviates reliance on costly, slow, intermittent or contested network connections, creating more secure and quicker decision-making in space.
The goal is to allow Axiom Space and its partners to have access to real-time processing capabilities, laying the foundation for increased reliability and improved space cybersecurity with extensive applications. Use cases for ODCs include but are not limited to supporting Earth observation satellites with in-space and lower latency data storage and processing, AI/ML training on-orbit, multi-factor authentication and cyber intrusion detection and response, supervised autonomy, in-situ space weather analytics and off-planet backup & disaster recovery for critical infrastructure on Earth.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/205225/axiom-space-and-red-hat-will-bring-edge-computing-to-the-international-space-station?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

This week the Free Software Foundation "backed a lone developer's brave effort to overturn a pivotal court ruling that threatens to undermine the AGPLv3 — the foundation's GNU Affero General Public License, version 3," reports the Register.

"At stake is the future of not just the AGPLv3, but the FSF's widely used GNU Public License it is largely based on, and the software covered by those agreements."

A core tenet of the GPL series is that free software remains free forever, and this is woven into the licenses' fine print. This ongoing legal battle is a matter of whether people can alter those licenses and redistribute code as they see fit in a non-free way, or if they must stick to the terms of an agreement that says the terms cannot be changed...
If the Ninth Circuit upholds the [original district court] ruling, it's likely to create a binding precedent that would limit one of the major freedoms that AGPLv3 and other GPL licenses aim to protect — the ability to remove restrictions added to GPL licensed code.

"Neo4j appended an additional nonfree commercial restriction, the Commons Clause, to a verbatim version of the GNU AGPLv3 in a version of its software..." according to an FSF announcement this week. "The FSF's position on such confusing licensing practices has always been clear: the GNU licenses explicitly allow users to remove restrictions incompatible with the four freedoms." (You can read their amicus brief here.)

Thanks to Slashdot reader jms00 for sharing the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/0613217/free-software-foundation-rides-to-defend-agplv3-against-neo4j-license-add-ons?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"The early web was fun," Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian posted Wednesday on X.com. "It was weird. It was community-driven. It's time to rebuild that.

"Which is why Kevin Rose and I just bought back Digg."

The amount of that purchase is "undisclosed," reports CNBC:

The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian's Seven Seven Six.... The company said in a release that it aims to differentiate itself in the social media market by "focusing on AI innovations designed to enhance the user experience and build a human-centered alternative...." Rose said in a post on X that he and Ohanian "dreamed up features that weren't even possible with yesterday's tech."

"We're bringing more transparency and community partnership," according to Rose's post, "unlike anything you've seen, plus AI that unlocks creativity without sanitizing the human element. The timing is finally right to reimagine what's possible."

"I really disliked you for a long time," Ohanian tells Rose in their joint announcement video. (To which a cheery Rose responds, "Rightfully so.")

But in the video Ohanian also says that today "Our perspective on the world has shifted a lot. You don't want to live in the past, but now we actually have the technology to make better, healthier community experiences." ("Old Rivals, New Vision," says a post on Digg's X.com account, urging readers to "Sign up to get early access when invites go live.")

And Digg.com now just displays this teasing catchphrase. "The front page of the internet, now with superpowers." (At the top of the page there's also a link to watch Diggnation Live at SXSW.)

While valued at $160 million dollars in 2008, Digg's plummeting traffic led to its brand and web site being acquired in 2012 by tech incubator Betaworks for about $500,000, according to CNBC...

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/2252242/reddit-and-digg-cofounders-plan-relaunch-of-human-centered-digg-with-ai-innovations?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

As Christie's auction house planned the first-ever auction dedicated to AI-generated art works, over 5,600 people signed an online letter urging them to cancel it. "Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license," the letter complained.
"These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them. Your support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivizes AI companies' mass theft of human artists' work." CNET reports that the signers "range from illustrators to authors to art therapists to cinematographers, from countries all across the globe."

Christie's ignored them all and held the auction anyways. So what happened when it was over on Wednesday morning?

More than 30 lots attracted hundreds of bids and brought in $728,784, Christie's reports. And there's a generational twist: The auction house says 37% of registrants were completely new to Christie's, and 48% of bidders were millennials or members of Gen Z... The highest price in the sale was $277,200 for a work by Refik Anadol titled Machine Hallucinations — ISS Dreams — A. It used a data set of more than 1.2 million images taken from the International Space Station and satellites.

ARTnews reports that the auction actually brought in more than Christie's had expected:
The sale, which made up of 34 lots, had an 82 percent sell through rate... While some digital artists, including Beeple, championed the sale, others decried it as emblematic of the ongoing struggle between human artistry and machine-driven innovation. The results, however, suggest that AI art — controversial as it may be — is carving a firm place in the market.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/03/09/0132251/ignoring-protests-christies-holds-ai-art-auction-makes-big-money?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

U.S. president Donald Trump called Daylight Saving Time "very costly to our nation" and "inconvenient" in December. Today the Washington Post remembers he'd vowed his Republican party would use their "best efforts" to eliminate it.

But it's still proving to be politically difficult...

Polls have shown that most Americans oppose the time shifts but disagree on what should replace them... [U.S. political leaders] also say they are grappling with whether the nation should permanently move the clocks forward one hour, an idea championed by lawmakers on the coasts who say it would allow for more sunshine during the winter, or remain on year-round standard time, which is favored by neurologists who say it aligns with our circadian rhythms. That decision would rest with Congress, not the president. The split often reflects regional, not political, differences, based on where time zones fall; a year-round "spring forward" would mean winter sunrises that could creep past 9 a.m. in cities such as Indianapolis and Detroit, prompting many local lawmakers to oppose the idea...

[A 2022 Senate vote to make Daylight Saving Time permanent] awoke a new lobbying effort from advocates such as the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, which warned that year-round daylight saving time would be unhealthy, citing risks such as higher rates of obesity or metabolic dysfunction. Some researchers warned of a condition dubbed "social jetlag," saying that internal body clocks and rhythms would be persistently misaligned if human clocks were permanently set forward an hour. The concerted resistance from the health groups — which some congressional aides jokingly referred to as "Big Sleep" — helped kill the measure in the House and has contributed to a stalemate over how to proceed...
Today, roughly two-thirds of Americans want to end the clock changes, polls show. But even those Americans don't agree on what should come next. An October 2023 YouGov poll found that 33 percent of respondents wanted year-round daylight saving time, 23 percent wanted permanent standard time, and 9 percent had no preference. The remainder weren't sure or preferred to remain on the current system... The political fight is far from over, with Trump allies such as Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) pledging to keep pushing for year-round daylight saving time. Some congressional Republicans also have privately called for a hearing in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, with hopes of advancing the Sunshine Protection Act.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/09/0359219/is-america-closer-to-ending-daylight-saving-time?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Last week Google urged the U.S. government not to break up the company — but apparently, it didn't work.
In a new filing Friday, America's Justice Department "reiterated its November proposal that Google be forced to sell its Chrome web browser," reports the Washington Post, "to address a federal judge finding the company guilty of being an illegal monopoly in August."

The government also kept a proposal that Google be banned from paying other companies to give its search engine preferential placement on their apps and phones. At the same time, the government dropped its demand that Google sell its stakes in AI start-ups after one of the start-ups, Anthropic AI, argued that it needed Google's money to compete in the fast-growing industry.

The government's final proposal "reaffirms that Google must divest the Chrome browser — an important search access point — to provide an opportunity for a new rival to operate a significant gateway to search the internet, free of Google's monopoly control," Justice Department lawyers wrote in the filing... Judge Amit Mehta, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who had ruled that Google held an illegal monopoly, will decide on the final remedies in April.
The article quotes a Google spokesperson's response: that the Justice Department's "sweeping" proposals "continue to go miles beyond the court's decision, and would harm America's consumers, economy and national security."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/09/0232250/americas-justice-department-still-wants-google-to-sell-chrome?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A blog post from the Stanford University School of Medicine attempts to answer the question: What's the deal with the gut-brain connection?

It affects your mood, your sleep, even your motivation to exercise. There's convincing evidence that it's the starting point for Parkinson's disease and could be responsible for long COVID's cognitive effects. And it sits about 2 feet below your brain. The gut plays an obvious role in our health by digesting what we eat and extracting nutrients. But there's a growing appreciation among scientists that our digestive systems affect our general well-being in a much broader fashion.

One fascinating aspect of the gut's widespread impact on health is its direct influence on and communication with the brain, a conduit known as the gut-brain axis. Through direct signals from the vagus nerve, [which] connects the brain and the gut, as well as through molecules secreted into the bloodstream from our gut microbes and immune cells that traffic from the gut to the rest of the body, our brains and our digestive tracts are in constant communication. And when that communication goes off the rails, diseases and disorders can result. The gut-brain connection is a key part of how the brain forms a picture of the rest of the body, a phenomenon known as interoception, explained Christoph Thaiss, PhD, an assistant professor of pathology at Stanford Medicine...
The gut also contains the largest number of neurons outside the brain of any structure in the body — more than 100 million neurons line the human digestive tract, from the esophagus to the anus. These cells make up what is known as the enteric nervous system, which some scientists refer to as a "second brain." The enteric nervous system is more brain-like than other peripheral nerves because it consists of lots of different types of neurons that communicate with each other, while other peripheral nerves primarily serve to communicate between the brain and the body, said Julia Kaltschmidt, PhD, the Firmenich Next Generation Faculty Scholar and an associate professor of neurosurgery. In fact, the gut's nervous system can act alone. Scientists have found that if they remove an animal's gut and bathe it in a special fluid designed to keep neurons alive, the gut continues to contract, pushing its contents from top to bottom.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/09/0513235/how-your-gut-influences-your-brain?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"McDonald's is giving its 43,000 restaurants a technology makeover," reports the Wall Street Journal, including AI-enabled drive-throughs and AI-powered tools for managers — as well as internet-connected kitchen equipment.

"Technology solutions will alleviate the stress...." says McDonald's CIO Brian Rice.
McDonald's tapped Google Cloud in late 2023 to bring more computing power to each of its restaurants — giving them the ability to process and analyze data on-site... a faster, cheaper option than sending data to the cloud, especially in more far-flung locations with less reliable cloud connections, said Rice... Edge computing will enable applications like predicting when kitchen equipment — such as fryers and its notorious McFlurry ice cream machines — is likely to break down, Rice said. The burger chain said its suppliers have begun installing sensors on kitchen equipment that will feed data to the edge computing system and give franchisees a "real-time" view into how their restaurants are operating. AI can then analyze that data for early signs of a maintenance problem.
McDonald's is also exploring the use of computer vision, the form of AI behind facial recognition, in store-mounted cameras to determine whether orders are accurate before they're handed to customers, he said. "If we can proactively address those issues before they occur, that's going to mean smoother operations in the future," Rice added...

Additionally, the ability to tap edge computing will power voice AI at the drive-through, a capability McDonald's is also working with Google's cloud-computing arm to explore, Rice said. The company has been experimenting with voice-activated drive-throughs and robotic deep fryers since 2019, and ended its partnership with International Business Machines to test automated order-taking at the drive-through in 2024.
Edge computing will also help McDonald's restaurant managers oversee their in-store operations. The burger giant is looking to create a "generative AI virtual manager," Rice said, which handles administrative tasks such as shift scheduling on managers' behalf. Fast-food giant Yum Brands' Pizza Hut and Taco Bell have explored similar capabilities.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/03/09/070211/will-an-ai-makeover-help-mcdonalds?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader databasecowgirl writes: The Times is reporting an interesting study published in Science in which mice demonstrated doing first aid. In the replicated study, an anaesthetised mouse is exposed to another mouse who recognises the distress and clears airway to revive the unconscious mouse.

The mice had never seen an unconscious animal before, so the behaviour is thought to be instinctive.

From the Times:

Large social mammals have previously been documented lending assistance to each other. Chimpanzees have been seen tending to wounded companions, dolphins are known to push distressed pod members to the surface to help them breathe, and elephants have been observed assisting their ailing relatives. Never before, however, has such a meticulous, paws-on approach to first aid been recorded in a creature as small as a mouse.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/08/2133224/mice-give-first-aid?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Damaged corneas were repaired at a Harvard teaching hospital in a unique clinical trial, reports New Atlas:

Since it's on the frontline of potential hazards from the outside world, the cornea features a population of limbal epithelial stem cells, which repair minor damage to keep the surface smooth and functional... The new study, conducted by scientists at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, investigated a new treatment called cultivated autologous limbal epithelial cells (CALEC). This involves removing stem cells from a patient's uninjured eye, growing their population in the lab for a few weeks, then surgically transplanting them into the injured eye.
The phase 1/2 trial recruited 14 patients to undergo the procedure, and followed them for 18 months afterwards... By the first checkup at three months, the corneas of seven (50%) of the participants had been completely restored. By the 12-month mark, that number had increased to 11 (79%) patients. Two other participants met the definition for partial success, so the team claims an overall success rate of 92% for CALEC.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/09/1612213/stem-cell-therapy-trial-reverses-irreversible-damage-to-cornea?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Slashdot covered the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in 2008 and 2010 — though it's been running since 1983. Entrants competed to write the worst-possible first sentence for a novel, in a contest started by English professor Scott E. Rice at San Jose State University (which sponsored the contest). In its first year it drew over 10,000 entries!

Over the years the bad first sentences were even collected into actual books (that were edited by Rice). But after 43 years, Rice delivered his own disappointing first sentence. "It is with deep regrets that I announce the conclusion of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest."
Being a year and a half older than Joseph Biden, I find the BLFC becoming increasingly burdensome and would like to put myself out to pasture while I still have some vim and vigor!

When I initiated the competition in 1983, inviting entrants to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels, I never dreamed that we would receive thousands of entrants from all over the U.S. and the globe, or that the contest would survive for over four decades.

I am especially grateful to our entrants for keeping the contest alive and to our Panel of Undistinguished Judges who dutifully selected each year's "winners." And, of course, I would like to thank my daughter, EJ, who has been indispensable the last several years of the contest. It's been 42 good years but, alas, all good things must come to an end. Rest assured we're keeping the BLFC spirit alive by maintaining our archive for posterity so that generations and generations hence may witness your greatness!
His daughter EJ added their own words of thanks:
Lastly, any little bit you could spare towards helping us keep the archive going (a few bucks is great!) would be greatly appreciated (EJ's Venmo is @elizabeth-rice-12). Thank you so much for your joy and enthusiasm — the noble Bulweriers have made working on the contest a treasure!!

[ Read more of this story ]( https://idle.slashdot.org/story/25/03/09/1740239/professor-ends-bulwer-lytton-bad-writing-contest-after-43-years?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.