If you got in your car and suddenly found that Spotify’s Car View feature had mysteriously disappeared, I’m sorry to say that no, it’s not a bug. Spotify actually announced—although “whispered” would be more accurate—that it was killing Car View more than a month ago, but it looks like it hadn’t gotten to actually…
Source: Gizmodo – Spotify Pulls Plug on Car View Feature, Offers Users No Alternative
This guide explains what is Gnome Boxes and how to install Boxes on various Linux distributions and then how to manage remote and virtual machines with Gnome boxes from a Linux desktop operating system.
Source: LXer – How To Manage Remote And Virtual Machines With Gnome Boxes
When people worry about robots coming to take their jobs, I don’t think “poet” is what they had in mind. Enter Ai-Da, a highly realistic, AI-driven robot firmly rooted in the uncanny valley that can paint, draw, sculpt, and, yes, write its own poetry.
Source: Gizmodo – Creepy Humanoid Robo-Artist Gives Public Performance Of Its Own AI-Generated Poetry
Bill Kendrick informs 9to5linux.com today about the general availability of Tux Paint 0.9.27 as the latest stable release of this open-source, free, and cross-platform drawing application for kids.
Source: LXer – Tux Paint 0.9.27 Open-Source Drawing App for Kids Adds New Ways to Draw, Other Updates
The Los Angeles Times summarizes the results of a new medical study conducted by Northwestern University researchers on antibody levels protecting against Covid-19 in 974 people. “Those who were immunized against COVID-19 with two doses of an mRNA vaccine and received a booster shot about eight months later saw their levels of neutralizing antibodies skyrocket.
“Among this group of 33 fully vaccinated and boosted people, the median level of these antibodies was 23 times higher one week after the booster shot than it had been just before the tune-up dose.”
What’s more, their median post-booster antibody level was three times higher than was typical for another group of people whose antibodies were measured a few weeks after getting their second dose of vaccine, when they’re close to their peak.
And it was 53 times higher than that of a group of 76 unvaccinated people who had recovered from COVID-19 just two to six weeks earlier. Even compared to a group of 73 people who had weathered a bout with COVID-19 and went on to get two doses of an mRNA vaccine, the boosted group’s median antibody level was 68% higher.
Study leader Alexis Demonbreun, a cell biologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said the data demonstrate that no matter how well protected a vaccinated person may think she is, getting a booster shot is likely to increase her neutralizing antibodies — and with it, her immunity — considerably. And because scientists expect large antibody responses to create more durable immunity, the protection afforded by the booster should last longer than the initial two-shot regimen did…
Among their other findings: After receiving two doses of vaccine, people who’d already had an asymptomatic infection were typically no better protected than vaccinated people who had never been infected.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Booster Shots Create a 23X Increase in Protective Antibody Levels, Study Suggests
In the original Jurassic Park film, Ian Malcolm has a famous monologue criticizing the park and its very existence. In that speech, he says: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” To the PC modder responsible for replacing some dinosaurs in …
Source: Kotaku – Someone Replaced The Dinos In Jurassic World Evolution 2 With Uh… Ice Age Characters
Long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat writes:
Recently, Slashdot posted a story about a group trying to purchase one of the few copies of the U.S. Constitution in the public domain. The idea was to use pool donations by people via Ethereum to get the winning bid. Alas, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin outbid the group and took possession of the copy.
Now the group, ConsitutionDAO, is in the process of refunding the donations, the BBC reports, and the people getting their money back are finding it can be quite expensive…
The BBC writes:
That is because the Ethereum network records its transactions on the blockchain, the same basic technology idea that powers other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. And like Bitcoin mining, it requires computational power to run.
“Gas” is the fee paid to those who run the computer systems to facilitate transactions. And it changes price based on supply and demand. That means that at times, it can be much more expensive to make any kind of transaction, depending on how busy the Ethereum network is. And the network has recently seen high usage — and high gas prices.
On its official Discord — the chat app which allows anyone to create rooms and discussion channels for enthusiasts on almost any topic — the group said it had 17,437 donors with a median donation of $206.26. High gas fees mean that “small” donations could be severely hit by the transaction charge.
One user on the Discord said that in order to get $400 refunded, they would have to pay $168 in gas. Others complained of the fees being higher than the relatively small amount of their refund.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Getting a Crypto Refund Can Be Very Expensive
It’s one thing to produce nanoscale devices, but it’s another to study and improve on them — they’re so small they can’t reflect enough light to get a good look. A breakthrough might make that possible, however. UC Riverside researchers have built technology that squeezes tungsten lamp light into a 6-nanometer spot at the end of a silver nanowire. That lets scientists produce color imaging at an “unprecedented” level, rather than having to settle for molecular vibrations.
The developers modified an existing “superfocusing” tool (already used to measure vibrations) to detect signals across the entire visible spectrum. Light travels in a flashlight-like conical path. When the nanowire’s tip passes over an object, the system records that item’s influence on the beam shape and color (including through a spectrometer). With two pieces of specrtra for every 6nm pixel, the team can create color photos of carbon nanotubes that would otherwise appear gray.
This ability to compress light is notable by itself, but the inventors see it playing an important role in nanotechnology. Semiconductor producers could develop more uniform nanomaterials that find their way into chips and other densely-packed devices. The squeezed light could also improve humanity’s understanding of nanoelectronics, quantum optics and other scientific fields where this resolution hasn’t been available.
Source: Engadget – ‘Squeezed’ light might produce breakthroughs in nano-sized electronics
You want to have a look at the non-overclockable versions of Intel’s Alder Lake 12Th Gen Core desktop CPU lineup? Well, there they are, pictured plain as day right above this text. Have a gander, if you want. These pictures come to us by way of a post on Zhihu, which is a Chinese social media site that is sort of like someone stuck Twitter
Source: Hot Hardware – Intel Alder Lake Non-K Desktop CPUs Break Cover As Specs Leak In Retailer Listing
There’s a polluted 343-square-mile lake known as “the Salton Sea,” about 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times calls it California’s “largest and most troubled lake,” after a recent visit with biogeochemist Timothy Lyons.
But is it about to experience a change of fortune?
“The big problem at the Salton Sea is intermingled with that organic brown layer on top — and to be honest, it’s scary,” said Lyons, 63. “It’s loaded with pesticides and heavy metals — molybdenum, cadmium and selenium — that linger in greatest concentrations in deeper water… That should worry people, because the Salton Sea is shrinking and exposing more and more of this stuff to scouring winds that carry them far and wide,” he added. “Our goals include mapping where these hazardous materials are located, and determining where they came from and what may become of them if trends continue.”
For Lyons’ research team, filling blanks in existing data is an obsession, and it could have significant implications at a time when the air practically crackles with a volatile mix of environmental danger and economic opportunities promised by ongoing efforts to tap immense reserves of lithium, a key ingredient of rechargeable batteries…. Clouds of salty, alkaline toxic dust containing heavy metals, agricultural chemicals and powdery-fine particulates linked to asthma, respiratory diseases and cancer are rolling off newly exposed playa, threatening the health of thousands of nearby residents. Delays and costs are mounting for many projects that were designed to be showcases of restoration and dust mitigation. Scientists say it’s because the projects were developed without consideration for heat waves, severe droughts and water cutbacks due to climate change, or for the constantly evolving underlying geology at the hyper-saline landlocked lake at the southern end of the San Andreas Fault, where shifting tectonic plates bring molten material and hot geothermal brine closer to Earth’s surface.
Now, large corporations investing in proposals to suck lithium out of the brine produced by local geothermal operations have revived hopes of jobs and revenue from land leases, with lithium recovery projects potentially supporting internships, education programs and environmental restoration projects for years to come.
The Times got an interesting quote from Frank Ruiz, a program director at the nonprofit environmental group Audubon California — a man who is also a member of the Lithium Valley Commission (lawmakers and community leaders trying to help guide decisions).
“If done correctly, it will elevate the region by creating jobs, benefit the state and the nation by making geothermal energy more affordable, and lay the groundwork for negotiations aimed at ensuring that some of the royalties from lithium production and related land leases are used to support dust reduction and environmental restoration projects.”
Ruiz also says that one way or another, “The lithium rush at the Salton Sea cannot be stopped.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Will a ‘Lithium Rush’ From California’s Salton Sea Fund Its Environmental Remediation?
Michael Tremer announced the release of IPFire 2.27 Core Update 161, a new maintenance update to the hardened open-source GNU/Linux distribution that primarily performs as a router and a firewall.
Source: LXer – IPFire Linux Firewall Now Supports exFAT, Boosts Intrusion Prevention System’s Performance
The second season of Netflix’s The Witcher is almost upon us, and that means more of Henry Cavill’s brooding (and not quite eternally grunting) Geralt of Rivia and his new, youthful charge Ciri. With a promise of more monsters to meet the business end of a steel or silver sword, a clip for the new season sees the…
Source: Gizmodo – A New Witcher Clip Will Remind You of Witcher 3’s Best DLC
Authorities worldwide have started taking steps to contain the spread of the new coronavirus variant Omicron as the holiday season enters full swing. On Friday, the World Health Organization recognized the heavily mutated coronavirus variant, which was first identified in South Africa, as a “variant of concern” due to…
Source: Gizmodo – Emerging Omicron Coronavirus Variant Has Officials Worldwide on the Defensive
We’re finally seeing some more chatter about the long-rumored desktop version of the GeForce RTX 3050. The last time we heard anything about this mini Ampere variant on the desktop was on New Year’s Eve, when a document from Lenovo seemed to confirm the existence of the low-power GeForce. It seems like NVIDIA may have shelved the desktop version
Source: Hot Hardware – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Will Be The Cheapest Ampere Card Yet, What To Expect
“The international Forward Search Experiment team, led by physicists at the University of California, Irvine, has achieved the first-ever detection of neutrino candidates produced by the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN facility near Geneva, Switzerland,” reports Phys.org.
Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shared their report:
In a paper published Friday in the journal Physical Review D, the researchers describe how they observed six neutrino interactions during a pilot run of a compact emulsion detector installed at the LHC in 2018. “Prior to this project, no sign of neutrinos has ever been seen at a particle collider,” said co-author Jonathan Feng, UCI Distinguished Professor of physics & astronomy and co-leader of the FASER Collaboration. “This significant breakthrough is a step toward developing a deeper understanding of these elusive particles and the role they play in the universe.”
He said the discovery made during the pilot gave his team two crucial pieces of information. “First, it verified that the position [480 meters] forward of the ATLAS interaction point at the LHC is the right location for detecting collider neutrinos,” Feng said. “Second, our efforts demonstrated the effectiveness of using an emulsion detector to observe these kinds of neutrino interactions….”
“Given the power of our new detector and its prime location at CERN, we expect to be able to record more than 10,000 neutrino interactions in the next run of the LHC, beginning in 2022,” said co-author David Casper, FASER project co-leader and associate professor of physics & astronomy at UCI. “We will detect the highest-energy neutrinos that have ever been produced from a human-made source.”
The article also points out that in future experiments the researchers hope to explore dark matter — and how it interacts with normal atoms.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Physicists Start Detecting Signs of Neutrinos At Large Hadron Collider
While you may be trying to buy a Vebjörn desk or snag a deal on a Yttervåg, IKEA is trying to quell an ongoing cyberattack within its infrastructure. On Friday, it was discovered that cybercriminals were targeting IKEA employees with internal phishing attacks, using stolen reply-chain emails.
Reply-chain email attacks occur when a threat
Source: Hot Hardware – IKEA Under Ongoing Security Assault As Criminals Relentlessly Hammer Its Email System
Never mind 3D-printing organs — eventually, the material could have a life of its own. Phys.orgreports scientists have developed a “living ink” you could use to print equally alive materials usable for creating 3D structures. The team genetically engineered cells for E. Coli and other microbes to create living nanofibers, bundled those fibers and added other materials to produce an ink you could use in a standard 3D printer.
Researchers have tried producing living material before, but it has been difficult to get those substances to fit intended 3D structures. That wasn’t an issue here. The scientists created one material that released an anti-cancer drug when induced with chemicals, while another removed the toxin BPA from the environment. The designs can be tailored to other tasks, too.
Any practical uses could still be some ways off. It’s not yet clear how you’d mass-produce the ink, for example. However, there’s potential beyond the immediate medical and anti-pollution efforts. The creators envisioned buildings that repair themselves, or self-assembling materials for Moon and Mars buildings that could reduce the need for resources from Earth. The ink could even manufacture itself in the right circumstances — you might not need much more than a few basic resources to produce whatever you need.
Source: Engadget – 3D-printed ‘living ink’ could lead to self-repairing buildings
Halo Infinite’s early multiplayer launch on Nov. 15 was a fun surprise and in the time since then the general response to the beta has been favorable. But, the free-to-play shooter’s battle pass has been heavily criticized for being too slow to level up and filled with crappy rewards. While I can’t help you with the…
Source: Kotaku – How To Easily Complete Some Halo Infinite Challenges Using Bots
RenderDoc 1.17 released this week as the newest version of this leading cross-platform, cross-API graphics debugging utility…
Source: Phoronix – RenderDoc 1.17 Released For This Leading Open-Source Graphics Debugging Tool
By 2024, the global revenue of fintech will reach €175 billion. 5000 new startups appear in the sphere every year. Because of this competition, modern technologies are widely utilized in fintech. One of these technologies, app containerization, allows to quickly test and launch new opportunities, grow and modernize services and platforms. But it has a disadvantage as well: the divided structure is harder to manage, which is critical for fintech apps. Luckily, there’s a solution, and it’s called Kubernetes.
Source: LXer – How Kubernetes simplifies the operation of fintech apps