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Comment Re:Fuck the airlines (Score 1) 338

If they can make money with you taking a multiple-hop flight, they can make a bit more from you skipping the last leg because they use a tiny bit less fuel on account of not having to haul your butt through the sky.

What really ought to result from this is a serious investigation into the airlines for the implicit over-charging on shorter flights.

Yeah, you would think. However, the ticket charges result from a complex set of agreements between airlines that depends on all legs of a ticket being used as written. If the entire ticket is on one carrier there isn't much impact on the carrier's finances but there usually isn't any price advantage to the customer either. The sticky issue is when a ticket is fulfilled by multiple carriers.

Back in the 1980's I used to fly to Europe from Canada twice a month. I would buy this round-trip ticket that originated in Cyprus but I would start in my actual European destination. At the time there was a terrific exchange rate between Canadian and Cypriot currencies (from my point of view) plus the route was cheaper than a round-trip to my actual destination. The ticket was fulfilled by three carriers and the initial/final, virtual, carrier got fucked because they never collected the stubs.

The good old days: currency exchange leverage, skips, and they would give upgrades to business class at the boarding desk if you just asked.

Until the 1970's you could give your unused stubs to someone else to fly on them but increased travel security killed that. Nobody used to care that the passenger ID matched the travel ticket.

Skip tickets were usually ignored by airline agents who had enough to do without trying to enforce arcane fare rules. Computer systems haven't been much help because they have had enough trouble doing basic tasks let alone reporting in real time on skips. Skip identification and reporting also depends on information sharing between the carriers and getting their systems to talk to each other.

I guess by now the airlines have had enough time to get their IT shit together.

Submission + - JWST capable of detecting potential biosignatures in exoplanets (universetoday.com) 2

Submitted by Baron_Yam
Baron_Yam writes: Perhaps it can't do it for an actual Earth-like world, but with a handful of transit observations of an atmosphere-bearing planet orbiting a red dwarf, JWST should be able to collect enough information to determine if some basic compounds exist that are common to life. Sadly, not unique — there's overlap with non-biological processes — but it's still a good proof of concept for future telescopes that will be able to use the same method of examining light that has passed through a small rocky world's atmosphere. This would be a significant improvement over successes to date using gas giants with very dense atmospheres.

Submission + - Coding Promoters Say AI is No Excuse for Not Learning to Code

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Y Combinator founder Paul Graham last week took to Twitter to lament those who use AI or other excuses for not learning to code. "A generation ago some people were saying there was no point in learning to program because all the programming jobs would be outsourced to India," Graham wrote. "Now they're saying you don't need to because AI will do it all. If you don't want to learn to program, you can always find a reason."

BloomTech Coding Bootcamp CEO Austen Allred this week doubled-down on Graham's tweet, offering his own history of excuses people have made for not learning to code. Reminiscent of the FTX Superbowl commercial in which Larry David portrayed a schmuck who kept saying I-don't-think-so to opportunities, Allred's tweet reads:

"Don't learn to code. Soon GUIs will do it all for you." — 1985

"Don't learn to code. Soon that will all be done offshore for pennies." — 2003

"Don't learn to code. Soon nocode tools will do it all for you." — 2015

"Don't learn to code. Soon AI will do it all for you." — 2023

Among the many retweeting Allred's cautionary message was Code.org, the tech-backed nonprofit that aims to make computer science a high school graduation requirement by 2030, whose CEO also replied to Graham with a reassuring tweet suggesting people's days of being able to avoid learning to code will soon be over. "Now that 27 states require that every school must teach computer science, and 7 states require a CS course to graduate high school," explained Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi, "the argument is basically behind us. Computer science won."

Submission + - Apple Faces Trademark Battle With Huawei to Use 'Vision Pro' Name in China (macrumors.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple may be forced to change the name of its new mixed reality headset in China unless it can come to an agreement with Huawei, which already owns the "Vision Pro" trademark in the country. Originally spotted by MyDrivers, the trademark was originally granted to Huawei on May 16, 2019, and gives the company exclusive rights to its use in China from November 28, 2021 to November 27, 2031. Huawei actively uses the trademark in China, and offers a number of products under the Vision name, including smart TVs and smart glasses. If Apple intends to sell its headset in China and call it Vision Pro, it may have to enter into negotiations with Huawei to release the trademark for a price.

Submission + - AI System Devises First Optimizations To Sorting Code In Over a Decade (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Anyone who has taken a basic computer science class has undoubtedly spent time devising a sorting algorithm—code that will take an unordered list of items and put them in ascending or descending order. It's an interesting challenge because there are so many ways of doing it and because people have spent a lot of time figuring out how to do this sorting as efficiently as possible. Sorting is so basic that algorithms are built into most standard libraries for programming languages. And, in the case of the C++ library used with the LLVM compiler, the code hasn't been touched in over a decade.

But Google's DeepMind AI group has now developed a reinforcement learning tool that can develop extremely optimized algorithms without first being trained on human code examples. The trick was to set it up to treat programming as a game. [...] The AlphaDev system developed x86 assembly algorithms that treated the latency of the code as a score and tried to minimize that score while ensuring that the code ran to completion without errors. Through reinforcement learning, AlphaDev gradually develops the ability to write tight, highly efficient code. [...]

Since AlphaDev did produce more efficient code, the team wanted to get these incorporated back into the LLVM standard C++ library. The problem here is that the code was in assembly rather than C++. So, they had to work backward and figure out the C++ code that would produce the same assembly. Once that was done, the code was incorporated into the LLVM toolchain—the first time some of the code had been modified in over a decade. As a result, the researchers estimate that AlphaDev's code is now executed trillions of times a day.

Submission + - Big Tech Isn't Prepared for A.I.'s Next Chapter - Open source (slate.com)

Submitted by mrflash818
mrflash818 writes: "there are many open-source models to choose from. Alpaca, Cerebras-GPT, Dolly, HuggingChat, and StableLM have all been released in the past few months. Most of them are built on top of LLaMA, but some have other pedigrees. More are on their way"

Submission + - Supreme Court Declines To Hear Bid To Sue Reddit Over Child Porn (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a bid by child pornography victims to overcome a legal shield for internet companies in a case involving a lawsuit accusing Reddit Inc of violating federal law by failing to rid the discussion website of this illegal content. The justices turned away the appeal of a lower court's decision to dismiss the proposed class action lawsuit on the grounds that Reddit was shielded by a U.S. statute called Section 230, which safeguards internet companies from lawsuits for content posted by users but has an exception for claims involving child sex trafficking. The Supreme Court on May 19 sidestepped an opportunity to narrow the scope of Section 230 immunity in a separate case.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects "interactive computer services" by ensuring they cannot be treated as the "publisher or speaker" of information provided by users. The Reddit case explored the scope of a 2018 amendment to Section 230 called the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which allows lawsuits against internet companies if the underlying claim involves child sex trafficking. Reddit allows users to post content that is moderated by other users in forums called subreddits. The case centers on sexually explicit images and videos of children posted to such forums by users. The plaintiffs — the parents of minors and a former minor who were the subjects of the images — sued Reddit in 2021 in federal court in California, seeking monetary damages. The plaintiffs accused Reddit of doing too little to remove or prevent child pornography and of financially benefiting from the illegal posts through advertising in violation of a federal child sex trafficking law.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022 concluded that in order for the exception under FOSTA to apply, plaintiffs must show that an internet company "knowingly benefited" from the sex trafficking through its own conduct. Instead, the 9th Circuit concluded, the allegations "suggest only that Reddit 'turned a blind eye' to the unlawful content posted on its platform, not that it actively participated in sex trafficking." Reddit said in court papers that it works hard to find and prevent the sharing of child sexual exploitation materials on its platform, giving all users the ability to flag posts and using dedicated teams to remove illegal content.

Submission + - Microsoft Is Scanning the Inside of Password-Protected Zip Files For Malware (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft cloud services are scanning for malware by peeking inside users’ zip files, even when they’re protected by a password, several users reported on Mastodon on Monday. Compressing file contents into archived zip files has long been a tactic threat actors use to conceal malware spreading through email or downloads. Eventually, some threat actors adapted by protecting their malicious zip files with a password the end user must type when converting the file back to its original form. Microsoft is one-upping this move by attempting to bypass password protection in zip files and, when successful, scanning them for malicious code.

While analysis of password-protected in Microsoft cloud environments is well-known to some people, it came as a surprise to Andrew Brandt. The security researcher has long archived malware inside password-protected zip files before exchanging them with other researchers through SharePoint. On Monday, he took to Mastodon to report that the Microsoft collaboration tool had recently flagged a zip file, which had been protected with the password “infected.” "While I totally understand doing this for anyone other than a malware analyst, this kind of nosy, get-inside-your-business way of handling this is going to become a big problem for people like me who need to send their colleagues malware samples,” Brandt wrote. “The available space to do this just keeps shrinking and it will impact the ability of malware researchers to do their jobs.”

Fellow researcher Kevin Beaumont joined the discussion to say that Microsoft has multiple methods for scanning the contents of password-protected zip files and uses them not just on files stored in SharePoint but all its 365 cloud services. One way is to extract any possible passwords from the bodies of email or the name of the file itself. Another is by testing the file to see if it’s protected with one of the passwords contained in a list. “If you mail yourself something and type something like 'ZIP password is Soph0s', ZIP up EICAR and ZIP password it with Soph0s, it'll find (the) password, extract and find (and feed MS detection),” he wrote.

Submission + - Gambling Firm Allegedly Paid Blogs To Link New Members To Its Online Games (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One of the UK’s leading gambling brands allegedly paid blogs advising new mothers to recommend its online casino games and link to its website, in a tactic that has been condemned as “predatory” by leading mental health and addiction experts. Coral struck deals with parenting bloggers to embed links in posts offering tips, including on how to relieve the stress of caring for a new baby. One post, ostensibly about baby food recipes, said: “If as a mum you can’t leave the house, then why not consider bingo online? “You can click here to play Bingo online at Coral – this momentary break from childcare can prove beneficial.”

The Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) guidelines state that gambling adverts must not be “socially irresponsible," including presenting betting as a way to relieve loneliness or depression. Another parenting blog recommended “opulent games of online roulette that are easy to learn and can provide some handy winnings too." The ASA guidelines also state that gambling must not be presented as a “solution to financial concerns." A further three parenting blogs posted parenting articles that also contained segments recommending online casino or bingo and linking to the Coral website. A source familiar with the arrangements said Coral had paid the bloggers to include the links.

Entain, which owns Coral, said the articles including links to the Coral website had been posted between 2014 and 2016, before it bought Ladbrokes Coral in 2018. On Tuesday, the company said it would try to get them taken down as soon as possible, although they remained live on Sunday. The source, who used to work for a company that arranged such deals with bloggers, said Coral staff had read the articles and signed them off before publication. [...] Only one of the blog posts disclosed that links contained in the article were the result of a sponsorship or affiliate marketing arrangement. The Guardian has chosen not to name the blogs because the authors could not be reached for comment. The source said the practice was chiefly aimed at manipulating Google’s search results by creating an association between women and online casino and bingo games.

Submission + - Anti-Piracy Outfit Wipes ACE's 'Watch Legally' Page From Google (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ACE, the world's leading anti-piracy coalition, is facing an unexpected setback after Google removed a page that advises 'pirates' where they can watch content legally. The removal is the result of an erroneous takedown notice from a competing anti-piracy organization, and was likely triggered by an ACE domain name seizure. [...] After the “Watch Legally” page was removed from Google search, visitors see the following note [here] at the bottom of the results.

In response to a recent takedown notice, Google removed ACE’s “Watch Legally” page for alleged copyright infringement. This action was taken at the behest of Indian anti-piracy outfit AiPlex. The ACE page was repeatedly flagged by AiPlex in recent weeks. In this notice, for example, it’s accused of distributing a pirated copy of the film ‘Virgin Bhanupriya,’ together with sites such as foumovies.pw, afilmyhit.cafe, and yomovies.bid. Why AiPlex flagged a page that’s designed to drive traffic to legal services is unclear.

Submission + - 'Dream glove' boosts creativity during sleep (science.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: On a stormy night in 1816, Mary Shelley had a terrifying dream about a corpse coming to life—a nightmare that inspired her to write Frankenstein. More than a century later, a melody in a dream led Paul McCartney to compose one of The Beatles’s most beloved songs, Yesterday.

Is there something about dreaming that enhances our creativity? Or is it just sleep itself? Scientists say they’re closer to an answer, thanks to an unusual study that used an electronic glove to guide people’s dreams while they slumbered.

To conduct the work, researchers invited 50 volunteers, mostly students and professors, to either stay awake or take a nap in a laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Those in the nap group laid down with an eye mask, while wearing a Dormio, a glovelike device with sensors that measure heart rate and muscle tone changes to track sleep stages. A computer linked to the device relayed audio cues to inspire the wearers to dream about specific subjects—a process called “targeted dream incubation.”

Overall, volunteers who dreamt about trees scored 78% higher on the creativity metrics than those who stayed awake just observing their thoughts and 63% higher than those who stayed awake thinking about trees. Participants who napped without hearing the prompt still got a creativity boost, but those who dreamed about trees still performed 48% better than them.

The researchers also noticed that the volunteers used the content of their dreams to answer the tests. The person who dreamed that their limbs were made of old wood wrote a story about an oak king with a wood body, for example. The person who dreamed of becoming bigger than trees, meanwhile, listed “toothpick for a giant” as an alternative use for a tree.

Comment Re:Starlink Rural Canada offer (Score 1) 45

Do you use a directional antenna to connect to the tower - those improve the signal a lot, especially as you have a clear line-of-sight?
And use Cellmapper.net service to make sure there aren't any other cell towers nearby (maybe with the beams better directed at your house).

I have a 10' (3m) parabolic reflector behind the transponder. I get a measured gain of 21 to 28 db depending on the band.

I know where every tower is for 100km around me. Cellmapper is ok, not always complete or accurate. Industry Canada maintains a public database of tower information.

Comment Re:Starlink Rural Canada offer (Score 1) 45

Actually speeds from 5G network should go much, much higher than 75Mbps. I guess in your case the main limiting factor is the distance to the tower, since the faster bands use higher frequencies - which consequently have shorter ranges.

But just for comparison, a local operator (Telia) offers here in Finland a nice 5G asymmetrical 1Gbps down 100MBps up connection for 45 euros per month. No data caps, no slowdown.

We get much better data rates in urban areas where there are higher frequency bands available and distances are under 1000 m. My locale is RF transmission challenged with 60' trees all around. I get my signal through a gap where my driveway comes up; at night I can see the tower hazard light on the horizon.

Gigabit service, unlimited data, CAD 70 per month? I wish!

The only reason TELUS is offering the plan I described is to compete with Starlink.

Comment Starlink Rural Canada offer (Score 3, Interesting) 45

Just received an offer from Starlink of CAD 199 (versus $749 normal) for the equipment purchase and $140 per month. Your location has to be approved but it is labelled "rural Canada" which covers a lot of territory. The map shows pretty much everything between latitude 49 N and about 70 N. Tough luck Resolute Bay and Alert.

5G wireless rural internet from TELUS is now unlimited data (no cap, no slowdown) for $95 per month on a two year plan and the equipment is free. Well actually you pay for it over two years but the payment is rebated every month: net zero.

Thank you EM for giving the terrestrial providers some competition.

Mind you, the current $95/month is a "special". Starlink, TELUS, Bell, et al are ready to jack the prices back up as soon as the competitive atmosphere dissipates.

Speeds from the 5G network can be up to 75Mbs but where I am it is typically 30Mbps symmetrical up & down. Also, the 5G is not stand alone (relies on the LTE network for control) and can be unstable at longer distances (I am 12 km from the tower). Apparently, when they upgrade to stand alone 5G, those problems go away.

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