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Overfishing has led to a collapse in the eastern Baltic cod population, but over the past three decades the size of the fish themselves has also been dramatically and mysteriously shrinking. From a report: Now scientists have uncovered genomic evidence that intensive fishing has driven rapid evolutionary changes that have contributed to these fish roughly halving in average body length since the 1990s. The "shrinking" of cod, from a median mature body length of 40cm in 1996 to 20cm in 2019, has a genetic basis and human activities have left a profound mark on the population's DNA, the study concluded. [...] The dramatic shrinking of cod has been a source of concern for several decades, but it was not clear to what extent the phenomenon has been driven by environmental factors such as hypoxic conditions caused by algal blooms, pollution and more extreme marine seasonal temperature changes. [...] The study used an archive of tiny ear bones, called otoliths, of 152 cod, caught in the Bornholm Basin between 1996 and 2019. Otoliths -- a bit like tree rings -- record annual growth, making them valuable biological timekeepers.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: One of the interesting projects engaged in by Mozilla that directly wasn't related to their web browser efforts was DeepSpeech, an embedded/offline speech-to-text engine. To not much surprise given the lack of activity in recent years, last week they finally and formally discontinued the open-source project. Mozilla DeepSpeech was a promising speech-to-text engine with great performance for real-time communication even when running on Raspberry Pi SBCs and other low-power systems.

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Terabytes per second of bandwidth, miles of copper cabling, all crammed into the back of a single rack

Analysis If you thought AI networks weren't complicated enough, the rise of rack-scale architectures from the likes of Nvidia, AMD, and soon Intel has introduced a new layer of complexity.…

Senator Bernie Sanders called for a four-day work week during a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, arguing that AI productivity gains should benefit workers rather than just technology companies and corporate executives. Sanders proposed reducing the standard work week to 32 hours when AI tools increase worker productivity, rather than eliminating jobs entirely. "Technology is gonna work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations," Sanders said. "You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right? Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm gonna reduce your work week to 32 hours."

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It's meant to cut down on false positives but could be a trove for mischief-makers

Ring doorbells and cameras are using AI to "learn the routines of your residence," via a new feature called Video Descriptions.…

The City of Lyon will replace Microsoft's office suite with free office software, including OnlyOffice for office work and Linux and PostgreSQL for systems and databases. The city aims to "no longer be dependent on American software solutions and acquire true digital sovereignty," according to an official statement.

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New UI library has 23 years of history – and unexpected roots

Cosmoe is a modern C++ UI library, but it's also a new iteration of a project with roots in one of the most elegant GUIs ever written.…

A Gallup and Walton Family Foundation poll found 6 in 10 US teachers in K-12 public schools used AI tools for work during the past school year, with higher adoption rates among high school educators and early-career teachers. The survey of more than 2,000 teachers nationwide conducted in April found that those using AI tools weekly estimate saving about six hours per week. About 8 in 10 teachers using AI tools report time savings on creating worksheets, assessments, quizzes and administrative work. About 6 in 10 said AI improves their work quality when modifying student materials or providing feedback. However, approximately half of teachers worry student AI use will diminish teens' critical thinking abilities and independent problem-solving persistence.

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A bottomless appetite for tracking people as "objects"

A new study shows academic computer vision papers feeding surveillance-enabling patents jumped more than fivefold from the 1990s to the 2010s.…

Who is the third party that does the thing in our thing? Yep. Attacks explode over past year

The vast majority of global businesses are handling at least one material supply chain attack per year, but very few are doing enough to counter the growing threat.…

theodp writes: The job of the future might already be past its prime," writes The Atlantic's Rose Horowitch in The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting. "For years, young people seeking a lucrative career were urged to go all in on computer science. From 2005 to 2023, the number of comp-sci majors in the United States quadrupled. All of which makes the latest batch of numbers so startling. This year, enrollment grew by only 0.2 percent nationally, and at many programs, it appears to already be in decline, according to interviews with professors and department chairs. At Stanford, widely considered one of the country's top programs, the number of comp-sci majors has stalled after years of blistering growth. Szymon Rusinkiewicz, the chair of Princeton's computer-science department, told me that, if current trends hold, the cohort of graduating comp-sci majors at Princeton is set to be 25 percent smaller in two years than it is today. The number of Duke students enrolled in introductory computer-science courses has dropped about 20 percent over the past year." "But if the decline is surprising, the reason for it is fairly straightforward: Young people are responding to a grim job outlook for entry-level coders. In recent years, the tech industry has been roiled by layoffs and hiring freezes. The leading culprit for the slowdown is technology itself. Artificial intelligence has proved to be even more valuable as a writer of computer code than as a writer of words. This means it is ideally suited to replacing the very type of person who built it. A recent Pew study found that Americans think software engineers will be most affected by generative AI. Many young people aren't waiting to find out whether that's true." Meanwhile, writing in the Communications of the ACM, Orit Hazzan and Avi Salmon ask: Should Universities Raise or Lower Admission Requirements for CS Programs in the Age of GenAI? "This debate raises a key dilemma: should universities raise admission standards for computer science programs to ensure that only highly skilled problem-solvers enter the field, lower them to fill the gaps left by those who now see computer science as obsolete due to GenAI, or restructure them to attract excellent candidates with diverse skill sets who may not have considered computer science prior to the rise of GenAI, but who now, with the intensive GenAI and vibe coding tools supporting programming tasks, may consider entering the field?

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U.S. banks have failed to prevent mass-scale money laundering in the face of approximately $44 billion per year in pig-butchering scams conducted by Asian crime syndicates, according to a ProPublica investigation. Chinese-language Telegram channels openly advertise rental of U.S. bank accounts to scammers who use them to move victims' cash into cryptocurrency. Bank of America allowed hundreds of unverified customers to open accounts, prosecutors alleged, including 176 customers who claimed the same small home as their address. Major financial institutions whose accounts pig-butchering scammers have exploited include Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, HSBC and Wells Fargo. The scams typically involve fake cryptocurrency trading platforms that convince victims to wire money to seemingly legitimate business accounts. Banks are reluctant to share account information with each other even after identifying suspicious activity, and "no real standards" exist for what banks must do to detect fraud or money laundering.

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Millions of customers left speechless

Britain's Three mobile network has suffered a major outage, with voice calls out of action and limitations on texting.…

Cloud and AI demand propel rapid buildout as on-prem share drops to 22%

Hyperscale operators are expected to account for 61 percent of all datacenter capacity by 2030, thanks in part to the growth of cloud services and rising demand for compute to feed AI.…

The HDMI Forum has officially finalized HDMI 2.2, doubling bandwidth from 48 GB/s to 96 GB/s compared to the current HDMI 2.1 standard. The specification enables 16K resolution at 60 Hz and 12K at 120 Hz with chroma subsampling, while supporting uncompressed 4K at 240 Hz with 12-bit color depth and uncompressed 8K at 60 Hz. The new standard requires "Ultra96" certified cables with clear HDMI Forum branding to achieve full bandwidth capabilities. HDMI 2.2's 96 GB/s throughput surpasses DisplayPort 2.1b UHBR20's 80 GB/s maximum. The specification maintains backwards compatibility with existing devices and cables, operating at the lowest common denominator when mixed with older hardware. HDMI 2.2 introduces a Latency Indication Protocol to improve audio-video synchronization in complex home theater setups.

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Twentysomethings claimed to be linked to spate of high-profile cybercrimes

The Paris police force's cybercrime brigade (BL2C) has arrested a further four men as part of a long-running investigation into the criminals behind BreachForums.…

A groundbreaking stem cell treatment developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals has allowed 10 out of 12 patients with severe type 1 diabetes to stop insulin therapy after one year. While the trial included some side effects and two unrelated deaths, the results mark a major step forward and have progressed to phase 3 clinical testing. ScienceAlert reports: The pancreas's islet cells are responsible for maintaining most of our bodies' insulin levels. Donor transplants of healthy versions of these cells have shown promise in treating type 1 diabetes in the past, but multiple donors are required, and donors are rare. So University of Toronto surgeon Trevor Reichman and colleagues infused 12 patients with islet cells derived from human stem cells in a treatment known as zimislecel. The patients also received immunosuppressive treatment before and after their zimislecel infusion. The islets not only produced insulin inside their bodies, but they did so at safe levels, reducing the patients' dependence on costly doses of insulin. "These findings showed that zimislecel islet cells were functional and self-regulated appropriately," the researchers write in their paper. The mild to moderate side-effects, including decreased kidney function and the anticipated drop in immune cells, were all linked with the immunosuppressive therapy. Sadly, two additional participants died during the trial; one from an infection arising from surgery and the other from complications due to an unrelated condition. As there were no serious adverse events attributed to the new islet cell therapy, the clinical trials are have progressed into phase 3. "These findings provide evidence that pancreatic islets can be effectively produced from pluripotent stem cells and used to treat type 1 diabetes," Reichman and team conclude. The research has been published in the journal NEJM.

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Australia's eSafety Commissioner has urged the government to deny YouTube an exemption from upcoming child safety regulations, citing research showing it exposes more children to harmful content than any other platform. YouTube pushed back, calling the commissioner's stance inconsistent with government data and parental feedback. "The quarrel adds an element of uncertainty to the December rollout of a law being watched by governments and tech leaders around the world as Australia seeks to become the first country to fine social media firms if they fail to block users aged under 16," reports Reuters. From the report: The centre-left Labor government of Anthony Albanese has previously said it would give YouTube a waiver, citing the platform's use for education and health. Other social media companies such as Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok have argued such an exemption would be unfair. eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she wrote to the government last week to say there should be no exemptions when the law takes effect. She added that the regulator's research found 37% of children aged 10 to 15 reported seeing harmful content on YouTube -- the most of any social media site. [...] YouTube, in a blog post, accused Inman Grant of giving inconsistent and contradictory advice, which discounted the government's own research which found 69% of parents considered the video platform suitable for people under 15. "The eSafety commissioner chose to ignore this data, the decision of the Australian Government and other clear evidence from teachers and parents that YouTube is suitable for younger users," wrote Rachel Lord, YouTube's public policy manager for Australia and New Zealand. Inman Grant, asked about surveys supporting a YouTube exemption, said she was more concerned "about the safety of children and that's always going to surpass any concerns I have about politics or being liked or bringing the public onside". A spokesperson for Communications Minister Anika Wells said the minister was considering the online regulator's advice and her "top priority is making sure the draft rules fulfil the objective of the Act and protect children from the harms of social media."

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Learning from the lessons of the past

interview Anuj Kapur, CEO of DevOps darling CloudBees, reckons that AI could retest the founding assumptions of DevOps as a whole, but warns against the risk of creating black-boxed code in the pursuit of greater efficiency. He also says that some customers who rushed into AI-generated code for fear of missing out (FOMO) are starting to slow down and be more considered.…

Intel is shutting down its small automotive division and laying off most of its staff in that group as part of broader cost -cutting efforts to refocus on core businesses like client computing and data centers. Oregon Live reports: "Intel plans to wind down the Intel architecture automotive business," the company told employees Tuesday morning in a message viewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive. The company said it will fulfill existing commitments to customers but will lay off "most" employees working in Intel's automotive group. "As we have said previously, we are refocusing on our core client and data center portfolio to strengthen our product offerings and meet the needs of our customers," Intel said in a written statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive. "As part of this work, we have decided to wind down the automotive business within our client computing group. We are committed to ensuring a smooth transition for our customers." Automotive technology isn't one of Intel's major businesses and the company doesn't report the segment's revenue or employment. But online, the company boasts that 50 million vehicles use Intel processors. Intel says its chips can help enable electric vehicles, provide information to drivers and optimize vehicles' performance. Intel also owns a majority stake in the Israeli company Mobileye, which develops technology for self-driving cars. It doesn't appear the closure of Intel's automotive group will directly affect Mobileye's operations.

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