He Was Expected To Get Alzheimer's 25 Years Ago. Why Hasn't He? | | Doug Whitney carries a genetic mutation that guaranteed he would develop Alzheimer's disease in his late forties or early fifties. His mother and nine of her thirteen siblings died from the disease. His oldest brother died at 45. The mutation has decimated his family for generations. Whitney is now 76 and remains cognitively healthy. The New York Times has a fascinating long read on Whitney and things happening around him.
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have studied Whitney for 14 years. They extract his cerebrospinal fluid and conduct brain scans during his periodic visits from Washington State. His brain contains heavy amyloid deposits but almost no tau tangles in regions associated with dementia. Tau accumulation correlates directly with cognitive decline. Whitney accumulated tau only in his left occipital lobe, an area that does not play a major role in Alzheimer's.
Researchers identified several possibly protective factors in Whitney's biology. His immune system produces a lower inflammatory response than other mutation carriers. He has unusually high levels of heat shock proteins, which prevent proteins from misfolding. Scientists believe his decade working in Navy engine rooms at temperatures reaching 110 degrees may have driven this accumulation. He also carries three gene variants his afflicted relatives lack. His son Brian inherited the mutation and remains asymptomatic at 43. Brian received anti-amyloid drugs in clinical trials. Researchers published their findings on Whitney in Nature Medicine. They described the study as a call for other scientists to help solve the case. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Windows Product Activation Creator Reveals Truth Behind XP's Most Notorious Product Key | | Dave W. Plummer, the Microsoft developer who created Task Manager and helped build Windows Product Activation, has revealed the origins of Windows XP's most notorious product key. The alphanumeric string FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8 was not cracked through clever hacking but leaked as a legitimate volume licensing key five weeks before XP's October 2001 release.
A warez group distributed the key alongside special corporate installation media. Windows Product Activation generated hardware IDs from system components and sent them to Microsoft for validation. The leaked volume licensing key bypassed this entirely. The system recognized it as corporate licensing and skipped phone-home activation. Users could install XP without activation prompts or 30-day timers. Microsoft later blacklisted the key. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Internet Archive Ordered To Block Books in Belgium After Talks With Publishers Fail | | The Internet Archive must block access to books in its Open Library project for Belgian users after negotiations with publishers failed. A Brussels Business Court issued a site-blocking order in July targeting several shadow libraries and the Internet Archive. A Belgian government department paused the order for the U.S. nonprofit and urged both parties to negotiate. The talks over recent weeks were unsuccessful.
The Department for Combating Infringements of Copyright concluded last week that the Internet Archive hosts the contested books and has the ability to render them inaccessible. Publishers must supply a list of books to be blocked. The nonprofit then has 20 calendar days to implement the measures and prevent future digital lending of those works in Belgium. The order includes a one-time penalty of $578,000 for non-compliance and remains in place until July 16 next year. The Internet Archive operates Open Library by purchasing physical copies and digitizing them to lend out one at a time. Publishers previously won a U.S. federal court case against the project. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Judge Dismisses Retail Group's Challenge To New York Surveillance Pricing Law | | A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by the National Retail Federation challenging a New York state law that requires retailers to tell customers when their personal data are used to set prices, known as surveillance pricing. From a report: U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said the world's largest retail trade group did not plausibly allege that New York's Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act violated its members' free speech rights under the Constitution's First Amendment.
The first-in-the-nation law required retailers to disclose in capital letters when prices were set by algorithms using personal data, or face possible civil fines of $1,000 per violation. Governor Kathy Hochul said charging different prices depending on what people were willing to pay was "opaque," and prevented comparison-shopping. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Intel's Next-Generation Panther Lake Laptop Chips Could Be a Return To Form | | Intel today announced its Panther Lake laptop processors, consolidating the confusing split between Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake chips that define its current generation. The new processors use a unified architecture across all models instead of mixing different technologies at different price points. Panther Lake comes in three configurations. An 8-core model targets mainstream ultrabooks. A 16-core version adds PCI Express lanes for gaming laptops and workstations with discrete GPUs. A third 16-core variant with 12 Xe3 graphics cores aims at high-end thin-and-light laptops without dedicated graphics cards.
All three chips use the same Cougar Cove P-cores, Darkmont E-cores, and Xe3 GPU architecture. They share an NPU capable of 50 trillion operations per second and identical media encoding capabilities. The main differences are core counts and I/O options rather than fundamental architectural variations. The approach contrasts with Intel's current Core Ultra 200 series. Lunar Lake chips integrated RAM on-package and used the latest Battlemage GPU architecture but were mostly used in high-end thin laptops.
Arrow Lake processors offered more flexibility but paired newer CPU cores with older graphics and an NPU that did not meet Microsoft Copilot+ requirements. Intel claims Panther Lake delivers up to 10% better single-threaded performance than Lunar Lake and up to 50% faster multi-threaded performance than both previous generations. The GPU is roughly 50% quicker. Power consumption drops 10% compared to Lunar Lake and 40% versus Arrow Lake. The chips use Intel's 18A manufacturing process for the compute tile. TSMC fabricates the platform controller tile. Intel said systems with Panther Lake processors should ship by the end of 2025. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
ISPs Created So Many Fees That FCC Will Kill Requirement To List Them All | | FCC Chairman Brendan Carr says Internet service providers shouldn't have to list every fee they charge. From a report: Responding to a request from cable and telecom lobby groups, he is proposing to eliminate a rule that requires ISPs to itemize various fees in broadband price labels that must be made available to consumers.
The rule took effect in April 2024 after the FCC rejected ISPs' complaints that listing every fee they created would be too difficult. The rule applies specifically to recurring monthly fees "that providers impose at their discretion, i.e., charges not mandated by a government."
ISPs could comply with the rule either by listing the fees or by dropping the fees altogether and, if they choose, raising their overall prices by a corresponding amount. But the latter option wouldn't fit with the strategy of enticing customers with a low advertised price and hitting them with the real price on their monthly bills. The broadband price label rules were created to stop ISPs from advertising misleadingly low prices.
This week, Carr scheduled an October 28 vote on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that proposes eliminating several of the broadband-label requirements. One of the rules in line for removal requires ISPs to "itemize state and local passthrough fees that vary by location." The FCC would seek public comment on the plan before finalizing it. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
DC Comics Won't Support Generative AI: 'Not Now, Not Ever' | | An anonymous reader shares a report: DC Comics president and publisher Jim Lee said that the company "will not support AI-generated storytelling or artwork," assuring fans that its future will remain rooted in human creativity. "Not now, not ever, as long as [SVP, general manager] Anne DePies and I are in charge," Lee said during his panel at New York Comic Con on Wednesday, likening concerns around AI dominating future creative industries to the Millennium bug scare and NFT hype.
"People have an instinctive reaction to what feels authentic. We recoil from what feels fake. That's why human creativity matters," said Lee. "AI doesn't dream. It doesn't feel. It doesn't make art. It aggregates it." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
McKinsey Wonders How To Sell AI Apps With No Measurable Benefits | | Software vendors keen to monetize AI should tread cautiously, since they risk inflating costs for their customers without delivering any promised benefits such as reducing employee head count. From a report: The latest report from McKinsey & Company mulls what software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors need to do to navigate the minefield of hype that surrounds AI and successfully fold such capabilities into their offerings. According to the consultancy, there are three main challenges it identifies as holding back broader growth in AI software monetization in the report.
One of these is simply the inability to show any savings that can be expected. Many software firms trumpet potential use cases for AI, but only 30 percent have published quantifiable return on investment from real customer deployments. Meanwhile, many customers see AI hiking IT costs without being able to offset these by slashing labor costs. The billions poured into developing AI models mean they don't come cheap, and AI-enabling the entire customer service stack of a typical business could lead to a 60 to 80 percent price increase, McKinsey says, while quoting an HR executive at a Fortune 100 company griping: "All of these copilots are supposed to make work more efficient with fewer people, but my business leaders are also saying they can't reduce head count yet."
Another challenge is scaling up adoption after introduction, which the report blames on underinvestment in change management. It says that for every $1 spent on model development, firms should expect to have to spend $3 on change management, which means user training and performance monitoring. The third issue is a lack of predictable pricing, which means that customers find it hard to forecast how their AI costs will scale with usage because the pricing models are often complex and opaque. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
China Confirms Solar Panel Projects Are Irreversibly Changing Desert Ecosystems | | An anonymous reader shares a report: China's giant solar parks aren't just changing the power mix -- they may be changing the ground beneath them. Fresh field data point to cooler soils, extra moisture, and pockets of greening, though lasting ecological shifts will hinge on design and long-term care.
[...] A team studying one of the largest photovoltaic parks in China, the Gonghe project in the Talatan Desert, found a striking difference between what was happening under the panels and what lay just beyond. They used a detailed framework measuring dozens of indicators -- everything from soil chemistry to microbial life -- and discovered that the micro-environment beneath the panels was noticeably healthier. The reasons track with physics: shade cools the surface and slows evaporation, letting scarce soil moisture linger longer; field experiments in western China report measurable soil-moisture gains beneath shaded arrays.
Simple shade from panel rows can create a gentler microclimate at ground level, cutting wind stress and helping fragile seedlings establish. In other desert locations like Gansu and the Gobi, year-round field data tell a similar story. Soil temperatures beneath arrays tend to be cooler during the day and a bit warmer at night than surrounding ground, with humidity patterns shifting in tandem -- conditions that can make harsh surfaces more habitable when paired with basic land care. Even small shifts like these can help re-establish vegetation -- if combined with erosion control and water management. These aren't wildflowers blooming overnight, but they are signs that utility-scale solar can double as a modest micro-restorer. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
One-Man Spam Campaign Ravages EU 'Chat Control' Bill | | An anonymous reader shares a report: A website set up by an unknown Dane over the course of one weekend in August is giving a massive headache to those trying to pass a European bill aimed at stopping child sexual abuse material from spreading online.
The website, called Fight Chat Control, was set up by Joachim, a 30-year-old software engineer living in Aalborg, Denmark. He made it after learning of a new attempt to approve a European Union proposal to fight child sexual abuse material (CSAM) -- a bill seen by privacy activists as breaking encryption and leading to mass surveillance.
The site lets visitors compile a mass email warning about the bill and send it to national government officials, members of the European Parliament and others with ease. Since launching, it has broken the inboxes of MEPs and caused a stir in Brussels' corridors of power. "We are getting hundreds per day about it," said Evin Incir, a Swedish Socialists and Democrats MEP, of the email deluge. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
UK's Central Bank Warns of Growing Risk That AI Bubble Could Burst | | The Bank of England has warned there is a growing risk of a "sudden correction" in global markets as it raised concerns about soaring valuations of leading AI tech companies. From a report: Policymakers said there were also threats of a "sharp repricing of US dollar assets" if the Federal Reserve lost credibility in the eyes of global investors. It comes as Donald Trump's continues to attack the US central bank and threaten its independence.
Continued hype and optimism about the potential for AI technology has led to a rise in valuations in recent months, with companies such as OpenAI now worth $500 billion, compared with $157 billion last October. Another firm, Anthropic, has almost trebled its valuation, going from $60 billion in March to $170 billion last month.
However, the Bank of England's financial policy committee (FPC) warned on Wednesday: "The risk of a sharp market correction has increased. "On a number of measures, equity market valuations appear stretched, particularly for technology companies focused on artificial intelligence. This ... leaves equity markets particularly exposed should expectations around the impact of AI become less optimistic." It said investors had not fully accounted for these potential risks, warning that "a sudden correction could occur" should any of them crystallise, resulting in finance drying up for households and businesses. The FPC added: "As an open economy with a global financial centre, the risk of spillovers to the UK financial system from such global shocks is material." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Discord Says 70,000 Users May Have Had Their Government IDs Leaked In Breach | | An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Discord has identified approximately 70,000 users that may have had their government ID photos exposed as part of a customer service data breach announced last week, spokesperson Nu Wexler tells The Verge. A tweet by vx-underground said that the company was being extorted over a breach of its Zendesk instance by a group claiming to have "1.5TB of age verification related photos. 2,185,151 photos." In its announcement last week, Discord said that information like names, usernames, emails, the last four digits of credit cards, and IP addresses also may have been impacted by the breach. "All affected users globally have been contacted and we continue to work closely with law enforcement, data protection authorities, and external security experts," said Wexler. "We've secured the affected systems and ended work with the compromised vendor. We take our responsibility to protect your personal data seriously and understand the concern this may cause." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Internet Archive Ordered to Block Books in Belgium | | After failed negotiations with publishers, Belgium's copyright enforcement agency has ordered the Internet Archive to block access to specific books in its Open Library within Belgium or face a 500,000-euro fine. TorrentFreak reports: Back in July, the Brussels Business Court issued a sweeping ex parte site-blocking order targeting several "shadow libraries" including Anna's Archive, Libgen, and Z-Library. Unusually, the order also included the Internet Archive's Open Library, a project operated by the well-known U.S. non-profit organization Internet Archive. The order was granted based on a request from publishers and authors who claimed, among other things, that the operators of the targeted sites were difficult to identify. This also applied to the Internet Archive, which was not heard by the court before the order was issued.
[...] Over the past several weeks, Internet Archive attempted to reach an agreement with the publishers, but the effort was unsuccessful. It is clear, however, that the Internet Archive believes that its use of copyrighted books for the Open Library qualifies as fair use. The organization is known to purchase physical copies, which it then digitizes to lend out to patrons, one copy at a time. This self-digitizing project was previously contested in a U.S. federal court, where the publishers ultimately came out as the winner. They argued that the Internet Archive project competed with their own licensing business for book lending. The detailed arguments at the center of the Belgian case are not public, but after hearing both sides, the Department for Combating Infringements of Copyright concluded that Internet Archive must take action.
In a follow-up decision (PDF) published last week, the government department explicitly states that it can't rule on U.S. fair use or the Belgian equivalent, but concludes that self-blocking measures are warranted. The Internet Archive hosts the contested books and has the ability to render them inaccessible. If it refuses to do so, it may be considered a copyright infringer under local law. The final decision requires the rightsholders to supply the Internet Archive with a list of all books that should be blocked in Belgium. The non-profit then has 20 calendar days to implement the necessary measures. In addition to making the books unavailable, Internet Archive must also prevent these works from being made available for digital lending in the future. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
The World's Biggest Citizen Science Project | | eBird, now the world's largest citizen science project with over 2 billion bird observations, is transforming ornithology by turning casual birders (and even TikTok-using kids) into vital contributors to global research and conservation. Slashdot reader alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has been one of the most influential organizations in the world when it comes to encouraging people to engage in natural history projects. While some form of amateur involvement in science projects has been around since 1900, when the Audubon Society organized the first Christmas Bird Count, it was the Cornell Lab that formalized citizen science as a sound and reliable means of collecting data on birds.
It didn't take much thought to realize that one of the richest sources of information about birds resided in the notebooks virtually every birder has kept, often from childhood. It's a given that birdwatchers list everything. The problem is that zillions of such notebooks sit forgotten in drawers or in dusty boxes in the attic. If only all of that information could be gathered together, organized in sensible ways and then made available to anyone who wanted to use it. What a resource that would be!
After lots of trials and discussion, a small team at the Lab came up with the idea of eBird. It started in a humble way back in 2002, as simply somewhere birders could store their records in a central location. Today, "humble" is no longer an appropriate description. In 2022, its 20th anniversary year, a total of more than 1.3 billion records had been received from more than 820,000 participants. In the month of August this year, reports eBird, 123,000 birders submitted 1.6 million lists of sightings. It has now hit a total of 2 billion bird observations since inception. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
EU Lawmakers Push To Ban Plant-Based Food Terms | | An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: MEPs voted on Wednesday by 355 in favor to 247 against to reserve names such as "steak", "burger" and "sausage" exclusively for products derived from meat, a longstanding demand of farm unions. In order to come into effect, the idea would have to be approved by a majority of the EU's 27 member states, which is far from certain. The vote is a victory for the French centre-right MEP Celine Imart, who drafted the amendment to legislation intended to strengthen the position of farmers in the food supply chain.
Imart, who is also a cereals farmer in north-west France, said: "A steak, an escalope or a sausage are products from our livestock, not laboratory art nor plant products. There is a need for transparency and clarity for the consumer and recognition for the work of our farmers." She argues the proposal is in line with EU rules that already ban the use of terms such as "milk" and "yoghurt" for non-dairy products.
The European parliament rejected a ban on meaty names for plant-based products in 2020, but the 2024 elections shifted the parliament to the right, bringing in more lawmakers who seek close ties with farmers. Opposition was led by Green MEPs, who decried what they saw as a populist move to rename plant-based foods. "Veggie burgers, seitan schnitzel and tofu sausage do not confuse consumers, only rightwing politicians," Thomas Waitz, an Austrian Green MEP, said after the vote. "This tactic is a diversion and a pathetic smokescreen. No farmer will earn more money or secure their future with this ban." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
|
|
