More than 1.6 million Americans have been [1]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.



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/unemployed-office-workers-are-having-a-harder-time-finding-new-jobs/ar-AA1x0Sbn

The climate crisis is "wreaking havoc" on the planet's water cycle, with [1]ferocious floods and crippling droughts affecting billions of people , a report has found. The Guardian:

> Water is people's most vital natural resource but global heating is changing the way water moves around the Earth. The analysis of water disasters in 2024, which was the hottest year on record, found they had killed at least 8,700 people, driven 40 million from their homes and caused economic damage of more than $550bn.

>

> Rising temperatures, caused by continued burning of fossil fuels, disrupt the water cycle in multiple ways. Warmer air can hold more water vapour, leading to more intense downpours. Warmer seas provide more energy to hurricanes and typhoons, supercharging their destructive power. Global heating can also increase drought by causing more evaporation from soil, as well as shifting rainfall patterns.

>

> Deadly flash floods hit Nepal and Brazil in 2024, while river flooding caused devastation in central Europe, China and Bangladesh. Super Typhoon Yagi, which struck south-east Asia in September, was intensified by the climate crisis, as was Storm Boris which hit Europe the same month. Droughts also caused major damage, with crop production in southern Africa halving, causing more than 30 million people to face food shortages. Farmers were also forced to cull livestock as their pastures dried up, and falling output from hydropower dams led to widespread blackouts.



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/06/climate-crisis-wreaking-havoc-on-earths-water-cycle-report-finds

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the AI startup has figured out [1]how to build artificial general intelligence (AGI) and is now targeting superintelligent systems that could transform scientific discovery.

In a blog post, Altman predicted AI agents could begin integrating into workplaces by 2025. He outlined plans to develop AI systems surpassing human-level intelligence across all domains. "We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it," wrote Altman.

The statement represents a significant shift as major AI companies rarely provide concrete timelines for AGI development.



[1] https://blog.samaltman.com/reflections

The Walt Disney Co. will merge its streaming multichannel video service [1]Hulu with Live TV with its competitor Fubo in a surprise deal that will shake up the streaming TV business, the companies said Monday. From a report:

> The new company will continue to be traded publicly under the Fubo name, however Disney will control 70% and appoint a majority of the board. Fubo management, including co-founder and CEO David Gandler, will run the combined venture.

>

> The deal will do a couple of big things if and when it is completed: For starters, it will create a much bigger player in the virtual multichannel video provider (vMVPD) space, one that can more aggressively take on the market leader YouTube TV. YouTube TV said a year ago that it had 8 million subscribers, while Hulu + Live TV had 4.6 million subscribers and Fubo had 1.6 million subscribers, giving a combined offering 6.2 million subs.



[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/disney-hulu-live-tv-with-fubo-1236100636/

This week New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose [1]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 [2]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."



[1] https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2024/12/31/opinion-the-2024-good-tech-awards

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/03/technology/prevent-cyberattack-linux.html

As America begins a [1]six-day state funeral for former president Jimmy Carter, Microsoft co-founder/philanthropist [2]Bill Gates shared "my fondest memory " this week. "He and Rosalynn were among my first and most inspiring role models in global health."

> They played a pretty profound role in the early days of the Gates Foundation. I'm especially grateful that they introduced us to [3]Dr. Bill Foege , who once helped eradicate smallpox and was a key advisor for our global health work.

>

> Jimmy and Rosalynn were also good friends to my dad. One of my favorite photographs of all time shows Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, and my dad in South Africa holding babies at a medical clinic. I remember my dad coming back from that trip with a whole new appreciation for Jimmy's passion for helping people with HIV. At the time, then-President Thabo Mbeki was refusing to let people with HIV get treatment, and my dad watched Jimmy almost get into a fist fight with Mbeki over the issue. As Jimmy said in a 2012 conversation at the Gates Foundation hosted by my dad, "He was claiming there was no relationship between HIV and AIDS and that the medicines that we were sending in, the antiretroviral medicines, were a white person's plot to help kill black babies." At a time when a quarter of all people in South Africa were HIV positive, Jimmy just couldn't accept Mbeki's obstructionism.

Ars Technica reported it was also Jimmy Carter who [4]saved America's space shuttle program .

And Carter [5]installed solar panels on the roof of the White House (which "were later removed by his successor, Ronald Reagan," [6]according to Boiling Point , an environmental newsletter from the Los Angeles Times):

> He [7]tried and largely failed to block construction of more than a dozen expensive, environmentally destructive water infrastructure projects such as dams, canals and reservoirs. He also tried to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, implementing the first vehicle fuel-efficiency standards and [8]tasking researchers with bringing down the cost of solar panels — an effort he predicted could be "a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people...." And although he was largely thinking about how to free Americans from geopolitical crises that could wreak havoc on oil supplies and gasoline prices, he also had heat-trapping greenhouse gases in mind... The final report from the White House Council on Environmental Quality [9]warned that fossil fuel combustion could cause "widespread and pervasive changes in global climatic, economic, social, and agricultural patterns." It advised that to avoid such risks, we should limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — the goal eventually agreed to by nearly 200 nations, 35 years later.

>

> Even if Carter's actions were targeted more at reducing oil imports than at cutting planet-warming pollution — he was willing to increase domestic coal production if it meant less dependence on foreign crude — the political battles he fought, particularly those he lost, have lessons for those of us who care about the climate today. The historian Kai Bird, for instance, [10]notes that after struggling to pass a tax on gas-guzzling cars, Carter wrote in his diary, "The influence of the oil and gas industry is unbelievable, and it's impossible to arouse the public to protect themselves." Indeed, oil and gas companies still wield huge influence. SUVs are [11]more popular than ever .

The newsletter argues the story of Carter's life can be an inspiration, since Carter saw a lot of changes in his 100 years.

"We need to see more changes to survive. May we all be as lucky as Carter was."



[1] https://apnews.com/article/jimmy-carter-funeral-b55e0689cf66809997dc6d54849f6e81

[2] https://www.gatesnotes.com/remembering-president-jimmy-carter

[3] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Walking-with-a-Giant

[4] http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/a-cold-war-mystery-why-did-jimmy-carter-save-the-space-shuttle/

[5] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/02/the-forgotten-story-of-jimmy-carters-white-house-solar-panels/

[6] https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2024-12-31/boiling-point-jimmy-carter-vs-the-oil-industry-boiling-point

[7] https://www.nytimes.com/1977/03/07/archives/wests-water-fight-intensifies-as-carter-plans-project-cuts-western.html

[8] https://www.nrel.gov/about/history.html

[9] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03032023/jimmy-carter-climate-change/

[10] https://e360.yale.edu/features/jimmy-carter-environmental-legacy

[11] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/suvs-are-setting-new-sales-records-each-year-and-so-are-their-emissions

A U.S. Appeals Court ruled this week that net neutrality [1]couldn't be reinstated by America's Federal Communications Commission . But "Despite the dismantling of the FCC's efforts to regulate broadband internet service, state laws in California, New York and elsewhere remain intact," [2]notes the Los Angeles Times :

> This week's decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, striking down the FCC's open internet rules, has little bearing on state laws enacted during the years-long tug-of-war over the government's power to regulate internet service providers, telecommunications experts said. In fact, some suggested that the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit's decision — along with other rulings and the U.S. Supreme Court's posture on a separate New York case — has effectively fortified state regulators' efforts to fill the gap. "Absent an act of Congress, the FCC has virtually no role in broadband any more," Ernesto Falcon, a program manager for the California Public Utilities Commission, said in an interview. "The result of this decision is that states like California, New York and others will have to govern and regulate broadband carriers on our own."

>

> California has one of the nation's strongest laws on net neutrality, the principle that internet traffic must be treated equally to ensure a free and open network. Former Gov. Jerry Brown signed the measure into law in 2018, months after federal regulators in President elect-Donald Trump's first administration repealed the net neutrality rules put in place under President Obama. Colorado, Oregon and other states also adopted their own standards.

>

> The Golden State's law has already survived legal challenges. It also prompted changes in the way internet service providers offered plans and services. "California's net neutrality law, which is seen as the gold standard by consumer advocates, carries national impact," Falcon said.... "The state's authority and role in broadband access has grown dramatically now," Falcon said.

California's net neutrality rules prohibit "throttling" data speeds, according to the article.



[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/02/206258/us-appeals-court-blocks-biden-administration-effort-to-restore-net-neutrality-rules

[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/federal-court-decision-wont-change-221221410.html

It "felt like a Disneyland ride," [1]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 [2]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 [3]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," [4]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.



[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/la-man-nearly-misses-flight-as-self-driving-waymo-taxi-drives-around-parking-lot-in-circles/

[2] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mikejohns_lyft-uber-omg-activity-7271962168286191617-E7j4/

[3] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mikejohns_lyft-uber-omg-activity-7271962168286191617-E7j4/

[4] https://www.yahoo.com/tech/los-angeles-man-trapped-circling-174520267.html

"Millions of computers are heading towards a security crisis as Microsoft plans to end support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025," [1]writes BetaNews :

> 32 million devices — roughly 65 percent of household computers in Germany — are still running the aging operating system. In the DACH region, including Austria and Switzerland, over 35 million systems rely on Windows 10, leaving millions of users exposed to potential cyberattacks once updates stop. By contrast, only about 33 percent of German devices have transitioned to Windows 11, and over a million are still running even older systems like Windows 8, 7, or XP.

>

> Thorsten Urbanski, an IT security expert at ESET, is [2]sounding the alarm . "It's five minutes to midnight to prevent a security fiasco in 2025. We strongly urge users not to wait until October. Upgrade to Windows 11 now or choose an alternative operating system if your device cannot support the latest version. Otherwise, users are exposing themselves to significant security risks, including dangerous cyberattacks and data breaches...."

>

> Urbanski also points out that the current situation is worse than when Windows 7 support ended in 2020. By late 2019, over 70 percent of users had already switched to Windows 10, while only about 20 percent remained on Windows 7. Today, the transition to Windows 11 is far slower, creating a dangerous environment. "Cybercriminals know these numbers well and are waiting for the end-of-support date. Once that hits, vulnerabilities will be exploited en masse."

"Those unable to move to Windows 11 are being advised to [3]consider Linux as a secure alternative , especially for older hardware."

Thanks to Slashdot reader [4]BrianFagioli for sharing the news.



[1] https://betanews.com/2025/01/05/windows-10-end-of-support-security-risks-millions-affected/

[2] https://www.eset.com/de/about/presse/pressemitteilungen/pressemitteilungen/security-fiasko-32-millionen-computer-in-deutschland-laufen-noch-mit-windows-10/

[3] https://betanews.com/2025/01/01/nobara-41-linux-windows-11/

[4] https://slashdot.org/~BrianFagioli

"It's fair to say that by 1995, OS/2 was dead software walking," [1]remembers a new article from the Register (which begins with a [2]1995 Usenet post from Gordon Letwin, Microsoft's lead architect on the OS/2 project).

But the real question is why this Microsoft-IBM collaboration on a DOS-replacing operating system ultimately lost out to Windows...?

> If OS/2 1.0 had been an 80386 OS, and had been able to multitask DOS apps, we think it would have been a big hit.... OS/2's initial 1980s versions were 16-bit products, at IBM's insistence. That is when the war was lost. That is when OS/2 flopped. Because its initial versions were even more crippled than the Deskpro 386...

>

> Because OS/2 1.x flopped, Microsoft launched a product that fixed the key weakness of OS/2 1.x. That product was Windows 3, which worked perfectly acceptably on 286 machines, but if you ran the same installed copy on a 32-bit 386 PC, it worked better. Windows 3.0 could use the more sophisticated hardware of a 386 to give better multitasking of the market-dominating DOS apps...

>

> IBM's poor planning shaped the PC industry of the 1990s more than Microsoft's successes. Windows 3.0 wasn't great, but it was good enough. It reversed people's perception of Windows after the failures of Windows 1 and Windows 2. Windows 3 achieved what OS/2 had intended to do. It transformed IBM PC compatibles from single-tasking text-only computers into graphical computers, with poor but just about usable multitasking...

>

> Soon after Windows 3.0 turned out to be a hit, [3]OS/2 NT was rebranded as Windows NT . Even the most ardent Linux enthusiast must c\oncede that Windows NT [4]did quite well over three decades.

Back in 1995, the Register's author says they'd moved from OS/2 to Windows 95 "while it was still in beta.

"The UI was far superior, more hardware worked, and Doom ran much better."



[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/05/microsoft_os2_flop_future/

[2] https://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post

[3] https://www.itprotoday.com/server-virtualization/windows-nt-and-vms-the-rest-of-the-story

[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/19/windows_nt_30_years_on/

"In many instances, there's a catch: flexible work but at lower pay..." [1]writes Fortune .

"Remote workers are accepting lower salaries in order to achieve remote status. Some are taking as much as 5% to 15% less pay to do so, while other employers are reversing the strategy to entice workers to come to the office at higher salaries..."

> Today, nearly half of managers anticipate challenges in meeting candidates' compensation expectations. And when the gap between salary expectation and an offer is too great, many employers are negotiating remote and hybrid work to get candidates to sign on the dotted line, according to Robert Half's recently published [2]2025 U.S. Hiring Outlook . Some candidates accept 5% to 15% less pay in exchange for getting to work from home, Theresa L. Fesinstine, founder of human resources advisory [3]peoplepower.ai , told Fortune. "There's this unspoken exchange rate between flexibility and comp, and for some candidates, it's worth a significant trade-off," said Fesinstine, who has more than two decades of leadership experience in HR. This is especially true "for those who value work-life balance or are saving on commute costs."

>

> There are inherent risks in offering job candidates lower salaries, even if it means getting the chance to work from home. Amy Spurling, founder and CEO of employee benefits reimbursement platform [4]Compt , told Fortune she expects to see a [5]second Great Resignation this year after hiring freezes, benefits cuts, and forced RTO policies in 2023 and 2024. "If you're trying to lowball remote workers, you're about to face a harsh reality," Spurling said. "2025 is going to be a 'find out' year for companies that thought they could use remote work or other 'perks' to replace competitive compensation and genuine employee support." To wit, a 2024 report by PwC forecasts another resignation period with a 28% increase in the number of people who plan to change jobs, compared to 19% during the Great Resignation of 2022...

>

> What's more, Fesinstine argues, remote work "isn't a perk anymore, but rather a standard operating model." So attempting to describe remote work as a benefit doesn't sit well with job candidates...

On the other hand, Michael Steinitz, senior executive director of professional talent solutions at Robert Half, told Fortune their research shows 76% of job candidates are willing to work fully in-office — in exchange for a higher salary.

"Among those employees, the average raise they would request is about 23%, he said."



[1] https://fortune.com/2025/01/05/job-recruiters-managers-pay-remote-work-from-home-return-to-office/

[2] https://www.roberthalf.com/us/en/insights/salary-guide/market-outlook

[3] http://peoplepower.ai/

[4] https://compt.io/

[5] https://fortune.com/europe/2024/11/20/great-resignation-2-0-employees-feel-overworked-underpaid-pwc-hope-fears-survey/

In a potential U.S.-China conflict, cyberattackers are military weapons. That's the thrust of [1]a new article from the Wall Street Journal :

> The message from President Biden's national security adviser was startling. Chinese hackers had [2]gained the ability to shut down dozens of U.S. ports, power grids and other infrastructure targets at will, Jake Sullivan told telecommunications and technology executives at a secret meeting at the White House in the fall of 2023, according to people familiar with it. The attack could threaten lives, and the government needed the companies' help to root out the intruders.

>

> What no one at the briefing knew, including Sullivan: China's hackers [3]were already working their way deep inside U.S. telecom networks , too. The two massive hacking operations have upended the West's understanding of what Beijing wants, while revealing the astonishing skill level and stealth of its keyboard warriors — once seen as the cyber equivalent of noisy, drunken burglars. China's hackers were once thought to be interested chiefly in business secrets and huge sets of private consumer data. But the latest hacks make clear they are now soldiers on the front lines of [4]potential geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and China , in which cyberwarfare tools are expected to be powerful weapons. U.S. computer networks are a "key battlefield in any future conflict" with China, said Brandon Wales, a former top U.S. cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security, who closely tracked China's hacking operations against American infrastructure. He said prepositioning and intelligence collection by the hackers "are designed to ensure they prevail by keeping the U.S. from projecting power, and inducing chaos at home."

>

> As [5]China increasingly threatens Taiwan , working toward what Western intelligence officials see as a [6]target of being ready to invade by 2027 , the U.S. could be pulled into the fray as the island's most important backer... Top U.S. officials in both parties have warned that China [7]is the greatest danger to American security .

>

> In the infrastructure attacks, which began at least as early as 2019 and are still taking place, hackers connected to China's military embedded themselves in arenas that spies usually ignored, including a water utility in Hawaii, a port in Houston and an oil-and-gas processing facility. Investigators, both at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and in the private sector, found the hackers lurked, sometimes for years, periodically testing access. At a regional airport, investigators found the hackers had secured access, and then returned every six months to make sure they could still get in. Hackers spent at least nine months in the network of a water-treatment system, moving into an adjacent server to study the operations of the plant. At a utility in Los Angeles, the hackers searched for material about how the utility would respond in the event of an emergency or crisis. The precise location and other details of the infrastructure victims are closely guarded secrets, and couldn't be fully determined.

>

> American security officials said they believe the infrastructure intrusions — carried out by a group dubbed Volt Typhoon — are at least in part aimed at disrupting Pacific military supply lines and otherwise impeding America's ability to respond to a future conflict with China, including over a potential invasion of Taiwan... The focus on Guam and West Coast targets suggested to many senior national-security officials across several Biden administration agencies that the hackers were focused on Taiwan, and doing everything they could to slow a U.S. response in a potential Chinese invasion, buying Beijing precious days to complete a takeover even before U.S. support could arrive.

The telecom breachers "were also able to swipe from Verizon and AT&T a list of individuals the U.S. government was surveilling in recent months under court order, which included suspected Chinese agents. The intruders used known software flaws that had been publicly warned about but hadn't been patched."

And ultimately nine U.S. telecoms were breached, according to America's deputy national security adviser for cybersecurity — including what appears to have been a preventable breach at AT&T (according to "one personal familiar with the matter"):

> [T]hey took control of a high-level network management account that wasn't protected by multifactor authentication, a basic safeguard. That granted them access to more than 100,000 routers from which they could further their attack — a serious lapse that may have allowed the hackers to copy traffic back to China and delete their own digital tracks.

The details of the various breaches are stunning:

> Chinese hackers gained a foothold in the digital underpinnings of one of America's largest ports in just 31 seconds. At the Port of Houston, an intruder acting like an engineer from one of the port's software vendors entered a server designed to let employees reset their passwords from home. The hackers managed to download an encrypted set of passwords from all the port's staff before the port recognized the threat and cut off the password server from its network...



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/how-chinese-hackers-graduated-from-clumsy-corporate-thieves-to-military-weapons/ar-AA1wY8ZP

[2] https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-disables-chinese-hacking-operation-that-targeted-critical-infrastructure-184bb407

[3] https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/china-cyberattack-internet-providers-260bd835

[4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/us-military-future-china-russia-2136888f

[5] https://www.wsj.com/world/china/taiwan-leader-urges-calm-amid-military-threats-from-beijing-a4d614fa

[6] https://www.wsj.com/articles/cia-chief-says-china-has-doubts-about-its-ability-to-invade-taiwan-670b8f87

[7] https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-defense-strategy-casts-china-as-greatest-danger-to-american-security-11666885023

Long-time Slashdot reader [1]theodp writes:

> In an Op-ed for

>> The Huntington News

> , fourth year Northeastern University CS student Derek Kaplan [2]argues that real pedagogical merit is what should count when deciding which language to use to teach CS fundamentals (aka 'Fundies'). He makes the case for Northeastern to reconsider its decision to move from [3]Racket to [4]Python and [5]Java later this year in an [6]overhaul of its first-year curriculum .

>

> "Students will get extensive training in Python, which is currently the most requested language by co-op employers," Northeastern explains (some two decades after a Slashdot commenter made the same [7]Hot Languages = Jobs observation in a spirited 2001 debate on [8]Java as a CS introductory language )...

>

> "I have often heard computer science students complain that Fundies 1 teaches Racket instead of a 'useful language' like Python," Kaplan writes. "But the point of Fundies is not to teach Racket — it is to teach program design skills that can be applied using any programming language. Racket is just the tool it uses to do so. A student who does well in Fundies will have no difficulty applying the same skills to Python or any other language. And with how fast the tech industry changes, is it really worth having a course that teaches just Python when tomorrow, some other language might dominate the industry? Our current curriculum focuses on timeless principles rather than fleeting trends."

>

> Also [9]expressing concerns about the selection of suitable languages for novice programming is King's College CS Prof Michael Kölling, who explains, "One of the drivers is the perceived usefulness of the language in a real-world context. Students (and their parents) often have opinions which language is 'better' to learn. In forming these opinions, the definition of 'better' can often be vague and driven by limited insight. One strong aspect commonly cited is the perceived usefulness of a language in the 'real world.' If a language is widely used in industry, it is more likely to be seen as a useful language to learn." Kölling's recommendation? "We need a new language for teaching novices at secondary school and introductory university level," Kölling concludes. "This language should be designed explicitly for teaching [...] Maintenance and adaptation of this language should be driven by pedagogical considerations, not by industry needs."

>

> While noble in intent, one suspects Kaplan and Kölling may be on a quixotic quest in a [10]money wins world, outgunned by the demands, resources, and influence of tech giants like Amazon — the [11]top employer of Northeastern MSCS program grads — who pushed back against [12]NSF advice to deemphasize Java in high school CS and [13]dropped $15 million to have [14]tech-backed nonprofit Code.org develop and push a new Java-based, powered-by-AWS CS curriculum into high schools with the support of a [15]consortium of politicians, educators, and tech companies . Echoing Northeastern, an [16]Amazon press release argued the new Java-based curriculum "best prepares students for the next step in their education and careers."



[1] https://www.slashdot.org/~theodp

[2] https://huntnewsnu.com/82511/editorial/op-eds/op-ed-northeasterns-redesign-of-the-khoury-curriculum-abandons-the-fundamentals-of-computer-science/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(programming_language)

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language)

[6] https://www.khoury.northeastern.edu/qa-what-to-expect-from-khoury-colleges-upcoming-intro-course-changes/

[7] https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=153927&sid=12731&tid=116

[8] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/01/06/11/2021220/java-as-a-cs-introductory-language

[9] https://infedu.vu.lt/journal/INFEDU/article/797/info

[10] https://www.theringer.com/2019/09/09/tv/succession-tern-haven-roys-versus-pierces

[11] https://graduate.northeastern.edu/program/master-of-science-in-computer-science-boston-5238/

[12] https://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/women/17comp.html

[13] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/21/02/25/2056233/amazon-gives-codeorg-15-million-to-reimagine-advanced-placement-csa

[14] https://code.org/about/supporters

[15] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/21/04/22/194236/tech-giants-support-codeorgs-amazon-bankrolled-java-based-ap-cs-curriculum

[16] https://press.aboutamazon.com/2021/2/amazon-donates-15-million-to-code-org-to-create-new-equity-minded-advanced-placement-computer-science-curriculum-to-help-high-school-students-in-underserved-communities-excel-in-tech

Friday America's surgeon general warned that alcohol is " [1]a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States," and recommended an update to the warning labels on alcohol.

So what happens to beer and spirits companies? They've actually been preparing for something like this for years, [2]reports CNN :

> Major brewers, including Molson Coors and Anheuser-Busch InBev, and spirit giants such as Diageo and Pernod Ricard, have all grown their portfolios with new non-alcoholic drinks to attract an increasing number of consumers, particularly younger ones, who are ditching drinking because of health concerns. A [3]Gallup poll from August found that almost half of Americans say that having one or two drinks a day is bad for a person's health — the highest percentage recorded in the survey's 23 years, and younger adults were most likely to say drinking is bad for health. The poll also showed that just 58% of adults said they drink alcohol, down from 67% in 2022, although Gallup notes it's relatively close to the historical average of 63% going back to 1939.

>

> But that doesn't predict a doomsday scenario for Big Alcohol. It actually could be good for their bottom lines: A December report from IWSR, a leading drinks analysis firm, said that the non-alcoholic drinks global market is "experiencing a transformative period of growth, driven by evolving consumer behaviors and the momentum of no-alcohol." The trend, to be led by the United States, is expected to grow by $4 billion by 2028 in the firm's forecast. Non-alcoholic drinks are even "skewing younger than the core buyer demographic across markets, and demonstrate higher frequency and intensity of consumption," signaling that there's a sustained thirst for booze-less beverages.

Anheuser-Busch said in its 2023 annual report that its non-alcoholic beers "continued to outperform, delivering high-teens revenue growth."

And the staff economist for the Brewers Association told CNN that non-alcoholic beer sales have jumped more than 100% between 2021 and 2024.



[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/03/1316230/surgeon-general-calls-for-cancer-risk-warning-on-alcoholic-beverages

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/03/food/beer-spirit-sales-non-alcoholic/index.html

[3] https://news.gallup.com/poll/648413/alcohol-consumption-increasingly-viewed-unhealthy.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_content=morelink&utm_campaign=syndication

TPM is a dedicated chip or firmware enabling hardware-level security, housing encryption keys, certificates, passwords, and sensitive data, "and shielding them from unauthorized access," Microsoft senior product manager Steven Hosking [1]wrote last month , declaring TPM 2.0 to be "a non-negotiable standard for the future of Windows."

Or, [2]as BleepingComputer put it , Microsoft "made it abundantly clear... that Windows 10 users won't be able to upgrade to Windows 11 unless their systems come with TPM 2.0 support." (This despite the fact that Statcounter Global data "shows that more than 61% of all Windows systems worldwide [3]still run Windows 10 .") They add that Microsoft "announced on October 31 that Windows 10 home users [4]will be able to delay the switch to Windows 11 for one more year if they're willing to pay $30 for Extended Security Updates."

But last week the Free Software Foundation's campaigns manager delivered a message on the FSF's official blog: " [5]Keep putting pressure on Microsoft ."

> Grassroots organization against a corporation as large as Microsoft is never easy. They have the advertising budget to claim that they "love Linux" (sic), not to mention the money and political willpower to corral free software developers from around the world on their nonfree platform Microsoft GitHub. This year's [6]International Day Against DRM took aim at one specific injustice: their requiring a hardware TPM module for users being forced to "upgrade" to Windows 11. As Windows 10 will soon stop receiving security updates, this is a (Microsoft-manufactured) problem for users still on this operating system. Normally, offloading cryptography to a different hardware module could be seen as a good thing — but with nonfree software, it can only spell trouble for the user...

>

> What's crucial now is to keep putting pressure on Microsoft, whether that's through switching to GNU/Linux, avoiding new releases of their software, or actions as simple as moving your projects off of Microsoft GitHub. If you're concerned about e-waste or have friends who work to combat climate change, getting them together to tell them about free software is the perfect way to help our movement grow, and free a few more users from Microsoft's digital restrictions. If you're concerned about e-waste or have friends who work to combat climate change, getting them together to tell them about free software is the perfect way to help our movement grow, and free a few more users from Microsoft's digital restrictions.



[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/tpm-2-0-%E2%80%93-a-necessity-for-a-secure-and-future-proof-windows-11/4339066

[2] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-says-having-a-tpm-is-non-negotiable-for-windows-11/

[3] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwide

[4] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-wants-30-if-you-want-to-delay-windows-11-switch/

[5] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/keep-putting-pressure-on-microsoft

[6] https://dayagainstdrm.org/

Phoronix reports on Valve's " [1]Steam Survey" results for December 2024, saying the new numbers " [2]reflect a nice upward trend for the Linux gaming statistics and a high point in recent times."

> In November the Steam Survey [3]reflected a 2.03% marketshare for Linux ... Roughly inline with what we have been seeing for Linux right at around the 2% threshold. With the just-published December survey numbers, there is a 0.29% increase to 2.29%...! When looking at the Linux numbers, SteamOS Holo accounts for around 36% of all Linux gamers... SteamOS Holo being the operating system of the Steam Deck and beginning to appear on other devices as well... Driven in large part by the Steam Deck relying on a custom AMD SoC/APU and AMD being popular with Linux gamers/enthusiasts for their open-source driver support, AMD CPU use on Linux commands a 73.6% marketshare.

In fact, December "saw AMD reach another record-high share among participants of Valve's survey," [4]according to TechSpot — "up 3.02% last month, taking its total to 38.7% as Intel fell slightly to 63.4%..."

> Elsewhere, Windows 11 is now comfortably the most popular OS in the survey. It pulled ahead another 2% to an almost 55% share in December as Windows 10 dropped to 42.3%... However, it's a different story when looking at global users: Windows 10's share has increased two months in a row to 62.7% while Windows 11 has declined to 34.1%. Rounding up the rest of the survey, 16GB of RAM remains the most popular amount of system RAM but it's lead is declining as second-place 32GB grows; a trend that is mirrored in the VRAM category...

Phoronix adds that the Windows percent "pulled back by 0.51% to 96.1% while Apple macOS also gained 0.22% going up to a 1.61% marketshare."



[1] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Survey-December-2024

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Survey-November-2024

[4] https://www.techspot.com/news/106184-steam-survey-highlights-amd-amazing-year-almost-1.html

Developer/data journalist Josh Renaud is also long-time Slashdot reader [1]Kirkman14 — and he's got a story to tell:

> How do you get people interested in an obscure Atari ST graphics format used on BBSes in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Recruit some folks to help you make an [2]artpack full of images and animations showing it off! That's the idea behind IGNITE, a new artpack from [3]Mistigris computer arts and [4]Break Into Chat , featuring 18 images and animations created in "Instant Graphics and Sound" format.

>

> I love telling unknown underdog computer stories, and IGS sucked me in. This fall, I published a [5]six-part, 14,000-word history , introducing readers to a cast of characters that included [6]Mears , the self-described "working man without a degree" who often downplayed his own coding ability; [7]Kevin Moody and Anthony Rau , two Navy guys in Florida who bonded over their love of Atari and BBSing; [8]Steve Turnbull , an artist and scenic designer working in Hollywood; and many others.

>

> But IGS isn't just a thing of the past. Two years ago, on New Years Eve 2022, Mears made a [9]surprise announcement — he was releasing a new version of IGS, thirty years after he had stopped working on the project.

>

> Because I (inadvertently) had spurred Larry to action, I felt an obligation to make some art using his new tools. I completed my first piece — a drawing of a ship from the sci-fi game FTL — in early 2023. Over the subsequent months, I kept at it, and ended up creating a number of fun animations. I'm particularly proud of the [ Star Trek -themed] animated [10]Guardian of Forever login sequence , and a brand-new Calvin and Hobbes-themed animation I created just for this pack.

>

> I had long wanted to release an all-IGS artpack as a way to honor Mears, highlight IGS, and maybe stir other people's interest in trying this format. To lower the barrier to entry, I created my own web-based drawing tool, JoshDraw, which supports a small subset of IGS's features. To my surprise, I successfully recruited seven other people to submit nine static images to include in the pack.



[1] https://www.slashdot.org/~Kirkman14

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS_riObN32o

[3] https://mistigris.org/

[4] https://breakintochat.com/

[5] https://breakintochat.com/blog/category/instant-graphics-and-sound/?order=asc

[6] https://breakintochat.com/blog/2024/08/04/instant-graphics-and-sound-part-2-larry-mears/

[7] https://breakintochat.com/blog/2024/08/09/instant-graphics-and-sound-part-3-the-adventure-begins/

[8] https://breakintochat.com/blog/2024/08/22/instant-graphics-and-sound-part-4-the-artist-and-the-community/

[9] https://forums.atariage.com/topic/345855-instant-graphics-218-developer-release-for-telenet-bbs-sysops-and-users/

[10] https://digipres.club/@kirkman/110395608293646885

Today 34-year-old chess champion Magnus Carlsen married 26-year-old Ella Victoria Malone, "in a ceremony packed with guests on a sunny winter day in Oslo," [1]reports Chess.com .

> According to [2]Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet , a film crew from Netflix was also present. The streaming giant is shooting a chess-related TV show rumored to air in 2025... Ella Victoria is now expected to have a more central role in her husband's career. [3]According to VG , she played a crucial role in securing Magnus a deal with fashion brand G-Star Raw...

>

> Their wedding was surely a fairy tale, but the Carlsens aren't heading for their honeymoon just yet. Magnus is set to make his debut for St. Pauli in the German Bundesliga on January 10, when he'll face Dusseldorf led by none other than GM Gukesh Dommaraju.

The article adds that "For Carlsen, this caps off a whirlwind week that began in New York, highlighted by his [4]eighth World Blitz Championship title," a victory that they say was "controversially" shared with Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi. [5]CNN reports :

> [Carlsen] had taken a 2-0 lead in the four-game contest before Nepomniachtchi launched a stunning comeback to level the scores, sending the match to a sudden death tie-break. The pair then drew the next three games, and it was later determined that they would share the title after the proposal was accepted by Arkady Dvorkovich, the president of chess governing body FIDE. "I thought, at that point, we had already played for a very long time and I was, first of all, very happy to end it, and I thought, at that point, it would have been very, very cruel on both of us if one gets first and the other gets second," Carlsen later told reporters....

>

> [T]he decision to share the Blitz title with long-time rival Nepomniachtchi has sparked outcry from some of the world's top players — the first time in history that a world championship title has been shared. "This is a situation where I cannot stand with what Magnus has done," prominent player Hikaru Nakamura [6]said on his YouTube channel. "I do not think that there is any precedent for this, when you put out rules about the game itself and then suddenly you decide, 'It's okay, we're going to go home' ... It's unconscionable to me...."

>

> "FIDE goes from forfeiting Carlsen (over the jeans debacle) to creating an entirely new rule," Hans Niemann, whom Carlsen had defeated in the quarterfinals, [7]wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. "Seems like the the regulatory body of chess has no intention of being unbiased. They seem to only care about what one player thinks...." Former world champion Garry Kasparov made a pointed reference to the jeans controversy, [8]writing on X: "I thought the first FIDE tiebreak was pants."

Magnus apparently tells his opponent "If they like refuse, we can just play short draws until they give up," according to a behind-the-scenes video clip posted to X.com. The CEO of FIDE, Emil Sutovsky, [9]re-posted it on X.com , complaining that FIDE president Dvorkovich's decision to accept the players' proposed draw was made "under the spur of a moment, and of course, the video appeared much later. I do think it is VERY BAD though..."

FIDE later told CNN that "This situation has already prompted valuable discussions within FIDE management to improve our regulations." (And their article adds that some — including [10]grandmaster Ivan Sokolov — suggested ties be settled with a new chess format known as Armageddon.) "In Armageddon, White has more time but a draw on the board counts as a win for Black," [11]explains the Guardian — adding that back in 1983, "Fide determined the winner of a Candidates match by a roulette wheel."

The Guardian adds that Russian-born FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich "probably felt he had little choice but to rubber stamp the agreement by the players."

> He would have been pilloried in Moscow as preventing a Russian world champion had he ruled otherwise, and a negative could also have provoked a series of the notorious [12]Berlin draws , the standard method for a quick mutually agreed half point. However, that course of action would have brought the players into disrepute, and it is more likely that an inspired game or a blunder would have settled the final. The audience on Wall Street applauded the decision, but the considerable online reaction from professional players and fans has been mostly critical.

>

> It was the first ever shared over-the-board individual world title in chess history.



[1] https://www.chess.com/news/view/chess-king-magnus-carlsen-marries-his-queen-ella-victoria

[2] https://www.dagbladet.no/sport/giftet-seg-1/82464646

[3] https://www.vg.no/sport/i/73QKjw/magnus-carlsen-gifter-seg-denne-helgen-med-ella-victoria-malone

[4] https://www.chess.com/news/view/2024-fide-world-blitz-chess-championship-day-2

[5] https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/03/sport/magnus-carlsen-nepomniachtchi-chess-world-blitz-championships-spt/index.html

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=083brMIG9Tg

[7] https://x.com/HansMokeNiemann/status/1874248843342340517

[8] https://x.com/Kasparov63/status/1874254130774237464

[9] https://x.com/EmilSutovsky/status/1874497182193319976

[10] https://x.com/GMSokolovIvan/status/1874366706560426449

[11] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/jan/03/chess-jeans-clad-carlsen-defies-critics-to-share-blitz-with-nepomniachtchi

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Defence#Berlin_draw

"Private space stations have been raising billions of dollars in an effort to build future hubs — and even one day cities — in orbit," according to [1]a recent report from the U.K. newspaper, the Telegraph :

> Axiom Space, a US business aiming to build its own station, has raised more than $500m (£400m). Vast, a space business backed by crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb, is plotting two stations before the end of the decade. Gravitics, meanwhile, has raised tens of millions of dollars for its modular space "real estate". Nasa itself, along with other space agencies, is planning a further station, Lunar Gateway, which will orbit the Moon. Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin has also announced plans to build a space station by 2027, called Orbital Reef, which it has described as an orbital "mixed-use business park". Working with US aerospace business Sierra Space, Orbital Reef will be made up of inflatable pods, which can be launched on a regular rocket before being "blown up" in space. Sierra Space says these modules could house in-space manufacturing or pharmaceutical technology...

>

> Since 2021, Nasa has also offered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to private companies to develop commercial space stations that could succeed the ISS. So far, it has handed $400m to companies including Axiom, Blue Origin (which is working with Sierra Space), and Northrop Grumman... Vast hopes to launch its first space station, Haven-1, as soon as 2025. This simple module will be the first privately-run space station and will be occupied by a crew of four over four two week expeditions... While Vast was not one of the businesses to secure funding from Nasa, it hopes by launching the first proof-of-concept space station as soon as next year it can leapfrog rival efforts and claim the agency as an anchor customer. From there, it can target other space agencies or companies looking to conduct research.

Some interesting perspectives from the article:

Chris Quilty, an analyst at Quilty Space: "If China were not building its own space station it is arguable whether Nasa would have felt enjoined to maintain a human presence in low Earth orbit."

Tim Farrar, founder of TMF Associates, which advises some of the world's top space companies: "Unless they either secure government funding or focus on space tourism, they will inevitably have to rely on the largess of either billionaires or gullible investors who are space enthusiasts."

Thanks to Slashdot reader [2]fjo3 for sharing the news.



[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/12/29/billionaires-tech-barons-vying-build-private-space-station/

[2] https://www.slashdot.org/~fjo3

"Electric vehicles are expected to outsell cars with internal combustion engines in China for the first time next year," [1]reports the Financial Times , calling it "a historic inflection point that puts the world's biggest car market years ahead of western rivals."

> China is set to smash international forecasts and Beijing's official targets with domestic EV sales — including pure battery and plug-in hybrids — growing about 20 per cent year on year to more than 12mn cars in 2025, according to the latest estimates supplied to the Financial Times by four investment banks and research groups. The figure would be more than double the 5.9mn sold in 2022. At the same time, sales of traditionally powered cars are expected to fall by more than 10 per cent next year to less than 11 million, reflecting a near 30 per cent plunge from 14.8 million in 2022...

>

> Robert Liew, director of Asia-Pacific renewables research at Wood Mackenzie, said China's EV milestone signalled its success in domestic technology development and securing global supply chains for critical resources needed for EVs and their batteries. The industry's scale meant steep manufacturing cost reductions and lower prices for consumers. "They want to electrify everything," said Liew. "No other country comes close to China." While the pace of Chinese EV sales growth has eased from a post-pandemic frenzy, the forecasts suggest Beijing's official target, set in 2020, for EVs to account for 50 per cent of car sales by 2035, will be achieved 10 years in advance of schedule...

>

> As China's EV market tracked towards year-on-year growth of near 40 per cent in 2024, the market share of foreign-branded cars fell to a record low of 37 per cent — a sharp decline from 64 per cent in 2020, according to data from Automobility, a Shanghai-based consultancy. In this month alone, GM wrote down more than $5 billion (€4.8 billion) of its business value in China; the holding company behind Porsche warned of a writedown in its Volkswagen stake of up to €20 billion; and arch rivals Nissan and Honda said they were responding to a "drastically changing business environment" with a merger.

"Meanwhile, EV sales growth has slowed in Europe and the US, reflecting the legacy car industry's slow embrace of new technology, uncertainty over government subsidies and rising protectionism against imports from China..."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [2]AmiMoJo for sharing the news.



[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/12/26/chinas-ev-sales-set-to-overtake-traditional-cars-years-ahead-of-west/

[2] https://www.slashdot.org/~AmiMoJo