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Thursday, December 5th, 2024
| Time | Event |
| 2:39a | Internet Archive: We Will Not Appeal 'Hachette v. Internet Archive' Ruling In March, 2023 the Internet Archive lost in court, with a judge ruling they couldn't scan entire books and then lend them as ebooks. The Internet Archive appealed to a higher court, which also ruled against them in September of 2024. Today, the Internet Archive made an announcement: that "While we are deeply disappointed with the Second Circuit's opinion in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the Internet Archive has decided not to pursue Supreme Court review." We will continue to honor the Association of American Publishers agreement to remove books from lending at their member publishers' requests. We thank the many readers, authors and publishers who have stood with us throughout this fight. Together, we will continue to advocate for a future where libraries can purchase, own, lend and preserve digital books. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 2:50a | Bitcoin Reaches and Surpasses $100k USD Bitcoin just broke $100,000 USD for the first time and reached as high as $104k, and is now sitting at $102,857 at the time of this writing. Slashdot was pretty early on Bitcoin. Thoughts, nocoiners?
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 4:44a | Music Sector Workers Will Lose Nearly a Quarter of Their Income to AI in 4 Years, Study Suggests The Guardian reports: People working in the music sector will lose almost a quarter of their income to artificial intelligence within the next four years, according to the first global economic study examining the impact of the emerging technology on human creativity. Those working in the audiovisual sector will also see their income shrink by more than 20% as the market for generative AI grows from €3bn (A$4.9bn) annually to a predicted €64bn by 2028. The findings were released in Paris on Wednesday by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), representing more than 5 million creators worldwide. The report concluded that while the AI boom will substantially enrich giant tech companies, creators' rights and income streams will be drastically reduced unless policymakers step in... The study concluded that under current regulatory frameworks in most countries, creators stand to lose on two fronts. Unauthorised use of their works by generative AI models will eat into remuneration earned through copyright, while at the same time work opportunities will shrink as AI-generated outputs become more competitive against human-made works. The report predicted that by 2028, exponential growth in generative AI music would account for about 20% of traditional music streaming platforms' revenues, and about 60% of music libraries' revenues. The report warned of revenue "derived directly from the unlicensed reproduction of creators' works, representing a transfer of economic value from creators to AI companies," according to the article. On a hopeful note, it adds that the CISAC's president also applauded Australia and New Zealand for their thoughtful response to the issue. "By setting a gold standard in AI policy, one that protects creators' rights while fostering responsible and innovative technological development, Australia and New Zealand can ensure that AI serves as a tool to enhance human creativity rather than replace it." Thanks to Slashdodt reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 8:34a | Could Evidence of Primordial Black Holes Be Hiding in Plain Sight? "Are Primordial Black Holes real...?" asks Universe Today. "If they do exist, a "new paper suggests they may be hiding in places so unlikely that nobody ever thought to look there..." — in planets, in asteroids, and here on earth. Physicists hypothesize that Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) formed in the early Universe from extremely dense pockets of sub-atomic matter that collapsed directly into black holes. They could form part or all of what we call dark matter. However, they remain hypothetical because none have been observed... The authors claim that evidence for PBHs could be found in objects as large as hollowed out planetoids or asteroids and objects as small as rocks here on Earth. "Small primordial black holes could be captured by rocky planets or asteroids, consume their liquid cores from inside and leave hollow structures," the authors write. "Alternatively, a fast black hole can leave a narrow tunnel in a solid object while passing through it." "We could look for such micro-tunnels here on Earth in very old rocks," the authors claim, explaining that the search wouldn't involve specialized, expensive equipment... "The chances of finding these signatures are small, but searching for them would not require much resources and the potential payoff, the first evidence of a primordial black hole, would be immense," said Dejan Stojkovic [the paper's co-author from the State University of New York]. "We have to think outside of the box because what has been done to find primordial black holes previously hasn't worked...." Cosmology is kind of at a standstill while we wrestle with the idea of dark matter. Could PBHs be dark matter? Could they behave like the authors suggest, and be detected in this manner? "The smartest people on the planet have been working on these problems for 80 years and have not solved them yet," Stojkovic said. "We don't need a straightforward extension of the existing models. We probably need a completely new framework altogether."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 12:34p | Elon Musk's xAI Plans Massive Expansion of AI Supercomputer in Memphis An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters: Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI plans to expand its Memphis, Tennessee, supercomputer to house at least one million graphics processing units (GPUs), the Greater Memphis Chamber said on Wednesday, as xAI races to compete against rivals like OpenAI. The move represents a massive expansion for the supercomputer called Colossus, which currently has 100,000 GPUs to train xAI's chatbot called Grok. As part of the expansion, Nvidia, which supplies the GPUs, and Dell and Super Micro, which have assembled the server racks for the computer, will establish operations in Memphis, the chamber said in a statement. The Greater Memphis chamber (an economic development organization) called it "the largest capital investment in the region's history," even saying that xAI "is setting the stage for Memphis to become the global epicenter of artificial intelligence." ("To facilitate this massive undertaking, the Greater Memphis Chamber established an xAI Special Operations Team... This team provides round-the-clock concierge service to the company.") Reuters calls the supercomputer "a critical component of advancing Musk's AI efforts, as the billionaire has deepened his rivalry against OpenAI..." And the Greater Memphis chamber describes the expansion by Nvidia/Dell/Super Micro as "further solidifying the city's position as the 'Digital Delta'... Memphis has provided the power and velocity necessary for not just xAI to grow and thrive, but making way for other companies as well."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 4:34p | Is Europe Better Prepared to Protect Undersea Internet Cables? The Carnegie Endowment for Peace, a nonpartisan international affairs think tank, points out that when subsea internet cables were cut in November, Europe was more prepared: Where in the past there were no contingency plans for sabotage, there are now more maritime patrols, an attempt to forge deeper intelligence connections, and the beginnings of a new relationship with the private sector... Even before the October 2023 incident, NATO, the EU, and certain European governments began to increase their efforts to boost subsea cable resilience and security. In February 2023, NATO stood up a new Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell in Brussels to convene stakeholders and enhance coordination between the public and private sectors. In July 2023, NATO allies at the Vilnius Summit established a Maritime Center for the Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure as part of the alliance's Maritime Command in Northwood, UK. In October 2023, after the first incident, NATO defense ministers endorsed a new Digital Ocean Vision, an initiative aimed at improving undersea surveillance. And in February 2024, the European Commission released its first "Recommendation on Secure and Resilient Submarine Cable Infrastructures," encouraging member states to conduct regular stress tests, improve information sharing amongst themselves, and improve cable maintenance and repair capabilities. The article points out that the Chinese ship suspected in the 2023 cable cutting "ignored requests from Finnish and Estonian authorities to halt" and returned to China. But the Chinese ship suspected in November's cable-cutting "remains in international waters in the Kattegat, with naval and coast guard vessels from Denmark, Germany, and Sweden circling close by." Yet "Under international maritime law, these countries' authorities are not allowed to board..." Current provisions of international law are neither formulated to adequately protect subsea data cables from sabotage nor hold perpetrators accountable. This reality should lead the EU, as a body inherently focused on the resilience of international legal regimes, to push for updates that are better suited for the current geopolitical reality... Lawmakers should also explore ways to increase penalties for subsea cable damage, in part to deter acts of sabotage in the first place.... A forthcoming Carnegie Endowment report will detail more in-depth recommendations on how Europe can both protect itself against future subsea cable damage and help expand trusted networks around the world. The article also notes that "Of the hundreds of disruptions to cables that occur each year, the vast majority are caused by accidental human activity, like fishing, or natural events, like earthquakes."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 5:59p | Hard Drive Tossed in Landfill With Bitcoin Now Worth $8 Billion. Lawsuits Continue 11 years ago his hard drive ended up in a U.K. landfill — with 8,000 bitcoin. It's now worth $8 billion... and James Howell wants it back. The Guardian reports that his "bid to become extremely rich reached a judge on Tuesday with a team of lawyers arguing that it was still possible to launch a hunt for his missing hard drive containing the bitcoin." They claimed that rather than searching for a "needle in a haystack", the position of the bitcoin hoard had been narrowed down to a small area and there was a "finely tuned" plan to retrieve it... [Howells] has been asking Newport city council for help in getting the hard drive back, and even said he would share the money with the authority, to no avail... James Goudie KC, representing the council, said Howells had no legal claim to the hard drive. He said: "Anything that goes into the landfill goes into the council's ownership." Goudie said Howells' offer to share some of the bitcoin with Newport council amounted to a bribe. He said: "He is trying to buy something the council is not in a position to sell...." Before the hearing, a spokesperson for Newport council said: "The council has told Mr Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area. "Responding to Mr Howells' baseless claims are costing the council and Newport taxpayers time and money which could be better spent on delivering services." Howells was 28 when he lost the hard drive, and has said he may as well keep trying to recover it — because he'll always know that it's out there. Howells' legal teams are "working pro bono," the article notes, "on the basis that they get a share of the bitcoin profits if successful..." And TechSpot points out that "There's also the question of whether the data on the drive would still be accessible after more than a decade of sitting under a pile of rotting garbage. "Howells has a team of data recovery engineers who are also working pro bono..." Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 7:59p | Backdoor in Compromised Solana Code Library Drains $184,000 from Digital Wallets The Solana JavaScript SDK "was temporarily compromised yesterday in a supply chain attack," reports BleepingComputer, "with the library backdoored with malicious code to steal cryptocurrency private keys and drain wallets." Solana offers an SDK called "@solana/web3.js" used by decentralized applications (dApps) to connect and interact with the Solana blockchain. Supply chain security firm Socket reports that Solana's Web3.js library was hijacked to push out two malicious versions to steal private and secret cryptography keys to secure wallets and sign transactions... Solana confirmed the breach, stating that one of their publish-access accounts was compromised, allowing the attackers to publish two malicious versions of the library... Solana is warning developers who suspect they were compromised to immediately upgrade to the latest v1.95.8 release and to rotate any keys, including multisigs, program authorities, and server keypairs... Once the threat actors gain access to these keys, they can load them into their own wallets and remotely drain all stored cryptocurrency and NFTs... Socket says the attack has been traced to the FnvLGtucz4E1ppJHRTev6Qv4X7g8Pw6WPStHCcbA
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 9:17p | After 7.0 Earthquake, Coastal Northern California Phones Get 'Tsunami Warning' Alert (Since Cancelled) A tsunami warning was issued — and then cancelled about an hour later — for 400 miles of California coastline after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast near California's northern border with Oregon. "About 5 million people were under the warning while it was in effect," reports a San Francisco news site. Phones had sounded with an emergency tone in affected areas, with a warning that "You are in danger. Get away from coastal waters. Move to high ground or inland now." Warning sirens sounded in some areas, and as a precaution San Francisco paused service for its BART trains travelling under the San Francisco Bay. But while tsunami waves were originally predicted to hit San Francisco at 12:10 p.m. — they didn't. New information prompted the cancellation of the tsunami warning. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 10:25p | The Rust Foundation's Plan to Grow the Pool of Well-Trained Rust Developers "The Rust Foundation is dedicated to ensuring a healthy Rust ecosystem," according to a new announcement today, " which depends on a growing pool of well-trained developers to thrive." The latest SlashData Developer Nation survey found Rust to be the fastest-growing programming language, doubling its users over the past two years. As Rust's adoption continues to accelerate, the demand for a multifaceted ecosystem of quality training will too. Their blog post highlights three examples of the Rust community "creating new pathways for learning Rust" and "addressing the critical need for Rust training in academic settings..." Rust-Edu operates as a non-profit through Portland State University, with funding from Futurewei. Their mission is to "spread Rust use and development through academic curricula and communities throughout the world, making Rust the language of choice for 'systems programming' in its broadest sense through shared efforts of faculty, students and the Rust community." They focus on three main areas: curriculum development, educational tools, and language improvements... teach-rs, pronounced "teachers," is a modular and reusable university course designed for in-person teaching in Rust. Its mission is to introduce Rust in higher education and ensure that more students enter the job market with considerable Rust experience. The teach-rs project provides ready-to-use Rust teaching materials, including slide decks and exercises that can be adapted to various teaching contexts... As an open source permissively licensed project, teach-rs enables educators to share and improve resources, making introducing Rust instruction into their programs more accessible. Many institutions now use teach-rs in their courses, including the Slovak University of Technology, RustIEC (a collaboration between Vrije Universiteit Brussel and KU Leuven), and the University Politehnica of Bucharest. At the time of this writing, teach-rs has nearly 3000 stars on GitHub... Under the guidance of The Rust Foundation's Global Rust Coordinator and Rust Nation UK's organizer Ernest Kissiedu, Mordecai Etukudo (Mart) has developed a guide to help educational institutions adopt Rust in their systems. This resource walks organizations through the entire implementation process, from initial assessment to community engagement.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 11:25p | Millions of Cubans Had Another Power Outage Wednesday Wednesday Cuba's energy grid collapsed, "leaving millions without power," CNN reported, calling it "the latest in a series of failures on an island struggling from creaking infrastructure, natural disasters and economic turmoil." Today Reuters reports: Cuba said it had reconnected its national electrical grid on Thursday, though generation remained well below demand one day after a plant failure knocked out power to millions across the island... Around half of Cuba's power generation facilities are offline for maintenance or broken down. All are decades old and producing well under capacity. As a result, a majority of Cuba's residents suffer hours-long, rolling blackouts on a daily basis even when the grid is functional. Cuba's electrical grid has been on the brink of collapse for years, as fuel shortages, a string of natural disasters and an economic crisis have left the island's government unable to maintain the system's decrepit infrastructure. Dwindling oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico tipped the system into full crisis this year, leading to several nationwide blackouts that have sparked unrest and increasing anger among the population. The blackouts, together with food, medicine and water shortages, have vastly complicated life on the island and driven a record-breaking exodus of its residents since 2020. Authorities informed Cuba's citizens that scheduled power outages will now resume, reports ABC News. "Cuban authorities said they will continue their current practice of implementing daily, five-hour power outages by block or zone as they have been doing for the past few months."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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