In the same way that Marvel Comics has imprints for stories featuring alternate universe versions of its characters, DC Comics has that in Elseworlds. But that line disappeared after 2010, and was semi-replaced with similar enough imprints like Earth One (which was similarly short-lived), the Black Label, and the…
Source: Gizmodo – DC’s Elseworlds Imprint is Making a Multiversal Comeback
ZDNet’s senior contributing editor also maintains software, and recently tested ChatGPT on two fixes for bugs reported by users, and a new piece of code to add a new feature, It’s a “real-world” coding test, “about pulling another customer support ticket off the stack and working through what made the user’s experience go south.” First…
please rewrite the following code to change it from allowing only integers to allowing dollars and cents (in other words, a decimal point and up to two digits after the decimal point).
ChatGPT responded by explaining a two-step fix, posting the modified code, and then explaining the changes. “I dropped ChatGPT’s code into my function, and it worked. Instead of about two-to-four hours of hair-pulling, it took about five minutes to come up with the prompt and get an answer from ChatGPT.”
Next up was reformatting an array. I like doing array code, but it’s also tedious. So, I once again tried ChatGPT. This time the result was a total failure. By the time I was done, I probably fed it 10 different prompts. Some responses looked promising, but when I tried to run the code, it errored out. Some code crashed; some code generated error codes. And some code ran, but didn’t do what I wanted. After about an hour, I gave up and went back to my normal technique of digging through GitHub and StackExchange to see if there were any examples of what I was trying to do, and then writing my own code.
Then he posted the code for a function handling a WordPress filter, along with the question: “I get the following error. Why?”
Within seconds, ChatGPT responded… Just as it suggested, I updated the fourth parameter of the add_filter() function to 2, and it worked!
ChatGPT took segments of code, analyzed those segments, and provided me with a diagnosis. To be clear, in order for it to make its recommendation, it needed to understand the internals of how WordPress handles hooks (that’s what the add_filter function does), and how that functionality translates to the behavior of the calling and the execution of lines of code. I have to mark that achievement as incredible — undeniably ‘living in the future’ incredible…
As a test, I also tried asking ChatGPT to diagnose my problem in a prompt where I didn’t include the handler line, and it wasn’t able to help. So, there are very definite limitations to what ChatGPT can do for debugging right now, in 2023…
Could I have fixed the bug on my own? Of course. I’ve never had a bug I couldn’t fix. But whether it would have taken two hours or two days (plus pizza, profanity, and lots of caffeine), while enduring many interruptions, that’s something I don’t know. I can tell you ChatGPT fixed it in minutes, saving me untold time and frustration.
The article does include a warning. “AI is essentially a black box, you’re not able to see what process the AI undertakes to come to its conclusions. As such, you’re not really able to check its work… If it turns out there is a problem in the AI-generated code, the cost and time it takes to fix may prove to be far greater than if a human coder had done the full task by hand.”
But it also ends with this prediction. “I see a very interesting future, where it will be possible to feed ChatGPT all 153,000 lines of code and ask it to tell you what to fix… I can definitely see a future where programmers can simply ask ChatGPT (or a Microsoft-branded equivalent) to find and fix bugs in entire projects.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – ‘OK, So ChatGPT Just Debugged My Code. For Real’
“A recent analysis accounting for nearly 1.2 million open source software projects primarily across four major ecosystems found that only about 11% of projects were actively maintained,” reports InfoWorld:
In its 9th Annual State of the Software Supply Chain report, published October 3, software supply chain management company Sonatype assessed 1,176,407 projects and reported an 18% decline this year in actively maintained projects. Just 11% of projects — 118,028 — were receiving active maintenance.
The report also found some new projects, unmaintained in 2022, now being maintained.
The four ecosystems included JavaScript, via NPM; Java, via the Maven project management tool; Python, via the PyPI package index; and .NET, through the NuGet gallery. Some Go projects also were included. According to the report, 18.6% of Java and JavaScript projects that were being maintained in 2022 are no longer being maintained today.
Other interesting findings:
Nearly 10% reported security breaches due to open source vulnerabilities in the past 12 months.
Use of AI and machine learning software components within corporate environments surged 135% over the last year.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Report Finds Few Open Source Projects are Actively Maintained
Since 2009, Archer has been a reliable (sometimes award-winning) staple of adult animation and FX’s larger TV lineup. Having gone through multiple reinventions and status quo changes, it’s almost hard to imagine the show actually ending—which it did just a few days ago.
Source: Gizmodo – FX’s Archer Will Go Out With a Three-Part Bang
Netflix just dropped the official trailer for its upcoming Scott Pilgrim anime, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. The highly anticipated eight-episode series brings back the original cast from the 2010 movie, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and counts Bryan Lee O’Malley — creator of the comics it’s all based on — as a co-writer and executive producer. Edgar Wright, who directed the movie, is also on board as an executive producer. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off will be released on November 17.
The show will return to the story of 23-year-old Sex Bob-Omb bass player, Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), and his plight to defeat the seven evil exes of his new love interest, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). While Scott Pilgrim Takes Off will build on what we’ve seen in the comics and movie, it won’t be a straight adaptation, according to the show’s creators. In an interview with the Netflix companion site Tudum, Wright said O’Malley’s idea for the show “was way more adventurous” than that.
Alongside Cera and Winstead, actors including Kieran Culkin, Ellen Wong, Brie Larson, Chris Evans, and Aubrey Plaza will be reprising their roles. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off will also feature music by Anamanaguchi, the band that did the soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game. The action-packed trailer set to the Mortal Kombat theme is doing everything to drum up the hype, and honestly, it’s working.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-full-trailer-for-scott-pilgrim-takes-off-is-here-and-it-brings-the-heat-161223113.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – The full trailer for Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is here, and it brings the heat
T2 SDE is not just a Linux distribution, but “a flexible Open Source System Development Environment or Distribution Build Kit,” according to a 2022 announcement of its support for 25 CPU architectures, variants, and C libraries. (“Others might even name it Meta Distribution. T2 allows the creation of custom distributions with state of the art technology, up-to-date packages and integrated support for cross compilation.”)
And while working on it, Berlin-based T2 Linux developer René Rebe (long-time Slashdot reader ReneR) discovered random illegal instruction speculation on AMD Ryzen 7000-Series and Epyc Zen 4 CPU.
ReneR writes:
Merged to Linux 6.6 Git is a fix for the bug now known at AMD as Erratum 1485.
The discovery was possible through continued high CPU load cross-compiling the T2 Linux distribution with support for all CPU architectures from ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, RISC-V to x86 (and more) for 33 build variants. With sustained high CPU load and various instruction sequences being compiled, pseudo random illegal instruction errors were observed and subsequently analyzed.
ExactCODE Research GmbH CTO René Rebe is thrilled that working with AMD engineers lead to a timely mitigation to increase system stability of the still new and highest performance Zen4 platform.
“I found real-world code that might be similar or actually trigger the same bugs in the CPU that are also used for all the Spectre Meltdown and other side-channel security vulnerability mitigations,” Rebe says in a video announcement on YouTube.
It took Rebe a tremendous amount of research, and he says now that “all the excessive work changed my mind. Mitigations equals considered harmful… If you want stable, reliable computational results — no, you can’t do this. Because as Spectre Meltdown and all the other security issues have proven, the CPUs are nowadays as complex as complex software systems…”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – T2 Linux Discovers (Now Patched) AMD Zen 4 Invalid Opcode Speculation Bug
We’re not quite done with the busy fall season of tech events. It’s Baidu’s turn to reveal what it has been cooking up. The company will host its Baidu World showcase on October 16th at 10PM ET.
After several years of holding the event entirely virtually, Baidu is returning to an in-person format with “real-world demos and experiences” for the first time since 2019. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the direction almost every major tech company has gone in recent times, there will be a significant focus on artificial intelligence.
Baidu says it will discuss “a range of AI-native applications and the latest advances in foundation models.” That suggests we’ll learn more about what’s next for ERNIE Bot, its large language model and generative AI chatbot. The company may also have more to share about the impact of artificial intelligence on its self-driving initiatives.
The two-hour event will open with a keynote address from Baidu co-founder and CEO Robin Li. You can watch a live stream of Baidu World 2023 below.
An anonymous reader shared this report from Neowin:
The various versions of Windows have used Kerberos as its main authentication protocol for over 20 years. However, in certain circumstances, the OS has to use another method, NTLM (NT LAN Manager). Today, Microsoft announced that it is expanding the use of Kerberos, with the plan to eventually ditch the use of NTLM altogether.
In a blog post, Microsoft stated that NTLM continues to be used by some businesses and organizations for Windows authentication because it “doesn’t require local network connection to a Domain Controller.” It also is “the only protocol supported when using local accounts” and it “works when you don’t know who the target server is.” Microsoft states:
These benefits have led to some applications and services hardcoding the use of NTLM instead of trying to use other, more modern authentication protocols like Kerberos. Kerberos provides better security guarantees and is more extensible than NTLM, which is why it is now a preferred default protocol in Windows.
The problem is that while businesses can turn off NTLM for authentication, those hardwired apps and services could experience issues. That’s why Microsoft has added two new authentication features to Kerberos.
Microsoft’s blog post calls it “the evolution of Windows authentication,” arguing that “As Windows evolves to meet the needs of our ever-changing world, the way we protect users must also evolve to address modern security challenges…” So, “our team is building new features for Windows 11.”
Initial and Pass Through Authentication Using Kerberos, or IAKerb, “a public extension to the industry standard Kerberos protocol that allows a client without line-of-sight to a Domain Controller to authenticate through a server that does have line-of-sight.”
A local Key Distribution Center (KDC) for Kerberos, “built on top of the local machine’s Security Account Manager so remote authentication of local user accounts can be done using Kerberos.”
“We are also fixing hard-coded instances of NTLM built into existing Windows components… shifting these components to use the Negotiate protocol so that Kerberos can be used instead of NTLM… NTLM will continue to be available as a fallback to maintain existing compatibility.”
“We are also introducing improved NTLM auditing and management functionality to give your organization more insight into your NTLM usage and better control for removing it.”
“Reducing the use of NTLM will ultimately culminate in it being disabled in Windows 11. We are taking a data-driven approach and monitoring reductions in NTLM usage to determine when it will be safe to disable.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – To ‘Evolve’ Windows Authentication, Microsoft Wants to Eventually Disable NTLM in Windows 11
Siri and Alexa were only the beginning. As voice recognition and speech synthesis technologies continue to mature, the days of typing on keyboards to interact with the digital world around us could be coming to an end — and sooner than many of us anticipated. Where today’s virtual assistants exist on our mobile devices and desktops to provide scripted answers to specific questions, the LLM-powered generative AI copilots of tomorrow will be there, and everywhere else too. This is the “voice-first” future Tobias Dengel envisions in his new book, The Sound of the Future: The Coming Age of Voice Technology.
Using a wide-ranging set of examples, and applications in everything from marketing, sales and customer service to manufacturing and logistics, Dengel walks the reader through how voice technologies can revolutionize the ways in which we interact with the digital world. In the excerpt below, Dengel discusses voice technology might expand its role in the aviation industry, even after the disastrous outcome of its early use in the Boeing 737 MAX.
Excerpted from THE SOUND OF THE FUTURE: The Coming Age of Voice Technology by Tobias Dengel with Karl Weber. Copyright © 2023. Available from PublicAffairs, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
REDUCING THE BIGGEST RISKS: MAKING FLYING SAFER
Some workplaces involve greater risks than others. Today’s technology-driven society sometimes multiplies the risks we face by giving ordinary people control over once-incredible amounts of power, in forms that range from tractor trailers to jet airplanes. People carrying out professional occupations that involve significant risks on a daily basis will also benefit from the safety edge that voice provides — as will the society that depends on these well-trained, highly skilled yet imperfect human beings.
When the Boeing 737 MAX airliner was rolled out in 2015, it featured a number of innovations, including distinctive split-tip winglets and airframe modifications that affected the jumbo jet’s aerodynamic characteristics. A critical launch goal for Boeing was to enable commercial pilots to fly the new plane without needing new certifications, since retraining pilots is very expensive for airlines. To achieve that goal, the airliner’s software included an array of ambitious new features, including many intended to increase safety by taking over control from the crew in certain situations. These included something called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which was supposed to compensate for an excessive nose-up angle by adjusting the horizontal stabilizer to keep the aircraft from stalling— a complicated technical “hack” implemented by Boeing to avoid the larger cost involved in rewriting the program from the ground up.
The 737 MAX was a top seller right out of the gate. But what Boeing and its airline customers hadn’t realized was that the software was being asked to do things the pilots didn’t fully understand. As a result, pilots found themselves unable to interface in a timely fashion with the complex system in front of them. The ultimate result was two tragic crashes with 346 fatalities, forcing the grounding of the 737 MAX fleet and a fraud settlement that cost Boeing some $2.5 billion. Additional losses from cancelled aircraft orders, lowered stock value, and other damages have been estimated at up to $60 billion.
These needless losses — financial and human — were caused, in large part, by small yet fatal failures of cockpit communication between people and machines. The pilots could tell that something serious was wrong, but the existing controls made it difficult for them to figure out what that was and to work with the system to correct the problem. As a result, in the words of investigative reporter Peter Robison, “the pilots were trying to retake control of the plane, so that the plane was pitching up and down over several minutes.” Based on his re-creation of what happened, Robison concludes, “it would have been terrifying for the people on the planes.”
When voice becomes a major interface in airliner cockpits, a new tool for preventing such disasters will be available. In traditional aviation, pilots receive commands like “Cleared Direct Casanova VOR” or “Intercept the ILS 3” via radio from dispatchers at air traffic control. After the pilots get this information, they must use their eyes and hands to locate and press a series of buttons to transmit the same commands to the aircraft. In a voice-driven world, that time-wasting, error-prone step will be eliminated. In the first stage of voice adoption, pilots will simply be able to say a few words without moving their eyes from the controls around them, and the plane will respond. According to Geoff Shapiro, a human factors engineer at the former Rockwell Collins Advanced Technology Center, this shift trims the time spent when entering simple navigational commands from half a minute to eight seconds — a huge improvement in circumstances when a few moments can be critical. In the second stage, once veteran pilots have recognized and accepted the power of voice, the plane will automatically follow the spoken instructions from air traffic control, merely asking the pilot to confirm them.
A voice-interface solution integrating the latest capabilities of voice-driven artificial intelligence can improve airline safety in several ways. It gives the system self-awareness and the ability to proactively communicate its state and status to pilots, thereby alerting them to problems even at moments when they might otherwise be distracted or inattentive. Using increasingly powerful voice-technology tools like automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding, it also allows the airplane’s control systems to process and act on conversational speech, making the implementation of pilot commands faster and more accurate than ever. It facilitates real-time communications linking the cockpit, air traffic control, the airline carrier, and maintenance engineers to remove inconsistencies in communication due to human indecision or misjudgment. In the near future, it may even be able to use emerging voice-tech tools such as voice biometrics and real-time sentiment analysis to determine stress levels being experienced by pilots —information that could be used to transmit emergency alerts to air traffic controllers and others on the ground.
Voice technology won’t eliminate all the traditional activities pilots are trained to perform. But in critical moments when the speed of response to messages from a control tower may spell the difference between survival and disaster, the use of a voice interface will prevent crashes and save lives. This is not a fantasy about the remote future. Today’s planes have all the electronics needed to make it possible.
One field of aviation in which safety risks are especially intense is military flying. It’s also an arena in which voice-enabled aviation is being avidly pursued. Alabama-based Dynetics has received $12.3 million from DARPA, the Pentagon’s storied defense-technology division, to develop the use of AI in “high-intensity air conflicts.” The third phrase of the current three-phase research/implementation program involves a “realistic, manned-flight environment involving complex human-machine collaboration” — including voice communication.
The US Air Force is not alone in pursuing this technological advantage. The next generation of the MiG-35, the highly advanced Russian fighter jet, will apparently feature a voice assistant to offer advice in high-pressure situations. Test pilot Dmitry Selivanov says, “We call her Rita, the voice communicant. Her voice remains pleasant and calm even if fire hits the engine. She does not talk all the time, she just makes recommendations if the plane approaches some restrictions. Hints are also provided during combat usage.”
Voice-controlled flying is also in development for civilian aircraft. Companies like Honeywell and Rockwell are designing voice interfaces for aviation, with an initial focus on reducing pilot workload around tedious tasks involving basic, repetitive commands like “Give me the weather at LAX and any critical weather en route.” More extensive and sophisticated use cases for voice tech in aviation are steadily emerging. Vipul Gupta is general manager of Honeywell Aerospace Avionics. He and his team are deeply focused on perfecting the technology of the voice cockpit, especially its response speed, which is a crucial safety feature. Their engineers have reduced the voice system’s average response time to 250 milliseconds, which means, in effect, that the system can react more quickly than a human pilot can.
Over time, voice-controlled aircraft systems will become commonplace in most forms of aviation. But in the short term, the most important use cases will be in general aviation, where single-pilot operators are notoriously overloaded, especially when operating in bad weather or congested areas. Having a “voice copilot” will ease those burdens and make the flying experience safer for pilot and passengers alike.
Voice-controlled aircraft are also likely to dominate the emerging field of urban air mobility, which involves the use of small aircraft for purposes ranging from cargo deliveries to sightseeing tours within city and suburban airspaces. New types of aircraft, such as electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOLs) are likely to dominate this domain, with the marketplace for eVTOLs expected to explode from nothing in 2022 to $1.75 billion in 2028. As this new domain of flight expands, experienced pilots will be in short supply, so the industry is now designing simplified cockpit systems, controlled by voice, that trained “operators” will be able to manage.
Vipul Gupta is bullish about the future of the voice-powered cockpit. “Eventually,” he says, “we’ll have a voice assistant where you will just sit in [the aircraft] and the passenger will say, ‘Hey, fly me there, take me there. And then the system does it.’”
As a licensed pilot with significant personal experience in the cock- pit, I suspect he will be right —eventually. As with most innovations, I believe it will take longer than the early adopters and enthusiasts believe. This is especially likely in a critical field like aviation, in which human trust issues and regulatory hurdles can take years to overcome. But the fact is that the challenges of voice-powered flight are actually simpler in many ways than those faced by other technologies, such as autonomous automobiles. For example, a plane cruising at 20,000 feet doesn’t have to deal with red lights, kids dashing into the street, or other drivers tailgating.
For this reason, I concur with the experts who say that we will have safe, effective voice-controlled planes sooner than autonomous cars. And once the technology is fully developed, the safety advantages of a system that can respond to spoken commands almost instantly in an emergency will be too powerful for the aviation industry to forgo.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-the-sound-of-the-future-tobias-dengel-publicaffairs-143020776.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Hitting the Books: Voice-controlled AI copilots could lead to safer flights
During its New York Comic-Con panel for its upcoming shows, Prime Video revealed the full cast for its animated musical series, Hazbin Hotel. Based on the popular 2019 YouTube video from creator Vivienne Medrano, the streamer first teased the A24-backed series at the end of September.
Source: Gizmodo – Hazbin Hotel Adds Stephanie Beatriz, Keith David, and More to Its Cast
Devin Ulibarri, the Free Software Foundation’s outreach and communications coordinator, writes up an event he describes as meeting with some old and new friends:
On Sunday, October 1, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) hosted a hackday to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the GNU Project. Folks came from both near and far to join in the festivities at FSF headquarters, Boston, MA… Sadi moma bela loza, the Bulgarian melody from which The Free Software Song is set, could be heard faintly playing in a nearby room, its distinctive odd-metered tune performed by a fully-liberated X200…
All in all, the event succeeded in our goal of welcoming both long-time members as well as introducing new people to free software and our cause. A few college students from local universities, for example, were able to ask questions seeking to better understand free software licenses and GNU Project history. We received multiple requests from attendees to host similar events again in the near future. And one parent, whose son played NetHack at the event, reported that, the following morning, his son asked to go to the FSF office after school to play it again. When playing he mastered the “vi” movement keys immediately. We hope they serve him well…!
Happy hacking and please stay tuned for more FSF-hosted events, including LibrePlanet 2024!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – GNU’s 40th Anniversary: the FSF’s Meeting with Old and New Friends
Enlarge / San Francisco City view through the haze of smoke as seen from Treasure Island on September 20, 2023. (credit: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
When wildfire smoke turns the air brown and hazy, you might think about heading indoors with the windows closed, running an air purifier or even wearing a mask. These are all good strategies to reduce exposure to the particles in wildfire smoke, but smoky air is also filled with potentially harmful gases. Those gases can get into buildings and remain in the walls and floors for weeks.
Getting rid of these gases isn’t as simple as turning on an air purifier or opening a window on a clear day.
In a new study published in the journal Science Advances, colleagues and I tracked the life of these gases in a home exposed to wildfire smoke. We also found that the best way to get rid of the risk is among the simplest: start cleaning.
Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Air purifiers aren’t enough to clean your home from wildfire smoke
An anonymous reader shared this report from Phys.org:
If global temperatures increase by 1 degrees Celsius (C) or more than current levels, each year billions of people will be exposed to heat and humidity so extreme they will be unable to naturally cool themselves, according to interdisciplinary research from the Penn State College of Health and Human Development, Purdue University College of Sciences and Purdue Institute for a Sustainable Future… Humans can only withstand certain combinations of heat and humidity before their bodies begin to experience heat-related health problems, such as heat stroke or heart attack. As climate change pushes temperatures higher around the world, billions of people could be pushed beyond these limits…
Results of the study indicate that if global temperatures increase by 2 degreesC above pre-industrial levels, the 2.2 billion residents of Pakistan and India’s Indus River Valley, the one billion people living in eastern China and the 800 million residents of sub-Saharan Africa will annually experience many hours of heat that surpass human tolerance… Troublingly, researchers said, these regions are also in lower-to-middle income nations, so many of the affected people may not have access to air conditioning or any effective way to mitigate the negative health effects of the heat.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Climate-Driven Heat Extremes May Make Earth to Hot for Billions of Humans
An anonymous reader shared this report from Phys.org:
If global temperatures increase by 1 degrees Celsius (C) or more than current levels, each year billions of people will be exposed to heat and humidity so extreme they will be unable to naturally cool themselves, according to interdisciplinary research from the Penn State College of Health and Human Development, Purdue University College of Sciences and Purdue Institute for a Sustainable Future… Humans can only withstand certain combinations of heat and humidity before their bodies begin to experience heat-related health problems, such as heat stroke or heart attack. As climate change pushes temperatures higher around the world, billions of people could be pushed beyond these limits…
Results of the study indicate that if global temperatures increase by 2 degreesC above pre-industrial levels, the 2.2 billion residents of Pakistan and India’s Indus River Valley, the one billion people living in eastern China and the 800 million residents of sub-Saharan Africa will annually experience many hours of heat that surpass human tolerance… Troublingly, researchers said, these regions are also in lower-to-middle income nations, so many of the affected people may not have access to air conditioning or any effective way to mitigate the negative health effects of the heat.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Climate-Driven Heat Extremes May Make Earth Too Hot for Billions of Humans
“The gap between C# and Java never has been so small,” according to October’s update for TIOBE’s “Programming Community Index”.
“Currently, the difference is only 1.2%, and if the trends remain this way, C# will surpass Java in about 2 month’s time.”
Java shows the largest decline of -3.92% and C# the largest gain of +3.29% of all programming languages (annually).
The two languages have always been used in similar domains and thus have been competitors for more than 2 decades now. Java’s decline in popularity is mainly caused by Oracle’s decision to introduce a paid license model after Java 8. Microsoft took the opposite approach with C#. In the past, C# could only be used as part of commercial tool Visual Studio. Nowadays, C# is free and open source and it’s embraced by many developers.
There are also other reasons for Java’s decline. First of all, the Java language definition has not changed much the past few years and Kotlin, its fully compatible direct competitor, is easier to use and free of charge.
“Java remains a critical language in enterprise computing,” argues InfoWorld, “with Java 21 just released last month and Java 22 due next March. And free open source binaries of Java still are available via OpenJDK.” InfoWorld also notes TIOBE’s ranking is different than other indexes. TIOBE’s top 10:
Python (14.82%)
C (12.08%)
C++ (10.67%)
Java (8.92%)
C# (7.71%)
JavaScript (2.91%)
Visual Basic (2.13%)
PHP (1.9%)
SQL (1.78%)
Assembly (1.64%)
And here’s the Pypl Popularity of Programming Language (based on searches for language tutorials on Google):
Python, with a 28.05% share
Java (15.88%)
JavaScript (9.27%)
C# (6.79%)
C/C++ (6.59%)
PHP (4.86%)
R (4.45%)
TypeScript (2.93%)
Swift (2.69%)
Objective-C (2.29%)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – C# Challenges Java in Programming Language Popularity
“If we carry on the way we’re going, we’re going to have to concrete the whole planet just to store the data that we’re generating,” explains a deputy lab director at Microsoft Research Cambridge in a new video.
Fortunately, “A small sheet of glass can now hold several terabytes of data, enough to store approximately 1.75 million songs or 13 years’ worth of music,” explains a Microsoft Research web page about “Project Silica”. (Data is retrieved by a high-speed, computer-controlled microscope from a library of glass disks storing data in three-dimensional pixels called voxels):
Magnetic storage, although prevalent, is problematic. Its limited lifespan necessitates frequent re-copying, increasing energy consumption and operational costs over time. “Magnetic technology has a finite lifetime,” says Ant Rowstron, Distinguished Engineer, Project Silica. “You must keep copying it over to new generations of media. A hard disk drive might last five years. A tape, well, if you’re brave, it might last ten years. But once that lifetime is up, you’ve got to copy it over. And that, frankly, is both difficult and tremendously unsustainable if you think of all that energy and resource we’re using.”
Project Silica aims to break this cycle. Developed under the aegis of Microsoft Research, it can store massive amounts of data in glass plates roughly the size of a drink coaster and preserve the data for thousands of years. Richard Black, Research Director, Project Silica, adds, “This technology allows us to write data knowing it will remain unchanged and secure, which is a significant step forward in sustainable data storage.” Project Silica’s goal is to write data in a piece of glass and store it on a shelf until it is needed. Once written, the data inside the glass is impossible to change.
Project Silica is focused on pioneering data storage in quartz glass in partnership with the Microsoft Azure team, seeking more sustainable ways to archive data. This relationship is symbiotic, as Project Silica uses Azure AI to decode data stored in glass, making reading and writing faster and allowing more data storage… The library is passive, with no electricity in any of the storage units. The complexity is within the robots that charge as they idle inside the lab, awakening when data is needed…
Initially, the laser writing process was inefficient, but after years of refinement, the team can now store several TB in a single glass plate that could last 10,000 years. For a sense of scale, each plate could store around 3,500 movies. Or enough non-stop movies to play for over half a year without repeating. A glass plate could hold the entire text of War and Peace — one of the longest novels ever written — about 875,000 times.
And most importantly, it can store data in a fraction of the space of a datacenter…
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Kirschey for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Is Glass the Future of Storage?
New York Comic Con is here, and Netflix came ready to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Scott Pilgrim comics next year with the latest look at its new animated adaptation of Brian Lee O’Malley’s seminal series.
Source: Gizmodo – Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’s New Trailer Is a Wild, Rockin’ Trip
Due to an air traffic control mistake in February, a FedEx cargo plane flew within 100 feet of a Southwest Airlines flight in February. The New York Times reports that the flight’s 128 passengers “were unaware that they had nearly died.”
In a year filled with close calls involving US airlines, this was the one that most unnerved federal aviation officials: A disaster had barely been averted, and multiple layers of the vaunted US air-safety system had failed… But the errors by the controller — who has continued to direct some plane traffic in Austin, Texas — were far from the whole story, according to 10 current and former controllers there, as well as internal Federal Aviation Administration documents reviewed by the Times. Austin-Bergstrom, like the vast majority of US airports, lacks technology that allows controllers to track planes on the ground and that warns of imminent collisions. The result is that on foggy days, controllers can’t always see what is happening on runways and taxiways. Some have even resorted to using a public flight-tracking website in lieu of radar.
In addition, for years Austin has had a shortage of experienced controllers, even as traffic at the airport has surged to record levels. Nearly three-quarters of shifts have been understaffed. Managers and rank-and-file controllers have repeatedly warned that staffing levels pose a public danger. The controller on that February morning was working an overtime shift. In June, Stephen B. Martin, then Austin’s top manager, and a local union representative wrote a memo pleading for more controllers. “Drastic steps are needed to allow the facility to adequately staff for existing traffic,” they wrote to FAA and union officials.
Austin is a microcosm of a systemic crisis. The safety net that underpins air travel in America is fraying, exposing passengers to potential tragedies like the episode in February.
And yet the chair of America’s National Transportation Safety Board calls the February incident “just one of seven serious close calls and near misses involving commercial airlines that we have initiated investigations on this year.”
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
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Source: Slashdot – How a Series of Air Traffic Control Lapses Nearly Killed 131 People
Anyone sitting on a mountain of cryptocurrency can now use it to buy a Ferrari in the US. According to Reuters, the luxury carmaker is working with the crypto payment processor BitPay to accept bitcoin, ether and USDC for purchases stateside, which customers were apparently begging for. Europe is expected to get the same treatment in early 2024, with other regions to follow.
There won’t be any upcharges for those paying with crypto, Ferrari’s Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer Enrico Galliera told Reuters, and BitPay will convert those payments to traditional currency at the time of the transaction to avoid any issues of volatility. Galliera said the move will help the company reach “people who are not necessarily our clients but might afford a Ferrari.”
Just last year, Ferrari announced a commitment to more sustainable operations, including reducing its environmental footprint, and embracing the notoriously energy-intensive cryptocurrencies would seem to go against that. But, the company insists this doesn’t get in the way of its mission. Galliera cited recent strides in improving crypto’s carbon footprint, like heavier reliance on renewable energy sources, and told Reuters, “Our target to reach for carbon neutrality by 2030 along our whole value chain is absolutely confirmed.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/you-can-now-buy-a-ferrari-with-crypto-in-the-us-if-thats-your-thing-214639691.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – You can now buy a Ferrari with crypto in the US, if that’s your thing
The BBC reports:
Doctor Who’s first writer could finally be recognised 60 years after he helped launch the hugely-popular series. Anthony Coburn penned the first four episodes of the sci-fi drama in 1963 — a story called An Unearthly Child. But after his second story did not air, the writer has been seen as a minor figure among some Doctor Who fans.
However, a campaign to erect a memorial to Coburn in his home town of Herne Bay, Kent, is gathering pace a month ahead of the show’s 60th anniversary.
A local elected councillor told the BBC they’re working to find a location for the memorial.
The BBC writes that Coburn’s episode — broadcast November 23, 1963 — “introduced the character of The Doctor, his three travelling companions, and his time and space machine, the TARDIS, stuck in the form of a British police box.”
Richard Bignell, a Doctor Who historian, believes Coburn played a significant role in sowing the seeds of the programme’s success. He said: “Although the major elements that would go on to form the core of the series were devised within the BBC, as the scriptwriter for the first story, Coburn was the one who really put the flesh on the bones of the idea and how it would work dramatically. “Many opening episodes of a new television series can be very clunky as they attempt to land their audience with too much information about the characters, the setting and what’s going to happen, but Coburn was very reserved in how much he revealed, preserving all the wonder and mystery.”
In 2013, the Independent reported:
Mr Coburn’s son claims that the BBC has been in breach of copyright since his father’s death in 1977. He has demanded that the corporation either stop using the Tardis in the show or pay his family for its every use since then. Stef Coburn claims that upon his father’s death, any informal permission his father gave the BBC to use his work expired and the copyright of all of his ideas passed to his widow, Joan. Earlier this year she passed it on to him.
He said: “It is by no means my wish to deprive legions of Doctor Who fans (of whom I was never one) of any aspect of their favourite children’s programme. The only ends I wish to accomplish, by whatever lawful means present themselves, involve bringing about the public recognition that should by rights always have been his due, of my father James Anthony Coburn’s seminal contribution to Doctor Who, and proper lawful recompense to his surviving estate.”
Today jd (Slashdot reader #1,658) notes that Stef Coburn apparently has a Twitter feed, where this week Stef claimed he’d cancelled the BBC’s license to distribute his father’s episodes after being offered what he complained was “a pittance” to relicense them.
In response to someone who asked “What do you actually gain from doing this though?” Stef Coburn replied: “Vengeance.” But elsewhere Stef Coburn writes “There are OTHER as yet unfulfilled projects & aspirations of Tony’s (of one of which, I was a significant part, in his final year), which I would like to see brought to fruition. If Doctor Who is my ONLY available leverage. So be it!”
Stef Coburn also announced plans to publish his father’s “precursor draft-scripts (At least one very different backstory; sans ‘Timelords’) plus accompanying notes, for the story that became ‘The Tribe of Gum’.”
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Source: Slashdot – First ‘Doctor Who’ Writer Honored. His Son Contests BBC’s Rights to ‘Unearthly Child’
