Large earthquakes are always followed by aftershocks — a series of smaller but still potentially damaging quakes produced as the ground readjusts. But how long does it take for the aftershocks to die out? A new study suggests some areas can experience aftershocks decades or even centuries after the original earthquake. From a report: In earthquake-prone areas it is hard to tell the difference between aftershocks and ordinary background seismicity. But recognising aftershocks is an important part of assessing a region’s disaster risk. To understand how long aftershocks can persist, researchers turned to the stable continental interior of North America, where earthquakes are uncommon. Using statistical analysis they assessed the timing and clustering of quakes that followed three large magnitude 6.5 to 8 historical earthquakes: one near south-east Quebec in Canada in 1663; a trio of quakes around the Missouri-Kentucky border from 1811 to 1812; and an earthquake in Charleston in South Carolina in 1886. Their results, published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, suggest that the Quebec quake in 1663 has likely shaken itself out, but to their surprise nearly a third of modern quakes in the Missouri-Kentucky area were most likely to be aftershocks from the 1811-12 event, and about 16% of recent quakes in the Charleston region are probably aftershocks from the 1886 quake.

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Source: Slashdot – Aftershocks Can Occur Centuries After Original Earthquake, Says Study

In 2018, director Carl Rinsch was courted by multiple studios due to high demand for content, despite his first film being a flop. He pitched a sci-fi series about artificial humans providing aid worldwide, but who are eventually rejected by humans. After a bidding war, Netflix signed an $61 million deal for the unnamed project, giving Rinsch final cut privilege and rights to future seasons – highly unusual moves.

Soon after, Rinsch’s behavior grew concerning as he claimed to discover COVID’s transmission and predict lightning, and he gambled away millions from Netflix on stocks and crypto, The New York Times reported Wednesday. His wife Gabriela Roses worried about his amphetamine use and tried intervening, but he refused rehab. In 2020, Netflix gave Rinsch another $11 million, which he also lost much of on risky bets.

By mid-2021, Roses informed Netflix executives about Rinsch’s state and filed for divorce, the Times reported. Netflix consulted police about Rinsch’s behavior before deciding to stop funding the project in March 2021, though he could shop it elsewhere. Rinsch made $27 million on crypto bets, which he used to buy Rolls-Royces and luxury items. He claims Netflix owes him $14 million more, while Netflix says he never delivered the project milestones to receive additional funding. The confidential arbitration case over the contract dispute concluded this month.

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Source: Slashdot – The Strange Million Saga of a Netflix Series You’ll Never See

As if homesickness, wasting muscles, thinner bones, an elevated cancer risk, the inescapable company of overachievers and the prospect of death in the endless vacuum of space were not enough to contend with, male astronauts may return from deep space prone to erectile dysfunction, scientists say. From a report: In what is claimed to be the first study to assess the impact of galactic radiation and weightlessness on male sexual health, Nasa-funded researchers found that galactic cosmic rays, and to a lesser extent microgravity, can impair the function of erectile tissues, with effects lasting potentially for decades. Raising their concerns in a report on Wednesday, the US researchers said they had identified “a new health risk to consider with deep space exploration.” They called for the sexual health of astronauts to be closely monitored on their return from future deep space missions, noting that certain antioxidants may help to counteract the ill-effects by blocking harmful biological processes.

“While the negative impacts of galactic cosmic radiation were long-lasting, functional improvements induced by acutely targeting the redox and nitric oxide pathways in the tissues suggest that the erectile dysfunction may be treatable,” said Dr Justin La Favor, an expert in neurovascular dysfunction at Florida State University and a senior author on the study. The warning comes amid a renewed focus on deep space missions, with Nasa and other major space agencies preparing for long-term expeditions to the moon and more ambitious voyages to Mars. Nasa’s Artemis programme aspires to send astronauts to the moon as early as next year, with crewed missions to Mars tentatively lined up for as early as 2040.

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Source: Slashdot – Deep Space Astronauts May Be Prone To Erectile Dysfunction, Study Finds

Microsoft’s Windows Hello fingerprint authentication has been bypassed on laptops from Dell, Lenovo, and even Microsoft. From a report: Security researchers at Blackwing Intelligence have discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the top three fingerprint sensors that are embedded into laptops and used widely by businesses to secure laptops with Windows Hello fingerprint authentication. Microsoft’s Offensive Research and Security Engineering (MORSE) asked Blackwing Intelligence to evaluate the security of fingerprint sensors, and the researchers provided their findings in a presentation at Microsoft’s BlueHat conference in October.

The team identified popular fingerprint sensors from Goodix, Synaptics, and ELAN as targets for their research, with a newly-published blog post detailing the in-depth process of building a USB device that can perform a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack. Such an attack could provide access to a stolen laptop, or even an “evil maid” attack on an unattended device. A Dell Inspiron 15, Lenovo ThinkPad T14, and Microsoft Surface Pro X all fell victim to fingerprint reader attacks, allowing the researchers to bypass the Windows Hello protection as long as someone was previously using fingerprint authentication on a device. Blackwing Intelligence researchers reverse engineered both software and hardware, and discovered cryptographic implementation flaws in a custom TLS on the Synaptics sensor. The complicated process to bypass Windows Hello also involved decoding and reimplementing proprietary protocols.

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Source: Slashdot – Microsoft’s Windows Hello Fingerprint Authentication Has Been Bypassed

Rahul Rao reports via Space.com: On Nov. 14, NASA picked up a laser signal fired from an instrument that launched with the Psyche spacecraft, which is currently more than 10 million miles (16 million kilometers) from Earth and heading toward a mysterious metal asteroid. (The spacecraft is at more than 40 times the average distance of Earth’s moon, and still voyaging afar.) The moment marked the first successful test of NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system, a next-generation comms link that sends information not by radio waves but instead by laser light. It’s part of a series of tests NASA is doing to speed up communications in deep space, on different missions. “Achieving first light is a tremendous achievement. The ground systems successfully detected the deep space laser photons from DSOC,” Abi Biswas, the system’s project technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said in an agency statement.

“And we were also able to send some data, meaning we were able to exchange ‘bits of light’ from and to deep space,” Biswas added.

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Source: Slashdot – Earth Receives Laser-Beamed Message From 10 Million Miles Away

Batteries used to store power produced by renewables are becoming cheap enough to make developers abandon scores of projects for gas-fired generation worldwide. Reuters reports: The long-term economics of gas-fired plants, used in Europe and some parts of the United States primarily to compensate for the intermittent nature of wind and solar power, are changing quickly, according to Reuters’ interviews with more than a dozen power plant developers, project finance bankers, analysts and consultants. They said some battery operators are already supplying back-up power to grids at a price competitive with gas power plants, meaning gas will be used less. The shift challenges assumptions about long-term gas demand and could mean natural gas has a smaller role in the energy transition than posited by the biggest, listed energy majors.

In the first half of the year, 68 gas power plant projects were put on hold or cancelled globally, according to data provided exclusively to Reuters by U.S.-based non-profit Global Energy Monitor. […] “In the early 1990s, we were running gas plants baseload, now they are shifting to probably 40% of the time and that’s going to drop off to 11%-15% in the next eight to 10 years,” Keith Clarke, chief executive at Carlton Power, told Reuters. Developers can no longer use financial modelling that assumes gas power plants are used constantly throughout their 20-year-plus lifetime, analysts said. Instead, modellers need to predict how much gas generation is needed during times of peak demand and to compensate for the intermittency of renewable sources that are hard to anticipate.

The cost of lithium-ion batteries has more than halved from 2016 to 2022 to $151 per kilowatt hour of battery storage, according to BloombergNEF. At the same time, renewable generation has reached record levels. Wind and solar powered 22% of the EU’s electricity last year, almost doubling their share from 2016, and surpassing the share of gas generation for the first time, according to think tank Ember’s European Electricity Review. “In the early years, capacity markets were dominated by fossil fuel power stations providing the flexible electricity supply,” said Simon Virley, head of energy at KPMG. Now batteries, interconnectors and consumers shifting their electricity use are also providing that flexibility, Virley added.

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Source: Slashdot – Giant Batteries Drain Economics of Gas Power Plants

OpenAI said today it reached an agreement for Sam Altman to return as CEO days after his ouster, capping a marathon discussion about the future of the startup at the center of the artificial intelligence boom. From a report: In addition to Altman’s return, the company agreed in principle to partly reconstitute the board of directors that had dismissed him. Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will join Quora CEO and current director Adam D’Angelo, OpenAI said. Under an “agreement in principle,” Altman will serve under the supervision of a new board of directors.

“I love OpenAI, and everything I’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together,” Altman wrote on the social media site X in response to the announcement. “When I decided to join Microsoft on Sunday evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team.” Microsoft chief Satya Nadella hired Altman after he was sacked.

With the “support” of the new OpenAI board and Nadella, Altman said, he looked forward to “returning to OpenAI, and building on our strong partnership with Microsoft.” Nadella said he was “encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board” and believed that the decision was the “first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance.”

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Source: Slashdot – Sam Altman To Return as OpenAI CEO

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: The richest one percent of the global population are responsible for the same amount of carbon emissions as the world’s poorest two-thirds, or five billion people, according to an analysis published Sunday by the nonprofit Oxfam International. […] Among the key findings of this study are that the richest one percent globally — 77 million people — were responsible for 16 percent of global emissions related to their consumption. That is the same share as the bottom 66 percent of the global population by income, or 5.11 billion people. The income threshold for being among the global top one percent was adjusted by country using purchasing power parity — for example in the United States the threshold would be $140,000, whereas the Kenyan equivalent would be about $40,000. Within country analyses also painted very stark pictures.

For example, in France, the richest one percent emit as much carbon in one year as the poorest 50 percent in 10 years. Excluding the carbon associated with his investments, Bernard Arnault, the billionaire founder of Louis Vuitton and richest man in France, has a footprint 1,270 times greater than that of the average Frenchman. The key message, according to Lawson, was that policy actions must be progressive. These measures could include, for example, a tax on flying more than ten times a year, or a tax on non-green investments that is much higher than the tax on green investments.

While the current report focused on carbon linked only to individual consumption, “the personal consumption of the super-rich is dwarfed by emissions resulting from their investments in companies,” the report found. Nor are the wealthy invested in polluting industries at a similar ratio to any given investor — billionaires are twice as likely to be invested in polluting industries than the average for the Standard & Poor 500, previous Oxfam research has shown.

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Source: Slashdot – World’s Richest 1% Emit As Much Carbon As Bottom Two-Thirds, Report Finds

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel today outlined a new proposal that would ban cable and satellite companies from charging subscribers early termination fees. Deadline reports: Some subscribers who sign contracts with cable and satellite operators face paying early termination fees if they want out of the agreement before the expiration date. The companies put such fees in place to reduce churn. The FCC proposal also would target requirements that subscribers pay for the entire billing cycle when they end their service before that date. The proposal would require that the video providers grant a pro-rated credit for the remaining days in a billing cycle. The proposal applies only to cable and satellite providers, not streaming services. The FCC will vote at its Dec. 13 meeting whether to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking for public comment. Rosenworcel said in a statement: “No one wants to pay junk fees for something they don’t want or can’t use. When companies charge customers early termination fees, it limits their freedom to choose the service they want. In an increasingly competitive media market, we should make it easier for Americans to use their purchasing power to promote innovation and expand competition within the industry.”

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Source: Slashdot – FCC Proposes Ban On Cable and Satellite Early Termination Fees

Laura Snapes reports via The Guardian: Spotify is to phase out its service in Uruguay after the passing of a new music copyright bill requiring “fair and equitable remuneration” for authors, composers, performers, directors and screenwriters. In October, the country’s parliament voted on a budget bill that included two new articles: per article 284, social networks and the internet are to be added “as formats for which, if a song is reproduced, the performer is entitled to financial remuneration” — namely if a link to a song is shared online. Article 285 will put into copyright law the “right to a fair and equitable remuneration” for all “agreements entered into by authors, composers, performers, directors and screenwriters with respect to their faculty of public communication and making available to the public of phonograms and audiovisual recordings.”

In response, Spotify said in a statement on November 20 that without changes to the 2023 Rendicion de Cuentas law, the streaming platform “will, unfortunately, begin to phase out its service in Uruguay effective January 1, 2024” and cease trading in the market in February 2024. The Swedish company seeks confirmation on whether additional costs to be paid to musicians are the responsibility of rights holders or the streaming platforms, arguing that the latter means that it would be required “to pay twice for the same music,” Music Business Worldwide reports. The statement continued: “Spotify already pays nearly 70% of every dollar it generates from music to the record labels and publishers that own the rights for music, and represent and pay artists and songwriters. Any additional payments would make our business untenable.” The platform claimed that it had contributed to a 20% growth in Uruguay’s music industry in 2022. That year, the South American nation was the 53rd largest market for music.

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Source: Slashdot – Spotify To Phase Out Service In Uruguay Following New Copyright Bill

Connor Jones reports via The Register: The government of Canada has confirmed its data was accessed after two of its third-party service providers were attacked. The third parties both provided relocation services for public sector workers and the government is currently analyzing a “significant volume of data” which could date back to 1999. No formal conclusions have yet been made about the number of workers impacted due to the large-scale task of analyzing the relevant data. However, the servers impacted by the breach held data related to current and former Canadian government staff, members of the Canadian armed forces, and Royal Canadian Mounted Police workers — aka Mounties.

“At this time, given the significant volume of data being assessed, we cannot yet identify specific individuals impacted; however, preliminary information indicates that breached information could belong to anyone who has used relocation services as early as 1999 and may include any personal and financial information that employees provided to the companies,” a government statement read. Those who think they may be affected are advised to update any login details that may be similar to those used to access BGRS or Sirva’s systems. Enabling MFA across all accounts that are used for online transactions is also advised, as is the manual monitoring of personal accounts for any potential malicious activity. Work is currently being carried out to identify and address any vulnerabilities that may have led to the incident, according to the statement.

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Source: Slashdot – Third-Party Data Breach Affecting Canadian Government Could Involve Data From 1999

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Matteo Franceschetti, the CEO of Eight Sleep, which makes the $2,295 smart mattress topper “The Pod” tweeted: “Breaking news: The OpenAI drama is real. We checked our data and last night, SF saw a spike in low-quality sleep. There was a 27 percent increase in people getting under 5 hours of sleep. We need to fix this. Source: @eightsleep data.” Franceschetti’s tweet reminds us that The Pod is essentially a mattress with both a privacy policy and a terms of service, and that the data Eight Sleep collects about its users can and is used to further its business goals. It’s also a reminder that many apps, smart devices, and apps for smart devices collect a huge amount of user data that they can then directly monetize or deploy for marketing or Twitter virality purposes whenever they feel like it.

The Pod does “intelligent cooling and heating for any bed,” and learns and adjusts the temperature of the bed based on your sleep habits, tracks your sleep and vital signs while you sleep, and gives you a “Sleep Fitness Score” based on your quality, routine, and time of sleep. As someone who often does not sleep well, The Pod is a compelling product that I cannot currently afford. Quickly, to get it out of the way: Eight Sleep’s data does not and cannot actually show that “San Francisco” had a spike in low-quality sleep. What it shows is that people in San Francisco who have purchased a $2,295 smart mattress topper and have not successfully opted out of Eight Sleep’s analytics — a group that surely overindexes on tech workers — slept less Sunday night.

The top of Eight Sleep’s terms of service states “At Eight Sleep we pledge to respect your privacy and to keep your data safe. We only collect data that helps us improve our products and services.” Both Eight Sleep’s privacy policy and terms of service then go on to note that the company collects a huge amount of data that can be used for a wide variety of purposes, including marketing, retargeting, and scientific studies. It can also, apparently, be used by the CEO for commenting on the day’s tech news. Specifically, the company notes that “data about your sleep activity is transferred from your Device to our servers” every time the Pod’s app syncs with the Pod. Certain features on the device also require location data “including GPS signals, device sensors, Wi-Fi access points, and cell tower IDs.” This data is then used to give users personalized sleep recommendations, but they are also “used in research to understand and improve the Eight Device and Eight Service,” “to enforce the Eight Terms of Service,” and, critically, “de-identified data that does not identify you may be used to inform the health and scientific community about trends; for marketing and promotional use; or for sale to interested audiences.” The terms of service add that it “may share or sell” this data.

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Source: Slashdot – CEO Reminds Everyone His Company Collects Customers’ Sleep Data

According to Polish news channel TVN24, a secret cryptomining rig was found under the floors of a Polish court, stealing thousands of Polish Zlotys worth of energy per month (the equivalent of roughly $250 per 1,000 Zlotys). “It’s currently unknown how long the rig was running because the illegal operation went undetected, partly because the computers used were connected to the Internet through their own modems rather than through the court’s network,” reports Ars Technica. From the report: While no one has been charged yet with any crimes, the court seemingly has suspects. Within two weeks of finding the rig, the court terminated a contract with a company responsible for IT maintenance in the building, TVN24 reported. Before the contract ended, the company fired two employees that it said were responsible for maintenance in the parts of the building where the cryptomine was hidden. Poland’s top law enforcement officials, the Internal Security Agency, have been called in to investigate. The Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office has hired IT experts to help determine exactly how much electricity was stolen from Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court in Warsaw, TVN24 reported.

The Supreme Administrative Court is the last resort for sensitive business and tax disputes, but no records seem to have been compromised. Judge Sylwester Marciniak — the chairman of the Judicial Information Department of the Supreme Administrative Court — told TVN24 that the discovery of the cryptomine “did not result in any threat to the security of data stored” in the court.

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Source: Slashdot – Massive Cryptocurrency Rig Discovered Under Polish Court’s Floor, Stealing Power

Winston Cho writes via The Hollywood Reporter: A federal judge has dismissed most of Sarah Silverman’s lawsuit against Meta over the unauthorized use of authors’ copyrighted books to train its generative artificial intelligence model, marking the second ruling from a court siding with AI firms on novel intellectual property questions presented in the legal battle. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria on Monday offered a full-throated denial of one of the authors’ core theories that Meta’s AI system is itself an infringing derivative work made possible only by information extracted from copyrighted material. “This is nonsensical,” he wrote in the order. “There is no way to understand the LLaMA models themselves as a recasting or adaptation of any of the plaintiffs’ books.”

Another of Silverman’s arguments that every result produced by Meta’s AI tools constitutes copyright infringement was dismissed because she didn’t offer evidence that any of the outputs “could be understood as recasting, transforming, or adapting the plaintiffs’ books.” Chhabria gave her lawyers a chance to replead the claim, along with five others that weren’t allowed to advance. Notably, Meta didn’t move to dismiss the allegation that the copying of books for purposes of training its AI model rises to the level of copyright infringement. In July, Silverman and two authors filed a class action lawsuit against Meta and OpenAI for allegedly using their content without permission to train AI language models.

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Source: Slashdot – Sarah Silverman Hits Stumbling Block in AI Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Against Meta

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: OpenAI’s board of directors is reportedly in talks with Sam Altman, ex-Y Combinator president and an OpenAI co-founder, to return to OpenAI as CEO as soon as this week. That’s according to Bloomberg, which in a brief this morning — citing sources close to the matter — said that discussions are happening between Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, one current member of the OpenAI board, and Altman — and possibly other board members as well. Per Bloomberg, the board member (or members) and Altman are discussing a number of possible scenarios that could play out. In one, Altman would return as a director on a transitional board. In another — or perhaps the same — former Salesforce Inc. co-CEO Bret Taylor could serve as a director on a new board. (Taylor’s name was floated as a potential future OpenAI board member in some reporting over the weekend.)

Investors are also in on the talks, Bloomberg reports, with Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital aggressively pushing for Altman’s return. The hope is to resolve the management crisis before Thanksgiving, so as to give OpenAI employees less uncertainty around the state of the company — and stem the broader bleeding. Were Altman to return to OpenAI, he’d presumably renege on his acceptance of Microsoft’s offer to head up a new AI research lab at the tech giant with Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s former president, who resigned in protest with Altman on Friday. Altman is said to have demanded “significant” managerial and governance changes at OpenAI as a condition of returning, a demand which many OpenAI backers — including Microsoft — share.

Today’s developments follow a memo sent by OpenAI VP of global affairs Anna Makanju late Monday indicating that OpenAI’s management had been in “intense discussions” with the board, Altman and interim CEO Emmett Shear, who took over from OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, to attempt to re-unify the company. Shear has reportedly been left in the dark for the most part, indicating to Bloomberg sources that he doesn’t plan to stick around if the board can’t clearly communicate its reasoning for Altman’s abrupt dismissal. Shear previously said in a note to employees Sunday that his first order of business would be to “hire an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report.”

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Source: Slashdot – OpenAI’s Board May Be Coming Around To Sam Altman Returning

An anonymous reader shares a report: In recent years, lots of American companies have gotten behind a potential climate solution called carbon capture and storage, and the Biden administration has backed it with billions of dollars in tax incentives and direct investments. The idea is to trap planet-heating carbon dioxide from the smokestacks of factories and power plants and transport it to sites where it is injected underground and stored. But the idea is controversial, in large part because the captured carbon dioxide would be shipped to storage sites via thousands of miles of new pipelines. Communities nationwide are pushing back against these pipeline projects and underground sites, arguing they don’t want the pollution running through their land.

Now the U.S. Forest Service is proposing to change a rule to allow storing this carbon dioxide pollution under the country’s national forests and grasslands. “Authorizing carbon capture and storage on NFS lands would support the Administration’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent below the 2005 levels by 2030,” the proposed rule change says. But environmental groups and researchers have concerns. Carbon dioxide pollution will still need to be transported to the forests via industrial pipeline for storage, says June Sekera, a research fellow with Boston University. “To get the CO2 to the injection site in the midst of our national forest, they’ve got to build huge pipelines,” Sekera says. “All this huge industrial infrastructure that’s going to go right through.” Sekera says building those CO2 pipelines may require clearing a lot of trees.

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Source: Slashdot – Forest Service Plans Carbon Dioxide Storage on Federal Lands

The chief executive of Binance, the largest global cryptocurrency exchange, plans to step down and plead guilty to violating criminal U.S. anti-money laundering requirements, in a deal that may preserve the company’s ability to continue operating, WSJ reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Changpeng Zhao is scheduled to appear in Seattle federal court Tuesday afternoon and enter his plea, the people said. Binance, which Zhao owns, will also plead guilty to a criminal charge and agree to pay fines totaling $4.3 billion, which includes amounts to settle civil allegations made by regulators, the people said. The deal would end long-running investigations of Binance. […] The deal would allow Zhao to retain his majority ownership of Binance, although he won’t be able to have an executive role at the company. He would face sentencing at a later date.

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Source: Slashdot – Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao Agrees To Step Down, Plead Guilty

An anonymous reader writes: Christopher Nolan made headlines earlier this month when he took a playful jab at streaming platforms while discussing the upcoming home release of “Oppenheimer.” The atomic bomb drama, which grossed a staggering $950 million in theaters worldwide, is hitting Blu-ray and other digital platforms this month. Nolan said at a recent “Oppenheimer” screening that it’s important to own the film on Blu-ray so that “no evil streaming service can come steal it from you.” He told The Washington Post in a follow-up interview: “It was a joke when I said it. But nothing’s a joke when it’s transcribed onto the internet. There is a danger, these days, that if things only exist in the streaming version they do get taken down, they come and go,” the director added.

Streamers have become notoriously known in the last year for pulling original titles from their platforms in order to license them out elsewhere and open up potential revenue streams. When such titles are streaming-only offerings, their removal makes it impossible to view the films elsewhere. Such was the case this year with the Disney+ movie “Crater,” for instance. The streaming-only family adventure was pulled from Disney+ in June and could not be viewed anywhere until it was reissued as a digital release months later in September. For Nolan, owning physical media is the only way to combat such streaming trends. Guillermo del Toro agrees, having shared Nolan’s recent quotes on X (formerly Twitter) and adding his own commentary on the issue. “Physical media is almost a Fahrenheit 451 (where people memorized entire books and thus became the book they loved) level of responsibility,” del Toro wrote to his followers. “If you own a great 4K HD, Blu-ray, DVD etc etc of a film or films you love…you are the custodian of those films for generations to come.”

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Source: Slashdot – Christopher Nolan Says Streaming-Only Content Is a ‘Danger’

Computer science teachers around the globe have been left scrambling to find an alternative IDE for their students, after Replit announced it was shuttering its Teams for Education plan. From a report: “To focus on improving the Replit experience for all users, we have made the difficult decision to deprecate Teams for Edu … Teams for Edu will no longer receive new features or bug fixes, and we will suspend the creation of new Teams and Orgs,” a statement from Replit, shared with educators and brought to our attention on Monday by Reg readers, declared last week. The platform provided a collaborative integrated development environment (IDE) tailored toward classrooms. It allowed students to work together on projects at the same time, similar to Google Docs, as well as automating code evaluation to streamline assessments carried out by teachers.

The decision has sparked frustration among many educators who’d invested heavily in the platform since Replit made the plan available for free in early 2022. “Computer science teachers in the last 48 hours have had to scramble to try to find alternatives as soon as possible and it will be the students that suffer,” a teacher based in Asia-Pacific told The Register. “Replit was the only organization we are aware of providing online coding with instant assessment and so it was a hugely popular choice with computer science teachers.” In a Xeet last week, CEO Amjad Masad acknowledged the pain the decision to shut down Teams for Education was likely to cause, but said the current system had become economically nonviable.

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Source: Slashdot – CS Teachers Panic as Replit Pulls the Plug on Educational IDE

Using fake names, sham LinkedIn profiles, counterfeit work papers and mock interview scripts, North Korean IT workers seeking employment in Western tech companies are deploying sophisticated subterfuge to get hired. From a report: Landing a job outside North Korea to secretly earn hard currency for the isolated country demands highly-developed strategies to convince Western hiring managers, according to documents reviewed by Reuters, an interview with a former North Korean IT worker and cybersecurity researchers. North Korea has dispatched thousands of IT workers overseas, an effort that has accelerated in the last four years, to bring in millions to finance Pyongyang’s nuclear missile programme, according to the United States, South Korea, and the United Nations.

“People are free to express ideas and opinions,” reads one interview script used by North Korean software developers that offers suggestions for how to describe a “good corporate culture” when asked. Expressing one’s thoughts freely could be met with imprisonment in North Korea. The scripts totalling 30 pages, were unearthed by researchers at Palo Alto Networks, a U.S. cybersecurity firm which discovered a cache of internal documents online that detail the workings of North Korea’s remote IT workforce. The documents contain dozens of fraudulent resumes, online profiles, interview notes, and forged identities that North Korean workers used to apply for jobs in software development.

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Source: Slashdot – North Koreans Use Fake Names, Scripts To Land Remote IT Work For Cash