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Submission + - Vandals Cut Fiber-Optic Lines, Causing Outage For Spectrum Internet Subscribers (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Subscribers in Southern California of Spectrum’s Internet service experienced outages over the weekend following what company officials said was an attempted theft of copper lines located in Van Nuys, a suburb located 20 miles from downtown Los Angeles. The people behind the incident thought they were targeting copper lines, the officials wrote in a statement Sunday. Instead, they cut into fiber optic cables. The cuts caused service disruptions for subscribers in Van Nuys and surrounding areas. Spectrum has since restored service and is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the people responsible. Spectrum will also credit affected customers one day of service on their next bill.

“Criminal acts of network vandalism have become an issue affecting the entire telecommunications industry, not just Spectrum, largely due to the increase in the price of precious metals,” the officials wrote in a statement issued Sunday. “These acts of vandalism are not only a crime, but also affect our customers, local businesses and potentially emergency services. Spectrum’s fiber lines do not include any copper.” Outage information service Downdetector showed that thousands of subscribers in and around Van Nuys reported outages starting a little before noon on Sunday. Within about 12 hours, the complaint levels returned to normal. Spectrum officials told the Los Angeles Times that personnel had to splice thousands of fiber lines to restore service to affected subscribers.

Submission + - Netflix documentary: Titan devles into OceanGate disaster (netflix.com)

Submitted by UnknowingFool
UnknowingFool writes: A new documentary released last week on Netflix goes into detail about events leading up to the destruction of OceanGate's submersible, Titan that imploded on June 18, 2023 while attempting to visit the wreckage of the RMS Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland. The Titan used a carbon-fiber hull instead of more traditional materials like steel or titanium.

Through exclusive access to whistleblower testimony, pivotal audio recordings, and footage from the company’s early days, the film provides an unprecedented look at the technical challenges, moral dilemmas, and shockingly poor decisions that culminated in the catastrophic expedition.

Some highlights:

  • Titan's original carbon-fiber hull had been replaced with a second carbon-fiber one after the first one developed noticeable cracks.
  • Three scale models of the second hull failed tests. OceanGate decided to manufacture the second hull regardless of these failures.
  • Loud pops were heard in many dives; CEO Stockton Rush dismissed these as "seasoning".
  • Many employees raised numerous safety concerns. They were fired like lead pilot and head of marine operations, David Lochridge. Or they quit.
  • Some employees like Emily Hammermeister wanted to quit earlier, but external conditions like the COVID pandemic made it difficult. After the scale models failed, she refused to bolt anyone in the future submersible. She was given the two options of being fired or quit; she quit in the middle of the pandemic.
  • Rush's blindness to inconvenient facts: After the crack was discovered, Rush questioned Director of Engineering, Tony Nissen, about why Nissen did not anticipate the possibility of a crack. Nissen: "I wrote you a report that showed you it was there." Nissen had warned repeatedly that the hull's fibers were breaking (the pops) with each dive. Rush: "Well, one of us has to go."
  • Poor decisions by Rush extended beyond engineering decisions. After Rush fired Lochridge for raising safety concerns , Rush wanted Bonnie Carl, the company's accountant, to be his replacement pilot. While Carl was an experienced scuba diver, she quit as she was extremely uncomfortable being a pilot. Her explanation: "Are you nuts? I'm an accountant."

Submission + - Using AI to write degrades your mental performance (arxiv.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Brain-to-LLM users exhibited higher memory recall and activation of occipito-parietal and prefrontal areas, similar to Search Engine users. Self-reported ownership of essays was the lowest in the LLM group and the highest in the Brain-only group. LLM users also struggled to accurately quote their own work. While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.

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

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

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

Submission + - Strange radio pulses detected coming from ice in Antarctica (phys.org) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Rather than reflecting off the ice, the signals—a form of radio waves—appeared to be coming from below the horizon, an orientation that cannot be explained by the current understanding of particle physics and may hint at new types of particles or interactions previously unknown to science, the team said.

Submission + - US Navy Backs Right To Repair After $13 Billion Carrier Crew Left Half-Fed (theregister.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: US Navy Secretary John Phelan has told the Senate the service needs the right to repair its own gear, and will rethink how it writes contracts to keep control of intellectual property and ensure sailors can fix hardware, especially in a fight. Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Phelan cited the case of the USS Gerald R. Ford, America's largest and most expensive nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which carried a price tag of $13 billion. The ship was struggling to feed its crew of over 4,500 because six of its eight ovens were out of action, and sailors were barred by contract from fixing them themselves.

"I am a huge supporter of right to repair," Phelan told the politicians. "I went on the carrier; they had eight ovens — this is a ship that serves 15,300 meals a day. Only two were working. Six were out." He pointed out the Navy personnel are capable of fixing their own gear but are blocked by contracts that reserve repairs for vendors, often due to IP restrictions. That drives up costs and slows down basic fixes. According to the Government Accountability Office, about 70 percent [PDF] of a weapon system's life-cycle cost goes to operations and support. A similar issue plagued the USS Gerald Ford's weapons elevators, which move bombs from deep storage to the flight deck. They reportedly took more than four years after delivery to become fully operational, delaying the carrier's first proper deployment. "They have to come out and diagnose the problem, and then they'll fix it," Phelan said. "It is crazy. We should be able to fix this."

Submission + - Israel Launches Multiple Strikes in Iran (axios.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. previously told Israel it would not be directly participating in any strikes against Iran's nuclear program. However, the U.S. privately warned allies to prepare for a scenario where talks between the U.S. and Iran might collapse, and where Israel would strike Iran. Reports seem to confirm that this scenario has come to pass.

Submission + - Spaceballs 2 Trailer Drops (ign.com)

Submitted by TronNerd82
TronNerd82 writes: IGN announces that Mel Brooks and Amazon MGM Studios are hard at work on the long-awaited sequel to Brooks' 1987 classic, Spaceballs, a tongue-in-cheek parody of Star Wars replete with Mel Brooks' signature brand of off-color humor. Reports indicate that Bill Pullman and Rick Moranis are set to return to the roles of Lone Starr and Dark Helmet, respectively.

The film is looking towards a release to theaters in 2027 (2027?! That's the combination to my luggage!!) and has just seen a teaser trailer drop, viewable on YouTube. Very likely this will be the last film of Mel Brooks' career, as he approaches the age of 99.

Submission + - Engineer Creates First Custom Motherboard For 1990s PlayStation Console (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last week, electronics engineer Lorentio Brodesco announced the completion of a mock-up for nsOne, reportedly the first custom PlayStation 1 motherboard created outside of Sony in the console's 30-year history. The fully functional board accepts original PlayStation 1 chips and fits directly into the original console case, marking a milestone in reverse-engineering for the classic console released in 1994. Brodesco's motherboard isn't an emulator or FPGA-based re-creation—it's a genuine circuit board designed to work with authentic PlayStation 1 components, including the CPU, GPU, SPU, RAM, oscillators, and voltage regulators. The board represents over a year of reverse-engineering work that began in March 2024 when Brodesco discovered incomplete documentation while repairing a PlayStation 1.

"This isn't an emulator. It's not an FPGA. It's not a modern replica," Brodesco wrote in a Reddit post about the project. "It's a real motherboard, compatible with the original PS1 chips." It's a desirable project for some PS1 enthusiasts because a custom motherboard could allow owners of broken consoles to revive their systems by transplanting original chips from damaged boards onto new, functional ones. With original PS1 motherboards becoming increasingly prone to failure after three decades, replacement boards could extend the lifespan of these classic consoles without resorting to emulation.

The nsOne project—short for "Not Sony's One"—uses a hybrid design based on the PU-23 series motherboards found in SCPH-900X PlayStation models but reintroduces the parallel port that Sony had removed from later revisions. Brodesco upgraded the original two-layer PCB design to a four-layer board while maintaining the same form factor. [...] As Brodesco noted on Kickstarter, his project's goal is to "create comprehensive documentation, design files, and production-ready blueprints for manufacturing fully functional motherboards." Beyond repairs, the documentation and design files Brodesco is creating would preserve the PlayStation 1's hardware architecture for future generations: "It's a tribute to the PS1, to retro hardware, and to the belief that one person really can build the impossible."

Comment Re:Same as it ever was (Score 4, Insightful) 111

by Lisias (#65038669) Attached to: Bret Taylor Urges Rethink of Software Development as AI Reshapes Industry

Agreed.

AI is a tool for people that can't use google to find code in StackOverflow.

Problem: not knowing how to google things also means inability to detect when the AI is hallucinating, what will create pretty interesting (besides annoying) consequences in the Field.

People knowing how to code will make some serious bucks overcharging by fixing AI created mess.

On the dark side: the current generation of skilled developers will have absolutely no incentive to train the next generation (it's the other way around), and so in a few years we will have some serious problems.

Comment Re:What's different between this judge and Putin . (Score 1) 161

by Lisias (#64755258) Attached to: Brazil Blocks X

Putin and the CCP create the laws they need - make no mistake, they follow their own laws.

This judge is forcing decisions that clearly contradicts the current laws.

I will say it again: this judge blatantly breaks the Country's Laws, he is not even trying to mold the laws to do what he wants.

Comment Re:My CS students are moving away from Java (Score 1) 75

by Lisias (#64195660) Attached to: Oracle's Plans for Java in 2024

colleges must teach CS concepts and let the student pick which language they want to implement those concepts on

Yes and no. Students need to write programs in at least 3 or 4 different languages, and not specialise on a single one.

On my days, I had to code in Pascal, Modula 2, C, C++, but also in LISP, Cobol and Fortran. After a full class on each one of these languages, we were allowed to code in whatever we would want (including BASIC, some students coded in Visual BASIC - a novelty at that time).

Colleges should not be market driven, they should give students enough knowledge to allow them to cope with whatever the market is needing when they finally goes to work.

Comment Re:Ditch Java (Score 1) 75

by Lisias (#64195636) Attached to: Oracle's Plans for Java in 2024

> Use python or a scripted language for backend stuff.

You don't do this IT stuff for a living, do you?

It depends on how you use it.

On my Company, I wrote a "service bus" using Python but all the heavy lifting is made on the good and faithful Java. Lots of RPCs, but it worth the pain because what Python does well, it does really well - and to everything else, there's Java.

But to tell you the true, some components on the stack ended up being wrote in Perl (yeah 5.4) because our testings demonstrate that it would be the fastest option for that particular job - got figure it out, I din't even tried to understand, just accepted the results.

So now I have a stack tied together using RC-Service, Bash, Perl, Python and Java - and we handle literally millions of requests a week on an a pretty cheap server.

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