Monthly Archives: July 2023

Understanding the octopus and its relationships with humans

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A giant Pacific octopus shows its colors at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

A giant Pacific octopus shows its colors at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. (credit: Monterey Bay Aquarium)

While other octopus books study the animal’s behavior in aquaria or tropical waters worldwide, Dr. David Scheel, a professor of Marine Biology at Alaska Pacific University, takes a unique approach in his first book, Many Things Under a Rock. He travels to extreme places in the Pacific Northwest where one may not expect these creatures to live, but they have for approximately 330 million years

“I think it is a little surprising to some people that octopuses live in cold water,” Scheel told Ars. “It might be because we’re used to seeing them in aquariums, and we think of aquariums as tropical locations, although you can run cold water aquariums as well.”

Personal experience

In Many Things Under a Rock, Scheel regales the reader with anecdotes of his time researching cephalopods in Alaska and Canada. From yearly tracking of octopus dens to discovering new octopus “cities,” Scheel’s chapters give engaging and informative stories on marine biology. Between these chapters are Indigenous stories about octopuses in the Pacific Northwest, revealing their influence on the area’s native tribes.

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Source: Ars Technica – Understanding the octopus and its relationships with humans

RHEL Response Discussed by SFC Conference's Panel – Including a New Enterprise Linux Standard

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Last weekend in Portland, Oregon, the Software Freedom Conservancy hosted a new conference called the Free and Open Source Software Yearly.

And long-time free software activist Bradley M. Kuhn (currently a policy fellow/hacker-in-residence for the Software Freedom Conservancy) hosted a lively panel discussion on “the recent change” to public source code releases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux which shed light on what may happen next. The panel also included:

benny Vasquez, the Chair of the AlmaLinux OS FoundationJeremy Alison, Samba co-founder and software engineer at CIQ (focused on Rocky Linux). Allison is also Jeremy Allison – Sam Slashdot reader #8,157.James (Jim) Wright, Oracle’s chief architect for Open Source policy/strategy/compliance/alliances

“Red Hat themselves did not reply to our repeated requests to join us on this panel… SUSE was also invited but let us know they were unable to send someone on short notice to Portland for the panel.”

One interesting audience question for the panel came from Karsten Wade, a one-time Red Hat senior community architect who left Red Hat in April after 21 years, but said he was “responsible for bringing the CentOS team onboard to Red Hat.” Wade argued that CentOS “was always doing a clean rebuild from source RPMS of their own…” So “isn’t all of this thunder doing Red Hat’s job for them, of trying to get everyone to say, ‘This thing is not the equivalent to RHEL.'”

In response Jeremy Alison made a good point. “None of us here are the arbiters of whether it’s good enough of a rebuild of Red Hat Linux. The customers are the arbiters.” But this led to an audience member asking a very forward-looking question: what are the chances the community could adopt a new (and open) enterprise Linux standard that distributions could follow. AlmaLinux’s Vasquez replied, “Chances are real high… I think everyone sees that as the obvious answer. I think that’s the obvious next step. I’ll leave it at that.” And Oracle’s Wright added “to the extent that the market asks us to standardize? We’re all responsive.”

When asked if they’d consider adding features not found in RHEL (“such as high-security gates through reproducible builds”) AlmaLinux’s Vasquez said “100% — yeah. One of the things that we’re kind of excited about is the opportunities that this opens for us. We had decided we were just going to focus on this north star of 1:1 Red Hat no matter what — and with that limitation being removed, we have all kinds of options.” And CIQ’s Alison said “We’re working on FIPS certification for an earlier version of Rocky, that Red Hat, I don’t believe, FIPS certified. And we’re planning to release that.”

AlmaLinux’s Vasquez emphasized later that “We’re just going to build Enterprise Linux. Red Hat has done a great job of establishing a fantastic target for all of us, but they don’t own the rights to enterprise Linux. We can make this happen, without forcing an uncomfortable conversation with Red Hat. We can get around this.”

And Alison later applied a “Star Wars” quote to Red Hat’s predicament. “The more things you try and grab, the more things slip through your fingers.” The more somebody tries to exert control over a codebase, the more the pushback will occur from people who collaborate in that codebase.” AlmaLinux’s Vasquez also said they’re already “in conversations” with independent software vendors about the “flow of support” into non-Red Hat distributions — though that’s always been the case. “Finding ways to reduce the barrier for those independent software vendors to add official support for us is, like, maybe more cumbersome now, but it’s the same problem that we’ve had…”

Early in the discussion Oracle’s Jim Wright pointed out that even Red Hat’s own web site defines open source code as “designed to be publicly accessible — anyone can see, modify, and distribute the code as they see fit.” (“Until now,” Wright added pointedly…) There was some mild teasing of Oracle during the 50-minute discussion — someone asked at one point if they’d re-license their proprietary implementation of ZFS under the GPL. But at the end of the panel, Oracle’s Jim Wright still reminded the audience that “If you want to work on open source Linux, we are hiring.”

Read Slashdot’s transcript of highlights from the discussion.

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Source: Slashdot – RHEL Response Discussed by SFC Conference’s Panel – Including a New Enterprise Linux Standard

Eating Less Meat 'Like Taking 8 Million Cars Off the Road'

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“Having big U.K. meat-eaters cut some of it out of their diet would be like taking 8 million cars off the road,” reports the BBC:

That’s just one of the findings of new research that scientists say gives the most reliable calculation yet of how what we eat impacts our planet.

The Oxford University study is the first to pinpoint the difference high- and low-meat diets have on greenhouse gas emissions, researchers say… [Oxford University] professor Peter Scarborough, who is part of the Livestock Environment And People project surveyed 55,000 people who were divided into big meat-eaters, who ate more than 100g of meat a day, which equates to a big burger, low meat-eaters, whose daily intake was 50g or less, approximately a couple of chipolata sausages, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans… The research shows that a big meat-eater’s diet produces an average of 10.24 kg of planet-warming greenhouse gasses each day. A low meat-eater produces almost half that at 5.37 kg per day. [Fish diet: 4.74 kg. “Vegetarian” diet: 4.16 kg] And for vegan diets — it’s halved again to 2.47 kg a day.

The analysis is the first to look at the detailed impact of diets on other environmental measures all together. These are land use, water use, water pollution and loss of species, usually caused by loss of habitat because of expansion of farming. In all cases high meat-eaters had a significantly higher adverse impact than other groups…
A separate study also published in Nature Food in 2021 concluded that food production was responsible for a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions. And an independent review for the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) called for a 30% reduction in meat consumption by 2032 in order to meet the UK’s net zero target.
“The meat industry said the analysis overstated the impact of eating meat.”

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader beforewisdom for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Eating Less Meat ‘Like Taking 8 Million Cars Off the Road’

Voice Actors Warn AI Could 'Steal Voices', Call for Laws Protecting a Person's Likeness

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Something unexpected happened at this year’s Comic-Con, reports Entertainment Weekly:

As film and TV actors skipped San Diego Comic-Con in support of the SAG-AFTRA strike, a number of voice actors gathered to show their support — and raise awareness about the threat of artificial intelligence on their industry.

The National Association of Voice Actors hosted a panel Saturday morning, where multiple actors and SAG officials spoke to a packed room about how rapidly changing AI technology can threaten both fans and creators… The panelists took a deep dive into the many different forms of AI, particularly in its use in voice work — from original voices like Apple’s Siri to synthetic voices copying live actors. All cautioned that AI inherently is not a bad tool and can in some ways enhance voice performances, but fans and actors should push back against exploitative methods.
“Voice acting is the tip of the spear of how AI can either be used to lift people up and enhance the opportunities that actors have — or be used in a negative way to steal their voices and crush human creativity,” SAG-AFTRA executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told the crowd. “We need to be very vigilant about that. AI isn’t implementing itself. People are choosing to implement AI. So, we’ve got to reject the idea that this is something that is going to happen to us, and there’s nothing to be done about that. That is an absolute myth that is being foisted upon us by the people who want us to think we have no power.”
Ultimately, the panelists explained, it all comes down to consent. Currently, there are no federal or international laws protecting a person’s likeness, and many existing contracts allow a company to capture an actor’s voice or likeness and use it “in perpetuity.” NAVA and SAG-AFTRA are calling upon voice actors and fans alike to push back, both by establishing protective contract language and by pushing for global laws.

In addition, the site also reports that “Actors, cosplayers, and a congressman hit the streets of San Diego during Comic-Con 2023 on Friday to show their support for the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Voice Actors Warn AI Could ‘Steal Voices’, Call for Laws Protecting a Person’s Likeness

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ drops its ‘Lower Decks’ crossover early

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Ever since Strange New Worlds’ second season was announced, the big draw has been the crossover episode with animated sitcom Lower Decks. It would see Tawny Newsome (Mariner) and Jack Quaid (Boimler) taking their until-now animated characters into live action. Following an early screening at Comic-Con, the episode is now available to watch on Paramount Plus.

The following article contains spoilers for “Those Old Scientists.”

There’s an SNL sketch where William Shatner, as himself, exhorts a room full of Star Trek fans to “Get a Life!” It’s clearly intended in jest, given Shatner’s barely-suppressed smile and a twist where Phil Hartman’s manager forces him to instantly recant his rant. Depending on who you ask, the sketch was either taken in the spirit it was intended, or with outrage amongst fans who felt mischaracterized, and misunderstood. But it’s this dichotomy, between the legend and the truth that’s mined for laughs in “Those Old Scientists,” the crossover episode between Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks. Well, that and an affectionate elbow in the ribs suggesting that we could all do with being a bit less obsessive.

The (animated) beta shift is making a routine survey of a long-dormant time-travel portal, while Boimler and Tendi argue about who discovered it. Boimler brags it was found by Starfleet, but Tendi says it was Orion scientists, once again trying to dispel myths that all Orions are pirates. While messing around Boimler is standing on the portal when Rutherford accidentally sets it running, throwing him back in time. When he arrives on the other side, he’s now in the live action world of Strange New Worlds, and is greeted by Spock, Una and La’an. And with that, we’re into an animated version of the title sequence, complete with nacelle-sucking alien.

On the Enterprise, Boimler can’t help but express his shock, surprise and generally fanboy out in front of his heroes. He gets lectured by La’an about not polluting the timeline and, thanks to her adventure in “Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” not getting attached. But, since this is the Boimler we know and love, he can’t help but throw spoilers out left, right and center. Not to mention his insistence on pointing out the difference between the history as he knows it, and the storylines as they’re presently unfolding on Strange New Worlds. For instance, he’s mightily disturbed by the fact that Spock – happy in a relationship with Chapel – is laughing, smiling and generally acting like he’s in love. After all, the Spock he knows – his Spock – isn’t this outwardly emotional, because that’s what the legend tells us. It’s almost as if he’s a stand-in for the sort of obsessive fan who tries to police the borders of what Star Trek is, instead of enjoying the journey.

At the same time, the Enterprise has to deal with an Orion vessel with undetermined intentions which then steals the time portal. Boimler urges Pike to be diplomatic, but winds up forcing him to trade a supply of much-needed triticale grain to get it back. Pike sees this – and the forced relocation of a planet-full of starving colonists – as preferable to having this guy on his ship any longer. When the portal is active and back in position, the Enterprise crew ready to get rid of this purple-haired irritation, Mariner leaps through, bravely declaring that she’s coming to the rescue. Except, the hardware had power enough for just one trip, and there’s not a fuel source available anywhere else in the quadrant. Leaving an eye-rolling Pike with the unwelcome possibility that they’re stuck with the Cerritos’ pair for good.

Boimler and Mariner wind up spending some time with their heroes, until they eventually realize that the Enterprise itself has a supply of fuel. Thanks to the naval tradition of using a component from the previous vessel in the construction of the next one, they can refine a chunk of NX-01 into fuel which can be used to send the pair home. (But not before the Strange New Worlds crew can reveal that they, too, are secretly as nerdy as a bunch of fans of their predecessors from Enterprise as Boimler is for this era.) They meet with the Orions again, and Pike pledges to claim that the Orions discovered the portal, giving their burgeoning science ship a small chunk of credit. And when Boimler and Mariner leap back to the future, the Enterprise crew drink an Orion cocktail that, in the closer, renders them all as animated characters.

“Those Old Scientists” is as pure a dose of fan service as Star Trek has ever produced, and I mean that as both a compliment and a criticism. Plenty of the elements, including the animated title sequence, reached straight into the lizard part of my brain and left me grinning like a loon. The screenplay, credited to Lower Decks’ executive story editor Kathryn Lyn and Bill Wolkloff, is crammed full of great gags. It helps, too, that Strange New Worlds has enough comic talent in its ranks to play an episode like this, and Carol Kane steals the show with the best gag in the episode.

But, and there is a but, the episode is a bit like cotton candy in that once the initial hit of sugar leaves your tongue, there’s little else here. We get a lot of scenes of Boimler and then Mariner telling the Enterprise crew how great they are, or are seen as such, by their successors. Most of these scenes take place sitting around desks, bars or lounges – telling rather than showing. I know that this is Strange New Worlds, and so the narrative will always belong with this crew rather than its guest stars. But the lower deckers are rendered passive observers in a narrative that could, or should, really have enabled them to demonstrate the dynamism they have in their own show. In the moment where Boimler and Mariner try to solve things on their own, they’re instantly shut down by La’an and Uhura and told to sit back on the bench. The worst served by this is Tawny Newsome, who is absent a major chunk of the episode and has little to do when Mariner does finally arrive in the past.

That cotton candy metaphor is probably the best way to sum up “Those Old Scientists,” a goofy snack between meatier meals, or episodes, either side. The fact it exists at all is a joy, even if it’s not as wonderful as it could have been, and I’d love nothing more than to see more forays into the real world by the Lower Decks crew. At the very least, with Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks in production at the same time, it’s a great time to be a Star Trek fan.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-drops-its-lower-decks-crossover-early-230033262.html?src=rss

Source: Engadget – ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ drops its ‘Lower Decks’ crossover early

Two great Star Trek shows revive the lost art of the gimmicky crossover episode

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Tawny Newsome (left) and Jack Quaid reprising their roles as Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler... but in real life this time.

Enlarge / Tawny Newsome (left) and Jack Quaid reprising their roles as Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler… but in real life this time. (credit: Paramount)

The second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, much like the first one, has been fun at least partly because the show itself is not all that new or strange.

The characters and visuals and specific plot constructs are new, but at its heart the show is a painstaking reconstruction of The Next Generation formula from Star Trek‘s 90s-era creative and commercial peak: ensemble cast, primarily episodic storytelling with lightly serialized character development and recurring arcs, and a willingness to mix high-concept sci-fi with just the right amount of silliness. It’s also very good at taking old Star Trek tropes—the transporter accident, the disease-on-the-ship, the talky courtroom thriller about the nature of humanity—and making them feel fresh again.

Episode 7, which went up early this weekend to coincide with a Comic-Con screening, exhumes and expertly executes yet another shopworn trope, something we haven’t seen on Star Trek since the days when Quark might show up on the viewscreen of the Enterprise-D: the crossover episode. And despite the wide gap between Strange New Worlds and the animated Lower Decks, the blending of the two shows’ disparate styles comes together better than any gimmicky attempt at cross-promotion has any right to.

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Source: Ars Technica – Two great Star Trek shows revive the lost art of the gimmicky crossover episode

Invincible's Letting Atom Eve Take Center Stage With a Video Game

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Though Prime Video’s animated series Invincible focuses on Steven Yeun’s titular teenage superhero, the first season highlighted other, more experienced young heroes that could show Invincible the ropes. One of those characters was Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs), who’s getting a little boost to her character ahead of the…

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Source: Gizmodo – Invincible’s Letting Atom Eve Take Center Stage With a Video Game

Hundreds of Drones Crash Into River During Display

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Long-time Slashdot reader maxcelcat writes: A fleet of some 500 drives were performing a display over Melbourne’s Docklands in the lead up to the FIFA Women’s World Cup. About 350 of them didn’t come back and are now being fished out of the Yarra River, no doubt somewhat worse for wear.
According to the operators, the drones experienced some kind of malfunction or loss of signal, which triggered a fail safe — an automated landing. So hundreds of drones landed safely… on the surface of a river!

One local newscaster called it “a spectacular malfunction” (in a report with a brief clip of the drones gently lowering themselves into the water).

The report also notes another drone company also once lost 50 drones in a river — worth tens of thousands of dollars — during a Christmas show.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Hundreds of Drones Crash Into River During Display

California City Tests AI Cameras On Buses for Parking Tickets

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Los Angeles TV station KTLA reports:
It’s an issue for cities across America: cars parked in bus lanes when they shouldn’t be. Now, new AI camera technology is letting the buses themselves write tickets instantly.

Santa Monica recently tested the technology with their Big Blue Bus Line. Last year, they provided 7.7 million trips, but not all were on schedule due to cars improperly parked or stopped in dedicated bus lanes. “The question becomes how do we and other cities keep vehicles that should not be in the transit lane out of the lane,” said Robert McCall, who oversees Community Engagement for the City of Santa Monica.

Santa Monica is among a growing number of cities exploring the use of AI cameras that can spot violations and issue tickets instantly. As buses drive their routes, special cameras capture the license plates of cars that shouldn’t be parked or stopped where they are… Already, their cameras are installed in buses in New York City and soon, Washington, DC…

During Santa Monica’s 45-day pilot, the system identified more than 500 potential violations. Each fine is nearly $300 dollars… Santa Monica still hasn’t decided if they’ll actually implement this technology, but it paves the way for a bigger trend in the future where AI will write tickets automatically when people break the rules.
“Although this might seem like a good way to keep people out of the bus lanes, it seems to me another encroachment on privacy and use of technology in ways that could harm more than help without oversight,” writes long-time Slashdot reader neoRUR.
“Also what is the role of traffic police when it’s all done automatically?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – California City Tests AI Cameras On Buses for Parking Tickets

Surprise! Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Lower Decks Crossover Is Streaming Today

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Thought you’d had enough Star Trek: Strange New Worlds this week? Think again. To not leave fans who didn’t directly beam into San Diego Comic-Con feeling left out today, Paramount has made the surprise move to drop the latest episode of the series—its highly anticipated crossover with Star Trek: Lower Decks—for…

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Source: Gizmodo – Surprise! Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Lower Decks Crossover Is Streaming Today

Holy Cow, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Is Doing a Musical Episode

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Not to be outdone by last year’s Comic-Con announcement that Strange New Worlds would team up with Lower Decks for a crossover episode in season 2, this year the latest Trek series returned to San Diego to go one weirder: the Enterprise is getting downright lyrical.

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Source: Gizmodo – Holy Cow, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Is Doing a Musical Episode