Sunday, January 21st, 2024

Time	Event
2:34a	Do Electric Vehicles Fail at a Lower Rate Than Gas Cars In Extreme Cold? In a country experiencing extreme cold — and where almost 1 in 4 cars are electric — a roadside assistance company says it's still gas-powered cars that are experiencing the vast majority of problems starting. Electrek argues that while extreme cold may affect chargers, "it mainly gets attention because it's a new technology and it fails for different reasons than gasoline vehicles in the cold." Viking, a road assistance company (think AAA), says that it responded to 34,000 assistance requests in the first 9 days of the year. Viking says that only 13% of the cases were coming from electric vehicles (via TV2 — translated from Norwegian) ["13 percent of the cases with starting difficulties are electric cars, while the remaining 87 percent are fossil cars..."] To be fair, this data doesn't adjust for the age of the vehicles. Older gas-powered cars fail at a higher rate than the new ones and electric vehicles are obviously much more recent on average. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
4:34a	Hans Reiser Sends a Letter From Prison In 2003, Hans Reiser answered questions from Slashdot's readers... Today Wikipedia describes Hans Reiser as "a computer programmer, entrepreneur, and convicted murderer... Prior to his incarceration, Reiser created the ReiserFS computer file system, which may be used by the Linux kernel but which is now scheduled for removal in 2025, as well as its attempted successor, Reiser4." This week alanw (Slashdot reader #1,822), spotted a development on the Linux kernel mailing list. "Hans Reiser (imprisoned for the murder of his wife) has written a letter, asking it to be published to Slashdot." Reiser writes: I was asked by a kind Fredrick Brennan for my comments that I might offer on the discussion of removing ReiserFS V3 from the kernel. I don't post directly because I am in prison for killing my wife Nina in 2006. I am very sorry for my crime — a proper apology would be off topic for this forum, but available to any who ask. A detailed apology for how I interacted with the Linux kernel community, and some history of V3 and V4, are included, along with descriptions of what the technical issues were. I have been attending prison workshops, and working hard on improving my social skills to aid my becoming less of a danger to society. The man I am now would do things very differently from how I did things then. Click here for the rest of Reiser's introduction, along with a link to the full text of the letter... The letter is dated November 26, 2023, and ends with an address where Reiser can be mailed. Ars Technica has a good summary of Reiser's lengthy letter from prison — along with an explanation for how it came to be. With the ReiserFS recently considered obsolete and slated for removal from the Linux kernel entirely, Fredrick R. Brennan, font designer and (now regretful) founder of 8chan, wrote to the filesystem's creator, Hans Reiser, asking if he wanted to reply to the discussion on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML). Reiser, 59, serving a potential life sentence in a California prison for the 2006 murder of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser, wrote back with more than 6,500 words, which Brennan then forwarded to the LKML. It's not often you see somebody apologize for killing their wife, explain their coding decisions around balanced trees versus extensible hashing, and suggest that elementary schools offer the same kinds of emotional intelligence curriculum that they've worked through in prison, in a software mailing list. It's quite a document... It covers, broadly, why Reiser believes his system failed to gain mindshare among Linux users, beyond the most obvious reason. This leads Reiser to detail the technical possibilities, his interpersonal and leadership failings and development, some lingering regrets about dealings with SUSE and Oracle and the Linux community at large, and other topics, including modern Russian geopolitics... Reiser asks that a number of people who worked on ReiserFS be included in "one last release" of the README, and to "delete anything in there I might have said about why they were not credited." He says prison has changed him in conflict resolution and with his "tendency to see people in extremes...." Reiser writes that he understood the difficulty ahead in getting the Linux world to "shift paradigms" but lacked the understanding of how to "make friends and allies of people" who might initially have felt excluded. This is followed by a heady discussion of "balanced trees instead of extensible hashing," Oracle's history with implementing balanced trees, getting synchronicity just right, I/O schedulers, block size, seeks and rotational delays on magnetic hard drives, and tails. It leads up to a crucial decision in ReiserFS' development, the hard non-compatible shift from V3 to Reiser 4. Format changes, Reiser writes, are "unwanted by many for good reasons." But "I just had to fix all these flaws, fix them and make a filesystem that was done right. It's hard to explain why I had to do it, but I just couldn't rest as long as the design was wrong and I knew it was wrong," he writes. SUSE didn't want a format change, but Reiser, with hindsight, sees his pushback as "utterly inarticulate and unsociable." The push for Reiser 4 in the Linux kernel was similar, "only worse...." He encourages people to "allow those who worked so hard to build a beautiful filesystem for the users to escape the effects of my reputation." Under a "Conclusion" sub-heading, Reiser is fairly succinct in summarizing a rather wide-ranging letter, minus the minutiae about filesystem architecture. I wish I had learned the things I have been learning in prison about talking through problems, and believing I can talk through problems and doing it, before I had married or joined the LKML. I hope that day when they teach these things in Elementary School comes. I thank Richard Stallman for his inspiration, software, and great sacrifices, It has been an honor to be of even passing value to the users of Linux. I wish all of you well. It both is and is not a response to Brennan's initial prompt, asking how he felt about ReiserFS being slated for exclusion from the Linux kernel. There is, at the moment, no reply to the thread started by Brennan. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
8:34a	Delivery Firm's AI Chatbot Goes Rogue, Curses at Customer and Criticizes Company An anonymous reader shared this report from Time: An AI customer service chatbot for international delivery service DPD used profanity, told a joke, wrote poetry about how useless it was, and criticized the company as the "worst delivery firm in the world" after prompting by a frustrated customer. Ashley Beauchamp, a London-based pianist and conductor, according to his website, posted screenshots of the chat conversation to X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, the same day he said in a comment that the exchange occurred. At the time of publication, his post had gone viral with 1.3 million views, and over 20 thousand likes... The recent online conversation epitomizing this debate started mid-frustration as Beauchamp wrote "this is completely useless!" and asked to speak to a human, according to a recording of a scroll through the messages. When the chatbot said it couldn't connect him, Beauchamp decided to play around with the bot and asked it to tell a joke. "What do you call a fish with no eyes? Fsh!" the bot responded. Beauchamp then asked the chatbot to write a poem about a useless chatbot, swear at him and criticize the company--all of which it did. The bot called DPD the "worst delivery firm in the world" and soliloquized in its poem that "There was once a chatbot called DPD, Who was useless at providing help." "No closer to finding my parcel, but had an entertaining 10 minutes with this chatbot ," Beauchamp posted on X. (Beauchamp also quipped that "The future is here and it's terrible at poetry.") A spokesperson for DPD told the BBC, "We have operated an AI element within the chat successfully for a number of years," but that on the day of the chat, "An error occurred after a system update... The AI element was immediately disabled and is currently being updated." Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
12:24p	Could Apostrophy OS Be the Future of Cellphone Privacy? "Would you pay $15 a month so Android doesn't track you and send all of that data back to Google?" asks Stuff South Africa: A new Swiss-based privacy company thinks $15 is a fair fee for that peace of mind. "A person's data is the original digital currency," argues Apostrophy, which has created its own operating system, called Apostrophy OS. It's based on Android — don't panic — but the version that has already been stripped of Google's intrusiveness by another privacy project called GrapheneOS, which used to be known as CopperheadOS. Launched in 2014, it which was briefly known as the Android Hardening project, before being rebranded as GrapheneOS in 2019. Apostrophy OS is "focused on empowering our users, not leveraging them," it says and is "purposely Swiss-based, so we can be champions of data sovereignty". What it does, they say, is separate the apps from the underlying architecture of the operating system and therefore prevent apps from accessing miscellaneous personal data, especially the all-important location data so beloved of surveillance capitalism... Apostrophy OS has its own app store, but also cleverly allows users to access the Google Play Store. If you think that is defeating the point, Apostrophy argues that those apps can't get to the vitals of your digital life. Apostrophy OS has "partitioned segments prioritising application integrity and personal data privacy". The service is free for one year with the purchase of the new MC02 phone from Swiss manufacturer Punkt, according to PC Magazine. "The phone costs $749 and is available for preorder now. It will ship at the end of January." Additional features include a built-in VPN called Digital Nomad based on the open-source Wireguard framework to secure your activity against outside snooping, which includes "exit addresses" in the US, Germany, and Japan with the base subscription. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
3:34p	40 Years Ago: How Sinclair's QL Computer Outshined Apple's Macintosh An anonymous reader shared this report from the Register: Two weeks before Apple launched the Macintosh, Sir Clive Sinclair launched his unprecedentedly powerful yet affordable Motorola-powered SOHO computer — starting a line of hardware and software that, remarkably, is still going. The QL remains a much-misunderstood computer. For its time, it was just as radical as the closely related machine that launched days later. Although it wasn't a smash hit, it wasn't the failure it's often deemed. A multinational licensed Sinclair's hardware, and several big-name companies sold versions of it around the world. The QL also inspired a dozen software-compatible successors, at least one of which is still manufactured today ... and not one but two versions of its unique operating system are still around as open source. Sinclair Research launched the QL on January 12, 1984, nearly two weeks before Apple Computer launched its new Macintosh computer on the 24th. Both machines had Motorola 68000-family processors, a mere 128 kB of memory, and just a pair of serial ports for I/O. Both launched with powerful bundled applications. Both had brutally cut-down specifications to make them price competitive, and both were big technological gambles on unproven technology, previously only available in vastly more expensive computers. Sinclair's bet was that multitasking would be the key differentiator. It was the first affordable personal computer to offer this. Today it's clear that Sinclair backed the wrong horse, but four decades ago, its mistake was understandable. Before the Macintosh, it was not at all clear that GUIs were the future... When the QL turned 30, The Reg published a detailed history, but a decade on, we thought it would be more interesting to look at the legacy of this pioneering machine — the many models of QL-compatible machines that appeared after Sinclair Research moved on to other things, and the descendants of its remarkable OS and their continued existence in the 21st century. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
4:34p	Now Musicians' Union Threatens Possible Strike Over AI, Streaming Media "After a year in which both actors and writers hit the picket lines, another Hollywood strike may be on the horizon," reports CNN: The American Federation of Musicians (AFM), a union representing musicians across the entertainment industry, will begin negotiations Monday on a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The union said it is seeking a deal to better reflect the current state of streaming media. The AFM is also seeking AI protection, increased wages, health care improvements, improved working conditions and residual payments for streaming content. According to the AFM, musicians who record on soundtracks make 75% less on streaming content due to less residual income. "The entertainment industry has fundamentally shifted," the union said in a news release. But musicians "are not being compensated accordingly for streaming media." AFM's president and chief negotiator Tino Gagliardi told CNN the union "is going to be prepared to do whatever it needs to get what we have to have, in order to make the lives of musicians better..." The AFM says it has roughly 70,000 members in the United States and Canada. Members include instrumental musicians working in orchestras, bands, clubs and theater who create music for film, television, commercials and other mediums. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
5:34p	Nearby Galaxy's Giant Black Hole Is Real, 'Shadow' Image Confirms "A familiar shadow looms in a fresh image of the heart of the nearby galaxy M87," reports Science magazine. "It confirms that the galaxy harbors a gravitational sinkhole so powerful that light cannot escape, one generated by a black hole 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun." But compared with a previous image from the network of radio dishes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), the new one reveals a subtle shift in the bright ring surrounding the shadow, which could provide clues to how gases churn around the black hole. "We can see that shift now," says team member Sera Markoff of the University of Amsterdam. "We can start to use that." The new detail has also whetted astronomers' desire for a proposed expansion of the EHT, which would deliver even sharper images of distant black holes. The new picture, published this week in Astronomy & Astrophysics, comes from data collected 1 year after the observing campaign that led to the first-ever picture of a black hole, revealed in 2019 and named as Science's Breakthrough of the Year. The dark center of the image is the same size as in the original image, confirming that the image depicts physical reality and is not an artifact. "It tells us it wasn't a fluke," says Martin Hardcastle, an astrophysicist at the University of Hertfordshire who was not involved in the study. The black hole's mass would not have grown appreciably in 1 year, so the comparison also supports the idea that a black hole's size is determined by its mass alone. In the new image, however, the brightest part of a ring surrounding the black hole has shifted counterclockwise by about 30 degrees. That could be because of random churning in the disk of material that swirls around the black hole's equator. It could also be associated with fluctuations in one of the jets launched from the black hole's poles — a sign that the jet isn't aligned with the black hole's spin axis, but precesses around it like a wobbling top. That would be "kind of exciting," Markoff says. "The only way to know is to keep taking pictures...." [T]he team wants to add more telescopes to the network, which would further sharpen its images and enable it to see black holes in more distant galaxies. Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
7:09p	How Scientists are Fighting Drug-Resistant Superbugs with Phages "It's ridiculous just how virulent some of these bacteria get over time," says Dwayne Roach, assistant professor of bacteriophages, infectious disease and immunology at San Diego State University. But now CNN says doctors are fighting multi-drug-resistant superbugs with "nature's oldest predators — tiny tripod-looking viruses called phages designed to find, attack and gobble up bacteria." The microscopic creatures have saved the lives of patients dying from superbug infections and are being used in clinical trials as a potential solution to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance... In labs around the country, phage scientists are taking research and discovery to the next level... [Yale scientists] are busy mapping which phages and antibiotics are most symbiotic in the fight against a pathogen. Roach's San Diego State lab is investigating the body's immune response to phages while developing new phage purification techniques to prepare samples for intravenous use in patients. Currently, clinical trials are underway to test the effectiveness of phages against intractable urinary tract infections, chronic constipation, joint infections, diabetic foot ulcers, tonsillitis and the persistent, reoccurring infections that occur in patients with cystic fibrosis. The chronic infections common in cystic fibrosis are typically due to various strains of drug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa — the same pathogen responsible for Horton's ear infection and the artificial tears outbreak. A number of labs are developing libraries of phages, stockpiled with strains found in nature that are known to be effective against a particular pathogen. In Texas, a new facility is taking that a step further — speeding up evolution by creating phages in the lab. "Rather than just sourcing new phages from the environment, we have a bioreactor that in real time creates billions upon billions of phages," said Anthony Maresso, associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "Most of those phages won't be active against the drug-resistant bacteria, but at some point there will be a rare variant that has been trained, so to speak, to attack the resistant bacteria, and we'll add that to our arsenal," Maresso said. "It's a next-generation approach on phage libraries." Maresso's lab published a study last year on the treatment of 12 patients with phages customized to each patient's unique bacterial profile. It was a qualified success: The antibiotic-resistant bacteria in five patients were eradicated, while several more patients showed improvements. "There's a lot of approaches right now that are happening in parallel," Roach said. "Do we engineer phages? Do we make a phage cocktail, and then how big is the cocktail? Is it two phages or 12 phages? Should phages be inhaled, applied topically or injected intravenously? There's a lot of work underway on exactly how to best do this...." Genetically engineering phages would allow scientists to target each person's unique mix of antibiotic-resistant pathogens instead of searching sewage, bogs, ponds, the bilge of boats and other prime breeding grounds for bacteria to find just the right phage for the job. Along with phage libraries, genetic engineering is also a key to churning out phages in mass, to distribute on a wider scale. In Russia and the country of Georgia, where phage therapy has been used for decades, patients can buy phage cocktails off the shelf in pharmacies. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
8:35p	NASA Regains Contact With Its 'Ingenuity' Mars Helicopter "Good news..." NASA posted Saturday night on X. "We've reestablished contact with the Mars Helicopter..." After a two-day communications blackout, NASA had instructed its Perseverance Mars rover "to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity's signal" — and apparently they did the trick. "The team is reviewing the new data to better understand the unexpected comms dropout" during the helicopter's record-breaking 72nd flight. Slashdot reader Thelasko shared this report from NPR: Communications broke down on Thursday, when the little autonomous rotorcraft was sent on a "quick pop-up vertical flight," to test its systems after an unplanned early landing during its previous flight, the agency said in a status update on Friday night. The Perseverance rover, which relays data between the helicopter and Earth during the flights, showed that Ingenuity climbed to its assigned maximum altitude of 40 feet, NASA said. During its planned descent, the helicopter and rover stopped communicating with each other... Even before it came back online, RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) pointed out that the Mars copter has done this before. "Batteries dieing, resulting in a communications re-set, If I remember correctly." Space.com also noted additional alternatives: "Perseverance is currently out of line-of-sight with Ingenuity, but the team could consider driving closer for a visual inspection," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages both robots' missions, said via X on Friday. Ingenuity has stayed aloft for more than 128 minutes and covered a total of 11 miles (17.7 kilometers) during its 72 Mars flights, according to the mission's flight log. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
9:50p	What's the Solution to Gridlocked EV Chargers? "Some of the most convenient fast-charging stations — mostly those located off major highways — have become gridlocked, especially on busy weekends," complains the opinion editor for California's Tribune newspaper in San Luis, Obispo. Drivers are reporting waits of half an hour or more — sometimes much more. One driver who posted on Reddit waited three hours to charge in Kettleman City on Thanksgiving weekend, turning a five-and-a-half-hour trip into a 10-and-a-half-hour ordeal... Look, it's one thing to spend 30 or 40 minutes charging a battery, which is a given when you take an EV on a road trip. But having to wait in a long line just to get to an open charging bay? What's happening now is "potentially a nightmare for drivers as more EVs hit the road," described GreenBiz transportation writer Vartan Badalian [after a March visit to New York State]... Badalian, the transportation writer, has an idea on how to deal with gridlock. "As you approach a full charging location, your EV (of any make) connects to the charging location and enters itself into a virtual queue, with entry to the queue dependent upon close geographical proximity. Drivers then park in an available normal parking spot, and only when prompted, proceed to plug in and charge. If a driver attempted to charge before their turn, the chargers would simply not communicate with the vehicle..." If only that would work. Unfortunately, plug-in chargers have a tough enough time fulfilling their basic task of delivering electricity. Hereâ(TM)s how bad it is: A survey of non-Tesla chargers conducted in the Bay Area in 2022 found that 27% of chargers were not working. This would be a good time to point out that Tesla superchargers have a much better performance record than other types of chargers, and that Tesla is opening "select" supercharger stations to other types of vehicles. Also, efforts are being made to increase the reliability of public chargers; the U.S. Department of Transportation just awarded $149 million in grants for the repair and replacement of broken chargers. The biggest share, $64 million, is going to California. In other words, hope is on the horizon. For now, though, we seem to be relying on a haphazard honor system. How hard would it be to use some orange cones to designate a "waiting lane"? That way drivers pulling in could get an immediate read on how long they might have to wait... Also, limit drivers to an 80% charge, and require them to drive away within, say, five minutes after the charger has stopped. That might be hard to enforce, but peer pressure can be a powerful incentive. The point is, somebody has to step up and make charging stations more driver-friendly, and the obvious choice is whoever is in charge of the chargers. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
10:50p	Potential Cancer Vaccine Entering Stage 3 Trials Slashdot reader quonset writes: After decades of study and testing, a potential vaccine for cancer may be on the horizon. Dr. Thomas Wagner, founder of Orbis Health Solutions, is using the body's own immune system to fight the disease, with each shot personalized to the patient, according to ABC News. From the article: Typically, cancer cells evade a person's immune system because it is recognized as that person's cells. Wagner developed a tumor lysate particle only (TLPO) vaccine that uses a person's tumor cells to identify particular parts that are then presented back in the body using the vaccine in a way that can stimulate their immune system to gain the ability to detect these cancer cells like an infection, allowing the immune system to fight the cancer itself. "People used to ask me the question, 'When will there be a cure for cancer?' And I've been doing this for 60 years and I could never answer that question," Wagner said. "Until recently, until the last three or four or five years." Wagner believes this type of cancer treatment could be a key to finding the long-awaited cure for cancer, all cancers, if paired with early detection. Wagner's TLPO cancer vaccine has been tested in hundreds of patients with advanced forms of melanoma in Phase 2 clinical trials. The most recent data presented at an academic conference showed nearly 95% of people given only the vaccine were still alive three years after starting treatment and 64% were still disease-free. Among the most advanced forms of melanoma, disease-free survival after three years for people with stage III disease was 60% in the vaccine-only group, compared to about 39% in the placebo group. Disease-free survival for those with stage IV disease was about 68% in the vaccine-only group, and zero in the placebo group. The most common side effects were redness or pain at the injection site, fever and fatigue after the injection – similar to other vaccines that stimulate an immune response. Based on this data and other studies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has greenlit Wagner's vaccine to start a Phase 3 clinical trial. It will be a three-year endeavor with a goal to enroll 500 people and is planned to launch sometime this year, Riley Polk, president of Orbis Health Solutions, told WLOS, an ABC News affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina. Polk's own father was told there were no treatment options left for his lung cancer, according to the article. That was more than 10 years ago, and "His father opted to try Wagner's cancer vaccine and lived 10 more years before dying from something unrelated to cancer." Polk gives ABC News this quote. "You can tell me a lot of things, but you can't tell me [the vaccine] doesn't work." Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
11:50p	WSJ: Broadcom's VMware Overhaul 'Draws Attention of CIOs' The Wall Street Journal reports: Moves by Broadcom to shore up its $69 billion VMware acquisition, completed in November, include a streamlining of product bundles and new billing models — efforts in line with the chip giant's past acquisitions, but not necessarily welcomed by all of VMware's customers... Broadcom has also recently laid off at least hundreds of VMware workers, disclosures from the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification show.... VMware has approximately 330,000 customers, according to the company. Chief information officers say they are closely monitoring what comes next. "Any CIO that's not taking stock of what they have and mentally considering alternatives and monitoring what else is out there is probably not doing their job," said Jay Ferro, executive vice president and chief information, technology and product officer at clinical research data-management company Clario. All these changes, plus past remarks by Broadcom that its go-to-market strategy is to focus completely on the needs and priorities of its top 600 customers, has left some CIOs rethinking the relationship. Price increases and degrading levels of support are among their biggest concerns. "I'm not one of their top, probably 600 customers, so they've been very clear to me where I fit in that pecking order," said Todd Florence, CIO of trucking company Estes Express Lines. Florence said he's started looking into alternatives. "It certainly doesn't make you feel good, like you're going to get lots of support going forward...." Goya Foods CIO Suvajit Basu said he is thinking about how to reduce the food company's reliance on VMware as the sole and longtime dominant provider of virtualization for the data center. "They're going to increase their prices or change their licensing so the customer pays more," he said. "And I think this is starting to hit us right now...." Forrester estimates that in 2024, 20% of VMware customers will begin the process of exiting VMware in favor of alternatives. On the other hand, a group VP at market researcher IDC tells the Journal that on the upside, now VMware and Broadcom will have to engage more actively with customers on the value of new produces included in their bundles... Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)

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