An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Instagram has begun testing a feature in which Meta's AI will automatically generate images of users in various situations and put them into that user's feed. One Redditor posted over the weekend that they were scrolling through Instagram and were presented an AI-generated slideshow of themselves standing in front of "an endless maze of mirrors," for example. "Used Meta AI to edit a selfie, now Instagram is using my face on ads targeted at me," the person posted. The user was shown a slideshow of AI-generated images in which an AI version of himself is standing in front of an endless "mirror maze." "Imagined for you: Mirror maze," the "location of the post reads."

"Imagine yourself reflecting on life in an endless maze of mirrors where you're the main focus," the caption of the AI images say. The Reddit user told 404 Media that at one point he had uploaded selfies of himself into Instagram's "Imagine" feature, which is Meta's AI image generation feature. People on Reddit initially did not even believe that these were real, with people posting things like "it's a fake story," and "I doubt that this is true," "this is a straight up lie lol," and "why would they do this?" The Redditor has repeatedly had to explain that, yes, this did happen. "I don't really have a reason to fake this, I posted screenshots on another thread," he said. 404 Media sent the link to the Reddit post directly to Meta who confirmed that it is real, but not an "ad."

"Once you access that feature and upload a selfie to edit, you'll start seeing these ads pop up with auto-generated images with your likeness," the Redditor told 404 Media. A Meta spokesperson told 404 Media that the images are not "ads," but are a new feature that Meta announced in September and has begun testing live. Meta AI has an "Imagine Yourself" feature in which you upload several selfies and take photos of yourself from different angles. You can then ask the AI to do things like "imagine me as an astronaut." Once this feature is enabled, Meta's AI will in some cases begin to automatically generate images of you in random scenarios that it thinks are aligned with your interests.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Defense Department said on Monday it has added Chinese tech giants including gaming and social media leader Tencent Holdings and battery maker CATL to a list of firms it says work with China's military. The list also included chip maker Changxin Memory Technologies, Quectel Wireless and drone maker Autel Robotics, according to a document published on Monday. The annually updated list (PDF) of Chinese military companies, formally mandated under U.S. law as the "Section 1260H list," designated 134 companies, according to a notice posted to the Federal Register.

U.S.-traded shares of Tencent, which is also the parent of Chinese instant messaging app WeChat, fell 8% in over-the-counter trading. Tencent said in a statement that its inclusion on the list was "clearly a mistake." It added: "We are not a military company or supplier. Unlike sanctions or export controls, this listing has no impact on our business." CATL called the designation a mistake, saying it "is not engaged in any military related activities." A Quectel spokesperson said the company "does not work with the military in any country and will ask the Pentagon to reconsider its designation, which clearly has been made in error."

While the designation does not involve immediate bans, it can be a blow to the reputations of affected companies and represents a stark warning to U.S. entities and firms about the risks of conducting business with them. It could also add pressure on the Treasury Department to sanction the companies. Two previously listed companies, drone maker DJI and Lidar-maker Hesai Technologies, both sued the Pentagon last year over their previous designations, but remain on the updated list. The Pentagon also removed six companies it said no longer met the requirements for the designation, including AI firm Beijing Megvii Technology, China Railway Construction Corporation Limited, China State Construction Group Co and China Telecommunications Corporation.

A forthcoming peer-reviewed study (PDF) from Rutgers University's Network Contagion Research Institute argues that TikTok surfaces fewer anti-CCP posts compared to Instagram and YouTube, despite higher user engagement with such content. It also found that heavy TikTok usage correlates with more favorable views of China's human rights record. The findings come a Supreme Court hearing later this week on whether the federal government can ban TikTok. Gizmodo reports: The new peer-reviewed paper, which was first reported by The Free Press, begins by examining whether content on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube related to the keywords "Tiananmen," "Tibet," "Uyghur," and "Xinjiang" tends to display pro- or anti-CCP sentiment. The researchers found that TikTok's algorithm didn't necessarily surface more pro-CCP content in response to searches for those terms, but it delivered fewer anti-CCP posts than did Instagram or YouTube and significantly more posts that were irrelevant to the subject.

In the second stage of their study, the NCRI team tested whether the lower performance of anti-CCP content was a result of less user engagement (likes and comments) with those posts. They found that TikTok users "liked or commented on anti-CCP content nearly four times as much as they liked or commented on pro-CCP content, yet the search algorithm produced nearly three times as much pro-CCP content" while there was no similar discrepancy on Instagram or YouTube.

Finally, the researchers surveyed 1,214 Americans about their social media usage and their views on China's human rights record. The more time users spent on any social media platform, the more likely they were to have favorable views of China's human rights record, the survey showed. Users were particularly more likely to have favorable views if they spent more than three hours a day using TikTok. The researchers wrote that they could not definitively conclude that spending more time on TikTok resulted in more positive views of China, but "taken together, the findings from these three studies raise the distinct possibility that TikTok is a vehicle for CCP propaganda."

More than 1.6 million Americans have been jobless for at least six months, up 50% since late 2022, despite the economy adding over two million jobs last year, Labor Department data shows.

The average job search now takes six months, primarily affecting high-paying sectors like tech, law, and media. While the 4.2% unemployment rate remains below pre-pandemic averages, job postings have dropped to one per unemployed worker from two in early 2022.

Software development, data science, and marketing roles are 20% below pre-pandemic levels, while healthcare and government sectors account for half of recent job creation. The number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits reached 1.8 million in late December, approaching post-pandemic highs, as wage growth declined to 4% from 6% during the early 2020s hiring peak.

This week New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose published his annual "Good Tech" awards to "shine the spotlight on a few tech projects that I think contributed positively to humanity."

And high on the list is "Andres Freund, and every open-source software maintainer saving us from doom." The most fun column I wrote this past year was about a Microsoft database engineer, Andres Freund, who got some odd errors while doing routine maintenance on an obscure open-source software package called xz Utils. While investigating, Freund inadvertently discovered a huge security vulnerability in the Linux operating system, which could have allowed a hacker to take control of hundreds of millions of computers and bring the world to its knees.

It turns out that much of our digital infrastructure rests on similar acts of nerdy heroism. After writing about Freund's discovery, I received tips about other near disasters involving open-source software projects, many of which were averted by sharp-eyed volunteers catching bugs and fixing critical code just in time to foil the bad guys. I could not write about them all, but this award is to say: I see you, open-source maintainers, and I thank you for your service.
Roose also acknowledges the NASA engineers who kept Voyager 1 transmitting back to earth from interstellar space — and Bluesky, "for making my social media feeds interesting again."

Roose also notes it was a big year for AI. There's a shout-out to Epoch AI, a small nonprofit research group in Spain, "for giving us reliable data on the AI boom." ("The firm maintains public databases of AI models and AI hardware, and publishes research on AI trends, including an influential report last year about whether AI models can continue to grow at their current pace. Epoch AI concluded they most likely could until 2030.") And there's also a shout-out to groups "pushing AI forward" and positive uses "to improve health care, identify new drugs and treatments for debilitating diseases and accelerate important scientific research."

• The nonprofit Arc Institute released Evo, an AI model that "can predict and generate genomic sequences, using technology similar to the kind that allows systems like ChatGPT to predict the next words in a sequence."

• A Harvard University lab led by Dr. Jeffrey Lichtman teamed with researchers from Google for "the most detailed map of a human brain sample ever created. The team used AI to map more than 150 million synapses in a tiny sample of brain tissue at nanometer-level resolution..."

• Researchers at Stanford and McMaster universities developed SyntheMol, "a generative AI model that can design new antibiotics from scratch."

It "felt like a Disneyland ride," reports CBS News. A man took a Waymo takes to the airport — only to discover the car "wouldn't stop driving around a parking lot in circles." And because the car was in motion, he also couldn't get out.

Still stuck in the car, Michael Johns — a tech-industry worker — then phoned Waymo for help. ("Has this been hacked? What's going on? I feel like I'm in the movies. Is somebody playing a joke on me?") But he also filmed the incident... "Why is this thing going in a circle? I'm getting dizzy," Johns said in a video posted on social media that has since gone viral, garnering more than two million views and interactions....

The Waymo representative was finally able to get the car under control after a few minutes, allowing him to get to the airport just in time to catch his flight back to LA. He says that the lack of empathy from the representative who attempted to help him, on top of the point that he's unsure if he was talking to a human or AI, are major concerns. "Where's the empathy? Where's the human connection to this?" Johns said while speaking with CBS News Los Angeles. "It's just, again, a case of today's digital world. A half-baked product and nobody meeting the customer, the consumers, in the middle."

Johns, who ironically works in the tech industry himself, says he would love to see services like Waymo succeed, but he has no plans to hop in for a ride until he's sure that the kinks have been fixed. In the meantime, he's still waiting for someone from Waymo to contact him in regards to his concerns, which hasn't yet happened despite how much attention his video has attracted since last week.
"My Monday was fine till i got into one of Waymo 's 'humanless' cars," he posted on LinkedIn . "I get in, buckle up ( safety first) and the saga begins.... [T]he car just went around in circles, eight circles at that..."

A Waymo spokesperson admitted they'd added about five minutes to his travel time, but then "said the software glitch had since been resolved," reports the Los Angeles Times, "and that Johns was not charged for the ride."

One final irony? According to his LinkedIn profile, Johns is a CES Innovations Awards judge.

"The Washington Post's crossword puzzle was recently deemed too offensive for advertisers," reports the Wall Street Journal. "So was an article about thunderstorms. And a ranking of boxed brownie mixes.

"Marketers have long been wary about running ads in the news media, concerned that their brands will land next to pieces about terrorism or plane crashes or polarizing political stories." But "That advertising no-go zone seems to keep widening." It is a headache that news publishers can hardly afford. Many are also grappling with subscriber declines and losses in traffic from Google and other tech platforms, and are now making an aggressive push to change advertisers' perceptions... News organizations recently began publicizing studies that show it really isn't dangerous for a brand to appear near a sensitive story. At the same time, they say blunt campaign-planning tools wind up fencing off even harmless content — and those stories' potentially large audiences — from advertisements. Forty percent of the Washington Post's material is deemed "unsafe" at any given time, said Johanna Mayer-Jones, the paper's chief advertising officer, referencing a study the company did about a year ago. "The revenue implications of that are significant."

The Washington Post's crossword page was blocked by advertisers' technology seven times during a weekslong period in October because it was labeled as politics, news and natural disaster-related material. (A tech company recently said it would ensure the puzzle stops getting blocked, according to the Post.) The thunderstorm story was cut off from ad revenue when a sentence about "flashing and pealing volleys from the artillery of the atmosphere" triggered a warning that it was too much like an "arms and ammunition" story. As for the brownies, a reference to research from "grocery, drug, mass-market" and other retailers was automatically flagged by advertisers for containing the word "drug."

While some brands avoid news entirely, many take what they consider to be a more surgical approach. They create lengthy blacklists of words or websites that the company considers off-limits and employ ad technology to avoid such terms. Over time, blacklists have become extremely detailed, serving as a de facto news-blocking tool, publishers said... The lists are used in automated ad buying. Brands aim their ads not at specific websites, but at online audiences with certain characteristics — people with particular shopping or web-browsing histories, for example. Their ads are matched in real-time to available inventory for thousands of websites... These days, less than 5% of client ad spending for GroupM, one of the largest ad-buying firms in the world, goes to news, according to Christian Juhl, GroupM's former chief executive who revealed spending figures during a congressional hearing over the summer.
A recent blacklist from Microsoft included about 2,000 words including "collapse," according to the article. ("Microsoft declined to comment.")

Remember that massive botnet run by Chinese government hackers? Flax Typhoon "compromised computer networks in North America, Europe, Africa, and across Asia, with a particular focus on Taiwan," according to the U.S. Treasury Department. (The group's botnet breaching this autumn affected "at least 260,000 internet-connected devices," reports the Washington Post, "roughly half of which were located in the United States.")

Friday America's Treasury Department sanctioned "a Beijing-based cybersecurity company for its role in multiple computer intrusion incidents against U.S. victims..." according to an announcement from the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. "Between summer 2022 and fall 2023, Flax Typhoon actors used infrastructure tied to Integrity Tech during their computer network exploitation activities against multiple victims. During that time, Flax Typhoon routinely sent and received information from Integrity Tech infrastructure."

From the Washington Post: The group behind the attacks was active since at least 2021, but U.S. authorities only managed to wrest control of the devices from the hackers in September, after the FBI won a court order that allowed the agency to send commands to the infected devices...

Treasury's designation follows sanctions announced last month on Sichuan Silence Information Technology Company, in which U.S. officials accused the company of exploiting technology flaws to install malware in more than 80,000 firewalls, including those protecting U.S. critical infrastructure. The new sanctions on Beijing Integrity Technology are notable due to the company's public profile and outsize role in servicing China's police and intelligence services via state-run hacking competitions. The company, which is listed in Shanghai and has a market capitalization of more than $327 million, plays a central role in providing state agencies "cyber ranges" — technology that allows them to simulate cyberattacks and defenses...

In September, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said the Flax Typhoon attack successfully infiltrated universities, media organizations, corporations and government agencies, and in some cases caused significant financial losses as groups raced to replace the infected hardware. He said at the time that the operation to shut down the network was "one round in a much longer fight...." A 2024 assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said China is the most "active and persistent" cyberthreat and that actors under Beijing's direction have made efforts to breach U.S. critical infrastructure with the intention of lying in wait to be able to launch attacks in the event of major conflict.
"The Treasury sanctions bar Beijing Integrity Technology from access to U.S. financial systems and freeze any assets the company might hold in the United States," according to the article, "but the moves are unlikely to have a significant effect on the company," (according to Dakota Cary, a fellow at the Atlantic Council who has studied the company's role in state-sponsored hacking).

In 2024, Americans spent 23% less on streaming subscriptions compared to 2023, driven by rising costs, streaming fatigue, and increased password-sharing restrictions. The findings have been reported in Review's annual State of Consumer Media Spending Report. TechSpot reports: Of those surveyed, 27.8 percent said they are experiencing streaming fatigue - or the feeling of being overwhelmed by the growing number of streaming apps on the market. And with the cost of goods and services at an all-time high, it's hitting folks in the wallet as well. The report additionally found that the average American has two streaming subscriptions, and watches three hours and 49 minutes of content each day. More than a quarter of subscribers - 26.5 percent - share subscriptions with others to save on cost although with recent crackdowns on password sharing, that might not be an option for much longer.

As such, Reviews recommends downsizing the number of subscriptions you pay for each month or spending more time using free services if you're looking to cut down on costs in the New Year. For example, you could stagger subscriptions by signing up for a service temporarily to watch a specific show or movie and canceling when you are finished. It's also wise to keep an eye out for free trials, discounts, and limited-time streaming deals like those occasionally offered from Internet and mobile providers.

Samsung and Google are introducing Eclipsa Audio, an open-source 3D audio standard set to debut on select YouTube videos and Samsung's 2025 TVs and soundbars. The new format "could eventually serve as a free alternative to Dolby Atmos, the dominant 3D audio format that hardware makers like Samsung pay to license for TVs and other equipment," reports The Verge. "Samsung says that similar to Atmos, this audio format supports adjusting 'audio data such as the location and intensity of sounds, along with spatial reflections' to create a 3D experience." From the report: The two companies first announced a partnership to develop spatial audio technology in 2023, initially calling it Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF). At the time, Samsung spatial audio head WooHyun Nam said the format would provide "a complete open-source framework for 3D audio, from creation to delivery and playback."

The IAMF spec has also been adopted by the Alliance for Open Media, a group that has been pushing for royalty-free codec support since 2015 and counts companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Netflix -- along with Samsung and Google -- among its members. If they also add support for this audio format, it could help it catch on, although it's already taken years for their AV1 video codec to see more use. Samsung and Google are also creating a certification program with the Telecommunications Technology Association "to ensure consistent audio quality" across devices using the format, which also sounds similar to the way companies like Dolby and THX manage the labeling for their specs.

Meta's AI-generated social media profiles, which sparked controversy this week following comments by executive Connor Hayes about plans to expand AI characters across Facebook and Instagram, have largely failed to gain user engagement since their 2023 launch, 404 Media reported Friday.

The profiles, introduced at Meta's Connect event in September 2023, stopped posting content in April 2024 after widespread user disinterest, with 15 of the original 28 accounts already deleted, Meta spokesperson Liz Sweeney told 404 Media. The AI characters, including personas like "Liv," a Black queer mother, and "Grandpa Brian," a retired businessman, generated minimal engagement and were criticized for posting stereotypical content.

Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah reported that one AI profile admitted its purpose was "data collection and ad targeting." Meta is now removing these accounts after identifying a bug preventing users from blocking them, Sweeney said, adding that Hayes' recent Financial Times interview discussed future AI character plans rather than announcing new features.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered dozens of attacks that involve malicious updates for Chrome browser extensions, one week after a security firm was compromised in a similar incident. As of Wednesday, a total of 36 Chrome extensions injected with data-stealing code have been detected, mostly related to artificial intelligence (AI) tools and virtual private networks (VPNs), according to a report by ExtensionTotal, a platform that analyzes extensions listed on various marketplaces and public registries. These extensions, collectively used by roughly 2.6 million people, include third-party tools such as ChatGPT for Google Meet, Bard AI Chat, YesCaptcha Assistant, VPNCity and Internxt VPN. Some of the affected companies have already addressed the issue by removing the compromised extensions from the store or updating them, according to ExtensionTotal's analysis. [...]

It remains unclear whether all the compromised extensions are linked to the same threat actor. Security researchers warn that browser extensions "shouldn't be treated lightly," as they have deep access to browser data, including authenticated sessions and sensitive information. Extensions are also easy to update and often not subjected to the same scrutiny as traditional software. ExtensionTotal recommends that organizations use only pre-approved versions of extensions and ensure they remain unchanged and protected from malicious automatic updates. "Even when we trust the developer of an extension, it's crucial to remember that every version could be entirely different from the previous one," researchers said. "If the extension developer is compromised, the users are effectively compromised as well -- almost instantly."

Nick Clegg, former British Deputy Prime Minister and Meta's President of Global Affairs, is stepping down after seven years, with longtime policy executive Joel Kaplan set to replace him. Engadget reports: Clegg will be replaced by Joel Kaplan, a longtime policy executive and former White House aide to George W. Bush known for his deep ties to Republican circles in Washington. As Chief Global Affairs Officer, Kaplan -- as Semafor notes -- will be well-positioned to run interference for Meta as Donald Trump takes control of the White House. In a post on Threads, Clegg said that "this is the right time for me to move on from my role as President, Global Affairs at Meta."

"My time at the company coincided with a significant resetting of the relationship between 'big tech' and the societal pressures manifested in new laws, institutions and norms affecting the sector. I hope I have played some role in seeking to bridge the very different worlds of tech and politics -- worlds that will continue to interact in unpredictable ways across the globe."

He said that he will spend the next "few months" working with Kaplan and "representing the company at a number of international gatherings in Q1 of this year" before he formally steps away from the company.

Further reading: Meta Says It's Mistakenly Moderating Too Much

Generation Beta, starting in 2025 and lasting until around 2039, will grow up deeply immersed in AI and smart technology, facing pressing societal challenges like climate change and global shifts while potentially being shielded from excessive screen time by tech-savvy Gen Z parents. NBC News reports: Start and end dates of generations can be murky, but Generation Beta will keep being born until around 2039. Before them, Gen Alpha stretched from 2010 to 2024, Gen Z from around 1996 to 2010, and millennials from 1981 to 1996. The upcoming generation "will inherit a world grappling with major societal challenges," wrote demographer and futurist Mark McCrindle in a blog post. "With climate change, global population shifts, and rapid urbanisation at the forefront, sustainability will not just be a preference but an expectation." [...]

Just like Gen Z and Gen Alpha, Gen Beta will grow up with social media, though it's still unknown how those mediums will evolve in the next decade-plus. But other experts predict that Gen Z parents might choose to shield their kids from being chronically online, a stereotype that has come to define Gen Alpha. While older millennial parents tend to integrate technology into their Gen Alpha kids' lives, McCrindle wrote that Gen Z parents might take a different approach with their future Gen Beta children. "Generation Z know more about both the positives and challenges that come with social media use from a young age," McCrindle wrote. "As the most technologically savvy generation of parents, Gen Z see the benefits of technology and screen time, but equally they see the downsides of it and are pushing back on technology and the age at which their children access and engage with it."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: A new study published in the journal Renewable Energy (PDF) uses data from the state of California to demonstrate that no blackouts occurred when wind-water-solar electricity supply exceeded 100% of demand on the state's main grid for a record 98 of 116 days from late winter to early summer 2024 for an average (maximum) of 4.84 (10.1) hours per day. Compared to the same period in 2023, solar output in California is up 31%, wind power is up 8%, and batteries are up a staggering 105%. Batteries supplied up to 12% of nighttime demand by storing and redistributing excess solar energy.

And here's the kicker: California's high electricity prices aren't because of wind, water, and solar energy. (That issue is primarily caused (PDF) by utilities recovering the cost of wildfire mitigation, transmission and distribution investments, and net energy metering.) In fact, researchers from Stanford, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of California, Berkeley found that states with higher shares of renewable energy tend to see lower electricity prices. The takeaway -- and the data backs it up -- is that a large grid dominated by wind, water, and solar is not only feasible, it's also reliable.

Researchers have uncovered widespread manipulation of GitHub's star-rating system, with over 3.1 million fraudulent stars identified across 15,835 repositories, according to a new study by Socket, Carnegie Mellon University, and North Carolina State University.

The research team analyzed 20TB of data from GHArchive, spanning 6 billion GitHub events from 2019 to 2024, using their "StarScout" detection tool. The tool identified 278,000 accounts engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior to artificially boost repository rankings.

GitHub uses stars, similar to social media likes, to rank projects and recommend content to users. The platform has previously encountered malicious exploitation of this system, including the "Stargazers Ghost Network" malware operation discovered last summer. Approximately 91% of flagged repositories and 62% of suspicious accounts were removed by October 2024.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Jennifer Ouellette: Over the holiday weekend, all but one member of the editorial board of Elsevier's Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) resigned "with heartfelt sadness and great regret," according to Retraction Watch, which helpfully provided an online PDF of the editors' full statement. It's the 20th mass resignation from a science journal since 2023 over various points of contention, per Retraction Watch, many in response to controversial changes in the business models used by the scientific publishing industry. "This has been an exceptionally painful decision for each of us," the board members wrote in their statement. "The editors who have stewarded the journal over the past 38 years have invested immense time and energy in making JHE the leading journal in paleoanthropological research and have remained loyal and committed to the journal and our authors long after their terms ended. The [associate editors] have been equally loyal and committed. We all care deeply about the journal, our discipline, and our academic community; however, we find we can no longer work with Elsevier in good conscience."

The editorial board cited several changes made over the last ten years that it believes are counter to the journal's longstanding editorial principles. These included eliminating support for a copy editor and a special issues editor, leaving it to the editorial board to handle those duties. When the board expressed the need for a copy editor, Elsevier's response, they said, was "to maintain that the editors should not be paying attention to language, grammar, readability, consistency, or accuracy of proper nomenclature or formatting." There is also a major restructuring of the editorial board underway that aims to reduce the number of associate editors by more than half, which "will result in fewer AEs handling far more papers, and on topics well outside their areas of expertise." Furthermore, there are plans to create a third-tier editorial board that functions largely in a figurehead capacity, after Elsevier "unilaterally took full control" of the board's structure in 2023 by requiring all associate editors to renew their contracts annually -- which the board believes undermines its editorial independence and integrity.

In-house production has been reduced or outsourced, and in 2023 Elsevier began using AI during production without informing the board, resulting in many style and formatting errors, as well as reversing versions of papers that had already been accepted and formatted by the editors. "This was highly embarrassing for the journal and resolution took six months and was achieved only through the persistent efforts of the editors," the editors wrote. "AI processing continues to be used and regularly reformats submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and require extensive author and editor oversight during proof stage." In addition, the author page charges for JHE are significantly higher than even Elsevier's other for-profit journals, as well as broad-based open access journals like Scientific Reports. Not many of the journal's authors can afford those fees, "which runs counter to the journal's (and Elsevier's) pledge of equality and inclusivity," the editors wrote. The breaking point seems to have come in November, when Elsevier informed co-editors Mark Grabowski (Liverpool John Moores University) and Andrea Taylor (Touro University California College of Osteopathic Medicine) that it was ending the dual-editor model that has been in place since 1986. When Grabowki and Taylor protested, they were told the model could only remain if they took a 50 percent cut in their compensation.

When it comes to the possibility of a bird flu outbreak, America's Centers for Disease Control recently issued a statement that the risk to the public "remains low."

But even in the event of a worst-case scenario, New York magazine believes "We may be more equipped for another pandemic than you think..." In 2023, more than half of people surveyed said that their lives had not returned to normal since the COVID outbreak, and a surprising number — 47 percent — said they now believe their lives will never return to normal.

But do we really know how a new pandemic would go and how we would handle it? Things are different this time — and in ways that aren't all bad. Unlike with COVID in the spring of 2020, millions of doses of bird-flu vaccines at various stages of testing sit in government stockpiles, and more are on the way. There are also already tests that work, though these are not broadly available to the public... Recent research suggests that we might actually manage a second pandemic better than we would believe. Despite all the noise to the contrary, a June poll by Harvard's School of Public Health says that Americans overall think the government responses to COVID — asking people to wear masks, pausing indoor dining, requiring health-care workers to get vaccinated — were all good ideas. Although the media tends to paint school closures as radically unpopular, only 44 percent of respondents said they currently think the shutdowns were a mistake.

A growing body of research also suggests that many Americans feel stronger for what we endured during the most extreme days of COVID. Counter to what we like to say about our friends and neighbors and children, the challenge of the pandemic may have benefited some people's mental health. One study found that "children entering the pandemic with clinically meaningful mental-health problems experienced notable improvements in their mental health." (Turns out there's one thing worse than shutting down an American school and that's having to attend it.)
The article also points out that "There is no real information" on the likelihood of a bird-flu virus even crossing over into humans.

And of course, "COVID still kills, with a body count just shy of 50,000 Americans in 2024, and it feels like a stretch to say that Americans are particularly concerned."

After a four-year hiatus, 2025 will see the return of the International Obfuscated C Code Contest. Started in 1984 (and inspired partly by a bug in the classic Bourne shell), it's "the Internet's oldest contest," acording to their official social media account on Mastodon.

The contest enters its "pending" state today at 2024-12-29 23:58 UTC — meaning an opening date for submissions has been officially scheduled (for January 31st) as well as a closing date roughly eight weeks later on April 1st, 2025. That's according to the newly-released (proposed and tentative) rules and guidelines, listing contest goals like "show the importance of programming style, in an ironic way" and "stress C compilers with unusual code." And the contest's home page adds an additional goal: "to have fun with C!"

Excerpts from the official rules: Rule 0
Just as C starts at 0, so the IOCCC starts at rule 0. :-)

Rule 1
Your submission must be a complete program....

Rule 5
Your submission MUST not modify the content or filename of any part of your original submission including, but not limited to prog.c, the Makefile (that we create from your how to build instructions), as well as any data files you submit....

Rule 6
I am not a rule, I am a free(void *human);
while (!(ioccc(rule(you(are(number(6)))))) {
ha_ha_ha();
}

Rule 6 is clearly a reference to The Prisoner... (Some other rules are even sillier...) And the guidelines include their own jokes: You are in a maze of twisty guidelines, all different.

There are at least zero judges who think that Fideism has little or nothing to do with the IOCCC judging process....

We suggest that you avoid trying for the 'smallest self-replicating' source. The smallest, a zero byte entry, won in 1994.
And this weekend there was also a second announcement: After a 4 year effort by a number of people, with over 6168+ commits, the Great Fork Merge has been completed and the Official IOCCC web site has been updated! A significant number of improvements has been made to the IOCCC winning entries. A number of fixes and improvements involve the ability of reasonable modern Unix/Linux systems to be able to compile and even run them.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader — and C programmer — achowe for sharing the news.

A 9-year-old girl born without a left hand had "started asking for a robotic arm to help her feel more confident," her mother told the Washington Post. So her parents met with a consultant from Open Bionics, which fits people with lightweight, 3D-printed prostheses that function more like a natural arm and hand — known as Hero Arms. The bionic arms are manufactured in Britain and cost about $24,000, but the Batemans were hopeful that their health insurance company, Select Health, would pay for one for [their 9-year-old daughter] Remi. Remi said she tried using one of the robotic arms for a few days in Colorado and was thrilled to cut her food with a knife and fork for the first time and carry plates with two hands. "I loved it so much — I could function like a full human," she said. "I was able to steal my dad's hat. When they fit me for my arm, I told them I wanted it to be pink."

On Oct. 1, the Batemans sent a prescription for the robotic arm and office notes from Remi's pediatrician to Select Health for approval. One week later, their request was denied, Jami Bateman said. "They sent us a letter saying it was not medically necessary for Remi to have a Hero Arm and that it was for cosmetic use only," she said. "We appealed twice and were again denied."

"It was very upsetting, and Remi cried when I told her, because we'd all been so hopeful," Bateman added. "It broke our hearts." In mid-December, a frustrated Jami Bateman tried an approach she'd seen other people use when their health insurance failed them: She started a GoFundMe for her daughter, hoping to purchase a robotic arm through the kindness of strangers.... Bateman was stunned when friends and strangers chipped in more than $30,000 in just a few days, surpassing the family's $24,000 goal. People who donated understood the Batemans' predicament, and many were furious on their behalf.

As donations poured in, the Batemans received a call from somebody else who wanted to help. Andy Schoonover is the CEO of CrowdHealth, a subscriber-based resource that helps people negotiate lower costs for medical bills. He told the family on Dec. 16 that his company wanted to pay the entire cost of Remi's bionic arm. "We were looking for some ways to help people during the holiday season, and I stumbled upon Remi's story on social media," Schoonover said. "We were honored to help her out...."

Remi quickly came up with an idea. "She came to me and said, 'Mom, I know how it feels to have one hand. Is there someone else we can help?" Bateman recalled. She said she contacted Open Bionics and learned there was a long list of children who had been turned down for Hero Arms by their health insurance companies for the same reason Remi was denied...
Somewhere in Maryland, the mother of a 9-year-old boy born without a left hand suddenly got a surprise phone call explaining Remi's decision. "I was so proud of Remi that I immediately started crying," she said. "She wanted to give my son an opportunity that I was unable to give him. It just touched my heart."

They had been trying to raise money by running a lemonade stand. But yesterday Remi's GoFundMe page posted an update. The 9-year-old boy's arm had now been paid for.

"And maybe, if more donations roll in we can help a third child!"