Linux fréttir

NBC News reports: Eating fewer calories appears to slow the pace of aging and increase longevity in healthy adults, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature Aging. The study, which was funded by the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, is the first-ever randomized controlled trial that looked at the long-term impact of calorie restriction. It adds to an already large body of evidence that a calorie-restricted diet can provide substantial health benefits, including delayed aging, said the study's senior author, Dan Belsky, who is assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. "The main take-home of our study is that it is possible to slow the pace of biological aging and that it may be possible to achieve that slowing through modification of lifestyle and behavior," Belsky said. In a phase 2 clinical trial, which ran for two years, 220 adults were randomized to cut their caloric intake by as much as 25% — 500 calories for people who generally consume 2,000 calories a day — or to make no changes to their diet. The participants had a body mass index, or BMI, ranging from 22 to 27.... Dr. Evan Hadley, director of the geriatrics and clinical gerontology division at the National Institute of Aging, said that most people in the calorie-restriction group only ended up cutting their daily caloric intake by about 12%. "But that 12% was enough to have significant changes," he said.... The researchers found that people who cut their calories slowed the pace of their aging by 2% to 3%, compared to people who were on a normal diet. That translates, Belsky said, to a 10% to 15% reduction in the likelihood of dying early. "We all have the power to change the trajectories of aging," he said. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the story.

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A Rust-based re-implementation of GNU core utilities like cp and mv is "reaching closer to parity with the widely-used GNU upstream and becoming capable of taking on more real-world uses," reports Phoronix: Debian developer Sylvestre Ledru [also an engineering director at Mozilla] began working on uutils during the COVID-19 pandemic and presented last week at FOSDEM 2023 on his Coreutils replacement effort. With uutils growing into increasingly good shape, it's been packaged up by many Linux distributions and is also used now by "a famous social network via the Yocto project...." The goals with uutils are to try to create a drop-in replacement for GNU Coreutils, strive for good cross-platform support, and easy testing. Ledru's initial goals were about being able to boot Debian, running the most popular packages, building key open-source software, and all-around it's been panning out to be a great success.... [M]ore performance optimizations are to come along with other work for compatibility against the GNU tools and implementing some still missing options in different programs

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Two non-profit news site, the Markup and Grist, have co-published their investigation into how big tech rewrote America's first cellphone repair law. "That New York passed any electronics right-to-repair bill is 'huge,' Repair.org executive director Gay Gordon-Byrne told Grist. But 'it could have been huger' if not for tech industry interference." The passage of the Digital Fair Repair Act last June reportedly caught the tech industry off guard, but it had time to act before Governor Kathy Hochul would sign it into law. Corporate lobbyists went to work, pressing for exemptions and changes that would water the bill down. They were largely successful: While the bill Hochul signed in late December remains a victory for the right-to-repair movement, the more corporate-friendly text gives consumers and independent repair shops less access to parts and tools than the original proposal called for. (The state Senate still has to vote to adopt the revised bill, but it's widely expected to do so.) The new version of the law applies only to devices built after mid-2023, so it won't help people to fix stuff they currently own. It also exempts electronics used exclusively by businesses or the government. All those devices are likely to become electronic waste faster than they would have had Hochul, a Democrat, signed a tougher bill. And more greenhouse gases will be emitted manufacturing new devices to replace broken electronics.... Jessa Jones, who founded iPad Rehab, an independent repair shop in Honeoye Falls, about 20 miles south of Rochester, New York, says the original bill included provisions that would have made it far easier for independent shops like hers to get the tools, parts, and know-how needed to make repairs. She pointed to changes that allow manufacturers to release repair tools that only work with spare parts they make, while at the same time controlling how those spare parts are used... "If you keep going down this road, allowing manufacturers to force us to use their branded parts and service, where they're allowed to tie the function of the device to their branded parts and service, that's not repair," Jones said. "That's authoritarian control." The bill's sponsor believes it could create momentum for dozens of other states trying to pass similar laws, the article points out, possibly leading ultimately to one national agreement between electronics manufacturers and the repair community. A lawmaker from another state argued that New York's law "gives us something to work from. We're going to take that now and try to do a better piece of legislation." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Z00L00K for submitting the article.

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System76 is announcing a "fully redesigned" version of its AMD-only Linux-powered "Pangolin" laptop with an upgraded memory, storage, processor, and display. 9to5Linux reports: It features the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor with up to 4.7 GHz clock speeds, 8 cores, 16 threads, and AMD Radeon 680M integrated graphics.... a 15.6-inch 144Hz Full HD (1920Ã--1080) display [using 12 integrated Radeon graphics cores] with a matte finish, a sleek magnesium alloy chassis, and promises up to 10 hours of battery life with its 70 Wh Li-Ion battery. It also features a single-color backlit US QWERTY Keyboard and a multitouch clickpad. Under the hood, the Linux-powered laptop boasts 32 GB LPDDR5 6400 MHz of RAM and it can be equipped with up to 16TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD storage. Another cool feature is the hardware camera kill switch for extra privacy.... As with all of System76's Linux-powered laptops, the all-new Pangolin comes pre-installed with System76's in-house built Pop!_OS Linux distribution featuring the GNOME-based COSMIC desktop and full disk-encryption or with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

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After Google's AI-powered chatbot Bard committed a factual error in a promotional video, Google's parent company Alphabet "lost $100 billion in market value," NPR reported Thursday morning: "Social media users quickly pointed out that the company could've fact-checked the exoplanet claim by, well, Googling it." The ad aired just hours before Google's senior executives touted Bard as the future of the company at a launch event in Paris. By Wednesday, Alphabet shares had slid as much as 9% during trading hours, balancing out by the day's close. Meanwhile, shares for Microsoft, Google's rival, rose by 3%.... Google did not respond to NPR's request for comment. In a Monday blog post, CEO Sundar Pichai said Bard will be available exclusively to "trusted testers" before releasing the engine publicly in the coming weeks. NPR published its article after Alphabet's stock had fallen roughly $6.77 on Wednesday — a drop of about 6.3%. But by Friday it had dropped another 5.4%, for a three-day drop of around 11.5%.

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Brit AI video tech caught up in pro-PRC disinformation campaign

Deepfake videos online featuring AI-generated news anchors spouting pro-Chinese government propaganda are likely the creations of a prolific disinformation crew dubbed Spamouflage.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: PayPal is pausing work on its stablecoin as regulators increase scrutiny of cryptocurrencies and a key partner on the project faces a probe by the New York State Department of Financial Services, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. PayPal had hoped to debut the stablecoin, which will be backed one for one by the dollar, in the coming weeks, Bloomberg reported, citing a person with knowledge of the matter. "We are exploring a stablecoin; if and when we seek to move forward, we will of course, work closely with relevant regulators," a PayPal spokesperson said in a statement.

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You might say this thing sucks

At first glance, TP-Link's Tapo RV10 looks a bit like a fallen Omada access point that's now leaking a mysterious substance on the floor. In reality, the white and black plastic puck is the company's entry into the robotic vacuum and mop arena.…

The US' Energy Information Agency (EIA) expects the nation's electrical grid to add more power (just under 55 GW), "and solar will be over half of it, at 54 percent," reports Ars Technica. "Another trend that's apparent is the reversal of the vast expansion in natural gas use following the development of fracking." From the report: In most areas of the country, solar is now the cheapest way to generate power, and the grid additions reflect that. The EIA also indicates that at least some of these are projects that were delayed due to pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions. As has been typical, Texas and California will account for the lion's share of the 29 GW of new capacity, with Texas alone adding 7.7 GW, and California another 4.2 GW. Another trend that's apparent is the reversal of the vast expansion in natural gas use following the development of fracking. Last year, natural gas generation accounted for 9.6 GW of the new capacity; this year, that figure is shrinking to 7.5 GW. And, strikingly, the EIA indicates that 6.2 GW of natural gas generating capacity is going to be shut down this year, meaning that there's a net growth of only 1.2 GW. Should current trends continue, we may actually see a net decline in natural gas generating capacity next year. The last big trend is the rapid growth of batteries. While these don't generate electricity, they are increasingly providing the equivalent function of a power plant, in the sense that they send power to the grid when it's needed. However you want to view them, they're booming, going from 11 percent of the new capacity last year (5.1 GW) to 17 percent this year. At 9.4 GW of new batteries, the additions have nearly doubled in just a year, pushing the new battery capacity ahead of natural gas and into second place. While it doesn't represent a trend, there's also big news for nuclear power: The last two reactors that had been under construction at the Vogtle site in Georgia will be coming online. Their operators expect that one of the 1.1 GW plants will start operating in March, and the second in December. Given the plant's history of delays, it will be no surprise if the latter slips into next year. The other major source of additions, wind power, appears to have entered a period of stagnation. It saw a burst of new construction at the start of the decade in advance of expiring tax credits. But, even though those credits were restored by the Inflation Reduction Act, construction of new facilities hasn't returned to its previous levels. Only six gigawatts of new wind are expected this year, down slightly from last year. Things may pick up in the second half of the decade as planners take the Inflation Reduction Act into account and offshore wind facilities start construction. The final piece of the story is the continued decline in coal plants. No new ones will be completed this year, and none are in planning. By contrast, nearly nine gigawatts of existing coal facilities will be shut down.

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