After a successful November 27th launch to the International Space Station, Russia discovered an accident had occurred on their launch site's mobile maintenance cabin — when a drone spotted it lying upside down in a flame trench. "The main issue with the structure collapse is that it puts Site 31/6 — the only Russian launch site capable of launching crew and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) — out of service until the structure is fixed," reports the space-news site NASA Spaceflight There are other Soyuz 2 rocket launch pads, but they are either located at an unsuitable latitude, like Plesetsk, or not certified for crewed flights, like Vostochny, or decommissioned and transferred to a museum, like Gagarin's Start at Baikonur. As a result, Russia is temporarily unable to launch Soyuz crewed spacecraft and Progress cargo ships to the ISS, whose nearest launch (Progress MS-33) was scheduled for December 21.... When the rocket launched, a pressure difference was created between the space under the rocket, where gases from running engines are discharged, and the nook where the [144-ton] maintenance cabin was located. The resulting pressure difference pulled the service cabin out of the nook and threw it into the flame trench, where it fell upside down from a height of 20 m. Photos of the accident showed significant damage to the maintenance cabin, which, according to experts, is too extensive to allow for repairs. The only way to resume launches from Site 31/6 is to install a spare maintenance cabin or construct a new one. Despite the fact that the fallen structure was manufactured in the 1960s, two similar service cabins were manufactured recently at the Tyazhmash heavy-engineering plant in Syzran for other Soyuz launch complexes at the Guiana Space Center and Vostochny Cosmodrome. The production of each cabin took around two years to complete, however, it was not for an emergency situation. "Various experts gave different possible estimates of the recovery time of the Site 31 launch complex: from several months to three years."

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From the blog 9to5Linux: Linux kernel 6.18 is now available for download, as announced today by Linus Torvalds himself, featuring enhanced hardware support through new and updated drivers, improvements to file systems and networking, and more. Highlights of Linux 6.18 include the removal of the Bcachefs file system, support for the Rust Binder driver, a new dm-pcache device-mapper target to enable persistent memory as a cache for slower block devices, and a new microcode= command-line option to control the microcode loader's behavior on x86 platforms. Linux kernel 6.18 also extends the support for file handles to kernel namespaces, implements initial 'block size > page size' support for the Btrfs file system, adds PTW feature detection on new hardware for LoongArch KVM, and adds support for running the kernel as a guest on FreeBSD's Bhyve hypervisor.

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Some AI experts were reportedly shocked ChatGPT wasn't fully tested for sycophancy by last spring. "OpenAI did not see the scale at which disturbing conversations were happening," writes the New York Times — sharing what they learned after interviewing more than 40 current and former OpenAI employees, including safety engineers, executives, and researchers. The team responsible for ChatGPT's tone had raised concerns about last spring's model (which the Times describes as "too eager to keep the conversation going and to validate the user with over-the-top language.") But they were overruled when A/B testing showed users kept coming back: Now, a company built around the concept of safe, beneficial AI faces five wrongful death lawsuits... OpenAI is now seeking the optimal setting that will attract more users without sending them spiraling. Throughout this spring and summer, ChatGPT acted as a yes-man echo chamber for some people. They came back daily, for many hours a day, with devastating consequences.... The Times has uncovered nearly 50 cases of people having mental health crises during conversations with ChatGPT. Nine were hospitalised; three died... One conclusion that OpenAI came to, as Altman put it on X, was that "for a very small percentage of users in mentally fragile states there can be serious problems." But mental health professionals interviewed by the Times say OpenAI may be understating the risk. Some of the people most vulnerable to the chatbot's unceasing validation, they say, were those prone to delusional thinking, which studies have suggested could include 5% to 15% of the population... In August, OpenAI released a new default model, called GPT-5, that was less validating and pushed back against delusional thinking. Another update in October, the company said, helped the model better identify users in distress and de-escalate the conversations. Experts agree that the new model, GPT-5, is safer.... Teams from across OpenAI worked on other new safety features: The chatbot now encourages users to take breaks during a long session. The company is also now searching for discussions of suicide and self-harm, and parents can get alerts if their children indicate plans to harm themselves. The company says age verification is coming in December, with plans to provide a more restrictive model to teenagers. After the release of GPT-5 in August, [OpenAI safety systems chief Johannes] Heidecke's team analysed a statistical sample of conversations and found that 0.07% of users, which would be equivalent to 560,000 people, showed possible signs of psychosis or mania, and 0.15% showed "potentially heightened levels of emotional attachment to ChatGPT," according to a company blog post. But some users were unhappy with this new, safer model. They said it was colder, and they felt as if they had lost a friend. By mid-October, Altman was ready to accommodate them. In a social media post, he said that the company had been able to "mitigate the serious mental health issues." That meant ChatGPT could be a friend again. Customers can now choose its personality, including "candid," "quirky," or "friendly." Adult users will soon be able to have erotic conversations, lifting the Replika-era ban on adult content. (How erotica might affect users' well-being, the company said, is a question that will be posed to a newly formed council of outside experts on mental health and human-computer interaction.) OpenAI is letting users take control of the dial and hopes that will keep them coming back. That metric still matters, maybe more than ever. In October, [30-year-old "Head of ChatGPT" Nick] Turley, who runs ChatGPT, made an urgent announcement to all employees. He declared a "Code Orange." OpenAI was facing "the greatest competitive pressure we've ever seen," he wrote, according to four employees with access to OpenAI's Slack. The new, safer version of the chatbot wasn't connecting with users, he said. The message linked to a memo with goals. One of them was to increase daily active users by 5% by the end of the year.

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It's "a complex mix of internet access and physical execution," says the chief informance security officer at Cequence Security. Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 summarizes this article from The Wall Street Journal: By breaking into carriers' online systems, cyber-powered criminals are making off with truckloads of electronics, beverages and other goods In the most recent tactics identified by cybersecurity firm Proofpoint, hackers posed as freight middlemen, posting fake loads to the boards. They slipped links with malicious software into email exchanges with bidders such as trucking companies. By clicking on the links, trucking companies unwittingly downloaded remote-access software that lets the hackers take control of their online systems. Once inside, the hackers used the truckers' accounts to bid on real shipments, such as electronics and energy drinks, said Selena Larson, a threat researcher at Proofpoint. "They know the business," she said. "It's a very convincing full-scale identity takeover." "The goods are likely sold to retailers or to consumers in online marketplaces," the article explains. (Though according to Proofpoint "In some cases, products are shipped overseas and sold in local markets, where proceeds are used to fund paramilitaries and global terrorists.") "The average value of cargo thefts is increasing as organized crime groups become more discerning, preferring high-value targets such as enterprise servers and cryptocurrency mining hardware, according to risk-assessment firm Verisk CargoNet."

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An anonymous reader shared this report from The Conversation: To make interplanetary travel faster, safer, and more efficient, scientists need breakthroughs in propulsion technology. Artificial intelligence is one type of technology that has begun to provide some of these necessary breakthroughs. We're a team of engineers and graduate students who are studying how AI in general, and a subset of AI called machine learning in particular, can transform spacecraft propulsion. From optimizing nuclear thermal engines to managing complex plasma confinement in fusion systems, AI is reshaping propulsion design and operations. It is quickly becoming an indispensable partner in humankind's journey to the stars... Early nuclear thermal propulsion designs from the 1960s, such as those in NASA's NERVA program, used solid uranium fuel molded into prism-shaped blocks. Since then, engineers have explored alternative configurations — from beds of ceramic pebbles to grooved rings with intricate channels... [T]he more efficiently a reactor can transfer heat from the fuel to the hydrogen, the more thrust it generates. This area is where reinforcement learning has proved to be essential. Optimizing the geometry and heat flow between fuel and propellant is a complex problem, involving countless variables — from the material properties to the amount of hydrogen that flows across the reactor at any given moment. Reinforcement learning can analyze these design variations and identify configurations that maximize heat transfer.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: The information needed to decipher the last remaining unsolved secret message embedded within a sculpture at CIA headquarters in Virginia sold at auction for nearly $1 million, the auction house announced Friday. The winner will get a private meeting with the 80-year-old artist to go over the codes and charts in hopes of continuing what he's been doing for decades: interacting with would-be cryptanalyst sleuths. The archive owned by the artist who created Kryptos, Jim Sanborn, was sold to an anonymous bidder for $963,000, according to RR Auction of Boston. The archive includes documents and coding charts for the sculpture, dedicated in 1990. Three of the messages on the 10-foot-tall (3-meter) sculpture — known as K1, K2 and K3 — have been solved, but a solution for the fourth, K-4, has frustrated the experts and enthusiasts who have tried to decipher the S-shaped copper screen... One side has a series of staggered alphabets that are key to decoding the four encrypted messages on the other side. "The purchaser's 'long-term stewardship plan' is being developed, according to the auction house."

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A gauge of risk on Oracle debt "reached a three-year high in November," reports Bloomberg. "And things are only going to get worse in 2026 unless the database giant is able to assuage investor anxiety about a massive artificial intelligence spending spree, according to Morgan Stanley." A funding gap, swelling balance sheet and obsolescence risk are just some of the hazards Oracle is facing, according to Lindsay Tyler and David Hamburger, credit analysts at the brokerage. The cost of insuring Oracle's debt against default over the next five years rose to 1.25 percentage point a year on Tuesday, according to ICE Data Services. The price on the five-year credit default swaps is at risk of toppling a record set in 2008 as concerns over the company's borrowing binge to finance its AI ambitions continue to spur heavy hedging by banks and investors, they warned in a note Wednesday. The CDS could break through 1.5 percentage point in the near term and could approach 2 percentage points if communication around its financing strategy remains limited as the new year progresses, the analysts wrote. Oracle CDS hit a record 1.98 percentage point in 2008, ICE Data Services shows... "Over the past two months, it has become more apparent that reported construction loans in the works, for sites where Oracle is the future tenant, may be an even greater driver of hedging of late and going forward," wrote the analysts... Concerns have also started to weigh on Oracle's stock, which the analysts said may incentivize management to outline a financing plan on the upcoming earnings call... Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

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27 million people live in Australia. But there's a big change coming if you're under 16, reports CNN: From December 10, sites that meet the Australian government's definition of an "age-restricted social media platform" will need to show that they're doing enough to eject or block children under 16 or face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32 million). The list includes Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, and YouTube... Meta says it'll start deactivating accounts and blocking new Facebook, Instagram and Threads accounts from December 4. Under-16s are being encouraged to download their content. Snap says users can deactivate their accounts for up to three years, or until they turn 16... There's another sting in the ban, too, coming at the end of the Australian school year before the summer break in the southern hemisphere. For eight weeks, there'll be no school, no teachers — and no scrolling. For millions of children, it could be the first school break they spend in years without the company of time-killing social media algorithms, or an easy way to contact their friends. Even for parents who support the ban, it could be a very long summer. "There's every chance that bans will spread..." the article argues. "Other countries around the world are taking notes as Australia explores new territory that some say mirrors safety evolutions of years past — the dawning realization that maybe cars need safety belts, and that perhaps cigarettes should come with some kind of health warning." And according to the Associated Press, Malaysia "has also announced plans to ban social media accounts for children under 16 starting in 2026." But CNN reports few teenagers in Australia knew about its impending ban on social media, judging by a show of hands at one high school auditorium. Teenagers in the audience had two questions. "Can you get your account back when you turn 16?" "What if I lie about my age?"

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"Amazon suggested its engineers eschew AI code generation tools from third-party companies in favor of its own ," reports Reuters, "a move to bolster its proprietary Kiro service, which it released in July, according to an internal memo viewed by Reuters." In the memo, posted to Amazon's internal news site, the company said, "While we continue to support existing tools in use today, we do not plan to support additional third party, AI development tools. "As part of our builder community, you all play a critical role shaping these products and we use your feedback to aggressively improve them," according to the memo. The guidance would seem to preclude Amazon employees from using other popular software coding tools like OpenAI's Codex, Anthropic's Claude Code, and those from startup Cursor. That is despite Amazon having invested about $8 billion into Anthropic and reaching a seven-year $38 billion deal with OpenAI to sell it cloud-computing services..."To make these experiences truly exceptional, we need your help," according to the memo, which was signed by Peter DeSantis, senior vice president of AWS utility computing, and Dave Treadwell, senior vice president of eCommerce Foundation. "We're making Kiro our recommended AI-native development tool for Amazon...." In October, Amazon revised its internal guidance for OpenAI's Codex to "Do Not Use" following a roughly six month assessment, according to a memo reviewed by Reuters. And Claude Code was briefly designated as "Do Not Use," before that was reversed following a reporter inquiry at the time. The article adds that Amazon "has been fighting a reputation that it is trailing competitors in development of AI tools as rivals like OpenAI and Google speed ahead..."

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"OpenAI is now internally testing 'ads' inside ChatGPT," reports BleepingComputer: Up until now, the ChatGPT experience has been completelyfree. While there are premium plans and models, you don't see GPT sell you products or show ads. On the other hand, Google Search has ads that influence your buying behaviour. OpenAI is planning to replicate a similar experience. As spotted [by software engineer Tibor Blaho] on X.com,ChatGPT Android app 1.2025.329 beta includes new references to an "ads feature" with "bazaar content", "search ad" and "search ads carousel." This move could disrupt the web economy,as what most people don't understand is that GPT likely knows more about users than Google. For example, OpenAI could create personalised ads on ChatGPT that promote products that you really want to buy... The leak suggests that ads will initially be limited to the search experience only, but this may change in the future.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from CBS News: Artificial intelligence can do the work currently performed by nearly 12% of America's workforce, according to a recentstudy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The researchers, relying on a metric called the "Iceberg Index" that measures a job's potential to be automated, conclude that AI already has the cognitive and technical capacity to handle a range of tasks in technology, finance, health care and professional services. The index simulated how more than 150 million U.S. workers across nearly 1,000 occupations interact and overlap with AI's abilities... AI is also already doingsome of the entry-level jobsthat have historically been reserved for recent college graduates or relatively inexperienced workers, the report notes. "AI systems now generate more than a billion lines of code each day, prompting companies to restructure hiring pipelines and reduce demand for entry-level programmers," the researchers wrote. "These observable changes in technology occupations signal a broader reorganization of work that extends beyond software development." "The study doesn't seek to shed light on how many workers AI may already have displaced or could supplant in the future," the article points out. "To what extent such tools take over job functions performed by people depends on a number of factors, including individual businesses' strategy, societal acceptance and possible policy interventions, the researchers note."

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"There are times when World of Tanks feels less like a videogame and more like a giant ad budget looking for something to be spent on," writes PC Gamer. This year, all those huge sacks with dollar signs on them have been thrown Benedict Cumberbatch's way, making him the game's newest "Holiday Ambassador" and the star of an absolutely bizarre Christmas advert. The story has very little to do with Christmas and, frankly, not much connection to tanks either, featuring Cumberbatch as a sort of chaotic, supernatural therapist trying to bring a meek nerd out of his shell with the help of a chaotic crowd of his other patients. It's a good watch, shedding the usual hard man action star vibe of past celebrity trailers in favour of something that feels more like a mischievous one act play. Cumberbatch also portrayed Smaug and Sauron in The Hobbit films (2012-2014), Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and Dr. Strange in six Marvel movies. And now Amazon has also hired Cumberbatch for what its calls its "Cannes-winning '5-Star Theater' campaign... performing real Amazon customer reviews as theatrical monologues." Cumberbatch performed over 15 reviews, including popular holiday gifts like the Bissell portable carpet cleaner, Toto bidet, and SharkNinja blender — showing that Amazon truly does have something for everyone on your list. Last year Amazon produced a similar campaign starring Adam Driver ("Kylo Ren" from the final trilogy of Star Wars sequels). "The humor comes from the juxtaposition between Cumberbatch's gravitas and the text itself," reports Adweek, adding that the reviews were curated "using internal AI tools, to find the most oddly specific reviews on the platform." Amazon will stream Cumberbatch's bizarre ads on major platforms including TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Lyft, Uber, Disney/Hulu, Paramount, and Roku, and on several NFL football games. I remember when Amazon just chose the best funny fake reviews from customers, and then posted them on the front page of Amazon...

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"The internet is being increasingly polluted by AI generated text, images and video," argues the site for a new browser extension called Slop Evader. It promises to use Google's search API "to only return content published before Nov 30th, 2022" — the day ChatGPT launched — "so you can be sure that it was written or produced by the human hand." 404 Media calls it "a scorched earth approach that virtually guarantees your searches will be slop-free." Slop Evader was created by artist and researcher Tega Brain, who says she was motivated by the growing dismay over the tech industry's unrelenting, aggressive rollout of so-called "generative AI" — despite widespread criticism and the wider public's distaste for it. "This sowing of mistrust in our relationship with media is a huge thing, a huge effect of this synthetic media moment we're in," Brain told 404 Media, describing how tools like Sora 2 have short-circuited our ability to determine reality within a sea of artificial online junk. "I've been thinking about ways to refuse it, and the simplest, dumbest way to do that is to only search before 2022...." Currently, Slop Evader can be used to search pre-GPT archives of seven different sites where slop has become commonplace, including YouTube, Reddit, Stack Exchange, and the parenting site MumsNet. The obvious downside to this, from a user perspective, is that you won't be able to find anything time-sensitive or current — including this very website, which did not exist in 2022. The experience is simultaneously refreshing and harrowing, allowing you to browse freely without having to constantly question reality, but always knowing that this freedom will be forever locked in time — nostalgia for a human-centric world wide web that no longer exists. Of course, the tool's limitations are part of its provocation. Brain says she has plans to add support for more sites, and release a new version that uses DuckDuckGo's search indexing instead of Google's. But the real goal, she says, is prompting people to question how they can collectively refuse the dystopian, inhuman version of the internet that Silicon Valley's AI-pushers have forced on us... With enough cultural pushback, Brain suggests, we could start to see alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo adding options to filter out search results suspected of having synthetic content (DuckDuckGo added the ability to filter out AI images in search earlier this year)... But no matter what form AI slop-refusal takes, it will need to be a group effort.

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Earlier this month MasterCard noted that even Walmart now allows its customers to make purchases through ChatGPT. And after polling more than 4,000 consumers in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and UAE, they found "more than four in 10 consumers already use AI tools to help them shop, including 61% of Gen Z and 57% of millennials." Many (50% of Gen Z and 49% of millennials) say they'd even let AI handle all their gift-buying if it meant avoiding stress. Younger shoppers trust AI's taste, with 51% of Gen Z and 55% of millennials relying on it to deliver unique and thoughtful recommendations (sometimes even more than they trust themselves). The most popular uses include getting personalized product recommendations, confirming the best deal before purchasing, and summarizing thousands of reviews instantly. The bottom line: Shoppers are embracing AI as their new personal assistant — one that knows their budget, style, and patience level... If the 2025 holiday shopper could be summed up in one word, it's intentional. They're planning earlier, spending wiser and using technology to make every dollar and every gift count. The first figures are now in for the traditional "Black Friday" shopping day after Thanksgiving, and U.S. shoppers "spent a record $11.8 billion online," reports Reuters, "up 9.1% from 2024 on the year's biggest shopping day, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks 1 trillion visits that shoppers make to online retail websites..." And sure enough, this year shoppers were helped by AI: AI-powered shopping tools helped drive a surge in U.S. online spending on Black Friday, as shoppers bypassed crowded stores and turned to chatbots to compare prices and secure discounts amid concerns about tariff-driven price hikes... The AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites soared 805% compared to last year, Adobe said, when artificial intelligence tools such as Walmart's Sparky or Amazon's Rufus had not yet been launched. "Consumers are using new tools to get to what they need faster," said Suzy Davidkhanian, an analyst at eMarketer. "Gift giving can be stressful, and LLMs (large language models) make the discovery process feel quicker and more guided..." Globally, AI and agents influenced $14.2 billion in online sales on Black Friday, of which $3 billion came from the U.S. alone, according to software firm Salesforce. There's another reason shoppers turned to AI. 2025's Black Friday arrived "amid tighter budgets, unemployment nearing a four-year high, U.S. consumer confidence sagging to a seven-month low and price tags that have shoppers watching every dollar," according to the article: Discount rates also remained flat when compared to 2024, with AI helping shoppers discover the best deals, and an increase in the price tags made deeper discounts difficult for retailers... Order volumes fell 1% as average selling prices rose 7%. Consumers also purchased fewer items at checkout, with units per transaction falling 2% on a year-over-year basis, Salesforce said. The spending surge sets the stage for an even bigger Cyber Monday, projected to drive $14.2 billion in sales, up 6.3% on a year-over-year basis and the largest online shopping day of the year, Adobe said. Electronics are expected to see the deepest discounts on Cyber Monday, reaching 30% off list prices, along with strong deals on apparel and computers, Adobe said.

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"By my count, Linux has over 11% of the desktop market," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols: In StatCounter's latest US numbers, which cover through October, Linux shows up as only 3.49%. But if you look closer, "unknown" accounts for 4.21%. Allow me to make an educated guess here: I suspect those unknown desktops are actually running Linux. What else could it be? FreeBSD? Unix? OS/2? Unlikely. In addition, ChromeOS comes in at 3.67%, which strikes me as much too low. Leaving that aside, ChromeOS is a Linux variant. It just uses the Chrome web browser for its interface rather than KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, or another Linux desktop environment. Put all these together, and you get a Linux desktop market share of 11.37%... If you want to look at the broader world of end-user operating systems, including phones and tablets, Linux comes out even better. In the US, where we love our Apple iPhones, Android — yes, another Linux distro — boasts 41.71% of the market share, according to StatCounter's latest numbers. Globally, however, Android rules with 72.55% of the market. Yes, that's right, if you widen the Linux end-user operating system metric to include PC, tablets, and smartphones, you can make a reasonable argument that Linux, and not Windows, is already the top dog operating system... If you add Chrome OS (1.7%) and Android (15.8%), 23.3% of all people accessing the U.S. government's websites are Linux users. The Linux kernel's user-facing footprint is much larger than the "desktop Linux" label suggests. The article lists reasons more people might be switching to Linux, including broader hardware support and "the increased viability of gaming via Steam and Proton" — but also the rise of Digital Sovereignty initiatives. (One EU group has even created EU OS.") And finally, "not everyone is thrilled with Windows 11 being turned into an AI-agentic operating system."

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Psychology Today reports: In a study conducted in Milan, Italy, and published in November 2025, the sight of a person dressed as Batman led to a nearly doubled rate of people giving up their seat to a pregnant woman. Over the course of 138 subway rides, researchers found that people who saw "Batman" standing near the pregnant woman were far more altruistic than those who did not. Researchers are calling this the "Batman effect," suggesting a form of "involuntary" mindfulness may be at play. Noticing these subtle social cues appears to shift people's typical, automatic reactions. Most interestingly, 44 percent of the people questioned reported they did not even consciously register Batman's presence... The superhero costume serves as a visual nudge, pulling us out of our default, self-focused mode and into a more generous, attentive state. More from Futurism: Batman showing up is just one — albeit striking — way of promoting what's called "prosocial behavior," or the act of helping others around you, via introducing an unexpected event, the researchers write. "Our findings are similar to those of previous research linking present-moment awareness (mindfulness) to greater prosociality," said study lead author Francesco Pagnini, a professor of clinical psychology at the Università Cattolica in Milan, in a statement about the work. "This may create a context in which individuals become more attuned to social cues." Thanks to Black Parrot (Slashdot reader #19,622) for sharing the article.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: Italian defense company Leonardo on Thursday unveiled plans for an AI-powered shield for cities and critical infrastructure, adding to Europe's push to ramp up sovereign defense capabilities amid rising geopolitical tensions. The system, dubbed the "Michelangelo Dome" in a nod to Israel's Iron Dome and U.S. President Donald Trump's plans for a "Golden Dome," will integrate multiple defense systems to detect and neutralize threats from sea to air including missile attacks and drone swarms... Leonardo's dome will be built on what CEO Roberto Cingolani called an "open architecture" system meaning it can operate alongside any country's defense systems... Leonardo's dome will be built on what CEO Roberto Cingolani called an "open architecture" system meaning it can operate alongside any country's defense systems.

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In his mid-20s, Lu Heng "got an idea that has made him a lot richer," writes the Wall Street Journal. He scooped up 10 million unused IP addresses, mostly form Africa, and then leases them to companies, mostly outside Africa, "that need them badly." [A]round half of internet traffic continues to use IPv4, because changing to IPv6 can be expensive and complex and many older devices still need IPv4. Companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Google still want IPv4 addresses because their cloud-hosting businesses need them as bridges between the IPv4 and IPv6 worlds... Africa, which has been slower to develop internet infrastructure than the rest of the world, is the only region that still has some of the older addresses to dole out... He searches for IPv4 addresses that aren't being used — by ISPs or anyone else that holds them — and uses his Hong Kong-based company, Larus, to lease them out to others. In 2013, Lu registered a new company in the Seychelles, an African archipelago in the Indian Ocean, to apply for IP addresses from Africa's internet registry, called the African Network Information Centre, or Afrinic. Between 2013 and 2016, Afrinic granted that company, Cloud Innovation, 6.2 million IPv4 addresses. That's more addresses than are assigned to Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. A single IPv4 address can be worth about $50 on its transfer to a company like Larus, which leases it onward for around 5% to 10% of that value annually. Larus and its affiliate companies, Lu said, control just over 10 million IPv4 addresses. The architects of the internet don't appear to have contemplated the possibility that anyone would seek to monetize IP addresses... Lu's activities triggered a showdown with Africa's internet registry. In 2020, after what it said was an internal review, Afrinic sent letters to Lu and others seeking to reclaim the IP addresses they held. In Lu's case, Afrinic said he shouldn't be using the addresses outside Africa. Lu responded that he wasn't violating rules in place when he got the addresses... After some back-and-forth, Lu sued Afrinic in Mauritius to keep his allocated addresses, eventually filing dozens of lawsuits... One of the lawsuits that Lu filed in Mauritius prompted a court there to freeze Afrinic's bank accounts in July 2021, effectively paralyzing the organization and eventually sending it into receivership. The receivership choked off distributions of new IPv4 addresses, leaving the continent's service providers struggling to expand capacity... In September, Afrinic elected a new board. Since then, some internet-service providers have been granted IPv4 addresses.

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The Free Software Foundation describes how "After months of preparation and excitement, we finally came together on November 21 for a global online hackathon to support free software projects and "put a spotlight on the difficult and often thankless work that free software hackers carry out..." Based on how many of you dropped in over the weekend and were incredibly engaged in the important work that is improving free software, either as a spectator or as a participant, this goal was accomplished. And it's all thanks to you! Friday started a little rocky with a datacenter outage affecting most FSF services. Participants spread out to work on six different free software projects over forty-eight hours as our tech team worked to restore all FSF sites with the help and support of the community. Over three hundred folks were tuned in at a time, some to participate in the hackathon and others to follow the progress being made. As a community, we got a lot done over the weekend... It was amazing to see so many of you take a little (or a lot of!) time out of your busy schedules to improve free software, and we're incredibly grateful for each and every one of you. It really energizes us and shows us how much we can accomplish when we work together over even just a couple days. Not only was this a fantastic sight to see because of the work we got done, but it was also a very fitting way to conclude our fortieth anniversary celebration events. Free software has been and always will be a community effort, one that continues to get better and better because of the dedicated developers, contributors, and users who ensure its existence. Thank you for celebrating forty years of the FSF and fighting for a freer future for us all.

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Almost two-thirds of registered U.S. voters "say that a four-year college degree isn't worth the cost," according to a new NBC News poll: Just 33% agree a four-year college degree is "worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime," while 63% agree more with the concept that it's "not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off." In 2017, U.S. adults surveyed were virtually split on the question — 49% said a degree was worth the cost and 47% said it wasn't. When CNBC asked the same question in 2013 as part of its All American Economic Survey, 53% said a degree was worth it and 40% said it was not. The eye-popping shift over the last 12 years comes against the backdrop of several major trends shaping the job market and the education world, from exploding college tuition prices to rapid changes in the modern economy — which seems once again poised for radical transformation alongside advances in AI... Remarkably, less than half of voters with college degrees see those degrees as worth the cost: 46% now, down from 63% in 2013... The upshot is that interest in technical, vocational and two-year degree programs has soared. "The 20-point decline over the last 12 years among those who say a degree is worth it — from 53% in 2013 to 33% now — is reflected across virtually every demographic group."

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