Submission + - President Trump and NASA's Isaacman: Please Take the Crew Off of Artemis II (pjmedia.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to the present plan, the next mission, Artemis II, will launch no later than April 2026, with SLS sending an Orion capsule carrying four astronauts around the Moon and back to Earth. Artemis III will then follow in 2028, landing three astronauts on the lunar surface. This tight schedule is necessary in order to meet Trump's desire to achieve that new American manned landing by 2028 — ahead of the Chinese — and thus setting the groundwork for the initial components of a permanent manned base by 2030.

I am writing now to plead with both President Trump and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman to please reconsider this schedule. Take the crew off the Artemis II mission in the spring, and fly it as an unmanned mission around the Moon.

I am suggesting this because right now it appears that NASA, the President, and Congress are all repeating the same mistakes NASA made in 1967 with the Apollo 1 launchpad fire that killed three astronauts, as well as in 1986 with the space shuttle Challenger disaster that killed seven astronauts. In both cases, there were clear and obvious engineering issues that said both the Apollo capsule and the space shuttle were not ready to fly, but the pressure of schedule convinced managers at NASA to look the other way, to place those scheduling concerns above fundamental engineering principles. In both cases, people died when the engineering issues were ignored.

It presently appears that the same circumstances exist today with Orion: serious engineering issues that everyone is ignoring because of the need to meet an artificial schedule.

Submission + - Some Super-Smart Dogs Can Learn New Words Just By Eavesdropping (npr.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: [I]t turns out that some genius dogs can learn a brand new word, like the name of an unfamiliar toy, by just overhearing brief interactions between two people. What's more, these "gifted" dogs can learn the name of a new toy even if they first hear this word when the toy is out of sight — as long as their favorite human is looking at the spot where the toy is hidden. That's according to a new study in the journal Science. "What we found in this study is that the dogs are using social communication. They're using these social cues to understand what the owners are talking about," says cognitive scientist Shany Dror of Eotvos Loránd University and the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna. "This tells us that the ability to use social information is actually something that humans probably had before they had language," she says, "and language was kind of hitchhiking on these social abilities."

[...] "There's only a very small group of dogs that are able to learn this differentiation and then can learn that certain labels refer to specific objects," she says. "It's quite hard to train this and some dogs seem to just be able to do it." [...] To explore the various ways that these dogs are capable of learning new words, Dror and some colleagues conducted a study that involved two people interacting while their dog sat nearby and watched. One person would show the other a brand new toy and talk about it, with the toy's name embedded into sentences, such as "This is your armadillo. It has armadillo ears, little armadillo feet. It has a tail, like an armadillo tail." Even though none of this language was directed at the dogs, it turns out the super-learners registered the new toy's name and were later able to pick it out of a pile, at the owner's request.

To do this, the dogs had to go into a separate room where the pile was located, so the humans couldn't give them any hints. Dror says that as she watched the dogs on camera from the other room, she was "honestly surprised" because they seemed to have so much confidence. "Sometimes they just immediately went to the new toy, knowing what they're supposed to do," she says. "Their performance was really, really high." She and her colleagues wondered if what mattered was the dog being able to see the toy while its name was said aloud, even if the words weren't explicitly directed at the dog. So they did another experiment that created a delay between the dog seeing a new toy and hearing its name. The dogs got to see the unfamiliar toy and then the owner dropped the toy in a bucket, so it was out of sight. Then the owner would talk to the dog, and mention the toy's name, while glancing down at the bucket. While this was more difficult for dogs, overall they still could use this information to learn the name of the toy and later retrieve it when asked. "This shows us how flexible they are able to learn," says Dror. "They can use different mechanisms and learn under different conditions."

Submission + - Google Is Adding an 'AI Inbox' to Gmail That Summarizes Emails (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google is putting even more generative AI tools into Gmail as part of its goal to further personalize user inboxes and streamline searches. On Thursday, the company announced a new “AI Inbox” tab, currently in a beta testing phase, that reads every message in a user’s Gmail and suggests a list of to-dos and key topics, based on what it summarizes. In Google’s example of what this AI Inbox could look like in Gmail, the new tab takes context from a user’s messages and suggests they reschedule their dentist appointment, reply to a request from their child’s sports coach, and pay an upcoming fee before the deadline. Also under the AI Inbox tab is a list of important topics worth browsing, nestled beneath the action items at the top. Each suggested to-do and topic links back to the original email for more context and for verification.

[...] For users who are concerned about their privacy, the information Google gleans by skimming through inboxes will not be used to improve the company's foundational AI models. “We didn’t just bolt AI onto Gmail,” says Blake Barnes, who leads the project for Google. “We built a secure privacy architecture, specifically for this moment.” He emphasizes that users can turn off Gmail’s new AI tools if they don’t want them. At the same time Google announced its AI Inbox, the company made free for all Gmail users multiple Gemini features that were previously available only to paying subscribers. This includes the Help Me Write tool, which generates emails from a user prompt, as well as AI Overviews for email threads, which essentially posts a TL;DR summary at the top of long message threads. Subscribers to Google's Ultra and Pro plans, which start at $20 a month, get two additional new features in their Gmail inbox. First, an AI proofreading tool that suggests more polished grammar and sentence structures. And second, an AI Overviews tool that can search your whole inbox and create relevant summaries on a topic, rather than just summarizing a single email thread.

Submission + - Wi-Fi Advocates Get Win From FCC With Vote To Allow Higher-Power Devices (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Federal Communications Commission plans to authorize a new category of wireless devices in the 6 GHz Wi-Fi band that will be permitted to operate at higher power levels than currently allowed. The FCC will also consider authorizing higher power levels for certain wireless devices that are only allowed to operate indoors. The FCC said it scheduled a vote for its January 29 meeting on an order “to create a new category of unlicensed devices... that can operate outdoors and at higher power than previously authorized devices.” These so-called Geofenced variable power (GVP) devices operating on the 6 GHz band will “support high data rates suitable for AR/VR, short-range hotspots, automation, and indoor navigation,” and “overcome limitations of previous device classes by allowing higher power and outdoor mobility,” the FCC said. They will be required to work with geofencing systems to avoid interference with fixed microwave links and radio astronomy observatories.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr attributed the FCC’s planned action to President Trump in a press release titled, “President Trump Unleashes American Innovation With 6 GHz Win.” That’s consistent with Carr’s relatively new stance that the FCC takes orders from the president, despite his insisting during the Biden era that the FCC must operate independently from the White House. While many of Carr’s regulatory decisions have been criticized by consumer advocates, the 6 GHz action is an exception. Michael Calabrese, of New America’s Open Technology Institute, told Ars that “increasing the power levels for Wi-Fi connections to peripheral devices such as AR/VR is a big win for consumers” and a change that has been “long advocated by the Wi-Fi community.”

Carr said that the FCC “will vote on an order that expands unlicensed operations in the 6 GHz band so that consumers can benefit from better, faster Wi-Fi and an entirely new generation of wireless devices—from AR/VR and IoT to a range of innovative smart devices. [It] will do so through a set of forward-looking regulations that allow devices to operate at higher power while protecting incumbent users, including through geofencing systems.” [...] A draft of the order said the planned “additional power will enable composite standard-power/LPI access points to increase indoor coverage and provide more versatility to American consumers.” The FCC will also seek comment on a proposal to authorize LPI access points on cruise ships.

Submission + - GLP-1 Medication Gains Are Lost After Stopping Use (bmj.com)

Submitted by Supp0rtLinux
Supp0rtLinux writes: Scientists at the University of Oxford examined multiple of studies following people after they discontinued GLP-1 based obesity medications. Former users typically regained close to a pound a month and they regained weight faster than people who shed their weight through positive lifestyle changes alone (calorie reduction, healthier dietary choices, exercise, etc).

Personally, I need to lose a few pounds but I would rather do it through diet and exercise than a pill; mostly for the personal reward/encouragement factor, but also for the other overall health benefits. But the bigger concern with dropping GLP-1 options could be the fallout from those that saw unrelated, off-market changes related to addiction tendencies. We've read how many obesity drugs don't just suppress appetite, but also help with addictive behaviors and related (smoking, alcohol consumption, sex addiction, other compulsive activities, etc). The question is if you go off the drugs do the other vices return as well? Or since those are more habit forming, can you still get the benefits? Does using a pill long enough to break a habit result in long term results or will you revert similarly to regaining lost weight?

Submission + - Fusion Physicists Found a Way Around a Long-Standing Density Limit (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Experiments inside a fusion reactor in China have demonstrated a new way to circumvent one of the caps on the density of the superheated plasma swirling inside.

At the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), physicists successfully exceeded what is known as the Greenwald limit, a practical density boundary beyond which plasmas tend to violently destabilize, often damaging reactor components.

For a long time, the Greenwald limit was accepted as a given and incorporated into fusion reactor engineering. The new work shows that precise control over how the plasma is created and interacts with the reactor walls can push it beyond this limit into what physicists call a 'density-free' regime.

Submission + - Musk lawsuit over OpenAI for-profit conversion can head to trial, US judge says (reuters.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers:
"There is plenty of evidence suggesting OpenAI's leaders made assurances that its original nonprofit structure was going to be maintained."

The backstory:
Elon co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and contributed roughly $38 million, about 60% of its early funding, based on assurances it would remain a nonprofit dedicated to public benefit.

Musk left in 2018. Since then, OpenAI cut multibillion-dollar deals with Microsoft and restructured toward for-profit status.

The accusation:
Elon alleges Sam Altman and Greg Brockman plotted the for-profit switch to enrich themselves, betraying OpenAI's founding mission.

OpenAI's response:
They called Elon "a frustrated commercial competitor seeking to slow down a mission-driven market leader."

The judge disagreed. Now a jury will decide.

Submission + - Exercise can be powerful in helping depression (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'Exercise may be as good at treating depression as psychological therapies and possibly antidepressants, a study suggests.

'A review of 73 studies from researchers at the University of Lancashire found exercise may have a moderate benefit on reducing symptoms of depression when compared with no treatment or a placebo.

'Exercise was also as beneficial as psychological therapies, based on evidence from 10 clinical trials.'

The observation helps explain the explosion of depression in our culture today; too many people taking zero exercise.

My own experience was after being formally diagnosed with the mildest category of depression, regular gym sessions and now an exercise bike at home have largely kept me clear of symptoms.

Submission + - Google co-founder leaves California amid wealth tax fears (yahoo.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Larry Page, the Google co-founder and world’s second-richest person, has reportedly left California amid concerns about a wealth tax on billionaires.

Mr Page has moved the registrations of several entities, including his family office and flying car business from California to Delaware, according to filings with the states.

He has also personally moved out of the state ahead of a potential vote on a 5pc wealth tax, according to Business Insider, which first reported the move.

Mr Page, who founded Google in 1998, is the world’s second-richest person with a net worth of $270bn (£200bn).

The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, left California for Texas in 2020.

Submission + - How Bright Headlights Escaped Regulation — and Blinded Us All (autoblog.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Modern LED technology promised safer roads. Instead, it’s creating a blinding menace that regulators refuse to address.

- Headlight brightness has doubled in a decade, with widespread driver complaints and frustration.
- Regulatory loopholes allow manufacturers to increase brightness because of outdated federal standards.
- Regulations capping maximum brightness for LED headlights have still not been formulated.

Submission + - California Lawmaker Proposes a Four-Year Ban On AI Chatbots In Kids' Toys (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Senator Steve Padilla (D-CA) introduced a bill on Monday that would place a four-year ban on the sale and manufacture of toys with AI chatbot capabilities for kids under 18. The goal is to give safety regulators time to develop regulations to protect children from “dangerous AI interactions.”

“Chatbots and other AI tools may become integral parts of our lives in the future, but the dangers they pose now require us to take bold action to protect our children,” Senator Padilla said in a statement. “Our safety regulations around this kind of technology are in their infancy and will need to grow as exponentially as the capabilities of this technology do. Pausing the sale of these chatbot-integrated toys allows us time to craft the appropriate safety guidelines and framework for these toys to follow.” [...] “Our children cannot be used as lab rats for Big Tech to experiment on,” Padilla said.

Submission + - Warner Bros Rejects Revised Paramount Bid, Sticks With Netflix (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Warner Bros Discovery's board unanimously turned down Paramount Skydance's latest attempt to acquire the studio, saying its revised $108.4 billion hostile bid amounted to a risky leveraged buyout that investors should reject. In a letter to shareholders on Wednesday, Warner Bros' board said Paramount's offer hinges on "an extraordinary amount of debt financing" that heightens the risk of closing. It reaffirmed its commitment to streaming giant Netflix's $82.7 billion deal for the film and television studio and other assets.

Their assessment comes even after Paramount, which has a market value of around $14 billion, proposed to use $40 billion in equity personally guaranteed by Oracle billionaire co-founder Larry Ellison — father of Paramount CEO David Ellison — and $54 billion in debt to finance the deal. The decision keeps Warner Bros on track for its deal with Netflix, even after Paramount amended its bid on December 22 to address the earlier concerns about the lack of a personal guarantee from Larry Ellison.

Submission + - ChatGPT orchestrated marriage nullified (nos.nl)

Submitted by thrill12
thrill12 writes: A marriage that was orchestrated by ChatGPT was nullified in The Netherlands on Monday, as a judge ruled that the vows generated with the AI were not according to the law. Dutch NOS reports (translated version) "The court in Zwolle declared a marriage invalid because the speech delivered during the ceremony did not comply with the Civil Code. The special registrar had written the speech using ChatGPT."
The original court documents(translated here) indicated that the person performing the marriage was appointed as extraordinary civil servant for the occassion, and used a ChatGPT written text during the ceremony. The judge found that that text did not have the same meaning as the words written in the law, including "fulfilling all obligations legally associated with a marriage". The marriage was nullified and protests of the couple were not accepted.

Submission + - Founder of Spyware Maker pcTattletale Pleads Guilty To Hacking, Advertising (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The founder of a U.S.-based spyware company, whose surveillance products allowed customers to spy on the phones and computers of unsuspecting victims, pleaded guilty to federal charges linked to his long-running operation. pcTattletale founder Bryan Fleming entered a guilty plea in a San Diego federal court on Tuesday to charges of computer hacking, the sale and advertising of surveillance software for unlawful uses, and conspiracy.

The plea follows a multi-year investigation by agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a unit within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. HSI began investigating pcTattletale in mid-2021 as part of a wider probe into the industry of consumer-grade surveillance software, also known as “stalkerware.” This is the first successful U.S. federal prosecution of a stalkerware operator in more than a decade, following the 2014 indictment and subsequent guilty plea of the creator of a phone surveillance app called StealthGenie. Fleming’s conviction could pave the way for further federal investigations and prosecutions against those operating spyware, but also those who simply advertise and sell covert surveillance software. HSI said that pcTattletale is one of several stalkerware websites under investigation.

Submission + - Canada advances fusion records (ecoticias.com)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: Fusion power may only be 30 years away as Canada has just broken a world record in nuclear fusion, producing about 600 million fusion neutrons every second at peak output.

Submission + - Nvidia Details New AI Chips and Autonomous Car Project With Mercedes (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Monday, [Jensen Huang, the chief executive of the chip-making giant Nvidia] said the company would begin shipping a new A.I. chip later this year, one that can do more computing with less power than previous generations of chips could. Known as the Vera Rubin, the chip has been in development for three years and is designed to fulfill A.I. requests more quickly and cheaply than its predecessors. Mr. Huang, who spoke during CES, an annual tech conference in Las Vegas, also discussed Nvidia’s surprisingly ambitious work around autonomous vehicles. This year, Mercedes-Benz will begin shipping cars equipped with Nvidia self-driving technology comparable to Tesla’s Autopilot.

Nvidia’s new Rubin chips are being manufactured and will be shipped to customers, including Microsoft and Amazon, in the second half of the year, fulfilling a promise Mr. Huang made last March when he first described the chip at the company’s annual conference in San Jose, Calif. Companies will be able to train A.I. models with one-quarter as many Rubin chips as its predecessor, the Blackwell. It can provide information for chatbots and other A.I. products for one-tenth of the cost. They will also be able to install the chips in data centers more quickly, courtesy of redesigned supercomputers that feature fewer cables. If the new chips live up to their promise, they could allow companies to develop A.I. at a lower cost and at least begin to respond to the soaring electrical demands of data centers being built around the world.

[...] On Monday, he said Nvidia had developed new A.I. software that would allow customers like Uber and Lucid to develop cars that navigate roads autonomously. It will share the system, called Alpamayo, to spread its influence and the appeal of Nvidia’s chip technology. Since 2020, Nvidia has been working with Mercedes to develop a class of self-driving cars. They will begin shipping an early example of their collaboration when Mercedes CLA cars become available in the first half of the year in Europe and the United States. Mr. Huang said the company started working on self-driving technology eight years ago. It has more than a thousand people working on the project. "Our vision is that someday, every single car, every single truck, will be autonomous," Mr. Huang said.

Submission + - Utah allows AI to renew medical prescriptions (utah.gov) 1

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

This agreement marks the first state-approved program in the country that allows an AI system to legally participate in medical decision-making for prescription renewals, an emerging model that could reshape access to care and ultimately improve care outcomes.

Hopefully opioids are excluded.

Submission + - NYC Wegmans is storing biometric data on shoppers' eyes, voices and faces (gothamist.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Wegmans in New York City has begun collecting biometric data from anyone who enters its supermarkets, according to new signage posted at the chain's Manhattan and Brooklyn locations earlier this month.

Anyone entering the store could have data on their face, eyes and voices collected and stored by the Rochester-headquartered supermarket chain. The information is used to "protect the safety and security of our patrons and employees," according to the signage. The new scanning policy is an expansion of a 2024 pilot.

The chain had initially said that the scanning system was only for a small group of employees and promised to delete any biometric data it collected from shoppers during the pilot rollout. The new notice makes no such assurances.

Wegmans representatives did not reply to questions about how the data would be stored, why it changed its policy or if it would share the data with law enforcement.

Submission + - Chinese Fusion Reactor Breaks Plasma Density Limit (futurism.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Scientists at China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) program rang in the new year with a stunning accomplishment: empirical evidence that they used the device to achieve nuclear plasma densities once thought to be beyond human capabilities. To reach a point where fusion reactor can power itself — a sustainable fusion reaction — requires that gnarly plasma to stay hot, dense, and stable for long stretches of time. For years, it was understood that higher plasma densities would inevitably result in instability, collapsing the fuel before it could ignite, a threshold known as the Greenwald limit. In deuterium-tritium fusion, the fuel must be heated to about 13 keV (150 million kelvin) to reach optimal conditions. At such temperatures, the amount of fusion power produced increases with the square of the plasma density. This new research seemingly flips all that on its head. As the EAST team explains, the method basically involves creating a high gas pressure environment in the reactor prior to plasma formation, which allows the plasma to interact with the reactor wall in a much less destructive way than it would otherwise. Scientists also manually pump extra energy into the plasma as it heats, allowing an even rise in density. The result is a plasma that remains stable even as its internal density rises, resulting in fuel densities “far exceeding empirical limits.” While there are still plenty of breakthroughs left before humanity achieves practical power production with fusion, shattering the Greenwald represents a major item on the to-do list — and another notch on China’s lengthy green energy belt.

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