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Speaking of robots, Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University researchers say they trained robots to perform surgical tasks autonomously using video learning, marking a breakthrough in robotic surgery capabilities. The robots successfully manipulated needles, tied knots, and sutured wounds independently, demonstrating ability to correct errors like dropped needles without human input. Testing has advanced to full surgeries on animal cadavers. Researchers aim to address a projected U.S. surgeon shortage of 10,000-20,000 by 2036. The technology builds on decades of robot-assisted surgery, which recorded 876,000 procedures in 2020.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Nvidia is betting on robotics as its next big driver of growth, as the world's most valuable semiconductor company faces increasing competition in its core AI chipmaking business. The US tech group, best known for the infrastructure that has underpinned the AI boom, is set to launch its latest generation of compact computers for humanoid robots [non-paywalled link] -- dubbed Jetson Thor -- in the first half of 2025. Nvidia is positioning itself to be the leading platform for what the tech group believes is an imminent robotics revolution. The company sells a "full stack" solution, from the layers of software for training AI-powered robots to the chips that go into them. [...] Talla said a shift in the robotics market is being driven by two technological breakthroughs: the explosion of generative AI models and the ability to train robots on these foundational models using simulated environments. The latter has been a particularly significant development as it helps solve what roboticists call the "Sim-to-Real gap," ensuring robots trained in virtual environments can operate effectively in the real world, he said.

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World chess champion Magnus Carlsen has returned to the International Chess Federation (FIDE) World Rapid and Blitz Championships after new rules allowed players to wear "elegant" jeans with jackets. Carlsen had withdrawn from the New York tournament when officials demanded he change out of jeans he wore after a lunch meeting, threatening him with fines and disqualification. FIDE revised its dress code following the incident, permitting "appropriate jeans matching the jacket" as an "elegant minor deviation" from standard attire.

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President-elect Donald Trump has defended the H-1B visa program for skilled foreign workers. "I've always liked the visas. I have many H-1B visas on my properties... It's a great program," Trump told The New York Post. His comments follow recent support for the program from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The H-1B program allows 85,000 skilled workers to immigrate annually, including 20,000 spots for those with U.S. advanced degrees. Trump's businesses have received approval to hire over 2,100 foreign workers since 2008, with about 70 positions through H-1B visas, mostly over a decade ago.

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America's aerospace industry is overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration (or FAA) — which also handles safety warnings from the industry's whistleblowers. But the Seattle Times says an analysis of reports to Congress found "an overwhelmed system delivering underwhelming results for whistleblowers... More than 90% of safety complaints from 2020 through 2023 ended with no violation found by the FAA, while whistleblowers reported them at great personal and professional risk." Aside from the FAA's in-house program, employees of Boeing, Spirit and the FAA can report safety hazards to the Office of Special Counsel, which has no FAA ties, or through internal employer complaint programs, such as Boeing's Speak Up and Spirit's Quality 360, to trigger company reviews... In the aftermath of the door-plug blowout over Portland, Boeing specifically asked its employees to use the Speak Up program or the FAA's internal process to report any concerns, according to Boeing spokesperson Jessica Kowal. Both have done a poor job protecting whistleblowers from retaliation, according to a congressionally appointed expert panel... While both were designed to guard against retaliation, critics say they have instead become enablers of it... A panel of aviation safety experts in February rebuked Boeing's Speak Up program in a report to Congress. Whistleblower advocates criticized Speak Up for commonly outing whistleblowers to the supervisors they're complaining about, exposing them to retaliation. Managers sometimes investigated complaints against themselves. Employees mistrusted the program's promise of anonymity. Collectively, the befuddling maze of whistleblower options sowed "confusion about reporting systems that may discourage employees from submitting safety concerns," according to the expert panel's report.... [Boeing quality inspector Sam Mohawk, who alleged the 737 MAX line in Renton was losing track of subpar aircraft parts], continues to pursue his FAA claim, originally submitted through Boeing's Speak Up program. Months passed before Boeing addressed Mohawk's complaint. When it did, Mohawk's report was passed to the managers he was complaining about, according to Brian Knowles, Mohawk's South Carolina-based lawyer. "If you do Speak Up, just know that your report is going to go straight to the guys you're accusing of wrongdoing. They aren't going to say, 'Thanks for speaking up against us,'" Knowles said. The article includes this quote about the FAA's in-house whistleblower program from Tom Devine, a whistleblower attorney with nearly a half-century of experience across a spectrum of federal agencies, and legal director of the nonprofit Government Accountability Project, which helps whistleblowers navigate the federal system. "It's been a disaster from the beginning. We tell everyone to avoid it because it's a trap... We've warned whistleblowers not to entrust their rights there."

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"I still can't quite believe that I'm using an Arm-powered Windows laptop every day," writes a senior editor at the Verge: After more than a decade of trying to make Windows on Arm a reality, Microsoft and Qualcomm finally nailed it this year with Copilot Plus PCs. These new laptops have excellent battery life and great performance — and the app compatibility issues that have plagued Windows on Arm are mostly a thing of the past (as long as you're not a gamer). Microsoft wanted 2024 to be "the year of the AI PC," but I think it was very much the year of Windows on Arm... The key to Windows on Arm's revival this year was Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite processors, which were announced in April. They've provided the type of performance and power efficiency only previously available with Apple's MacBooks and challenged Intel and AMD to do better in the x86 space. After much debate over Microsoft's MacBook Air-beating benchmarks, the reviews rolled in and showed that Windows on Arm was indeed capable of matching and beating Apple's MacBook Air. Qualcomm even hired the "I'm a Mac" guy to promote Windows on Arm PCs, showing how confident it was in challenging Apple's laptop dominance. Microsoft and Qualcomm also worked closely with developers to make key apps compatible, and it's now very rare to run into an app compatibility issue that can't be solved by a native Arm64 version or Microsoft's improved emulator. Even Google, which previously shunned Windows Phone, has created Arm64 versions of Chrome and Google Drive to support Microsoft's efforts. With developers continually providing native versions of their apps, it makes it a lot easier to switch to a Windows on Arm laptop. The only big exception is gaming, where x86 still reigns supreme for compatibility and performance... It's hard not to see 2025 as the year that Windows on Arm continues to eat into the laptop space. A Dell leak revealed Qualcomm is preparing new chips for 2025, and the chip maker has also been rolling out cheaper Arm-based chips to bring laptop prices down. The article acknowledges that both AMD and Intel "have the key advantage of game compatibility that Windows on Arm is definitely not ready for..." But "Given the Windows on Arm gaming situation, a new generation of Nvidia's GPUs could help generate fresh excitement around x86 laptops throughout 2025." And "Nvidia might also be planning to help the Windows on Arm effort. The chip maker has long been rumored to be planning to launch Arm PC chips as soon as 2025... Whatever happens to laptops in 2025, you can guarantee that there's going to be fierce competition between Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm." But the author still complains about the dedicated Copilot key on his new WIndows-on-Arm laptop. "While the Copilot experience on Windows has gone through several confusing revisions, it's still a key I accidentally press and then get frustrated when a Copilot window appears."

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Slashdot reader SysEngineer shared this report from the Guardian: AI tools could be used to manipulate online audiences into making decisions — ranging from what to buy to who to vote for — according to researchers at the University of Cambridge. The paper highlights an emerging new marketplace for "digital signals of intent" — known as the "intention economy" — where AI assistants understand, forecast and manipulate human intentions and sell that information on to companies who can profit from it. The intention economy is touted by researchers at Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) as a successor to the attention economy, where social networks keep users hooked on their platforms and serve them adverts. The intention economy involves AI-savvy tech companies selling what they know about your motivations, from plans for a stay in a hotel to opinions on a political candidate, to the highest bidder... The study claims that large language models (LLMs), the technology that underpins AI tools such as the ChatGPT chatbot, will be used to "anticipate and steer" users based on "intentional, behavioural and psychological data"... Advertisers will be able to use generative AI tools to create bespoke online ads, the report claims... AI models will be able to tweak their outputs in response to "streams of incoming user-generated data", the study added, citing research showing that models can infer personal information through workaday exchanges and even "steer" conversations in order to gain more personal information. The article includes this quote from Dr. Jonnie Penn, an historian of technology at LCFI. "Unless regulated, the intention economy will treat your motivations as the new currency. It will be a gold rush for those who target, steer and sell human intentions. "We should start to consider the likely impact such a marketplace would have on human aspirations, including free and fair elections, a free press and fair market competition, before we become victims of its unintended consequences."

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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has died. Born in 1924, he had just celebrated his 100th birthday on October 1st. If you want to catch a glimpse of his political charisma, YouTube has a clip of Carter's appearance on "What's My Line" when he was still only governor of Georgia. Within five years he'd be president of the United States, serving from 1977 to 1981. But it seems like today everyone has a story to tell. More than two decades later, long-time Slashdot reader destinyland saw Jimmy Carter speak in Las Vegas in 2001 on the final day of the CTIA Wireless tradeshow. "I feel thrilled to be a part of this," 77-year-old Carter had said.... Carter applauded the work of "entrepreneurs and scientists and engineers that are transforming the face of the globe." And he noted their technologies could address problems targeted by the Carter Center. Interrupted by a few cellphone rings, the former President conversed on a stage at the Sands Expo and Venetian Hotel with Tom Wheeler, the president of the wireless communications trade association. Wheeler reminded the audience of Carter's decidedly nontechnical background, discussing An Hour Before Daylight, Carter's memoir about growing up on a farm in Georgia during the Great Depression. "We were the only family blessed with an outhouse," Carter told the crowd. Wheeler also asked a question many in the technology community could relate to. Carter, he pointed out, had been involuntarily retired. "What's it feel like?" The former President told the audience he'd re-focussed his energies into humanitarian efforts through the Carter Center, which is active in providing health services around the world as well as monitoring elections. Carter donated his appearance fee to the Carter Center... Midway through the hour-long discussion, the former President touted his administration's record of deregulating several industries, including transportation, energy, and communications, saying "If it hadn't been for that deregulation, this environment in which you all live wouldn't have been possible." Carter also shared with the business crowd that it was a belief in free enterprise that made him want to enter politics, drawn from his experiences selling peanuts as a young boy for a dollar a day. The audience greeted the former president warmly, giving him a standing ovation both when he took the stage and when he left. Carter joked it was almost enough to make him want to get back into politics. Everyone has their own opinion. When a friend of mine was in high school, she got to meet Jimmy Carter early in his presidency. He'd seemed unusually kind and good, she said, but remembered her first reaction. "They're going to eat you alive." And yet then, pointing to the humanitarian work he would continue for four decades, she said he was also clearly America's very best ex-president. And the liberal blog Talking Points Memo argues Carter's accomplishments as president are being re-evaluated: Some found him to be distinctly unsung, with little attention given to his brokering of peace with the Camp David Accords and emphasis on global human rights. And some just liked him. A serious, intelligent, faithful, deeply honest man who spurned political expediency and burned through hundreds of pages of memos a day, he preached self-restraint, stewardship and commonality to an electorate that cast him off four years later for the glib excesses of Ronald Reagan.... "People assume that because he wasn't warm and cuddly with Congress that he didn't get much through," said John Alter [who wrote the first independent Carter biography in 2020]. "He signed more legislation in four years than Clinton or Obama did in eight. He has the most prodigious legislative record since World War II, with the exception of Lyndon Johnson." That record includes, by Alter's count, 14 major pieces of environmental legislation. In one of Carter's more creative moves, he dusted off the 1906 Antiquities Act to keep pristine 56 million acres of Alaskan wilderness. His piecemeal approach, cloaked in distinctly unsexy bills like the 1978 Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act, planted the seeds for a changing national energy system in the face of climate change. Carter had started underlining passages in scientific journals about what is now the most existential crisis of our time as early as 1971. What's most wrenching about Carter's improvements in energy and environmental policy now is what he wasn't able to accomplish. On his way out of office, he issued a report that included recommendations for cutting carbon emissions — at exactly the same rate the Paris Climate Accords coalesced behind 35 years later.... His Carter Center has virtually eradicated certain devastating diseases on the African continent, part of the work for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He and Rosalynn have also helped build and repair over 4,000 homes for Habitat for Humanity, work that continued well into his 90s. I've got my own story. As a young boy I saw Jimmy Carter give a speech in 1977 — just six months after he'd assumed the presidency. A crowd of teenagers thrilled to see the president gave him a long, loud round of applause. And when it finally died down, Carter said... "I wish I got that kind of reception from Congress."

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"Every single one of the top ten box office hits of 2024 was a sequel, a remake... or a prequel," writes The Hollywood Reporter. Here's the list of 2024's top-grossing films published by the movie blog SlashFilm: 10. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice 9. Venom: The Last Dance 8. Kung Fu Panda 4 7. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire 6. Wicked 5. Dune: Part Two 4. Moana 2 3. Despicable Me 4 2. Deadpool & Wolverine 1. Inside Out 2 2024 was the year Godzilla celebrated its 70th year as a franchise — but it wasn't the only long-running franchise. "When the Marvel Cinematic Universe went R-rated with Deadpool & Wolverine... it was literally more successful than any other R-rated movie in history," SlashFilm points out, while Venom: The Last Dance was the year's 9th highest-earner. (But several other big superhero movies flopped and "the misses outweighed the hits this year, while DC sat it out entirely as the world waits for Superman to usher in James Gunn's new DC Universe.") They also marvel that Wicked earned $572 million after opening on the same day as Ridley Scott's Gladiator II.... But in the end SlashFilm describes 2024 as "a banner year for animation," with computer-animated movies filling four of the top ten spots (Kung Fu Panda 4, Moana 2, Despicable Me 4, and Inside Out 2). And another interesting trend? Though the world flocked to Tim Burton's first sequel to Beetlejuice after 36 years, Warner Bros. was, "at one point, pushing for Beetlejuice 2 to go directly to streaming on Max." And Disney original had the same idea for Moana 2, leading SlashFilm to conclude that 2024's box office "should be the death of the big direct-to-streaming movie." SlashFilm notes that Disney also sent several Pixar originals to Disney+ between 2020 and 2022, which "did immeasurable damage to the brand, something that even CEO Bob Iger has acknowledged." And then after a theatrical debut Pixar's Inside Out 2 became "the eighth biggest movie ever at the box office, with $1.698 billion to its name" — and the highest-grossing animated film ever made. And Dune: Part Two? Denis Villeneuve accomplished nothing shy of a miracle with 2021's "Dune," an adaptation of Frank Herbert's cherished sci-fi novel that was faithful to the material, massive in scale, but still felt like an auteur film... The only downside? 2021 was a terrible time to release a movie, particularly a Warner Bros. movie, as all of the studio's films were going to HBO Max the same day they hit theaters. Yet, "Dune" made $400 million in its original run, which was enough to justify a sequel. Evidently, the audience for this franchise grew exponentially in the years before "Dune: Part Two" hit theaters in early March... All told, Villeneuve's sweeping, epic sequel pulled in $714.4 million worldwide, all while garnering tons of acclaim once again. Also, not for nothing, Villeneuve got it made for less than $200 million... Without "Dune: Part Two" making what it made, the box office might have been in truly dire shape. As a relatively dead April and very weak May followed, this overperformance helped keep theaters afloat until greener pastures arrived in the back half of the year. The Spice must flow, as it were. The Hollywood Reporter offers another take on the significance of 2024: Total domestic box office revenue appears to be heading toward around $8 billion, down from 2023's exhilarating post-COVID turnaround of $9 billion, but the National Association of Theatre Owners prefers to accentuate the positive, attributing the dip to a shortage of product due to the labor strikes and taking encouragement from the renewal of the movie habit... Interestingly, or thankfully, the cinematic universes of Marvel, DC, and Star Wars failed to expand: except for Deadpool & Wolverine, not one of the huge hits came from a comic book franchise or a galaxy far, far away. The article then complains about people using their phones during the movie for texting, talking, and photographing the movie itself. (Though it applauds a PSA against the practice in which Deadpool and Wolverine "delivered the message in laudably blunt terms.") And on Wikipedia, Deadpool & Wolverine and Dune: Part Two were the eighth and 23rd most popular articles of 2024.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Wall Street Journal: The rich get richer — and older. People with high salaries and net worth tend to live longer lives, research shows. Once Americans make it to their late 50s, the wealthiest 10% live to a median age of around 86 years, roughly 14 years longer than the least wealthy 10%, according to a study published earlier this year in JAMA Internal Medicine. People with more money can afford healthier food, more healthcare and homes in safer, less-polluted neighborhoods, says Kathryn Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and a medical director at the Boston Public Health Commission. Though you can't add more months or years to your online shopping cart yet, health and aging researchers say there are ways to spend money to improve your chances of living longer. They suggest favoring purchases that help you track your health, stay active and reduce stress. "We know the things that help us age better, and everyone's always disappointed when you tell them," says Andrew Scott, director of economics at the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford, England. "Eat less and eat better, sleep more, exercise more and spend time with friends...." But certain gadgets and luxuries can be worth the cost, some researchers say. Devices such as the Apple Watch and Oura Ring can instill healthy habits and catch worrying patterns that might emerge between annual checkups, says Joe Coughlin, the director of the MIT AgeLab... Coughlin says he once went to the emergency room because his Apple Watch detected a spike in his heart rate that he hadn't noticed himself. "For the superwealthy, suddenly living longer and living better has become the new prestige," Coughlin says. Higher incomes correlate with longer lives, but there are diminishing returns. Each successive jump in pay is linked to smaller boosts in longevity, a 2016 study from the research group Opportunity Insights found... A key to the relationship between income and longevity is that money doesn't just buy stuff that helps you live longer. It also buys time and reduces stress. "If you've got a nice place to live and you don't have to worry about food on the table, you have the mental head space and resources to prioritize your health," says Steven Woolf, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine... Moreover, many lower-income jobs are more physically taxing and more prone to workplace accidents and exposure to harmful substances. The article also includes examples of spending that promotes health, including things like home gym equipment and even swing-dancing lessons. But it also adds that "plenty of things that are good for you don't come with a bill, such as going on a walk or minimizing screen time before bedtime."

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When it comes to the possibility of a bird flu outbreak, America's Centers for Disease Control recently issued a statement that the risk to the public "remains low." But even in the event of a worst-case scenario, New York magazine believes "We may be more equipped for another pandemic than you think..." In 2023, more than half of people surveyed said that their lives had not returned to normal since the COVID outbreak, and a surprising number — 47 percent — said they now believe their lives will never return to normal. But do we really know how a new pandemic would go and how we would handle it? Things are different this time — and in ways that aren't all bad. Unlike with COVID in the spring of 2020, millions of doses of bird-flu vaccines at various stages of testing sit in government stockpiles, and more are on the way. There are also already tests that work, though these are not broadly available to the public... Recent research suggests that we might actually manage a second pandemic better than we would believe. Despite all the noise to the contrary, a June poll by Harvard's School of Public Health says that Americans overall think the government responses to COVID — asking people to wear masks, pausing indoor dining, requiring health-care workers to get vaccinated — were all good ideas. Although the media tends to paint school closures as radically unpopular, only 44 percent of respondents said they currently think the shutdowns were a mistake. A growing body of research also suggests that many Americans feel stronger for what we endured during the most extreme days of COVID. Counter to what we like to say about our friends and neighbors and children, the challenge of the pandemic may have benefited some people's mental health. One study found that "children entering the pandemic with clinically meaningful mental-health problems experienced notable improvements in their mental health." (Turns out there's one thing worse than shutting down an American school and that's having to attend it.) The article also points out that "There is no real information" on the likelihood of a bird-flu virus even crossing over into humans. And of course, "COVID still kills, with a body count just shy of 50,000 Americans in 2024, and it feels like a stretch to say that Americans are particularly concerned."

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Reuters reports: Finnish police said on Sunday they had found tracks that drag on for dozens of kilometres along the bottom of the Baltic Sea where a tanker carrying Russian oil is suspected of breaking a power line and four telecoms cables with its anchor... A break in the 658 megawatt (MW) Estlink 2 power cable between Finland and Estonia occurred at midday on Wednesday, leaving only the 358 MW Estlink 1 linking the two countries, grid operators said. They said Estlink 2 might not be back in service before August. In an interesting twist, the New York Times reports that the ship "bears all the hallmarks of vessels belonging to Russia's shadow fleet, officials said, and had embarked from a Russian port shortly before the cables were cut." If confirmed, it would be the first known instance of a shadow fleet vessel being used to intentionally sabotage critical infrastructure in Europe — and, officials and experts said, a clear escalation by Russia in its conflict with the West... NATO's general secretary, Mark Rutte, responding to requests from the leaders of Finland and Estonia, both member nations, said the Atlantic alliance would "enhance" its military presence in the Baltic Sea... Since Russia began assembling its fleet, the number of shadow vessels traversing the oceans has grown by hundreds and now makes up 17 percent of the total global oil tanker fleet... Nearly 70 percent of Russia's oil is being transported by shadow tankers, according to an analysis published in October by the Kyiv School of Economics Institute, a research organization based in Ukraine... The authorities in Finland are still investigating whether the "Eagle S" engaged in a criminal act. But the sheer size of the shadow fleet might have made using some of these vessels for sabotage irresistible to Russia, [said Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who has researched and written about shadow fleets]... While it's still not certain that this week's cable cutting was done intentionally, the Baltic Sea, for a number of reasons, is an ideal arena to carry out sabotage operations. It is relatively shallow and is crisscrossed with essential undersea cables and pipelines that provide energy, as well as internet and phone services, to a number of European countries that are NATO members. Russia has relatively unfettered access to the sea from several ports, and its commercial vessels, protected by international maritime law, can move around international waters largely unmolested... The suspicions that Russia was using shadow vessels for more than just escaping sanctions existed before this week's cable cutting. Last April, the head of Sweden's Navy told a local news outlet that there was evidence such ships were being used to conduct signals intelligence on behalf of Russia and that some fishing vessels had been spotted with antennas and masts not normally seen on commercial vessels. Since the war began, there has also been an uptick in suspicious episodes resulting in damage to critical undersea infrastructure... Hours after Finland's energy grid operator alerted the police that an undersea power cable was damaged on Wednesday, Finnish officers descended by helicopter to the ship's deck and took over the bridge, preventing the vessel from sailing farther. By Friday, it remained at anchor in the Gulf of Finland, guarded by a Finnish Defense Forces missile boat and a Border Guard patrol vessel. The cable incident happened just weeks after the EU issued new sanctions targetting Russia's shadow fleet, Euronews reports. "A handful of Chinese companies suspected of enabling Russia's production of drones are also blacklisted as part of the agreement, a diplomat told Euronews." The "shadow fleet" has been accused of deceptive practices, including transmitting falsified data and turning off their transporters to become invisible to satellite systems, and conducting multiple ship-to-ship transfers to conceal the origin of the oil barrels...

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NPR remembers when the world "prepared for the impending global meltdown" that might've been, on December 31, 1999 — and the possible bug known as Y2K: The Clinton administration said that preparing the U.S. for Y2K was probably "the single largest technology management challenge in history." The bug threatened a cascade of potential disruptions — blackouts, medical equipment failures, banks shutting down, travel screeching to a halt — if the systems and software that helped keep society functioning no longer knew what year it was... Computer specialist and grassroots organizer Paloma O'Riley compared the scale and urgency of Y2K prep to telling somebody to change out a rivet on the Golden Gate Bridge. Changing out just one rivet is simple, but "if you suddenly tell this person he now has to change out all the rivets on the bridge and he has only 24 hours to do it in — that's a problem," O'Riley told reporter Jason Beaubien in 1998.... The date switchover rattled a swath of vital tech, including Wall Street trading systems, power plants and tools used in air traffic control. The Federal Aviation Administration put its systems through stress tests and mock scenarios as 2000 drew closer. "Twenty-three million lines of code in the air traffic control system did seem a little more daunting, I will say, than I had probably anticipated," FAA Administrator Jane Garvey told NPR in 1998. Ultimately there were no systemwide aviation breakdowns, but airlines were put on a Y2K alert.... Some financial analysts remained skeptical Y2K would come and go with minimal disruption. But by November 1999 the Federal Reserve said it was confident the U.S. economy would weather the big switch. "Federal banking agencies have been visited and inspected. Every bank in the United States, which includes probably 9,000 to 10,000 institutions, over 99% received a satisfactory rating," Fed Board Governor Edward Kelley said at the time. The article also remembers a California programmer who bought a mobile home, a propane generator, and a year's supply of dehydrated food. (They were also considering buying a handgun — and converting his bank savings into gold, silver, and cash.) And "Dozens of communities across the U.S. formed Y2K preparedness groups to stave off unnecessary panic..." But the article concludes that "the aggressive planning and recalibration paid off. Humanity passed into the year 2000 without pandemonium..." And "People like Jack Pentes of Charlotte, N.C., were left to figure out what to do with their emergency stockpiles."

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The Washington Post shares some good news from 2024: Researchers were able to detect a significant dip in atmospheric levels of hydrochlorofluorocarbons — harmful gases that deplete the ozone layer — for the first time, almost 30 years after countries first agreed to phase out the chemicals. A new satellite launched in March to track and publicly reveal the biggest methane polluters in the oil and gas industry — an important step in tackling the greenhouse gas that accounts for almost a third of global warming. The NASA/Carbon Mapper satellite, which measures CO2 and methane emissions, also launched, providing detailed images from individual oil and gas facilities across the world. Back on Earth, the world's largest plant for pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere opened in Iceland. Norway became the first country to have more electric than gas-powered vehicles, while one Japanese island began using a new generation of batteries to help stockpile massive amounts of clean electricity. There were also small but important victories for animal conservation. The Iberian lynx, a European wildcat once on the brink of extinction, is no longer classed as an "endangered" species — in what experts have hailed as the "greatest recovery of a cat species ever achieved through conservation...." Despite a large number of powerful tornadoes to hit the United States in early 2024, the death tolls were fortunately not as high as meteorologists feared, in part due to improved forecasting technology. The article also notes America's Food and Drug Administration approved a new therapy which uses a patients' own cells to attack skin cancer for adults for whom surgery isn't an option. "Experts said the decision could open the door to similar treatments for far more common cancers." And one more inspiring story from 2024: 105-year-old Virginia Hislop, of Yakima, Washington received her master's degree from Stanford University...

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After a four-year hiatus, 2025 will see the return of the International Obfuscated C Code Contest. Started in 1984 (and inspired partly by a bug in the classic Bourne shell), it's "the Internet's oldest contest," acording to their official social media account on Mastodon. The contest enters its "pending" state today at 2024-12-29 23:58 UTC — meaning an opening date for submissions has been officially scheduled (for January 31st) as well as a closing date roughly eight weeks later on April 1st, 2025. That's according to the newly-released (proposed and tentative) rules and guidelines, listing contest goals like "show the importance of programming style, in an ironic way" and "stress C compilers with unusual code." And the contest's home page adds an additional goal: "to have fun with C!" Excerpts from the official rules: Rule 0 Just as C starts at 0, so the IOCCC starts at rule 0. :-) Rule 1 Your submission must be a complete program.... Rule 5 Your submission MUST not modify the content or filename of any part of your original submission including, but not limited to prog.c, the Makefile (that we create from your how to build instructions), as well as any data files you submit.... Rule 6 I am not a rule, I am a free(void *human); while (!(ioccc(rule(you(are(number(6)))))) { ha_ha_ha(); } Rule 6 is clearly a reference to The Prisoner... (Some other rules are even sillier...) And the guidelines include their own jokes: You are in a maze of twisty guidelines, all different. There are at least zero judges who think that Fideism has little or nothing to do with the IOCCC judging process.... We suggest that you avoid trying for the 'smallest self-replicating' source. The smallest, a zero byte entry, won in 1994. And this weekend there was also a second announcement: After a 4 year effort by a number of people, with over 6168+ commits, the Great Fork Merge has been completed and the Official IOCCC web site has been updated! A significant number of improvements has been made to the IOCCC winning entries. A number of fixes and improvements involve the ability of reasonable modern Unix/Linux systems to be able to compile and even run them. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader — and C programmer — achowe for sharing the news.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Archer is aiming to launch its first commercially operated [and electrically-powered] flights with a pilot and passengers within a year in Abu Dhabi. A competitor, Joby Aviation, says it is aiming to launch passenger service in Dubai as soon as late 2025. Advancements in batteries and other technologies required for the futuristic tilt-rotor craft are moving so fast that they could soon move beyond the novelty stage and into broader commercial use in a matter of years. Both companies are laying plans to operate at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles... Scaling the industry from a novelty ride for the wealthy to a broadly available commuter option will take billions more in start-up money, executives said, including building out a network of takeoff and landing areas (called vertiports) and charging stations. Some high-profile ventures have already faltered. A plan for air taxis to transport spectators around the Paris Olympics fizzled... Still, investors, including big names like Stellantis and Toyota, have poured money into Silicon Valley companies like Archer and Joby. Boeing and Airbus are developing their own versions. All are betting that quieter, greener and battery-powered aircraft can revolutionize the way people travel. Major U.S. airlines including American, Delta, Southwest and United also are building relationships and planting seeds for deals with air taxi companies. Two interesting quotes from the article: "It feels like the modern-day American Dream, where you can invent a technology and actually bring it to market even [if it's] as crazy as what some people call flying cars." — Adam Goldstein, CEO of Archer Aviation. "They have created these amazing new aircraft that really 10 or 15 years ago would've been unimaginable. I think there's something innately attractive about being able to leapfrog all of your terrestrial obstacles. Who hasn't wished that if you live in the suburbs that, you know, something could drop into your cul-de-sac and 15 minutes later you're at the office." — Roger Connor, curator of the vertical flight collection at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

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While microplastics seem to be everywhere, CNN reports that scientists in China "have come up with a possible solution: a biodegradable sponge made of squid bones and cotton" (which contain two organic compounds "known for eliminating pollution from wastewater...") They then tested the sponge in four different water samples, taken from irrigation water, pond water, lake water and sea water, and found it removed up to 99.9% of microplastics, according to a study published last month in Science Advances... The sponge created by the Wuhan researchers was able to absorb microplastics both by physically intercepting them and through electromagnetic attraction, the study said. Previously studied methods for absorbing plastics tend to be expensive and difficult to make, limiting their scalability. Last year, researchers in Qingdao, China developed a synthetic sponge made of starch and gelatin designed to remove microplastics from water, though its efficacy varied depending on water conditions. The low cost and wide availability of both cotton and squid bones mean [the Chinese researchers' sponge] "has great potential to be used in the extraction of microplastic from complex water bodies," according to the study. Shima Ziajahromi, a lecturer at Australia's Griffith University who studies microplastics, called the squid-cotton-sponge method "promising" and said it could be an effective way to "clean up the high risk and vulnerable aquatic ecosystem." However, the study's authors did not address whether the sponge can remove microplastics that sink to the sediment, which is the majority of microplastics in our waters, said Ziajahromi, who was not involved in the study. Another "critical issue" is the proper disposal of the sponges, Ziajahromi said. "Although the material is biodegradable, the microplastics it absorbs need to be disposed of properly," she said. "Without careful management, this process risks transferring microplastics from one ecosystem to another." Ultimately, Ziajahromi added, minimizing plastic pollution is in the first place should remain a "top priority."

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A 9-year-old girl born without a left hand had "started asking for a robotic arm to help her feel more confident," her mother told the Washington Post. So her parents met with a consultant from Open Bionics, which fits people with lightweight, 3D-printed prostheses that function more like a natural arm and hand — known as Hero Arms. The bionic arms are manufactured in Britain and cost about $24,000, but the Batemans were hopeful that their health insurance company, Select Health, would pay for one for [their 9-year-old daughter] Remi. Remi said she tried using one of the robotic arms for a few days in Colorado and was thrilled to cut her food with a knife and fork for the first time and carry plates with two hands. "I loved it so much — I could function like a full human," she said. "I was able to steal my dad's hat. When they fit me for my arm, I told them I wanted it to be pink." On Oct. 1, the Batemans sent a prescription for the robotic arm and office notes from Remi's pediatrician to Select Health for approval. One week later, their request was denied, Jami Bateman said. "They sent us a letter saying it was not medically necessary for Remi to have a Hero Arm and that it was for cosmetic use only," she said. "We appealed twice and were again denied." "It was very upsetting, and Remi cried when I told her, because we'd all been so hopeful," Bateman added. "It broke our hearts." In mid-December, a frustrated Jami Bateman tried an approach she'd seen other people use when their health insurance failed them: She started a GoFundMe for her daughter, hoping to purchase a robotic arm through the kindness of strangers.... Bateman was stunned when friends and strangers chipped in more than $30,000 in just a few days, surpassing the family's $24,000 goal. People who donated understood the Batemans' predicament, and many were furious on their behalf. As donations poured in, the Batemans received a call from somebody else who wanted to help. Andy Schoonover is the CEO of CrowdHealth, a subscriber-based resource that helps people negotiate lower costs for medical bills. He told the family on Dec. 16 that his company wanted to pay the entire cost of Remi's bionic arm. "We were looking for some ways to help people during the holiday season, and I stumbled upon Remi's story on social media," Schoonover said. "We were honored to help her out...." Remi quickly came up with an idea. "She came to me and said, 'Mom, I know how it feels to have one hand. Is there someone else we can help?" Bateman recalled. She said she contacted Open Bionics and learned there was a long list of children who had been turned down for Hero Arms by their health insurance companies for the same reason Remi was denied... Somewhere in Maryland, the mother of a 9-year-old boy born without a left hand suddenly got a surprise phone call explaining Remi's decision. "I was so proud of Remi that I immediately started crying," she said. "She wanted to give my son an opportunity that I was unable to give him. It just touched my heart." They had been trying to raise money by running a lemonade stand. But yesterday Remi's GoFundMe page posted an update. The 9-year-old boy's arm had now been paid for. "And maybe, if more donations roll in we can help a third child!"

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"Over the course of 2024, Python has proven again and again why it's one of the most popular, useful, and promising programming languages out there," writes InfoWorld: The latest version of the language pushes the envelope further for speed and power, sheds many of Python's most decrepit elements, and broadens its appeal with developers worldwide. Here's a look back at the year in Python. In the biggest news of the year, the core Python development team took a major step toward overcoming one of Python's longstanding drawbacks: the Global Interpreter Lock or "GIL," a mechanism for managing interpreter state. The GIL prevents data corruption across threads in Python programs, but it comes at the cost of making threads nearly useless for CPU-bound work. Over the years, various attempts to remove the GIL ended in tears, as they made single-threaded Python programs drastically slower. But the most recent no-GIL project goes a long way toward fixing that issue — enough that it's been made available for regular users to try out. The no-GIL or "free-threaded" builds are still considered experimental, so they shouldn't be deployed in production yet. The Python team wants to alleviate as much of the single-threaded performance impact as possible, along with any other concerns, before giving the no-GIL builds the full green light. It's also entirely possible these builds may never make it to full-blown production-ready status, but the early signs are encouraging. Another forward-looking feature introduced in Python 3.13 is the experimental just-in-time compiler or JIT. It expands on previous efforts to speed up the interpreter by generating machine code for certain operations at runtime. Right now, the speedup doesn't amount to much (maybe 5% for most programs), but future versions of Python will expand the JIT's functionality where it yields real-world payoffs. Python is now more widely used than JavaScript on GitHub (thanks partly to its role in AI and data science code).

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It had a 4.8-inch display. Introduced in 1991, Hewlett-Packard's (DOS-based) HP 95LX Palmtop PC — a collaboration with Lotus — was finally discontinued back in 2003. But one found its way to long-time Slashdot reader Shayde (who in November repaired a 48-year-old handheld videogame console from Mattel). "I really wanted to get this HP95LX talking to the internet at large," they told Slashdot, " but network stacks for DOS in 1991 were pretty limited, and this machine didn't even have the hardware for a network connection. "It did have a serial port though — a flat 4-pin custom interface. I did a bunch of research and learned how to custom-build an RS-232 hookup for this port, and using an external Wifi module, got it online — and talking to the retrocomputing BBS!" There's a video documenting the whole experience. (Along the way he uses 20-gauge hook-up wire from Amazon, a zip tie, solder cups, and an internet modem (the WiFi232 Hayes modem emulator). The whole thing is powered by two AA batteries — it has 512K of memory, and about half a meg of storage. My favorite technical detail? "Conveniently, the HP 95 [Palmtop PC] uses the exact same pinout as the HP 48GX handheld graphing calculator. So looking up on the Internet, we can determine what pins we need to map from the HP unit over to what would be a DB25 serial port..."

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