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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 117 declined, 41 accepted (158 total, 25.95% accepted)

Submission + - Mean Time Between FA and FO with "AI": 52.5 Hours

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: @daisy@cloudisland.nz on the Mastodon network posted a lovely pair of juxtaposed posts copied from another social media site wherein one @leojr94_ triumphantly writes: "my saas was built with Cursor; zero hand written code. AI is no longer just an assistant, it's also the builder. Now, you can continue to whine about it or start building. P.S: Yes, people pay for it." Just over two days later, the same user laments: "guys, I'm under attack. ever since I started to share how I built my SaaS using Cursor. random thing [sic] are happening, maxed out usage on api keys, people bypassing the subscription, creating random shit on db. as you know, I am not technical so this is taking me longer that [sic] usual to figure out [ ... ]" The ensuing thread is a delectable smorgasbord of schadenfreude, including one user opining, "I have a sneaking suspicion that those weird people who are making his saas behave in unexpected ways are what techies often call 'users'," while another quipped simply, "Finding Out as a Service."

Submission + - Evolution Journal's Editors Resign En Masse Amid Elsevier's Meddling

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: Retraction Watch is reporting that the entire editorial staff (save one) for the Journal of Human Evolution has resigned in protest over creeping harmful changes imposed by its publisher, Elsevier. In an open letter posted to social media, JHE editors recount Elsevier's changes to JHE's scientific and editorial processes — with Elsevier inserting itself into those processes — along with staff and budget reductions, negatively impacting their ability to review and publish submissions. When the editorial board complained of Elsevier's eliminating support for a copy editor, Elsevier allegedly responded, "...the editors should not be paying attention to language, grammar, readability, consistency, or accuracy of proper nomenclature or formatting." When the editors fiercely protested Elsevier's ending of JHE's dual-editor model, Elsevier allegedly responded, "...it would support a dual-editor model by cutting the compensation rate by half."

But perhaps most damning is a footnote revealing Elsevier's use of so-called "AI" in the publication process: "In fall of 2023, for example, without consulting or informing the editors, Elsevier initiated the use of AI during production, creating article proofs devoid of capitalization of all proper nouns (e.g., formally recognized epochs, site names, countries, cities, genera, etc.) as well italics for genera and species. These AI changes reversed the accepted versions of papers that had already been properly formatted by the handling editors. This was highly embarrassing for the journal and resolution took six months and was achieved only through the persistent efforts of the editors. AI processing continues to be used and regularly reformats submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and require extensive author and editor oversight during proof stage." Except for one unnamed associate editor, the JHE's editorial board determined that the situation with Elsevier was no longer tenable, and resigned.

Submission + - Itch.io Knocked Offline by Idiot AI and Somnambulant Registrar

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: Yesterday, the indie game publishing site Itch.io was knocked offline for several hours when its domain was temporarily revoked by its registrar, iwantmyname. Service was restored after several hours.

In a message posted to HackerNews, Itch.io's operator stated that a user-created fan page for Funko Fusion, a Funko Pop video game, was improperly flagged by BrandShield, a company retained by Funko who, "delivers cutting-edge online brand protection using AI-powered technology to proactively monitor digital landscapes for trademark infringements, phishing attempts, brand abuse, and counterfeit activity." Beginning about six days prior, the "AI" identified the fan page as "fraud and phishing." However, rather than inform Itch.io of the purported infringement, BrandShield instead sent nastygrams to Itch.io's hosting provider (Linode) and domain registrar (iwantmyname). Itch.io took down the "offending" page, and quickly resolved the matter with Linode. Iwantmyname, however, didn't respond to Itch.io's messages, and eventually revoked their domain (presumably part of an automated process). Creators and customers likewise were affected, with creators unable to update their pages, and customers unable to access or download their purchased goods.

The registrar eventually got around to revoking the revocation only after Itch.io escalated the issue to social media, and is currently back online.

Submission + - Shrinkwrap "Contract" Found at Costco on... Collagen Peptides 1

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: The user Wraithe on the Mastodon network is reporting that a bottle of Vital Proteins(TM) collagen peptides purchased at Costco came with a shrinkwrap contract. Collagen peptides are often used as an anti-aging nutritional supplement. The top of the Vital Proteins bottle has a pull-to-open seal. Printed on the seal is the following: "Read This: By opening and using this product, you agree to be bound by our Terms and Conditions, fully set forth at vitalproteins.com/tc, which includes a mandatory arbitration agreement. If you do not agree to be bound, please return this product immediately."

So-called "shrinkwrap contracts" have been the subject of controversy and derision for decades since their first widespread appearance in the 1970's, attempting to alter the terms of sale after the fact, impose unethical and onerous restrictions on the purchaser, and absolving the vendor of all liability. Most such contracts appear on items involving copyrighted works (computer software, or any item containing computer software). The alleged "validity" of such contracts supposedly proceeds from the (alleged) need that the item requires a copyright license from the vendor to use (because the right to use/read/listen/view/execute is somehow not concomitant with purchase), and that the shrinkwrap contract furnishes such license.

The application of such a contract to a good where copyright has no scope, however, is something new. The alleged contract itself governs consumers' use of, "the VitalProteins.com website and any other applications, content, products, and services (collectively, the “Service”)...," contains the usual we're-not-responsible-for-anything indemnification paragraph, and unilaterally removes your right to seek redress in court of law and imposes binding arbitration involving any disputes that may arise between the consumer and the company. Indeed, the arbitration clause is the first numbered section in the alleged contract. Consumers of collagen peptide supplements (or, indeed, any nutritional supplement) may want to consider carefully before giving their money to a company that is trying to immunize itself from lawsuits.

Submission + - MSI Exposes 600K+ Warranty Records via Open Server

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: Gamers Nexus today filed a YouTube video report that PC component manufacturer MSI left their internal warranty and RMA processing Web site accessible to the open Internet, with no authentication. Virtually the entire history of MSI warranty claims going back to at least 2017 were searchable and accessible for the browsing, including customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, and serial numbers of MSI devices. This event follows closely on the heels of a video report just a few days earlier of PC component manufacturer Zotac leaving their warranty/RMA and B2B records server open to indexing by Google. Gamers Nexus posted their reports after informing Zotac and MSI of their open servers and verifying they were no longer accessible. However, the data from MSI's server has almost certainly been fully scraped at this point, giving scammers a gold mine of data permitting them to impersonate MSI personnel and defraud customers. Anyone who's filed a warranty or RMA claim with MSI in the past seven years should exercise caution when receiving unsolicited emails or phone calls purporting to be from MSI.

Submission + - X Turns 40 2

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: On 19 June 1984, Robert Scheifler announced on MIT's Project Athena mailing list a new graphical windowing system he'd put together. Having cribbed a fair bit of code from the existing windowing toolkit called W, Scheifler named his new system X, thus giving birth to the X Window System. Scheifler prophetically wrote at the time, "The code seems fairly solid at this point, although there are still some deficiencies to be fixed up."

The 1980's and 1990's saw tremendous activity in the development of graphical displays and user interfaces, and X was right in the middle of it all, alongside Apple, Sun, Xerox, Apollo, Silicon Graphics, NeXT, and many others. Despite the fierce, well-funded competition, and heated arguments about how many buttons a mouse should have, X managed to survive, due in large part to its Open Source licensing and its flexible design, allowing it to continue to work well even as graphical hardware rapidly advanced. As such, it was ported to dozens of platforms over the years (including a port to the Amiga computer by Dale Luck in the late 1980's). 40 years later, despite its warts, inconsistencies, age, and Wayland promising for the last ten years to be coming Real Soon Now, X remains the windowing system for UNIX-like platforms.

Submission + - Firefox 88 Enables JavaScript Embedded in PDFs by Default 2

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: Firefox has long had a built-in PDF viewer, allowing users to view PDF files in the browser without having to install a third-party application. In addition to the other weird things PDF files can contain, one of them is JavaScript. Putatively offered as a way to create self-validating forms, this scripting capability has been abused over the decades in just about every way you can imagine. Firefox's built-in viewer, although it has apparently had the ability to execute embedded JS for some time, never turned that feature on, making it a safe(r) way to open PDFs... Until now. The newly released Firefox version 88 has flipped that switch, and will now blithely execute JavaScript embedded in PDFs. Firefox's main preferences dialog offers no control for turning this "feature" off.

To turn off JavaScript execution in PDFs:
  • Enter about:config in the address bar; click "I'll be careful."
  • In the search box near the top, enter pdfjs.enableScripting.
  • Change the setting to False.
  • Close the page.

And before the peanut gallery lunges for their keyboards to smugly honk, "Why are you concerned about JS in PDFs when you're already running JS in HTML Web pages?" Uh, no, I'm not doing that, either.

Submission + - With Fuel Exhausted, NASA Retires Kepler Telescope

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: NASA today announced that it is retiring the Kepler telescope after nearly ten years of service — double its initial mission life. In that time, Kepler discovered over 2600 exoplanets, most of which are between the size of Earth and Neptune, sparking an entirely new field of astronomical research, and revealing for the first time just how common exo-planetary systems are. With its fuel supply exhausted, Kepler is no longer able to maneuver or reorient itself to make observations. NASA have elected to decommission the spacecraft and leave it in its current, safe orbit away from Earth.

Submission + - TechShop Announces Chapter 7 Bankruptcy; Closes All Locations

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: To the shock and dismay of many, TechShop today announced the immediate closure of all of its US locations and is entering Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings. Their home page has been replaced with a PDF relating TechShop's history, and detailing the circumstances leading to shutting down the company. First launched ten years ago, TechShop was one of the first "shared maker spaces," a members-only machine and work shop where tinkerers, makers, inventors, and innovators were able to prototype their ideas, launch products, or even just fix their own stuff. Its closing will be a huge loss to the tech and maker communities.

Submission + - 24 Cores and The Mouse Won't Move: Engineer Diagnoses Win10 Bug

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: Bruce Dawson recently posted a deep-dive into an annoyance that Windows 10 was inflicting on him — namely, every time he built Chrome, his extremely beefy 24-core (48-thread) rig would begin stuttering, with the mouse frequently becoming stuck for a little over one second. This would be unsurprising if all cores were pegged at 100%, but overall CPU usage was barely hitting 50%. So he started digging out the debugging tools and doing performance traces on Windows itself. He eventually discovered that the function NtGdiCloseProcess(), responsible for Windows process exit and teardown, appears to serialize through a single lock, each pass through taking about 200S each. So if you have a job that creates and destroys a lot of processes very quickly (like building a large application such as Chrome), you're going to get hit in the face with this. Moreover, the problem gets worse the more cores you have. The issue apparently doesn't exist in Windows 7. Microsoft has been informed of the issue and they are allegedly investigating.

Submission + - Burger King Won't Take Hint; Alters TV Ad to Evade Google's Block (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: Earlier this week, Burger King released a broadcast television ad that opened with an actor saying, "Ok, Google: What is The Whopper?" thereby triggering any Google Home device in hearing range to respond to the injected request with the first line from the Whopper's Wikipedia page. Google very properly responded to the injection attack by fingerprinting the sound sample and blocking it from triggering responses. However, it seems Burger King and/or its ad agency are either unwilling or congenitally incapable of getting the hint, and has released an altered version of the ad to evade Google's block. According to spokesperson Dara Schopp, BK regards the ad as a success, as it has increased the brand's "social conversation" on Twitter by some 300%. It seems that Burger King thinks that malware-laden advertising infesting Web pages is a perfectly wonderful idea (in principle, at least), and taken it to the next level by reaching through your TV speakers and directly messing with your digital devices. You may wish to consider alternate vendors for your burger needs.

Submission + - New Season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 Premiers on Netflix

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: In 1988, comedian Joel Hodgson launched what is possibly one of the silliest ideas for a television show yet conceived: A man and two sentient robots sit in a theater and heckle a bad movie. Improbably, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) became a smash success on cable, spawned a feature-length film, and ran for ten official seasons on Comedy Central and The Sci-Fi Channel, its last episode airing on 8 August, 1999. Now, 17 years later, Season 11 of MST3K debuts today on Netflix. A full season has been produced, including a stretch-goal Christmas special, funded by the highest-earning Kickstarter Film & Video campaign to date ($5.76 million) – thousands of contributors are listed in the show’s end credits, spread across all fourteen episodes.

The show remains true to its low-budget roots, relying almost exclusively on models and practical effects, including a very inventive new door sequence. The backstory for the new season is very swiftly established in the opening to Experiment 1101, as Jonah Heston (played by co-producer Jonah Ray) is abducted by the evil mad scientist Kinga Forrester (Felicia Day) and her sidekick Max a/k/a TV’s son of TV’s Frank (Patton Oswalt). Together with Gypsy (Rebecca Hanson), Tom Servo (Baron Vaughn), and Crow (Hampton Yount), Jonah quips his way through a barrage of bad movies, including Reptilicus, Starcrash, The Loves of Hercules, and The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t.

Submission + - Update to Amazon Alexa/Echo Lets You Address It as "Computer"

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: "Computer, what is the time, please?" is now a spoken command that will actually work with Amazon's release of an update that adds a new wake word for the Alexa/Echo. Previously, your options were "Alexa," "Echo," and "Amazon." Now you can also choose, "Computer." In practice, it's a bit clunkier than you might hope, depending on how often you speak the word "computer" on a day-to-day basis; and "computer" is harder for machine speech recognition to pick out than "Alexa," so it may not hear you as reliably. But for those who've been yearning for a Star Trek-like future, this small bit of silliness gets you one step closer.

Submission + - Firefox 44 Deletes Fine-Grained Cookie Management (mozilla.org)

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: Among its other desirable features, Firefox included a feature allowing very fine-grained cookie management. When enabled, every time a Web site asked to set a cookie, Firefox would raise a dialog containing information about the cookie requested, which you could then approve or deny. An "exception" list also allowed you to mark selected domains as "Always allow" or "Always deny", so that the dialog would not appear for frequently-visited sites. It was an excellent way to maintain close, custom control over which sites could set cookies, and which specific cookies they could set. It also helped easily identify poorly-coded sites that unnecessarily requested cookies for every single asset, or which would hit the browser with a "cookie storm" — hundreds of concurrent cookie requests.

Mozilla quietly deleted this feature from Firefox 44, with no functional equivalent put in its place. Further, users who had enabled the "Ask before accept" feature have had that preference silently changed to, "Accept normally." The proffered excuse for the removal was that the feature was unmaintained, and that its users were, "probably crashing multiple times a day as a result" (although no evidence was presented to support this assertion). Mozilla's apparent position is that users wishing fine-grained cookie control should be using a third-party add-on instead, and that an "Ask before accept" option was, "not really nice to use on today's Web."

Submission + - Busybox Deletes systemd Support

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: On 22 October, in a very terse commit message, Busybox removed its support for the controversial 'systemd' system management framework. The commit was made by Denys Vlasenko, and passed unremarked on the Busybox mailing lists. Judging from the diffs, system log integration is the most obvious consequence of the change.

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