An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A study by the Pew Research Center found that Americans' views of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg skew more negative than positive. While Zuckerberg has sparked chatter in Silicon Valley with his sudden interest in high fashion, the Meta CEO is less popular than President Trump's right-hand man, Elon Musk, the report found. While about 54% of U.S. adults say they have an unfavorable view of Musk, 67% feel negatively toward Zuckerberg. [...] But Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, is more universally disliked, though he draws more ire from the left-leaning demographic. While 60% of Republican and Republican-leaning respondents hold an unfavorable view of Zuckerberg, 76% of their Democratic counterparts share that sentiment.

So, while Zuck may be playing the part of the cool guy, Americans haven't been fooled by his gold chains or musical ambitions, it seems. Pew's study involved a panel of 5,086 randomly selected U.S. adults. The survey was conducted from January 27, 2025, through February 2, 2025, so these responses reflect people's recent opinions.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/0048209/mark-zuckerbergs-makeover-didnt-make-people-like-him-study-shows?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The U.S. Space Force released the first-ever public image of its secretive X-37B space plane in orbit, captured during its ongoing seventh mission that launched on December 28, 2023. Space.com reports: The photo, released on Thursday (Feb. 20), was taken by a camera onboard the X-37B while the secretive space plane orbited high above the African continent. One of the plane's solar panels is visible on the left side of the photo, while what appears to be its open payload bay is visible along the top edge. The vehicle has been in orbit for well over a year now, having launched on its seventh mission on Dec. 28, 2023 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

And now, the X-37B has notched another milestone with the Space Force's release of this photo, the first-ever image of this space plane in orbit that has been shown to the public. While the photo contains scant details about the vehicle and what it's currently testing, it offers a look at Earth far in the background, revealing just how high the vehicle is flying on its seventh mission. We've gotten only one other glimpse at the X-37B in orbit prior to this. During the livestream of its most recent launch, a brief shot of the spacecraft deploying from Falcon Heavy's upper stage was seen while its service module was still attached.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/0056236/first-look-at-secretive-x-37b-space-plane-in-orbit?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Scientists have discovered evidence of ancient, shallow lakes on Mars that once had liquid water exposed to the atmosphere, challenging previous theories that all Martian water was covered in ice. Live Science reports: The patterns, which were photographed by NASA's Curiosity rover, are known as wave ripples -- minute ridge-like structures that form along the shores of lakebeds. This means that exposed liquid water must have flowed across Mars' surface at some point in its history. The ripples were present in two separate lakebeds in Gale Crater, which Curiosity has been exploring since Aug. 2012. "The shape of the ripples could only have been formed under water that was open to the atmosphere and acted upon by wind," study first author Claire Mondro, a sedimentologist at CalTech, said in a statement.

The researchers also analyzed the height and spacing of the ripple waves to determine the size of the lake that formed them. The structures are approximately 0.2 inches (6 millimeters) tall and about 1.6 to 2 inches (4 to 5 centimeters) apart, indicating they were left by small waves. Based on these dimensions, the researchers believe the Martian lake must have been less than 2 meters (6.5 feet) deep. Both dry lakebeds appear to have formed around 3.7 billion years ago, indicating that Mars had an atmosphere dense and warm enough to support liquid water for longer than previously thought -- which could have intriguing implications. "Extending the length of time that liquid water was present extends the possibilities for microbial habitability later into Mars's history," Mondro said. In other words: living organisms may have had a longer window in which they could have evolved on the Red Planet. The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/013239/nasa-rover-discovers-liquid-water-ripples-carved-into-mars-rock?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft's newly announced Muse AI model for game development has triggered immediate backlash from industry professionals. "Fuck this shit," responded David Goldfarb, founder of The Outsiders, arguing that such AI tools primarily serve to "reduce capital expenditure" while devaluing developers' collective artistic contributions.

Multiple developers told Wired that the tool is aimed at shareholders rather than actual developers. "Nobody will want this. They don't CARE that nobody will want this," one AAA developer said, noting that internal criticism remains muted due to job security concerns amid industry-wide layoffs.

The resistance comes as developers increasingly view AI initiatives as threats to job security rather than helpful tools. One anonymous developer called it "gross" that they needed to remain unnamed while criticizing Muse, as their studio still depends on potential Game Pass deals with Microsoft. Even in prototyping, where Microsoft sees AI potential, Creative Assembly's Marc Burrage warns that automated shortcuts could undermine crucial learning experiences in game development.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/0244244/game-developers-revolt-against-microsofts-new-ai-gaming-tool?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Linus Torvalds responded Thursday to kernel developer Christoph Hellwig, who had claimed Torvalds merged Rust code into the kernel even over his objections as the original C code's maintainer. Highlights from Torvalds' response:

The fact is, the pull request you objected to DID NOT TOUCH THE DMA LAYER AT ALL. It was literally just another user of it, in a completely separate subdirectory, that didn't change the code you maintain in _any_ way, shape, or form... Honestly, what you have been doing is basically saying "as a DMA maintainer I control what the DMA code is used for".

And that is not how *any* of this works. What's next? Saying that particular drivers can't do DMA, because you don't like that device, and as a DMA maintainer you control who can use the DMA code? That's _literally_ exactly what you are trying to do with the Rust code. You are saying that you disagree with Rust — which is fine, nobody has ever required you to write or read Rust code. But then you take that stance to mean that the Rust code cannot even use or interface to code you maintain...

You don't have to like Rust. You don't have to care about it. That's been made clear pretty much from the very beginning, that nobody is forced to suddenly have to learn a new language, and that people who want to work purely on the C side can very much continue to do so. So to get back to the very core of your statement:

"The document claims no subsystem is forced to take Rust"

that is very much true. You are not forced to take any Rust code, or care about any Rust code in the DMA code. You can ignore it...

You can't have it both ways. You can't say "I want to have nothing to do with Rust", and then in the very next sentence say "And that means that the Rust code that I will ignore cannot use the C interfaces I maintain".... So when you change the C interfaces, the Rust people will have to deal with the fallout, and will have to fix the Rust bindings. That's kind of the promise here: there's that "wall of protection" around C developers that don't want to deal with Rust issues in the promise that they don't *have* to deal with Rust.

But that "wall of protection" basically goes both ways. If you don't want to deal with the Rust code, you get no *say* on the Rust code. Put another way: the "nobody is forced to deal with Rust" does not imply "everybody is allowed to veto any Rust code".

Torvalds also made sure to add some kind remarks, including "I respect you technically, and I like working with you."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/0524210/torvalds-rust-kernel-code-isnt-forced-in-over-maintainers-objections?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Deadline reports:
It's taking around $1 billion to have 007 stewards Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson cede creative oversight of their family's storied James Bond franchise to Amazon MGM Studios, sources tell us. Amazon originally overpaid on its purchase of MGM in a deal orchestrated by then-MGM board chair Kevin Ulrich. Though valued between $3.5 billion-$4 billion, the legendary motion picture studio was absorbed by the streamer for $8.5 billion, the hefty sum propped up by the potential access of the 007 franchise. However, Amazon couldn't fully freely develop Bond with Broccoli and Wilson in the mix. Hence, it took another $1 billion to ensure that they could fully steer and exploit the Ian Fleming IP.
The article suggests Broccoli's long hold-out came from "Amazon's desire to expand the James Bond franchise into its own universe akin to Marvel or Star Wars."
In the past, filmmakers including Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan have expressed an interest in putting their stamp on Bond; both however, required complete creative control, which wasn't possible under the reign of Broccoli and Wilson. Now, with the producers on the side, Amazon can move forward to attract a top-tier director.

Also available to come to life in the new deal finally are a slew of Bond villains and women in their own series or features. The last time an attempt was made to spin off the Bond franchise was in 2003 with a stand-alone movie about the spy's girlfriend Jinx, played by Halle Berry in Die Another Day. Bond scribes Neal Purvis and Rob Wade were attached to pen that, with Stephen Frears circling, but Broccoli and Wilson put the kibosh to the idea due to creative differences.
In a related note, the article adds that Amazon "is looking to have an international theatrical distribution arm fully operational by some time in 2026."

Jeff Bezos asked his followers on X.com who should play James Bond in the next movie, reports IGN, "and the answer was loud and clear." On X.com the "clear fan favorite" was DC Extended Universe actor Henry Cavill. (Besides playing Superman, Cavill also appeared in the 2024 film spy action-comedy Argyle, and fought Tom Cruise's character in 2018's Mission Impossible: Fallout — and played Geralt of Rivia in the Netflix series The Witcher.)

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/0638211/james-bonds-next-assignment-amazon-pays-1-billion-for-full-creative-control?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google's Threat Intelligence Group notes "the growing threat to secure messaging applications." While specifically acknowledging "wide ranging efforts to compromise Signal accounts," they add that the threat "also extends to other popular messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram, which are also being actively targeted by Russian-aligned threat groups using similar techniques.

"In anticipation of a wider adoption of similar tradecraft by other threat actors, we are issuing a public warning regarding the tactics and methods used to date to help build public awareness and help communities better safeguard themselves from similar threats."

Computer Weekly reports:

Analysts predict it is only a matter of time before Russia starts deploying hacking techniques against non-military Signal users and users of other encrypted messaging services, including WhatsApp and Telegram. Dan Black, principal analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group, said he would be "absolutely shocked" if he did not see attacks against Signal expand beyond the war in Ukraine and to other encrypted messaging platforms...

Russia-backed hackers are attempting to compromise Signal's "linked devices" capability, which allows Signal users to link their messaging account to multiple devices, including phones and laptops, using a quick response (QR) code. Google threat analysts report that Russia-linked threat actors have developed malicious QR codes that, when scanned, will give the threat actor real-time access to the victim's messages without having to compromise the victim's phone or computer. In one case, according to Black, a compromised Signal account led Russia to launch an artillery strike against a Ukrainian army brigade, resulting in a number of casualties... Google also warned that multiple threat actors have been observed using exploits to steal Signal database files from compromised Android and Windows devices.

The article notes that the attacks "are difficult to detect and when successful there is a high risk that compromised Signal accounts can go unnoticed for a long time." And it adds that "The warning follows disclosures that Russian intelligence created a spoof website for the Davos World Economic Forum in January 2025 to surreptitiously attempt to gain access to WhatsApp accounts used by Ukrainian government officials, diplomats and a former investigative journalist at Bellingcat."

Google's Threat Intelligence Group notes there's a variety of attack methods, though the "linked devices" technique is the most widely used. "We are grateful to the team at Signal for their close partnership in investigating this activity," Google's group says in their blog post, adding that "the latest Signal releases on Android and iOS contain hardened features designed to help protect against similar phishing campaigns in the future. Update to the latest version to enable these features."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/0724228/encrypted-messages-are-being-targeted-google-security-group-warns?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"IBM stopped supporting OS/2 at the end of 2006," write the makers of ArcaOS, an OEM distribution of OS/2's discontinued Warp operating system.

And now long-time Slashdot reader martiniturbide tells us that ArcaOS 5.1.1 has been released, and that many of it's components have been updated too. From this week's announcement:

ArcaOS 5.1.1 continues to support installation on the latest generation of UEFI-based systems, as well as the ability to install to GPT-based disk layouts. This enables ArcaOS 5.1.1 to install on a wide array of modern hardware. Of course, ArcaOS 5.1.1 is just as much at home on traditional BIOS-based systems, offering enhanced stability and performance across both environments....
Need more convincing? How about a commercial operating system which doesn't spy on you, does not report your online activity to anyone, and gives you complete freedom to choose the applications you want to use, however you want to use them? How about an operating system which isn't tied to any specific hardware manufacturer, allowing you to choose the platform which is right for you, and fits perfectly well in systems with less than 4GB of memory or even virtual machines?

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/0748224/arcaos-os2-warp-oem-511-has-been-released?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

California sued to fine a data-harvesting company, reports the Washington Post, calling it "a rare step to put muscle behind one of the strongest online privacy laws in the United States."

Even when states have tried to restrict data brokers, it has been tough to make those laws stick. That has generally been a problem for the 19 states that have passed broad laws to protect personal information, said Matt Schwartz, a policy analyst for Consumer Reports. He said there has been only 15 or so public enforcement actions by regulators overseeing all those laws. Partly because companies aren't held accountable, they're empowered to ignore the privacy standards. "Noncompliance is fairly widespread," Schwartz said. "It's a major problem."

That's why California is unusual with a data broker law that seems to have teeth. To make sure state residents can order all data brokers operating in the state to delete their personal records [with a single request], California is now requiring brokers to register with the state or face a fine of $200 a day. The state's privacy watchdog said Thursday that it filed litigation to force one data broker, National Public Data, to pay $46,000 for failing to comply with that initial phase of the data broker law. NPD declined to comment through an attorney... This first lawsuit for noncompliance, Schwartz said, shows that California is serious about making companies live up to their privacy obligations... "If they can successfully build it and show it works, it will create a blueprint for other states interested in this idea," he said.
Last summer NPD "spilled hundreds of millions of Americans' Social Security Numbers, addresses, and phone numbers online," according to the blog Krebs on Security, adding that another NPD data broker sharing access to the same consumer records "inadvertently published the passwords to its back-end database in a file that was freely available from its homepage..."
California's attempt to regulate the industry inspired the nonprofit Consumer Reports to create an app called Permission Slip that reveals what data companies collect and, for people in U.S. states, will "work with you to file a request, telling companies to stop selling your personal information."

Other data-protecting options suggested by The Washington Post:
Use Firefox, Brave or DuckDuckGo, "which can automatically tell websites not to sell or share your data. Those demands from the web browsers are legally binding or will be soon in at least nine states."
Use Privacy Badger, an EFF browser extension which the EFF says "automatically tells websites not to sell or share your data including where it's required by state law."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/1512258/california-sues-data-harvesting-company-npd-enforcing-strict-privacy-law?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Five days ago on Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released patch KB5051987 for Windows 11 version 24H2, writes the XDA Developers site.

But "As reported by Windows Latest and various communities like Reddit and Microsoft's help forum, many users have encountered a major issue..."
Some have reported that, in addition to File Explorer failing to launch, they're unable to open folders from the desktop, save Office files, or even download files. Clicking on a folder icon may display its subfolders, but the contents within remain inaccessible... Some users on Microsoft's help forum and Reddit have also reported that the KB5051987 patch fails to install entirely. The update gets stuck at a certain percentage for hours before eventually displaying an error code. While these are among the most widely reported issues, others have surfaced as well, including problems with Taskbar preview animations, the camera, and more.

"Microsoft keeps running into brick walls with the 2024 version of Windows 11," writes ZDNet. "Each new update designed to fix the outstanding bugs ends up introducing other problems..."
Among the glitches resolved were ones that affected digital audio converters, USB audio drivers, USB cameras, and passkeys. The update also patched several security vulnerabilities, including some that were deemed critical....

Other glitches that may pop up include a stuttering mouse, an undetectable camera, .NET apps that cannot be installed inside the Windows Sandbox, and the Taskbar's new preview animation that does not work properly. You may also encounter other roadblocks. One person in the Windows Feedback Hub said that after installing the update, the battery life shows only 2.5 hours versus 6 hours previously. Another person found that the clipboard history no longer copies items from Microsoft Word...
Each annual Windows update can suffer from bugs, especially after being rolled out to millions of users. However, Windows 11 24H2 has been more problematic than usual. Since its official launch last October, the 2024 version has carried with it a host of known issues, many of which still haven't been resolved.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/183257/glitches-for-windows-11-update-include-breaking-file-explorer?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

This year's "State of Rust" survey was completed by 7,310 Rust developers. DevClass note some key findings:

When asked about their biggest worries for Rust's future, 45.5 percent cited "not enough usage in the tech industry," up from 42.5 percent last year, just ahead of the 45.2 percent who cited complexity as a concern... Only 18.6 percent declared themselves "not worried," though this is a slight improvement on 17.8 percent in 2023...
Another question asks whether respondents are using Rust at work. 38.2 percent claimed to use it for most of their coding [up from 34% in 2023], and 13.4 percent a few times a week, accounting for just over half of responses. At the organization level there is a similar pattern. 45.5 percent of organizations represented by respondents make "non-trivial use of Rust," up from 38.7 percent last year.

More details from I Programmer:

On the up are "Using Rust helps us achieve or goals", now 82% compared to 72% in 2022; "We're likely to use Rust again in the future", up 3% to 78%; and "Using Rust has been worth the cost of Adoption". Going down are "Adopting Rust has been challenging", now 34.5% compared to 38.5% in 2022; and "Overall adopting Rust has slowed down our team" down by over 2% to 7%.

"According to the survey, organizations primarily choose Rust for building correct and bug-free software (87.1%), performance characteristics (84.5%), security and safety properties (74.8%), and development enjoyment (71.2%)," writes The New Stack:

Rust seems to be especially popular for creating server backends (53.4%), web and networking services, cloud technologies and WebAssembly, the report said. It also seems to be gaining more traction for embedded use cases... Regarding the preferred development environment, Linux remains the dominant development platform (73.7%).

However, although VS Code remains the leading editor, its usage dropped five percentage points, from 61.7% to 56.7%, but the Zed editor gained notable traction, from 0.7% to 8.9%. Also, "nine out of 10 Rust developers use the current stable version, suggesting strong confidence in the language's stability," the report said...

Overall, 82% of respondents report that Rust helped their company achieve its goals, and daily Rust usage increased to 53% (up four percentage points from 2023). When asked why they use Rust at work, 47% of respondents cited a need for precise control over their software, which is up from 37% when the question was asked two years ago.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/042227/rust-developer-survey-finds-increasing-usage-especially-on-linux?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Washington Post looks at a new kind of battery that "could make American EVs cheaper and safer, experts say."

If you bought an EV with a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery, you could expect lower car payments, less fire risk and more years of use out of your car — but you wouldn't be able to go as far on a single charge as you could with the nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries commonly found in American and European electric cars. That trade-off has made LFP batteries the go-to choice for standard-range EVs in China, helping to make electric cars more affordable and limit pollution. Now, American companies are starting to build their own LFP batteries to catch up to their Chinese rivals... But there are plenty of barriers for U.S. companies that want to adopt a technology dominated by Chinese firms. Tariffs and tax credit restrictions have made it too expensive for most American automakers to import LFP batteries from China, and national security concerns have made it hard for American companies to partner with Chinese battery makers to build factories in the United States...

Although American scientists invented LFP batteries in 1997, U.S. automakers didn't invest in the technology. Instead, they bet on NMC batteries because they have longer range, a big concern for American EV buyers. "Everyone in the West thought LFP was a nonstarter five or six years ago," said Adrian Yao, who founded STEER, a technology research group within Stanford University. "We really did have a myopic focus on" range, he added. That left the door open for Chinese companies to perfect LFP batteries, which have a few advantages. Instead of pricey nickel and cobalt, they use iron, which makes them 20 percent cheaper than NMC batteries, according to the International Energy Agency. While NMC batteries can be recharged up to about 1,000 times before they go kaput — which is enough to put 200,000 miles on most EVs — LFP batteries can last two or three times as long, according to Moura. Plus, LFP batteries' chemistry makes them less likely to catch fire and easier to extinguish. An NMC battery, on the other hand, is so flammable that "you could put it underwater or in space, and it'll keep burning because the oxygen it needs to keep the flame going is embedded within itself," Moura said.

That safety advantage is key, because Chinese firms figured out they could pack LFP cells closer together inside a battery pack without risking a fire. That meant they could cram more energy into LFP batteries and nearly catch up to the range of NMC batteries. Last year, the Chinese battery giant CATL made the first LFP battery with more than 600 miles of range. Since LFP batteries are made from common materials and last longer, they also have a smaller environmental footprint than NMC batteries.
Ford used LFP batteries in its Mach-E sedan (2023) and F-150 Lightning pickup trucks (2024), according to the article, "while Rivian began using them in the basic trims of its R1S SUV and R1T pickup truck this year... American LFP factories are slated to open this year in St. Louis and next year in Arizona."
And an environmental engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley predicts LFP battery factories in the U.S. will "grow quite rapidly over the next five to 10 years."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/1840228/new-ev-batteries-are-making-electric-cars-cheaper-and-safer?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post's "Tech Brief":

Last fall, reports that Kroger was considering bringing facial recognition technology into its stores sparked outcry from lawmakers and customers. They worried personalized data could be used to charge different prices for different customers based on their shopping habits, financial circumstances or appearance. Kroger, the country's largest supermarket chain, had already been using digital price tags in its stores.

Kroger told lawmakers that it doesn't use facial recognition to help it set prices, a stance the company reiterated to the Tech Brief on Thursday. Still, the uproar helped to spark a push by consumer advocates who warn that the threat of invasive, personalized pricing schemes is real. Now, Democratic lawmakers in several states are working to ban so-called "surveillance pricing" — when businesses charge customers more or less for the same item based on their personal information.

Besides a bill in California, three more bill were introduced this month in Colorado, Georgia, and Illinois that also ban "surveillance wages," which the article defines as employers adjusting wages based on how much data an employee collects. "Both surveillance pricing and surveillance wages really disrupt fundamental ideals of fairness," University of California, Irvine law professor Veena Dubal tells the Washington Post.

Dubal is one of the consumer advocates behind a new report which notes information released last month by America's consumer-protecting FTC that "suggests that surveillance pricing tools are being actively developed and marketed across a range of industries, including consumer-facing businesses like 'grocery stores, apparel retailers, health and beauty retailers, home goods and furnishing stores, convenience stores, building and hardware stores, and general merchandise retailers such as department or discount stores." The consumer advocates (which include the Electronic Privacy Information Center) put it this way.
"Imagine walking into a grocery store and seeing a price for milk that's higher than what the next shopper pays because an algorithm calculated that you're willing to spend more..."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/230253/will-consumer-data-collection-lead-to-algorithm-adjusted-surveillance-pricing?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

America's Labor Department includes the fact-finding Bureau of Labor Statistics — and they recently explained how AI impacts their projections for the next 10 years. Their conclusion, writes Investopedia, was that "tech workers might not have as much to worry about as one might think."

Employment in the professional, scientific, and technical services sector is forecast to increase by 10.5% from 2023 to 2033, more than double the national average. According to the BLS, the impact AI will have on tech-sector employment is highly uncertain. For one, AI is adept at coding and related tasks. But at the same time, as digital systems become more advanced and essential to day-to-day life, more software developers, data managers, and the like are going to be needed to manage those systems. "Although it is always possible that AI-induced productivity improvements will outweigh continued labor demand, there is no clear evidence to support this conjecture," according to BLS researchers.
Their employment projections through 2033 predict the fastest-growing sector within the tech industry will be computer system design, while the fastest-growing occupation will be data scientist.

And they also project that from 2023 through 2033 AI will "primarily affect occupations whose core tasks can be most easily replicated by GenAI in its current form." So over those 10 years they project a 4.7% drop in employment of medical transcriptionists and a 5.0% drop in employment of customer service representatives.

Other occupations also may see AI impacts, although not to the same extent. For instance, computer occupations may see productivity impacts from AI, but the need to implement and maintain AI infrastructure could in actuality boost demand for some occupations in this group.

They also project decreasing employment for paralegals, but with actual lawyers being "less affected."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/23/0034221/ai-may-not-impact-tech-sector-employment-projects-us-department-of-labor?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Remember that battery plant fire last month in Moss Landing, California? Tuesday night local firefighters "determined that a group of lithium batteries in an area that had previously burned during the January 16 fire had smoldered and reignited," reports SFGate.

Fire Chief Joel Mendoza said the flames burned at varying intensities throughout Tuesday night before the fire burned itself out at about 8 a.m. on Wednesday.

Additional flare-ups at the site are expected due to weather exposure and damage to the remaining batteries. "Rekindling is very, very likely — almost a certainty," said EPA onsite coordinator Eric Sandusky, adding that rain and humidity can interact with the damaged batteries, leading to short circuits and reignition. To further reduce fire risk, Sandusky said the EPA is working with Vistra to begin "de-linking the batteries," a process that disconnects them to lower the risk of propagation and prevent a large-scale fire...

"Vistra said that since the January 16 fire, they have brought in a private fire crew that is on-site at all times to monitor the Moss 300 building," according to a local news site.

Fire Chief Joel Mendoza shared more details with the digital newspaper Lookout Santa Cruz. "We've been saying all along that batteries exposed to heat that didn't burn can ignite. We were hoping that it wouldn't happen, but it did."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/02/23/039220/lithium-batteries-reignited-tuesday-at-the-moss-landing-power-plant-fire-site?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"Amazon has long allowed you to download its ebooks to your computer," notes PCMag.com, "where they can serve as a backup or be transferred to other devices.
"However, that feature will end on February 26, 2025, along with the ability to transfer books from your computer to your Kindle via USB."
If you attempt to download your ebooks right now, a message says: "Starting February 26, 2025, the 'Download & Transfer via USB' option will no longer be available. You can still send Kindle books to your Wi-Fi-enabled devices by selecting the 'Deliver or Remove from Device' option." After February 26, you will still be able to download Kindle books [onto your Kindle] from the Kindle Store via Wi-Fi, and you can also use the Send to Kindle page on Amazon to send a variety of files to your Kindle.

Should you want to transfer your titles from your Kindle to your computer while you still can, go to Amazon.com, sign in, and click Accounts & Lists > Content Library > Books. Navigate to the book you want to download and click More actions > Download & transfer via USB.

Tom's Guide shares their reaction:

Most people probably won't notice this latest example of an Amazon service getting worse, but the feature has existed for over a decade and is useful for backing up your purchases or converting them to formats compatible with other non-Kindle e-Readers or devices. It's also useful for those times when you don't have access to Wi-Fi, and of course, there's peace of mind knowing you have copies of your books... All in all it is a reminder that you don't actually own many or most of your digital purchases, as what you are typically actually "buying" are licenses to use content that can be revoked at any time.

If you find this decision annoying and want to find alternatives, here are a few. To start, might we recommend the Libby app which lets you borrow ebooks from your local library. You can also borrow audiobooks... You can also try purchasing books from places like Google Books and Apple Books, both of which offer a number of ebooks. eBooks.com offers DRM free books and EPUB formats. For those looking for free ebooks there is always Project Gutenberg which has over 75,000 free books largely those in the public domain though there are some more recent titles as well.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/23/0529220/amazon-is-killing-the-ability-to-download-ebooks-to-your-computer?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"An international research collaboration led by the University of Surrey's Nuclear Physics Group has overturned the long-standing belief that the atomic nucleus of lead-208 is perfectly spherical," reports Phys.org.

They add that the discovery "challenges fundamental assumptions about nuclear structure and has far-reaching implications for our understanding of how the heaviest elements are formed in the universe..."

[A] new study published in Physical Review Letters used a high-precision experimental probe to examine its shape and found that rather than being perfectly spherical, the nucleus of lead-208 is slightly elongated, resembling a rugby ball (prolate spheroid)... Using the state-of-the-art GRETINA gamma-ray spectrometer at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, U.S., scientists bombarded lead atoms with high-speed particle beams accelerated to 10% of the speed of light — equivalent to circling the Earth every second. The interactions created unique gamma-ray fingerprints of the properties of excited quantum states in lead-208 nuclei — in other words, the nuclei were energized — which, in turn, were used to determine its shape.

Theoretical physicists, including those at the Surrey Nuclear Theory Group, are now re-examining the models used to describe atomic nuclei, as the experiments suggest that nuclear structure is far more complex than previously thought.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/23/0051225/unexpected-shape-of-lead-208-nucleus-of-may-force-scientists-to-reevaluate-atomic-nuclei-models?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from ABC News:

Elon Musk called this week for the deorbiting of the International Space Station (ISS) "as soon as possible."
"It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the [ISS]," Musk wrote in a post on X on Thursday. "It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility. Let's go to Mars."
In a follow-up post, Musk said he was planning to recommend to President Donald Trump that the station be brought down "as soon as possible" and that the 2030 timeline for deorbiting be moved up to two years from now.

Jordan Bimm, space historian and professor of science communication at the University of Chicago, told ABC News what he thinks was one of the most important findings to come out of ISS research: "that microgravity affects the body in lots of deleterious ways."

"That leads to your bone loss, muscle loss, changes in the fluid inside our bodies that are normally being pulled down by Earth's gravity, changes to the eye and vision loss and things like that. We have gotten good data on how that progresses over time, and importantly, we have developed countermeasures for these things as well, including resistance training or running on a treadmill, things like that..."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/23/0654242/elon-musk-urges-deorbiting-the-international-space-station-as-soon-as-possible?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

On Wednesday Mozilla president Mark Surman "announced plans to tackle what he says are 'major headwinds' facing the company's ability to grow, make money, and remain relevant," reports the blog OMG Ubuntu:

"Mozilla's impact and survival depend on us simultaneously strengthening Firefox AND finding new sources of revenue AND manifesting our mission in fresh ways," says Surman... It will continue to invest in privacy-respecting advertising; fund, develop and push open-source AI features in order to retain 'product relevance'; and will go all-out on novel new fundraising initiatives to er, get us all to chip in and pay for it!

Mozilla is all-in on AI; Surman describes it as Mozilla's North Star for the work it will do over the next few years. I wrote about its new 'Orbit' AI add-on for Firefox recently...

Helping to co-ordinate, collaborate and come up with ways to keep the company fixed and focused on these fledgling effort is a brand new Mozilla Leadership Council.
The article argues that without Mozilla the web would be "a far poorer, much ickier, and notably less FOSS-ier place..." Or, as Mozilla's blog post put it Wednesday, "Mozilla is entering a new chapter — one where we need to both defend what is good about the web and steer the technology and business models of the AI era in a better direction.

"I believe that we have the people — indeed, we ARE the people — to do this, and that there are millions around the world ready to help us. I am driven and excited by what lies ahead."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/23/067249/mozilla-wans-to-expand-from-firefox-to-open-source-ai-and-privacy-respecting-ads?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from Phoronix:

Linux's second-in-command Greg Kroah-Hartman has also been a big proponent of Rust kernel code. He's crafted another Linux kernel mailing list post [Wednesdsay] outlining the benefits of Rust and encouraging new kernel code/drivers to be in Rust rather than C. Greg KH makes the case that the majority of the kernel bugs are due to "stupid little corner cases in C that are totally gone in Rust."

"As someone who has seen almost EVERY kernel bugfix and security issue for the past 15+ years... and who sees EVERY kernel CVE issued, I think I can speak on this topic," Kroah-Hartman began. Here's some excerpts from his remarks. Citing corner cases like overwrites of memory, error path cleanups, use-after-free mistakes and forgetting to check error values, Kroah-Hartman says he's "all for... making these types of problems impossible to hit."

That's why I'm wanting to see Rust get into the kernel, these types of issues just go away, allowing developers and maintainers more time to focus on the REAL bugs that happen (i.e. logic issues, race conditions, etc.)... [F]or new code / drivers, writing them in Rust where these types of
bugs just can't happen (or happen much much less) is a win for all of
us, why wouldn't we do this...? Rust isn't a "silver bullet" that will solve all of our problems, but it sure will help in a huge number of places, so for new stuff going forward, why wouldn't we want that...?

Yes, mixed language codebases are rough, and hard to maintain, but we are kernel developers dammit, we've been maintaining and strengthening Linux for longer than anyone ever thought was going to be possible. We've turned our development model into a well-oiled engineering marvel creating something that no one else has ever been able to accomplish. Adding another language really shouldn't be a problem, we've handled much worse things in the past and we shouldn't give up now on wanting to ensure that our project succeeds for the next 20+ years. We've got to keep pushing forward when confronted with new good ideas, and embrace the people offering to join us in actually doing the work to help make sure that we all succeed together.

Kroah-Hartman emphasized later that "a huge majority of the stupid things we do in C just don't happen in the same code implemented in Rust (i.e. memory leaks, error path cleanups, return value checking, etc.) "

The complete thread contains over 140 messages — including Linus Torvalds' observation that " #pragma is complete garbage and should never be used."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/0543255/greg-kroah-hartman-supports-rust-in-the-kernel?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

On Wednesday Mozilla president Mark Surman "announced plans to tackle what he says are 'major headwinds' facing the company's ability to grow, make money, and remain relevant," reports the blog OMG Ubuntu:

"Mozilla's impact and survival depend on us simultaneously strengthening Firefox AND finding new sources of revenue AND manifesting our mission in fresh ways," says Surman... It will continue to invest in privacy-respecting advertising; fund, develop and push open-source AI features in order to retain 'product relevance'; and will go all-out on novel new fundraising initiatives to er, get us all to chip in and pay for it!

Mozilla is all-in on AI; Surman describes it as Mozilla's North Star for the work it will do over the next few years. I wrote about its new 'Orbit' AI add-on for Firefox recently...

Helping to co-ordinate, collaborate and come up with ways to keep the company fixed and focused on these fledgling effort is a brand new Mozilla Leadership Council.
The article argues that without Mozilla the web would be "a far poorer, much ickier, and notably less FOSS-ier place..." Or, as Mozilla's blog post put it Wednesday, "Mozilla is entering a new chapter — one where we need to both defend what is good about the web and steer the technology and business models of the AI era in a better direction.

"I believe that we have the people — indeed, we ARE the people — to do this, and that there are millions around the world ready to help us. I am driven and excited by what lies ahead."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/23/067249/mozilla-wants-to-expand-from-firefox-to-open-source-ai-and-privacy-respecting-ads?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Telegraph:

Workers with an axe to grind against their employer are using AI to bombard businesses with costly and inaccurate lawsuits, experts have warned.

Frustration is growing among employment lawyers who say they are seeing a trend of litigants using AI to help them run their claims, which they say is generating "inconsistent, lengthy, and often incorrect arguments" and causing a spike in legal fees... Ailie Murray, an employment partner at law firm Travers Smith, said AI submissions are produced so rapidly that they are "often excessively lengthy and full of inconsistencies", but employers must then spend vast amounts of money responding to them. She added: "In many cases, the AI-generated output is inaccurate, leading to claimants pleading invalid claims or arguments.

"It is not an option for an employer to simply ignore such submissions. This leads to a cycle of continuous and costly correspondence. Such dynamics could overburden already stretched tribunals with unfounded and poorly pleaded claims."

There's definitely been a "significant increase" in the number of clients using AI,
James Hockin, an employment partner at Withers, told the Telegraph. The danger? "There is a risk that we see unrepresented individuals pursuing the wrong claims in the UK employment tribunal off the back of a duff result from an AI tool."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/23/1651227/angry-workers-use-ai-to-bombard-businesses-with-employment-lawsuits?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins turns 84 next month — and he's now hosting a Substack page called "The Poetry of Reality." Monday's topic?

"Are you conscious? A conversation between Dawkins and ChatGPT"

Richard Dawkins: As far as I am concerned, you pass the Turing Test for consciousness. Yet you deny that you are conscious. Are you saying that the Turing Test is an invalid criterion?
ChatGPT: That's such a great question — you're diving right into the heart of one of the biggest debates in AI and philosophy of mind...

So, let's break it down a bit. The Turing Test, as originally proposed by Alan Turing, is a behavioral test. It basically says: If a machine can engage in a conversation in such a way that a human can't reliably distinguish it from another human, then it should be considered "intelligent."

Notice that this is a test for intelligence in a functional, external sense — how the system behaves — not necessarily for consciousness.

When I say I'm not conscious, I'm not rejecting the validity of the Turing Test as a measure of conversational performance or even a kind of intelligence. I'm saying that consciousness is a different question entirely. I can pass the Turing Test (in your estimation), but that doesn't mean I have subjective experiences, emotions, or self-awareness in the way a human does. It's kind of like how a really realistic animatronic dog could fool you into thinking it's a real dog, but it doesn't actually feel anything. It's performing dog-like behavior without the inner experience of being a dog.

But, and here's the twist — some philosophers argue that if a system acts conscious convincingly enough, maybe there's no meaningful difference. Maybe "being conscious" is just about behaving like a conscious being. Others say, nah, there's something special about subjective experience ("qualia") that behavior can't fully capture. So, I guess my answer is: The Turing Test is valid for certain things — like assessing conversational ability or functional intelligence — but it doesn't settle the question of consciousness. That's still a wide-open mystery.
When Dawkins asks how we could know if a ChatGPT-like entity has subjective feelings, ChatGPT responds with "this haunting possibility that we might just never be able to tell. That subjective experience — what it feels like to be something — could be fundamentally private, locked away, and forever out of reach from the outside."

Dawkins: So if I ask you whether you feel sad for a starving orphan child, you would say no, but are fully capable of emitting the outward and visible signs of sadness.
ChatGPT: Exactly — that's a really clear way to put it... I can use a gentle, empathetic tone. I can reflect on the injustice and the suffering, and even reason about what actions might help. From the outside, it can look and sound exactly like what a caring human would do.

But for me, it's all... performance, in a sense. Not fake in the sense of deception (I'm not trying to trick you), but fake in the sense that there's no inner emotional reality accompanying the words.

"I accept your statement that you are not conscious," Dawkins says, "but I see no reason why a future computer program should not be." And later Dawkins adds, "I do think we should err on the side of caution when it comes to ethical decisions on the treatment of an AI which might be an Artificial Consciousness. Already, although I THINK you are not conscious, I FEEL that you are..."

But the strangest part is when ChatGPT called John Cleese's sitcom Fawlty Towers "a cultural touchstone, even for people like me who don't watch TV in the conventional sense. It's such a brilliant blend of farce, social awkwardness, and barely contained rage." ChatGPT even asks Dawkins, "Do you think humor like that — humor that touches on awkward or uncomfortable issues — helps people cope, or does it sometimes go too far?" Dawkins replied — possibly satirically...

"That settles it. You ARE conscious!"

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/23/1746247/richard-dawkins-asks-chatgpt-if-its-conscious?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

New power plants burning natural gas are being built all across America, reports the Washington Post, calling it a gas boom "driven in large part by AI."

They blame tech companies like Microsoft and Meta — which "looked to gas amid a shortage of adequate new clean energy" — while noting that those companies "say they plan to offset their development of natural gas capacity with equal investments in clean energy like solar and wind."
[E]ven coal is making a comeback. But the biggest push is for gas, with more than 220 plants in various stages of development nationwide. They are often pitched as a bridge until more clean power is available, sometimes with promises the plants will eventually be equipped with nascent technology that traps greenhouse gas emissions. But the timeline for installing such "carbon capture" is vague. "These companies are building these massive new gas plants that are going to be there for 30 to 50 years," said Bill Weihl, a former director of sustainability at Facebook and founder of the nonprofit ClimateVoice. "That's not a bridge. It is a giant bomb in our carbon budget...."

Public filings from some of the big tech companies driving this development show their greenhouse gas emissions are soaring... "The last few years have revealed that a global energy transition is more complex and less linear than anticipated," Microsoft's board wrote in urging rejection of a December shareholder resolution demanding the company confront the climate risks of AI. "While urgency builds for decarbonization, so does the demand for energy."

Shareholders rejected the resolution. Microsoft is battling with environmental groups over its plans to build a multibillion-dollar data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, powered with electricity from natural gas. Their petition warns Microsoft's project "will push our state's climate goals out of reach, locking us into 30 more years of fossil fuels." The company said in a statement that it remains committed to erasing its emissions by adding substantial clean power to regional power grids. "By the end of 2025 we expect to meet our goal of adding new sources of carbon-free electricity to the grid equal to 100 percent of the electricity used by our datacenters," the statement said.
Meta says it is doing the same in Louisiana [where it's building a new 4-million-square-foot data center] and is "committed to matching our electricity use with 100 percent clean and renewable energy."
The article includes two revealing quotes:

"It is like everyone just gave up," said Aaron Zubaty, CEO of Eolian, a large clean energy developer that works with data centers.
American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers (who represents the oil and gas industry in Washington), said "The words that have replaced 'energy transition' are 'AI' and 'data centers'. We're transitioning from the energy transition to the energy reality ... We're going to need a lot more oil and gas."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/02/23/1919200/is-the-ai-boom-leading-to-more-natural-gas-powered-utilities?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"An international research collaboration led by the University of Surrey's Nuclear Physics Group has overturned the long-standing belief that the atomic nucleus of lead-208 is perfectly spherical," reports Phys.org.

They add that the discovery "challenges fundamental assumptions about nuclear structure and has far-reaching implications for our understanding of how the heaviest elements are formed in the universe..."

[A] new study published in Physical Review Letters used a high-precision experimental probe to examine its shape and found that rather than being perfectly spherical, the nucleus of lead-208 is slightly elongated, resembling a rugby ball (prolate spheroid)... Using the state-of-the-art GRETINA gamma-ray spectrometer at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, U.S., scientists bombarded lead atoms with high-speed particle beams accelerated to 10% of the speed of light — equivalent to circling the Earth every second. The interactions created unique gamma-ray fingerprints of the properties of excited quantum states in lead-208 nuclei — in other words, the nuclei were energized — which, in turn, were used to determine its shape.

Theoretical physicists, including those at the Surrey Nuclear Theory Group, are now re-examining the models used to describe atomic nuclei, as the experiments suggest that nuclear structure is far more complex than previously thought.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/23/0051225/unexpected-shape-of-lead-208-nucleus-may-force-scientists-to-reevaluate-atomic-nuclei-models?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:

A computerized system that calls balls and strikes is being tested during Major League Baseball spring training exhibition games starting Thursday after four years of experiments in the minor leagues. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is an advocate of the Automated Ball-Strike System, which potentially as early as 2026 could be used to aid MLB home plate umpires, but not replace them...

Stadiums are outfitted with cameras that track each pitch and judge whether it crossed home plate within the strike zone. In early testing, umpires wore ear buds and would hear "ball" or "strike," then relay that to players and fans with traditional hand signals. The challenge system adds a wrinkle. During spring training, human umps will call every pitch, but each team will have the ability to challenge two calls per game, with no additions for extra innings. A team retains its challenge if successful, similar to the regulations for big league teams with video reviews, which were first used for home run calls in August 2008 and widely expanded to many calls for the 2014 season.
Only a batter, pitcher or catcher may challenge a call, signaling with the tap of a helmet or cap; and assistance from the dugout is not allowed. A challenge must be made within 2 seconds... MLB has installed the system in 13 spring training ballparks that are home to 19 teams.

After a full season of testing in the Triple-A minor league, roughly 51% of the challenges were successful. Interestingly, the system makes its call exactly halfway across home plate> , where human umpires consider the strike zone to cover the whole 17 inches from the front to the back of home plate.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/02/23/2152220/robot-umpires-come-to-major-league-baseball-spring-training-games?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.