Monday long-time Slashdot reader denelson83 wrote: The crowdsourced, widely-used map database OpenStreetMap has had a hardware failure at its upstream ISP in Amsterdam and has been put into a protective read-only mode to avoid loss or corruption of data. .
The outage had started Sunday December 15 at 4:00AM (GMT/UTC), but by Tuesday they'd posted a final update: Our new ISP is up and running and we have started migrating our servers across to it. If all goes smoothly we hope to have all services back up and running this evening...

We have dual redundant links via separate physical hardware from our side to our Tier 1 ISP. We unexpectedly discovered their equipment is a single point failure. Their extended outage is an extreme disappointment to us.

We are an extremely small team. The OSMF budget is tiny and we could definitely use more help. Real world experience... Ironically we signed a contract with a new ISP in the last few days. Install is on-going (fibre runs, modules & patching) and we expect to run old and new side-by-side for 6 months. Significantly better resilience (redundant ISP side equipment, VRRP both ways, multiple upstream peers... 2x diverse 10G fibre links).
OpenStreetMap celebrated its 20th anniversary in August, with a TechCrunch profile reminding readers the site gives developers "geographic data and maps so they can rely a little less on the proprietary incumbents in the space," reports TechCrunch, adding "Yes, that mostly means Google."

OpenStreetMap starts with "publicly available and donated aerial imagery and maps, sourced from governments and private organizations such as Microsoft" — then makes them better: Today, OpenStreetMap claims more than 10 million contributors who map out and fine-tune everything from streets and buildings, to rivers, canyons and everything else that constitutes our built and natural environments... Contributors can manually add and edit data through OpenStreetMap's editing tools, and they can even venture out into the wild and map a whole new area by themselves using GPS, which is useful if a new street crops up, for example...

OpenStreetMap's Open Database License allows any third-party to use its data with the appropriate attribution (though this attribution doesn't always happen). This includes big-name corporations such as Apple and VC-backed unicorns like MapBox, through a who's who of tech companies, including Uber and Strava... More recently, the Overture Maps Foundation — an initiative backed by Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and TomTom — has leaned heavily on OpenStreetMap data as part of its own efforts to build a viable alternative to Google's walled mapping garden.
The article notes that OpenStreetMap is now overseen by the U.K.-based nonprofit OpenStreetMap Foundation (supported mainly by donations and memberships), with just one employee — a system engineer — "and a handful of contractors who provide administrative and accounting support."

In August its original founder Steve Coast, returned to the site for a special blog post on its 20th anniversary: OpenStreetMap has grown exponentially or quadratically over the last twenty years depending on the metric you're interested in... The story isn't so much about the data and technology, and it never was. It's the people... OpenStreetMap managed to map the world and give the data away for free for almost no money at all. It managed to sidestep almost all the problems that Wikipedia has by virtue of only representing facts not opinions. The project itself is remarkable. And it's wonderful that so many are in love with it.
"Two decades ago, I knew that a wiki map of the world would work," Coast writes. "It seemed obvious in light of the success of Wikipedia and Linux..."

"More than a decade after the advent of the 3D-printed gun as an icon of libertarianism and a gun control nightmare, police say one of those homemade plastic weapons has now been found in the hands of perhaps the world's most high-profile alleged killer," Wired wrote this month: For the community of DIY gunsmiths who have spent years honing those printable firearm models, in fact, the handgun police claim Luigi Mangione used to fatally shoot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is as recognizable as the now-famous alleged shooter himself — and shows just how practical and lethal those weapons have become. In the 24 hours since police released a photo of what they say is Mangione's gun following the 26-year-old's arrest Monday, the online community devoted to 3D-printed firearms has been quick to identify the suspected murder weapon as a particular model of printable "ghost gun" — a homemade weapon with no serial number, created by assembling a mix of commercial and DIY parts. The gun appears to be a Chairmanwon V1, a tweak of a popular partially 3D-printed Glock-style design known as the FMDA 19.2 — an acronym that stands for the libertarian slogan "Free Men Don't Ask."

The FMDA 19.2, released in 2021, is a relatively old model by 3D-printed-gun standards, says one gunsmith who goes by the first name John and the online handle Mr. Snow Makes... Despite its simple description by law enforcement and others as a "3D-printed pistol," the FMDA 19.2 is only partially 3D printed. That makes it fundamentally different from fully 3D-printed guns like the "Liberator," the original one-shot, 3D-printed pistol Wilson debuted in 2013. Instead, firearms built from designs like the FMDA 19.2 are assembled from a combination of commercially produced parts like barrels, slides, and magazines — sometimes sold in kits — and a homemade frame. Because that frame, often referred to as a "lower receiver" or "lower," is the regulated body of the gun, 3D-printing that piece or otherwise creating it at home allows DIY gunmakers to skirt gun-control laws and build ghost guns with no serial number, obtained with no background check or waiting period.
Chairmanwon "instantly recognized the gun seized from the suspect..." reported USA Today. As a photo circulated online the fake New Jersey driver's license and 3D-printed gun police found on Luigi Mangione, he spotted the tell-tale stippling pattern on the firearm's grip. "It's mine lol," the man, known as "Chairmanwon" quipped on X Dec. 9. Then he quickly deleted the post...

No federal laws ban 3D-printed or privately made firearms. But as police agencies have increasingly recovered untraceable homemade guns at crime scenes, some state legislatures have passed stricter rules... If authorities can prove Mangione downloaded and printed his firearm in Pennsylvania or New York, he could face additional gun charges. Fifteen states now require serial numbers on homemade parts or ban 3D printing them. Some even ban the distribution of 3D printing instructions.

President Biden and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives added regulations in 2022 that say the ghost gun parts kits themselves qualify as "firearms" that should be regulated by the Gun Control Act. ["Commercial manufacturers of the kits will have to be licensed and must add serial numbers on the kits' frame or receiver," USA Today reported earlier. ] Gunmakers challenged those rules at the Supreme Court. In October, the court heard oral arguments, but justices signaled they were leaning toward upholding the rules.
Rolling Stone tries to assess the results: In recent years, crimes involving ghost guns seem to have abated across much of the United States. Ghost gun recoveries by police in New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other major cities dropped by as much as 25 percent between 2022 and 2023, and the most prolific maker of the kits used to build the untraceable weapons closed its doors this year. The likely cause is a federal rule change requiring the kits to be serialized — a stipulation that forces sellers to conduct background checks on their customers.
Monday Luigi Mangione will appear in court for arraignment on state murder charges, reports USA Today: Mangione had been expected to face arraignment on the state charges Thursday, but the proceedings were postponed after federal authorities announced they were also bringing charges, and he was whisked to a federal courthouse instead in a move that appeared to shock Mangione's defense team... Federal authorities unsealed a criminal complaint against Mangione that included four separate charges: murder using a firearm, two counts of interstate stalking and a firearms count. The death penalty was abolished in New York state, but the federal charges could bring a death sentence if Mangione is convicted. The charge of murder using a firearm carries a maximum possible sentence of death or life in prison. The other federal charges have maximum sentences of life in prison, and the firearms charge has a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years.

An anonymous reader shared this report from NBC News: U.S. life expectancy rose last year, hitting its highest level since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The report, released Thursday, found that life expectancy at birth was 78.4 years in 2023. That's a significant rise — nearly a full year — from the life expectancy of 77.5 years in 2022. "The increase we had this year — the 0.9 year — that's unheard of prior to the pandemic," said Ken Kochanek, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics who co-authored the report. "Life expectancy in the United States never goes up or down any more than one- or two-tenths," he said. "But then when Covid happened, you had this gigantic drop, and now we have a gigantic drop in Covid. So, you have this gigantic increase in life expectancy."

From 2019 to 2021, U.S. life expectancy dropped from 78.8 years to 76.4. Covid deaths fell significantly last year: Whereas Covid was the fourth leading cause of death in 2022, it was the 10th in 2023, according to the new report. Last year, Covid was the underlying or contributing cause of more than 76,000 deaths, according to an August CDC report, compared with more than 350,000 such deaths in 2020.

The new findings are based on an analysis of death certificates from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The results showed that the overall death rate for the U.S. population decreased by 6%.
"According to the new report, the top five causes of death in the U.S. last year were heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, stroke and chronic lower respiratory diseases. Death rates fell for nine of the top 10 causes in 2023, while the rate of cancer deaths remained fairly unchanged..."

The Atlantic shares some other positive statistics, including reports that America's traffic fatalities keep declining, while drug-overdose deaths also dropped 3% between 2022 and 2023 and there was also a double-digit drop in murder rates.

"America is suddenly getting healthier," they write. "No one knows why."

On Thursday New Jersey lawmakers passed a resolution "calling on the federal government to conduct a 'rigorous and ongoing' investigation into the drone sightings in the state," reports the Associated Press: Meanwhile, federal and local authorities are warning against pointing lasers at suspected drones, because aircraft pilots are being hit in the eyes more often. Authorities also said they are concerned people might fire weapons at manned aircraft that they have mistaken for drones...

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Monday that the federal government has yet to identify any public safety or national security risks. "There are more than 1 million drones that are lawfully registered with the Federal Aviation Administration here in the United States," Kirby said. "And there are thousands of commercial, hobbyist and law enforcement drones that are lawfully in the sky on any given day. That is the ecosystem that we are dealing with." The federal government has deployed personnel and advanced technology to investigate the reports in New Jersey and other states, and is evaluating each tip reported by citizens, he said. About 100 of the more than 5,000 drone sightings reported to the FBI in recent weeks were deemed credible enough to warrant more investigation, according to a joint statement by the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense.

Speculation has raged online, with some expressing concerns the drones could be part of a nefarious plot by foreign agents or clandestine operations by the U.S. government. Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said it's unlikely the drones are engaged in intelligence gathering, given how loud and bright they are. He repeated Tuesday that the drones being reported are not being operated by the Department of Defense. Asked whether military contractors might be operating drones in the New Jersey area, Ryder rebuffed the notion, saying there are "no military operations, no military drone or experiment operations in this corridor." Ryder said additional drone-detecting technology was being moved to some military installations, including the Picatinny Arsenal...

U.S. Sen. Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat, said he has heard nothing to support the notion that the government is hiding anything. He said a lack of faith in institutions is playing a key part in the saga.

"California's population grew this year by nearly a quarter of a million residents," reports the Los Angeles Daily News, "closing in on record-high population levels the Golden State reached before the pandemic, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday."

Although "Data showed the state is growing more slowly than the country as a whole and other large states in the South..." The Census Bureau's Vintage 2024 population estimates show California's population on July 1, 2024 was 39,431,000, an increase of 233,000 from the year before, and just 125,000 short of the 2020 high point.

For Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, there are two ways to look at the new data. "There's the optimistic look that in the past year, we have seen the population increase... bigger increases than we have in a decade, so I do think there is some truth to the narrative of folks coming back to California," he said. On the other hand, California is still far behind the population gains made in states like Florida and Texas. "We are still trying to claw back to where we were pre-pandemic," Bellisario said. "It's going to take us a few more years to get to solid population growth numbers." California had the third most new residents, with the population growing by about 0.59%. Florida and Texas saw more new residents, and top the list of states with the largest increases by raw numbers...

Overall, the population of the entire country grew by about 0.9%, slightly outpacing California's growth.
A graph accompanying the article shows California's population increasing steadily until the pandemic — which produced a sudden drop that the article seems to attribute to pandemic restrictions (including restrictions on entering the country). And then this year there was a sudden spike back to nearly where it was before the pandemic.

The Linux Foundation partnered with GitHub and Harvard's Laboratory for Innovation Science to research organization-driven investments in open source software — the how and the why — surveying over 500 organizations around the world.

So what are the highlights from the published report? The median responding organization invests $520,600 (2023 USD) of annual value to OSS.

Responding organizations annually invest $1.7 billion in open source, which can be extrapolated to estimate that approximately $7.7 billion is invested across the entire open source ecosystem annually. 86% of investment is in the form of contribution labor by employees and contractors working for the funding organization, with the remaining 14% being direct financial contributions.
But the ultimate goal of the research was ideas "to improve monitoring and investing in open source" (to "create a more sustainable and impactful open source economy...") In this research, we discovered a few key obstacles that make this kind of data capture challenging... [O]rganizations have blind spots when it comes to the specifics of their contributions. Many respondents knew where they contribute, but only a portion of those could answer how many labor hours went into their OSS contributions or the percentage of budget that went to OSS. Second, the decentralized nature of organizational contributions, without explicit policies or centralized groups that encourage and organize this effort, make reporting even more challenging...

[W]e recommend that policies and practices are put in place to encourage employees to self-report their contributions, and do so using their employee email addresses to leave fingerprints on their work. We also suggest that open source work is consolidated under a single banner, such as an Open Source Program Office (OSPO). Finally, we suggest incorporating contribution monitoring into the organization's pipeline. We developed a toolkit to help improve data capture and monitoring.

Last week, startup Embodied announced it was closing down, and its product, an $800 robot for kids ages 5 to 10, would soon be bricked. Now, in a blog post published on Friday, CEO Paolo Pirjanian shared that Embodied's technical team is working on a way to open-source the robot, ensuring it can continue operating indefinitely. Ars Technica reports: The notice says that after releasing OpenMoxie, Embodied plans to release "all necessary code and documentation" for developers and users. Pirjanian said that an over-the-air (OTA) update is now available for download that will allow previously purchased Moxies to support OpenMoxie. The executive noted that Embodied is still "seeking long-term answers" but claimed that the update is a "vital first step" to "keep the door open" for the robot's continued functionality.

At this time, OpenMoxie isn't available and doesn't have a release date. Embodied's wording also seems careful to leave an opening for OpenMoxie to not actually release; although, the company seems optimistic. However, there's also a risk of users failing to update their robots in time and properly. Embodied noted that it won't be able to support users who have trouble with the update or with OpenMoxie post-release. Updating the robot includes connecting to Wi-Fi and leaving it on for at least an hour. "It is extremely important that you update your Moxie with this OTA as soon as possible because once the cloud servers stop working you will not be able to update your robot," the document reads. Embodied hasn't said when exactly its cloud servers still stop working.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Malaysia has agreed to resume the search for the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, its transport minister said on Friday, more than 10 years after it disappeared in one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries. Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

[...] MH370's last transmission was about 40 minutes after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. The pilots signed off as the plane entered Vietnamese air space over the Gulf of Thailand and soon after its transponder was turned off. "Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin," Transport Minister Anthony Loke told a press conference. "We hope this time will be positive, that the wreckage will be found and give closure to the families."

Further reading: Could Sea Explosions Finally Locate the 2014 Crash Site of Flight MH370?

Five years ago, journalist and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow published a short story that explored the radicalization of individuals denied healthcare coverage. As The Guardian notes in a recent article, the story "might seem eerily similar" to the recent shooting of UnitedHealthcare's CEO. While it appears that the alleged shooter never read the story, Doctorow said: "I feel like the most important thing about that is that it tells you that this is not a unique insight." Doctorow continued: "that the question that I had is a question other people have had." As an activist in favor of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, it's important to note that Doctorow advocates for systemic reform through collective action rather than violence. Here's an excerpt from the The Guardian's article: In Radicalized, one of four novellas comprising a science fiction novel of the same name, Doctorow charts the journey of a man who joins an online forum for fathers whose partners or children have been denied healthcare coverage by their insurers after his wife is diagnosed with breast cancer and denied coverage for an experimental treatment. Slowly, over the course of the story, the men of the forum become radicalized by their grief and begin plotting -- and executing -- murders of health insurance executives and politicians who vote against universal healthcare.

In the wake of the December 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which unleashed a wave of outrage at the U.S. health system, Doctorow's novella has been called prescient. When the American Prospect magazine republished the story last week, it wrote: "It is being republished with permission for reasons that will become clear if you read it." But Doctorow doesn't think he was on to something that no one else in the U.S. understood. [...]

In one part of the story, a man whose young daughter died after an insurance company refused to pay for brain surgery bombs the insurer's headquarters. "It's not vengeance. I don't have a vengeful bone in my body. Nothing I do will bring Lisa back, so why would I want revenge? This is a public service. There's another dad just like me," he shares in a video message on the forum. "And right now, that dad is talking to someone at Cigna, or Humana, or BlueCross BlueShield, and the person on the phone is telling that dad that his little girl has. To. Die. Someone in that building made the decision to kill my little girl, and everyone else in that building went along with it. Not one of them is innocent, and not one of them is afraid. They're going to be afraid, after this."

"Because they must know in their hearts," he goes on. "Them, their lobbyists, the men in Congress who enabled them. They're parents. They know. Anyone who hurt their precious children, they'd hunt that person down like a dog. The only amazing thing about any of this is that no one has done it yet. I'm going to make a prediction right now, that even though I'm the first, I sure as hell will not be the last. There's more to come."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCMag: Amazon employees are striking after the online retail giant missed a deadline to begin negotiations for a union contract. Roughly 10,000 employees have gone on strike as of Dec. 19. Workers are forming picket lines in New York City, Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco, and Skokie, IL. Per a press release from the Teamsters, employees at other facilities have authorized strikes as well. Local unions are also putting up picket lines at hundreds of fulfillment centers nationwide, which could cause package delays ahead of the holidays.

"If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon's insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it," says Teamsters General President Sean M. O'Brien. "These greedy executives had every chance to show decency and respect for the people who make their obscene profits possible. Instead, they've pushed workers to the limit and now they're paying the price. This strike is on them."

The Teamsters say this is "the largest strike against Amazon in US history." Amazon tells CBS News it doesn't expect it to impact its operations; the company employs 1.5 million people in its warehouses and corporate offices. The workers claim that Amazon has engaged in illegal anti-union behavior while failing to provide employees with better pay and better working conditions. "They talk a big game about taking care of their workers, but when it comes down to it, Amazon does not respect us and our right to negotiate for better working conditions and wages," said Gabriel Irizarry, a driver at DIL7 in Skokie, IL. "We can't even afford to pay our bills." For its part, Amazon claims the Teamsters have "continued to intentionally mislead the public" about the situation.

An Amazon spokesperson told NBC News: "The truth is that Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union."

You can read the Teamster's press release here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The newest online-only school greenlighted (PDF) by the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools comes with a twist: The academic curriculum will be taught entirely by AI. Charter schools -- independently operated but publicly funded -- typically get greater autonomy compared to traditional public schools when it comes to how subjects are taught. But Unbound Academy's application, which proposes an "AI-driven adaptive learning technology" that "condenses academic instruction into a two-hour window," is a first for the model. (Unbound's founders have been running a similar program at a "high-end private school" in Texas, which appears to be in-person.)

Unbound's approach leans on edtech platforms like IXL and Khan Academy, and students engage with "interactive, AI-powered platforms that continuously adjust to their individual learning pace and style." There will be humans, just fewer of them, and maybe not actual accredited teachers: It will adopt a "human-in-the-loop" approach with "skilled guides" monitoring progress who can provide "targeted interventions" and coaching for each student. Academic instruction is whittled down to just two hours. The remainder of the students' day will include "life-skills workshops" covering areas such as critical thinking, creative problem-solving, financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting, and entrepreneurship. The online-only school targets students from fourth to eighth grades.

U.S. data center power demand could nearly triple in the next three years, and consume as much as 12% of the country's electricity, as the industry undergoes an AI transformation, according to an unpublished Department of Energy-backed report seen by Reuters. The publication adds: The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, which is expected to be released on Friday, comes as the U.S. power industry and government agencies attempt to understand how the sudden rise of Big Tech's data-center demand will affect electrical grids, power bills and the climate.

By 2028, data-center annual energy use could reach between 74 and 132 gigawatts, or between 6.7% and 12% of total U.S. electricity consumption, according to the Berkeley Lab report. The industry standard-setting report included ranges that depended partly on the availability and demand for a type of AI chip known as GPUs. Currently, data centers make up a little more than 4% of the country's power load. "This really signals to us where the frontier is in terms of growing energy demand in the U.S.," said Avi Shultz, director of the DOE's Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has unveiled stricter criteria for food manufacturers to label their products as "healthy," marking the first major update to the definition in 30 years.

The new rule requires products to meet specific thresholds for nutrients while limiting sodium, saturated fat and added sugars. Under the guidelines, foods must contain minimum amounts of nutrient-dense ingredients like fruits, vegetables, or whole grains. Saturated fats cannot exceed 5% of daily recommended value, while sodium is capped at 10%. Manufacturers have until February 2028 to comply with the regulations.

Academic writing has become significantly less readable over the past 80 years, particularly in humanities and social sciences, according to an analysis of 347,000 PhD abstracts by The Economist. Using the Flesch reading-ease test, researchers found that readability scores in humanities and social sciences plunged from 37 in the 1940s to 18 in the 2020s. The decline was observed across all disciplines, with humanities and social sciences becoming as complex as natural sciences by the 1990s. The study, examining abstracts from 1812 to 2023, covered English-language doctoral theses from British universities.

A bipartisan group of senators is calling out the auto industry for its "hypocritical, profit-driven" opposition to national right-to-repair legislation, while also selling customer data to insurance companies and other third-party interests. From a report: In a letter sent to the CEOs of the top automakers, the trio of legislators -- Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Josh Hawley (R-MO) -- urge them to better protect customer privacy, while also dropping their opposition to state and national right-to-repair efforts.

"Right-to-repair laws support consumer choice and prevent automakers from using restrictive repair laws to their financial advantage," the senators write. "It is clear that the motivation behind automotive companies' avoidance of complying with right-to-repair laws is not due to a concern for consumer security or privacy, but instead a hypocritical, profit-driven reaction."