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Submission + - Hackers Again Target European Grocery Fridges (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Greymane
Greymane writes: Supermarket fridges and freezers in seven European countries have malfunctioned, their thermostats remotely cranked up in some cases to 50C (122F).

The EU has condemned what it said was “a deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain and undermine consumers’ confidence in it”.

Which supermarkets were affected and what does it mean?
The attack hit fridges in Belgian branches of Carrefour, Intermarché and Ikea, Coop and ICA in Sweden, Delhaize in Luxembourg, Kesko in Finland, SuperValu in Ireland and shops in Estonia.

It appeared to be a reprise of attacks three weeks ago when French retailers had to ditch huge amounts of food when their fridges suddenly overheated as a result of anonymous hackers seizing control of their internet-exposed appliance management software.

Something similar may have happened in the US in early August when a series of mysterious fridge malfunctions hit commissaries at at least six military bases. The Pentagon is investigating a suspected hack.

Comment New Mac Mini and AppleTV 4k (Score 1) 124

by Greymane (#66404071) Attached to: Apple Is Entering Its Slop Era
I have the maxed out M4 Mac Mini with 32Gb and self installed 2Tb SSD. It was a bargain last year with 3rd party SSD at a total of $1300. The new equivalently setup M6 Mac Mini with non-upgradable SSD for a mere $2300! Or the AppleTV 4k at a 100% increase in price point of $300, vs. $149 last year. Siri AI is not worth this increase and the performance in these products is not that much better for their usability. These upgrades don't justify the huge increase in price and I'm also not buying into the Connected Home products. I've already been burned by SMART connected appliances being abandoned and made useless (e.g., Sonos, Nest, Chamberlain’s myQ , etc.).

Comment Re:pigs all of you (Score 1) 132

by Greymane (#66387838) Attached to: Airbnb Bans Making Guests Do Dishes, Take Out the Trash
I used to use AirBnB when I travelled with my family. It started as a good way for a family not need to rent several rooms at a motel. Everything on the internet that started as a good idea has been enshitified for everyone. I've done the math and it is much cheaper now to stay in a decent hotel and not have to deal with the lousy check-ins with highly misrepresented rentals and scammers.

Comment Re:pigs all of you (Score 1) 132

by Greymane (#66387768) Attached to: Airbnb Bans Making Guests Do Dishes, Take Out the Trash
AirBnB "Guests" should absolutely clean up after themselves! I live and own my apartment in a condominium in France that has been overrun by AirBnB clients. It used to be a quiet place with neighbors I knew. Then several tenants started doing seasonal rental and now we have trash in the halls, noisy parties, broken mailboxes and the entry door has been broken by AirBnB clients several times in the last year. All the owners are on the hook for cleaning and repair costs, not just those doing AirBnB. We are trying our best to ban them entirely. AirBnB is not a hotel and their guests need to respect social norms, including cleaning up after themselves.

Submission + - Trump fires commissioner of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Greymane
Greymane writes: Critics warn that the United States may soon be taking on more nuclear safety risks after Donald Trump fired one of five members of an independent commission that monitors the country's nuclear reactors.

In a statement Monday, Christopher Hanson confirmed that Trump fired him from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Friday. He alleged that the firing was "without cause" and "contrary to existing law and longstanding precedent regarding removal of independent agency appointees." According to NPR, he received an email that simply said his firing was "effective immediately."

Hanson had enjoyed bipartisan support for his work for years. Trump initially appointed Hanson to the NRC in 2020, then he was renominated by Joe Biden in 2024. In his statement, he said it was an "honor" to serve, citing accomplishments over his long stint as chair, which ended in January 2025.

It's unclear why Trump fired Hanson. Among the committee chair's accomplishments, Hanson highlighted revisions to safety regulations, as well as efforts to ramp up recruitment by re-establishing the Minority Serving Institution Grant Program. Both may have put him in opposition to Trump, who wants to loosen regulations to boost the nuclear industry and eliminate diversity initiatives across government.

In a statement to NPR, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly suggested it was a political firing.

"All organizations are more effective when leaders are rowing in the same direction," Kelly said. "President Trump reserves the right to remove employees within his own Executive Branch who exert his executive authority."

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On social media, some Trump critics suggested that Trump lacked the authority to fire Hanson, arguing that Hanson could have ignored the email and kept on working, like the Smithsonian museum director whom Trump failed to fire. (And who eventually quit.)

But Hanson accepted the termination. Instead of raising any concerns, he used his statement as an opportunity to praise those left at NRC, who will be tasked with continuing to protect Americans from nuclear safety risks at a time when Trump has said that he wants industry interests to carry equal weight as public health and environmental concerns.

"My focus over the last five years has been to prepare the agency for anticipated change in the energy sector, while preserving the independence, integrity, and bipartisan nature of the world's gold standard nuclear safety institution," Hanson said. "It has been an honor to serve alongside the dedicated public servants at the NRC. I continue to have full trust and confidence in their commitment to serve the American people by protecting public health and safety and the environment."

Trump pushing “unsettled” science on nuclear risks

The firing followed an executive order in May that demanded an overhaul of the NRC, including reductions in force and expedited approvals on nuclear reactors. All final decisions on new reactors must be made within 18 months, and requests to continue operating existing reactors should be rubber-stamped within a year, Trump ordered.

Likely most alarming to critics, the desired reforms emphasized tossing out the standards that the NRC currently uses that "posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure, and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure."

Until Trump started meddling, the NRC established those guidelines after agreeing with studies examining "cancer cases among 86,600 survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War II," Science reported. Those studies concluded that "the incidence of cancer in the survivors rose linearly—in a straight line—with the radiation dose." By rejecting that evidence, Trump could be slowly creeping up the radiation dose and leading Americans to blindly take greater risks.

But according to Trump, by adopting those current standards, the NRC is supposedly bogging down the nuclear industry by trying to "insulate Americans from the most remote risks without appropriate regard for the severe domestic and geopolitical costs of such risk aversion." Instead, the US should prioritize solving the riddle of what might be safe radiation levels, Trump suggests, while restoring US dominance in the nuclear industry, which Trump views as vital to national security and economic growth.

Although Trump claimed the NRC's current standards were "irrational" and "lack scientific basis," Science reported that the so-called "linear no-threshold (LNT) model of ionizing radiation" that Trump is criticizing "is widely accepted in the scientific community and informs almost all regulation of the US nuclear industry."

Further, the NRC rejected past attempts to switch to a model based on the "hormesis theory" that Trump seemingly supports—which posits that some radiation exposure can be beneficial. The NRC found there was "insufficient evidence to justify any changes" that could endanger public health, Science reported.

One health researcher at the University of California, Irvine, Stephen Bondy, told Science that his 2023 review on the science of hormesis showed it is "still unsettled." His characterization of the executive order suggests that the NRC embracing that model "clearly places health hazards as of secondary importance relative to economic and business interests."

Trump’s pro-industry push could backfire

If the administration charges ahead with such changes, experts have warned that Trump could end up inadvertently hobbling the nuclear industry. If health hazards become extreme—or a nuclear event occurs—"altering NRC’s safety standards could ultimately reduce public support for nuclear power," analysts told Science.

Among the staunchest critics of Trump's order is Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In a May statement, Lyman warned that "the US nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority."

He also cautioned that it was critical for the NRC to remain independent, not just to shield Americans from risks but to protect US nuclear technology's prominence in global markets.

"By fatally compromising the independence and integrity of the NRC, and by encouraging pathways for nuclear deployment that bypass the regulator entirely, the Trump administration is virtually guaranteeing that this country will see a serious accident or other radiological release that will affect the health, safety, and livelihoods of millions," Lyman said. "Such a disaster will destroy public trust in nuclear power and cause other nations to reject US nuclear technology for decades to come."

Since Trump wants regulations changed, there will likely be a public commenting period where concerned citizens can weigh in on what they think are acceptable radiation levels in their communities. But Trump's order also pushed for that public comment period to be streamlined, potentially making it easier to push through his agenda. If that happens, the NRC may face lawsuits under the 1954 Atomic Energy Act, which requires the commission to “minimize danger to life or property,” Science noted.

Following Hanson's firing, Lyman reiterated to NPR that Trump's ongoing attacks on the NRC "could have serious implications for nuclear safety.

"It's critical that the NRC make its judgments about protecting health and safety without regard for the financial health of the nuclear industry," Lyman said.

Comment Re:They shit where they eat (Score 1) 136

Unfortunately, chloramine as a disinfectant in drinking water is behind the lead poisonings in Flint, Michigan and Washington, DC. Water companies took the cheap way out, by not first removing residual organic compound before chlorination, so they used chloramine instead. This was the cheap way to comply with EPA's Trihalomethane Rule.

Submission + - Potentially Toxic Chloronitramide Anion Found in 1/3 of US Drinking Water (science.org)

Submitted by Greymane
Greymane writes: Municipal drinking water in the US is often treated with chloramines to prevent the growth of harmful microorganisms, but these molecules can also react with organic and inorganic dissolved compounds to form disinfection by-products that are potentially toxic. Fairey et al. studied a previously known but uncharacterized product of mono- and dichloramine decomposition and identified it as the chloronitroamide anion. This anion was detected in 40 drinking water samples from 10 US drinking water systems using chloramines, but not from ultrapure water or drinking water treated without chlorine-based disinfectants. Although toxicity is not currently known, the prevalence of this by-product and its similarity to other toxic molecules is concerning.

Submission + - Can Google Scholar Survive the AI Revolution? (nature.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google Scholar — the largest and most comprehensive scholarly search engine — turns 20 this week. Over its two decades, some researchers say, the tool has become one of the most important in science. But in recent years, competitors that use artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the search experience have emerged, as have others that allow users to download their data. The impact that Google Scholar — which is owned by web giant Google in Mountain View, California — has had on science is remarkable, says Jevin West, a computational social scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle who uses the database daily. But “if there was ever a moment when Google Scholar could be overthrown as the main search engine, it might be now, because of some of these new tools and some of the innovation that’s happening in other places,” West says.

Many of Google Scholar’s advantages — free access, breadth of information and sophisticated search options — “are now being shared by other platforms”, says Alberto Martín Martín, a bibliometrics researcher at the University of Granada in Spain. AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT and other tools that use large language models have become go-to applications for some scientists when it comes to searching, reviewing and summarizing the literature. And some researchers have swapped Google Scholar for them. “Up until recently, Google Scholar was my default search,” says Aaron Tay, an academic librarian at Singapore Management University. It’s still top of his list, but “recently, I started using other AI tools”. Still, given Google Scholar’s size and how deeply entrenched it is in the scientific community, “it would take a lot to dethrone," adds West. Anurag Acharya, co-founder of Google Scholar, at Google, says he welcomes all efforts to make scholarly information easier to find, understand and build on. “The more we can all do, the better it is for the advancement of science.”

Comment Re:Makes sense (Score 1) 75

This makes no sense as Flow Science offers free 4-month licenses for FLOW-3D for the purpose of academic research. Applications require a research proposal. If accepted, a license for the software that best fits the applicant’s field of research will be issued. https://www.flow3d.com/academi...

Submission + - Amazon Workers "Rage-applying" to Companies after 5-Day RTO Mandate (nypost.com)

Submitted by AsylumWraith
AsylumWraith writes: The New York Post is reporting that Amazon employees are "rage-applying" for positions at different companies after Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, mandated 5-Day RTO starting early next year.

"One employee told Fortune that he was hired remotely in May last year — a month after the company made its initial announcement telling workers they were expected in the office three days a week.

'I left a decent company I live near to go to Amazon since it was working from home,' said the worker, who was identified only by his first name, Luca. 'For me, it’s not that I don’t want to go in the office, there is no office close to me.'"

Submission + - How a Cheap Barcode Scanner Helped Fix CrowdStrike'd Windows PCs In a Flash (theregister.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Not long after Windows PCs and servers at the Australian limb of audit and tax advisory Grant Thornton started BSODing last Friday, senior systems engineer Rob Woltz remembered a small but important fact: When PCs boot, they consider barcode scanners no differently to keyboards. That knowledge nugget became important as the firm tried to figure out how to respond to the mess CrowdStrike created, which at Grant Thornton Australia threw hundreds of PCs and no fewer than 100 servers into the doomloop that CrowdStrike's shoddy testing software made possible. [...] The firm had the BitLocker keys for all its PCs, so Woltz and colleagues wrote a script that turned them into barcodes that were displayed on a locked-down management server's desktop. The script would be given a hostname and generate the necessary barcode and LAPS password to restore the machine.

Woltz went to an office supplies store and acquired an off-the-shelf barcode scanner for AU$55 ($36). At the point when rebooting PCs asked for a BitLocker key, pointing the scanner at the barcode on the server's screen made the machines treat the input exactly as if the key was being typed. That's a lot easier than typing it out every time, and the server's desktop could be accessed via a laptop for convenience. Woltz, Watson, and the team scaled the solution – which meant buying more scanners at more office supplies stores around Australia. On Monday, remote staff were told to come to the office with their PCs and visit IT to connect to a barcode scanner. All PCs in the firm's Australian fleet were fixed by lunchtime – taking only three to five minutes for each machine. Watson told us manually fixing servers needed about 20 minutes per machine.

Submission + - If Congress probes CrowdStrike, they'll likely examine management oversight (techtarget.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: Congress is unlikely to settle for a simple technical explanation from CrowdStrike regarding the root cause of its failure. Lawmakers have asked CrowdStrike officials to appear before a U.S. House committee. They will likely ask whether management issues, inadequate oversight, employee turnover, training, processes, communications, resource allocation, and tool investment contributed to this outage. They will also examine the remedies detailed on Wednesday by Crowdstrike, which included basic Q&A practices such as local developer testing. Local developer testing, or basic unit testing, involves testing software on a single, isolated machine or environment, explained Jim Johnson, who recently retired as the longtime chair of the Standish Group, a research organization that studies software failures. "I do not see anything in their response that would prevent future issues," Johnson said after reviewing CrowdStrike's "software resiliency and testing" prevention plans. Owners of systems that were disabled will also have much to explain. For instance, it crashed 911 systems in several states but not in NYC, which uses a sandbox for updates. Herb Krasner, an advisory board member and author of the 2022 Consortium for Information and Software Quality's report on "The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the U.S.," noted that the issue is generally one of "organizational willpower in the C-Suite to do better than they currently are doing." He added, "Meaning specifically that quality is not usually an organizational goal—which is now coming home to roost."

CrowdStrike preliminary review: https://www.crowdstrike.com/wp...

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