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janrinok writes:

Nobel economics prize goes to 3 researchers for explaining innovation-driven economic growth

Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt won the Nobel memorial prize in economics Monday for their research into the impact of innovation on economic growth and how new technologies replace older ones, a key economic concept known as "creative destruction."

The winners represent contrasting but complementary approaches to economics. Mokyr is an economic historian who delved into long-term trends using historical sources, while Howitt and Aghion relied on mathematics to explain how creative destruction works.

Dutch-born Mokyr, 79, is from Northwestern University; Aghion, 69, from the Collège de France and the London School of Economics; and Canadian-born Howitt, 79, from Brown University.

Mokyr was still trying to get his morning coffee when he was reached on the phone by an AP reporter, and said he was shocked to win the prize.

"People always say this, but in this case I am being truthful—I had no clue that anything like this was going to happen," he said.

His students had asked him about the possibility he would win the Nobel, he said. "I told them that I was more likely to be elected Pope than to win the Nobel Prize in economics—and I am Jewish, by the way."

Mokyr will turn 80 next summer but said he has no plans to retire. "This is the type of job that I dreamed about my entire life," he said.

Like fellow laureate Mokyr, Aghion also expressed surprise at the honor. "I can't find the words to express what I feel," he said by phone to the press conference in Stockholm. He said he would invest his prize money in his research laboratory.

Asked about current trade wars and protectionism in the world, Aghion said that: "I am not welcoming the protectionist way in the US. That is not good for ... world growth and innovation."

The winners were credited with better explaining and quantifying "creative destruction," a key concept in economics that refers to the process in which beneficial new innovations replace—and thus destroy—older technologies and businesses. The concept is usually associated with economist Joseph Schumpeter, who outlined it in his 1942 book "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy."

upstart writes:

Warp Speed! How Some Galaxies Can Move Away from Us Faster Than Light:

If there is an absolute law in the universe, it's that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

For science-fiction enthusiasts, that's a bit depressing. Space is big, and while the speed of light is incredibly fast to us humans, on interstellar scales it's glacially slow. Even at a photon's speed of about 300,000 kilometers per second, it's a journey of more than four years to reach just the closest star to the sun.

But we have to be careful how we state this universal law. To be more specific, nothing can move faster than the speed of light through space. That may seem like a nitpick, but it turns out to have literally cosmic importance.

To see why, we have to look at the behavior of the universe itself. One of the most important things the universe does is expand. It's getting bigger every day. The foundational observations for this, which were made more than a century ago, showed that distant galaxies appeared to be receding from us—not only that, but ones farther away were moving faster.

That's what an explosion does: at some time after the bang, the fastest-moving material will be farthest away. This is where the idea of the big bang model for the origin of the universe comes from.

The cosmic expansion can be measured as a rate, meaning at a given distance from us, a galaxy will be moving away from us at given speed. At a different distance, a galaxy will be moving at a different speed. We measure this as a rate of expansion called the Hubble constant. Our best measurements of this give a value of about 70 kilometers per second per megaparsec. In other words, a galaxy one megaparsec from us (about 3.26 million light-years) will be receding at 70 km/sec. A galaxy two megaparsecs away will be moving twice as fast, or at 140 km/sec, and so on.

Extrapolating this, though, runs us into trouble: it's not hard to see that at some distance from us, the recession speed will equal the speed of light. If you run the numbers, just using the speed of light divided by the Hubble constant, you find that distance is about 14 billion light-years. That distance is called the Hubble sphere, and anything farther away than that would be—from our perspective—moving faster than light.

Here's where things get weird. ("Oh yes, here is where that happens," I expect you're thinking.) The universe is actually quite a bit bigger than that. We know the cosmos was born about 13.8 billion years ago. By some few hundreds of millions of years later, galaxies had formed. When we see the light from a distant galaxy, it's taken, say, 12 billion years to reach us, but over that time, the universe has expanded. So the light has actually had to travel much farther than 12 billion light-years to get to us. By the time the light reaches us, that galaxy is more like 23 billion light-years away.

That means there are galaxies outside our Hubble sphere, and they are moving away from us faster than the speed of light! How is that possible?

jelizondo writes:

PsyPost has a very interesting report about the consequences of using Ayahuasca on our feelings about death.

I've been interested in the stuff but a couple of friends that tried it reported there is a large possibility of vomiting after drinking the stuff and I just don't like that. Point of fact, they ask you to fast before the ceremony to minimize vomiting but to me dry heaves are worst.

Anyway, a very interesting read.

People who regularly use ayahuasca, a traditional Amazonian psychedelic drink, may have a fundamentally different way of relating to death. A new study published in the journal Psychopharmacology indicates that long-term ayahuasca users tend to show less fear, anxiety, and avoidance around death—and instead exhibit more acceptance. These effects appear to be driven not by spiritual beliefs or personality traits, but by a psychological attitude known as "impermanence acceptance."

The findings come from researchers at the University of Haifa, who sought to better understand how psychedelics influence people's thinking and behavior around mortality. According to their data, it is not belief in an afterlife or a shift in metaphysical views that predicts reduced death anxiety. Instead, the results suggest that learning to accept change and the transient nature of life may be central to how ayahuasca helps people relate more calmly to death.

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew traditionally used by Indigenous Amazonian groups in healing and spiritual rituals. The drink contains the powerful hallucinogen DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) along with harmala alkaloids that make it orally active. Many users describe deeply emotional, and often death-themed, visions during their experiences. These may include the sensation of personal death, symbolic rebirth, contact with deceased individuals, or feelings of ego dissolution—the temporary loss of a sense of self.

The research team, led by Jonathan David and Yair Dor-Ziderman, were interested in this recurring death-related content. Historical records, cultural traditions, and previous studies all suggest that ayahuasca frequently evokes visions or thoughts related to death. In one survey, over half of ayahuasca users said they had experienced what felt like a "personal death" during a session. Others described visions involving graves, spirits, or life-after-death themes.

Despite these consistent reports, empirical studies that systematically assess how ayahuasca affects death-related cognition and emotion remain rare. Past work has often relied on limited self-reports, lacked control groups, and overlooked possible mediating psychological factors. The current study aimed to address those gaps with a more rigorous design.

"We were motivated by the lack of research exploring how ayahuasca use might relate to the way people think about and come to terms with the most certain aspect of life: death. Most studies in this area have focused on other psychedelics and on short-term or clinical effects, while we wanted to explore longer-lasting, personality-level changes. We also wanted to understand why such changes might occur, which has been largely missing from the existing literature," David told PsyPost.

"There is a hype in popular and scientific venues regarding the efficacy of psychedelics to affect a fundamental shift in our response to the theme of death. In particular, ayahuasca has long been described as the 'vine of the dead' (translation from Quechua) and death-related themes are pervasive in ayahuasca visions," added Dor-Ziderman, a research director at the University of Haifa and visiting scholar at Padova University.

"However, there has been surprisingly little empirical work on how such encounters shape one's relationship with mortality. Furthermore, most existing studies rely on single self-report scales and overlook the unconscious, behavioral, and cognitive layers of how humans process death. We wanted to provide a comprehensive, multidimensional assessment of "death processing," and to identify the causal mechanisms which mediate, or account for, long-term differences in death processing between ayahuasca users and non-users."

To examine how these individuals relate to death, the researchers administered a detailed set of questionnaires and behavioral tasks. These included measures of death anxiety, fear of personal death, death-avoidant behaviors, and death acceptance. They also used implicit tasks, such as response times to death-related words, to capture unconscious reactions. The idea was to get a broad, multi-dimensional picture of how people think and feel about mortality.

The researchers found statistically significant differences between the two groups. Compared to non-users, ayahuasca users scored lower on death anxiety, were less likely to avoid thinking about death, showed fewer fear responses, and expressed greater acceptance of mortality. These patterns held true across both self-report and behavioral measures. Notably, even the subtle response time tasks pointed in the same direction.

The effect sizes were moderate to large, suggesting these differences are not just statistical artifacts. The changes showed up in emotional, cognitive, and behavioral domains alike, which the authors interpret as evidence of a generalized shift in how ayahuasca users process the idea of death.

"Although these findings should be interpreted with caution, since this was a cross-sectional and mostly self-report study, our results suggest that ayahuasca use may help people feel less anxious about death and more accepting of it, especially among long-term users," David said.

upstart writes:

A unique case of a woman with male chromosomes in her blood:

This is believed to be the first recorded case of its kind, and doctors believe her blood came from her twin brother while they were in the womb.

In every other cell in her body, Ana Paula Martins has XX chromosomes associated with female sex characteristics.

But in her blood cells she carries XY chromosomes that typically determine biological male sex.

This is believed to be the first recorded case of its kind, and doctors believe her blood came from her twin brother while they were in the womb.

This phenomenon was discovered in 2022, after a miscarriage experienced by Ana Paula.

During a medical examination, the gynecologist ordered a karyotype analysis, which allows for a detailed examination of an individual's chromosomes, usually from a blood sample.

"They called me from the lab and said the analysis needed to be repeated," Ana Paula recalls.

The results showed the presence of XY chromosomes in her blood, which confused both Ana and the doctors.

"I went to examine the patient and she had, so to speak, absolutely all the normal female characteristics," explains Gustavo Maciel, a gynecologist at a Brazilian health organization. Fleury Medicine and Health.

"She had a uterus, ovaries... the ovaries were functioning normally," adds this professor at the School of Medicine of the University of São Paulo.

upstart writes:

Tom's Hardware published a report about the new deal between AMD and OpenAI:

OpenAI and AMD have announced a multibillion-dollar partnership that will see the companies collaborate on AI data centers powered by AMD processors. OpenAI has committed to purchasing 6 gigawatts of AMD chips, starting with the MI450 next year. That will be done either by purchasing the chips directly from AMD or through cloud computing partners. AMD CEO Lisa Su told the WSJ that the deal would generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue for AMD over the next five years.

The two companies are not disclosing the exact financial details of the deals. However, AMD emphasized that each "per gigawatt" of capacity is worth tens of billions of dollars, so it's possible the deal is worth upwards of $60 billion.

In return, OpenAI will receive warrants for up to 160 million AMD shares, approximately 10% of AMD, at a price of $0.01 per share, to be awarded in phases, provided that OpenAI meets deployment milestones. The warrants will only be exercised if AMD's share price increases, although again, the specifics are unclear.

The deal is an enormous win for AMD and stands juxtaposed with Nvidia's groundbreaking Intel partnership announced last month. Under the terms of that deal, Nvidia and Intel are jointly developing Intel x86 RTX SOCs for PCs featuring Nvidia graphics, as well as custom Nvidia data center x86 processors. Nvidia also received $5 billion in Intel stock as part of the deal.

OpenAI will use AMD's chip for inference in order to cope with skyrocketing demand. "It's hard to overstate how difficult it's become... We want it super fast, but it takes some time." OpenAI's Sam Altman said to WSJ.

"We are thrilled to partner with OpenAI to deliver AI compute at massive scale," said Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO, AMD. "This partnership brings the best of AMD and OpenAI together to create a true win-win enabling the world's most ambitious AI buildout and advancing the entire AI ecosystem."

The first deployment will be 1 gigawatt worth of MI450 chips, scheduled for the second half of 2026. Altman said the AI buildout has reached a phase "where the entire industry's got to come together and everybody's going to do super well," not only on chips and data centers, but also further down the supply chain too.

OpenAI has also inked a $100 billion deal with Nvidia, and will use Nvidia's investment to secure and deploy 10 gigawatts worth of AI data centers. While that deal isn't finalized, AMD and OpenAI reportedly say this deal is "definitive" and plan to immediately file the requisite details with regulators, a step that has yet to happen in the Nvidia deal.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Tom's Hardware is reporting on a project by Cambridge University to rescue data trapped on old floppy disks. Magnetic media only lasts a decade or so under optimal, climate controlled storage conditions. So this task is much more fundamental than just pushing the old disks into off-the-shelf drives.

Led by the library's digital preservation team, the project aims to document and formalize best practices for floppy disk recovery, encompassing cleaning and handling methods, as well as imaging workloads. It's also pulling in expertise from the retro-computing community, whose trial-and-error techniques are often the only reason legacy formats still survive.

You can forget those cheap USB floppy drives you can buy online. Cambridge's preservationists don't just mount disks and hope for the best; they sample the raw magnetic signal itself. Specialized hardware, such as the KryoFlux and open-hardware Greaseweazle interfaces, captures the flux transitions — the tiny changes in polarity that encode data — and reconstructs the file structure later in software. This flux-level imaging process enables archivists to recover non-PC formats and identify weak or damaged sectors that would otherwise remain unread.

This project only addresses the matter of hardware, so far. Although that is important on its own when working for preservation, much of the data will turn out to be trapped in proprietary or DRM'd formats. Thus draconian copyright laws can impose an unnecessary non-technical barrier to the final steps of legally retrieving the data and bringing it to a usable form.

Previously:
(2025) A Story About USB Floppy Drives
(2024) PC Floppy Copy Protection: Softguard Superlok
(2024) PC Floppy Copy Protection: Formaster Copy-Lock
(2024) Japan's Digital Minister Claims Victory Against Floppy Disks
(2024) Where Are Floppy Disks Today? Planes, Trains, And All These Other Places
(2022) The Last Man Selling Floppy Disks Says He Still Receives Orders From Airlines

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

CRM giant Salesforce has been hacked affecting Qantas and other large corporations. While Salesforce claims to be number 1 in the world, a big claim in the presence of SAP and Microsoft, this recent hack shows that no system is completely secure. More than a billion records have been stolen from the 39 companies, including the Qantas Frequent Flyers program, Toyota, Disney, McDonalds, and HBO Max. Hackers have threatened to release this personal data unless Salesforce pay a ransom.

Problem is that when you start paying ransoms you don't stop paying.

Updates:
    • Salesforce refuses to submit to extortion demands linked to hacking campaigns
    • Hackers leak Qantas data containing 5 million customer records after ransom deadline passes

Original Submission

It's so common to hear that the gov't can't possibly do anything right, or for a good price, that many people believe it was always true. Here is a counter example to discuss:

https://theconversation.com/believe-it-or-not-there-was-a-time-when-the-us-government-built-beautiful-homes-for-working-class-americans-to-deal-with-a-housing-shortage-253512

In 1918, as World War I intensified overseas, the U.S. government embarked on a radical experiment: It quietly became the nation's largest housing developer, designing and constructing more than 80 new communities across 26 states in just two years.

These weren't hastily erected barracks or rows of identical homes. They were thoughtfully designed neighborhoods, complete with parks, schools, shops and sewer systems. In just two years, this federal initiative provided housing for almost 100,000 people.

Few Americans are aware that such an ambitious and comprehensive public housing effort ever took place. Many of the homes are still standing today.
[...]
Alongside housing construction, the Housing Corporation invested in critical infrastructure. Engineers installed over 649,000 feet of modern sewer and water systems, ensuring that these new communities set a high standard for sanitation and public health.

Attention to detail extended inside the homes. Architects experimented with efficient interior layouts and space-saving furnishings, including foldaway beds and built-in kitchenettes. Some of these innovations came from private companies that saw the program as a platform to demonstrate new housing technologies.

One company, for example, designed fully furnished studio apartments with furniture that could be rotated or hidden, transforming a space from living room to bedroom to dining room throughout the day.

To manage the large scale of this effort, the agency developed and published a set of planning and design standards − the first of their kind in the United States. These manuals covered everything from block configurations and road widths to lighting fixtures and tree-planting guidelines. The standards emphasized functionality, aesthetics and long-term livability.

Architects and planners who worked for the Housing Corporation carried these ideas into private practice, academia and housing initiatives. Many of the planning norms still used today, such as street hierarchies, lot setbacks and mixed-use zoning, were first tested in these wartime communities.

And many of the planners involved in experimental New Deal community projects, such as Greenbelt, Maryland, had worked for or alongside Housing Corporation designers and planners. Their influence is apparent in the layout and design of these communities.

The USA has another housing crunch now, partly (I've read) due to private capital bidding up the prices of many houses/apartments and turning them into rental units--makes a nice rate of return for the investors, but sucks for everyone else. While I have no expectations that the current administration (and their history with high end developments) would consider anything like this, it might be something to work toward in a few years, after the next election?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Teachers need to be scientists themselves, experimenting and measuring the impact of powerful AI products on education:

American technologists have been telling educators to rapidly adopt their new inventions for over a century. In 1922, Thomas Edison declared that in the near future, all school textbooks would be replaced by film strips, because text was 2% efficient, but film was 100% efficient. Those bogus statistics are a good reminder that people can be brilliant technologists, while also being inept education reformers.

I think of Edison whenever I hear technologists insisting that educators have to adopt artificial intelligence as rapidly as possible to get ahead of the transformation that's about to wash over schools and society.

At MIT, I studythe history and future of education technology, and I have never encountered an example of a school system – a country, state or municipality – that rapidly adopted a new digital technology and saw durable benefits for their students. The first districts to encourage students to bring mobile phones to class did not better prepare youth for the future than schools that took a more cautious approach. There is no evidence that the first countries to connect their classrooms to the internet stand apart in economic growth, educational attainment or citizen well-being.

New education technologies are only as powerful as the communities that guide their use. Opening a new browser tab is easy; creating the conditions for good learning is hard.

It takes years for educators to develop new practices and norms, for students to adopt new routines, and for families to identify new support mechanisms in order for a novel invention to reliably improve learning. But as AI spreads through schools, both historical analysis and new research conducted with K-12 teachers and students offer some guidance on navigating uncertainties and minimizing harm.

[...] Today, there is a cottage industry of consultants, keynoters and "thought leaders" traveling the country purporting to train educators on how to use AI in schools. National and international organizations publish AI literacy frameworks claiming to know what skills students need for their future. Technologists invent apps that encourage teachers and students to use generative AI as tutors, as lesson planners, as writing editors, or as conversation partners. These approaches have about as much evidential support today as the CRAAP test did when it was invented.

upstart writes:

While drones flying over different parts of Europe have raised concerns in many countries, some are worried about a more dystopian future with the technology:

While drones flying over different parts of Europe have raised concerns in many countries, some are worried about a more dystopian future with the technology.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine could lead to a new arms race — one not defined by big submarines or loud missiles, but by small, silent drones.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the prospect during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, where he warned that it is cheaper to stop Russia now "than wondering who will be the first to create a simple drone carrying a nuclear warhead"."

We must use everything we have, together, to force the aggressor to stop. And only then do we have a real chance that this arms race won't end in catastrophe for all of us," he said."Otherwise, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will keep driving the war forward — wider and deeper."

Experts warn drones carrying nuclear weapons might already exist.

TASS, the Russian state-owned news agency, reported in 2023 on the manufacture of a nuclear-armed underwater drone called Poseidon.

Previously, in 2018, the United States defence ministry also publicly acknowledged Russia was developing a "new intercontinental, nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered, undersea autonomous torpedo" or underwater drone.

Mick Ryan, a retired Australian Army major general and senior fellow for military studies at the Lowy Institute, said drones with nuclear warheads "may already be a reality".

"It's something that we should be concerned about," Ryan, who is also a strategic adviser at a US drone company, Skydio, told SBS News.

"Particularly since detecting a drone underwater that's capable of very long ranges would be a significant threat to Western countries, including Australia," Ryan said.

[...] Nuclear warheads are not the only possible future predicted for drones, as politicians are warning about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to control drones.

During his speech at the UN, Zelenskyy said "it's only a matter of time" before drones operate "all by themselves, fully autonomous, and no human involved, except the few who control AI systems".

Earlier in September, The Wall Street Journal reported that AI-powered drones were introduced on the battlefield, with Ukraine utilising technology that allows groups of drones to make decisions independently.

Ryan said the use of AI might actually help reduce civilian casualties in future warfare.

"AI might actually make them more deadly for the military and less deadly for civilians. Now, that's a perfect scenario, of course, and it's theoretical," he said.

upstart writes:

Comets Lemmon and SWAN may be visible around the same time as they race across the solar system:

Skywatchers, rejoice. This month, not one but two comets are set to soar into our night skies for your viewing pleasure.

The two comets, C/2025 R2 (SWAN) and C/2025 A6 (Lemmon), were both discovered in 2025. The celestial visitors are gearing up for a close flyby of Earth in October, becoming more visible as they approach our planet. SWAN will be closest to Earth on October 19, while Lemmon is set for its own close approach on October 21. Both icy comets may even be visible to the naked eye around that time.

Astronomers spotted Lemmon in January using the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter observatory in Arizona's Santa Catalina Mountains. The comet was speeding toward the inner solar system at speeds up to 130,000 miles per hour (209,000 kilometers per hour).

Later in September, amateur astronomer Vladimir Bezugly discovered comet SWAN in images from the SWAN instrument on NASA's SOHO satellite. The comet became significantly brighter as it emerged from the Sun's direction.

At its closest approach, SWAN will be at a distance of approximately 24 million miles (39 million kilometers) from our planet, or about a quarter of the distance between the Sun and Earth. SWAN is now at a brightness magnitude of around 5.9, according to EarthSky. The unexpectedly bright comet is currently in the southern skies, but it is slowly moving north, according to NASA.

Following SWAN's closest approach, comet Lemmon will be right behind. The comet will be about half the distance between the Sun and Earth before rounding the Sun on November 8. From there, it will begin its next journey around the star. Lemmon will continue to brighten as it approaches the Sun, but it will likely stay visible, and possibly become even brighter, around October 31 to November 1, according to EarthSky.

upstart writes:

Some early experiments with AI are revealing the technology's shortcomings - and, by extension, the value of human workers:

This time three years ago, most people had never heard of generative AI. Today, the technology is a cultural behemoth, and businesses across virtually every industry are facing huge pressure to embrace it.

At least at first glance, customer service would seem to be a field that's particularly ripe for AI-powered automation. Chatbots specialize in fielding simple queries, while newer and more powerful agents can access a business's internal files to provide up-to-date information, send follow-up emails, and perform other complex tasks. Little wonder that a fleet of companies like Salesforce and Microsoft have been replacing human customer service reps with AI.

New research, however, suggests this could turn out to be a mistake -- that despite the huge amount of marketing gusto that's been poured into selling generative AI-powered customer service tools to businesses, the technology could in fact be doing more harm than good.

You know that relief you feel when you finally get past a customer service bot and an actual person picks up the phone? Turns out most other people seem to feel that way too, even in the age of AI.

[...] "Companies that rushed to cut jobs in the name of AI savings are now facing massive, and often unexpected costs," he told ZDNET. "We've seen customers share examples of AI-generated errors -- like chatbots giving wrong answers, marketing emails misfiring, or content that misrepresents the brand -- and they notice when the human touch is missing."

He added that the backlash has spread to social media.

Some companies have already learned painful lessons about AI's shortcomings and adjusted course accordingly. In one early example from last year, McDonald's announced that it was retiring an automated order-taking technology that it had developed in partnership with IBM after the AI-powered system's mishaps went viral across social media.

Snotnose writes:

To cat lovers, a litter box is a necessity. But not to scientists. A team of researchers decided to investigate litter boxes as records of behavior: the pre-squat scratch, the whirl, the precise geometry of the bury

To cat owners, a litter box is a nuisance. But to scientists, it's a trove of information. A team of researchers at Nestlé Purina PetCare decided to investigate litter boxes as records of behavior: the pre-squat scratch, the whirl, the precise geometry of the bury.

The scientists built a painstaking dictionary of these gestures—a full "ethogram," or catalog, of species-specific behaviors—and then identified the distinct moves in feline bathroom habits: grooming, digging, sniffing litter. "We landed on 39 different behaviors that cats do in a litter box, with the understanding that depending on their satisfaction with the litter box, the environment and the dynamics around them, those behaviors will shift," says Ragen McGowan, director of digital and AI product development at Purina and one of the authors of a paper published recently in Applied Animal Behaviour Science on the development of Purina's AI-powered litter box monitor. "We realized this ethogram could be a window into their health."

And Imma gonna leave a link to where I found it, on Fark

Original Submission

digitalaudiorock writes:

As a very long time user of MythTV and free OTA ATSC 1.0 TV, reading this one did not make my day:

CordCutters published news of a recent FCC decision to allow broadcasters flexibility on switching to ATSC 3.0 technology:

In a major shift for American television viewers, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decided against setting a hard deadline to end the old digital TV system that powers most broadcasts and cable services today. [...] The agency, now headed by Brendan Carr, had initially pushed for a quicker switch to the advanced ATSC 3.0 technology, known as NextGen TV. But after hearing concerns from consumer groups, cable companies, and satellite providers, the FCC is choosing a more flexible, voluntary approach to make the change easier for everyone involved.

According to the new proposal this would "tentatively conclude that television stations should be allowed to choose when to stop broadcasting in 1.0 and start broadcasting exclusively in 3.0."

To understand this, it's helpful to step back and explain the basics. For over 15 years, U.S. TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs)—think cable giants like Comcast or satellite services like DirecTV and DISH—have relied on ATSC 1.0. This is the standard digital TV technology that replaced fuzzy analog signals in 2009, delivering clearer pictures and more channels. It's the "original" digital TV, or what some call the "OG" of modern broadcasting. ATSC 1.0 works universally across free over-the-air antennas, cable boxes, and satellite dishes, reaching nearly every household without special upgrades.

NextGen TV, built on ATSC 3.0, promises even better features: sharper 4K video, interactive apps, and stronger signals that can cut through buildings or bad weather. It's like upgrading from a reliable old smartphone to one with a bigger screen and faster apps. The transition started voluntarily during the Biden administration, with a handful of cities testing it out. But since Trump's return in January 2025—about nine and a half months ago—the push intensified. FCC leaders wanted a nationwide shutdown of ATSC 1.0 by a set date to speed things up, arguing it would modernize broadcasting and free up airwaves for new uses.

This aggressive stance hit a wall of opposition. Consumer advocates, led by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and its president Gary Shapiro, warned that forcing the change too fast could leave millions of viewers in the dark. Older TVs and set-top boxes might stop working, forcing families to buy new equipment they can't afford. Cable and satellite lobbies echoed these fears, pointing out the massive costs of rewiring their networks to carry the new signals. For context, imagine every home suddenly needing a software update or new hardware just to watch local news—disruptive and expensive, especially for low-income or rural households.

The FCC's latest move, outlined in a document called the Fifth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM), listens to these voices. Instead of a mandatory cutoff, the agency proposes keeping the transition market-driven and optional. Broadcasters— the TV stations that send out signals—would get to decide when, or even if, they fully drop ATSC 1.0. Many are already "simulcasting," meaning they beam both the old and new signals at the same time, like offering two radio stations on one frequency. The FCC wants to ease rules around this, removing red tape that currently limits how long stations can keep the old signal running. This builds on policies from the Democratic-led FCC, extending the grace period without a strict timeline.

The plan also calls for ways to cut costs and smooth the ride for all players. For consumers, that could mean subsidies or incentives to upgrade TVs or antennas without breaking the bank. Manufacturers might get breaks on producing hybrid devices that handle both standards. Smaller broadcasters in rural areas, who often operate on tight budgets, would benefit from fewer mandates. And MVPDs could phase in NextGen support at their own pace, avoiding a sudden overhaul that might raise monthly bills.

But the FCC isn't stopping at flexibility—it's opening the floor for public input on trickier issues. One big question: Should new TVs sold in stores be required to receive ATSC 3.0 signals right out of the box? This echoes a famous FCC rule from the 1960s, when regulators under Chairman Newton Minow mandated UHF tuners in TVs. That move helped spark the growth of companies like Sinclair Inc., now a leading cheerleader for NextGen TV. Yet today, the CTA and others are pushing back hard, saying it could hike prices for basic sets and slow sales.

This compromise feels like a win for balance. Proponents of NextGen, like Sinclair, get regulatory green lights to experiment and expand. Critics, including the cable industry, avoid the chaos of a rushed shutdown. For everyday viewers, it means no panic-buying of new gear tomorrow. The transition, which began quietly years ago at events like a 2019 FCC symposium, can now evolve naturally. Back then, questions about integrating NextGen into cable systems lingered unanswered by groups like Pearl TV or the ATSC standards body. Today's proposal nods to those gaps, seeking fresh input.

Reflecting on history adds irony. A quarter-century ago, ATSC 1.0 was hailed as revolutionary, even as early tech from firms like Sinclair hinted at what 3.0 could become. Now, with costs in mind, the FCC is ensuring the next leap doesn't repeat past disruptions. As comments roll in over the coming months, this could shape TV for the next generation—literally. For now, Americans can keep flipping channels without fear of a digital cliff.

Hardware requirements aside, ATSC 3.0 will have DRM which, as I understand it, will make recording impossible. I know there are far worse things going on in Washington now, but wow this sucks.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/10/like-putting-on-glasses-for-the-first-time-how-ai-improves-earthquake-detection/

On January 1, 2008, at 1:59 am in Calipatria, California, an earthquake happened. You haven't heard of this earthquake; even if you had been living in Calipatria, you wouldn't have felt anything. It was magnitude -0.53, about the same amount of shaking as a truck passing by. Still, this earthquake is notable, not because it was large but because it was small—and yet we know about it.

Over the past seven years, AI tools based on computer imaging have almost completely automated one of the fundamental tasks of seismology: detecting earthquakes.
[...]
"In the best-case scenario, when you adopt these new techniques, even on the same old data, it's kind of like putting on glasses for the first time, and you can see the leaves on the trees," said Kyle Bradley, co-author of the Earthquake Insights newsletter.
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Less certain is what comes next. Earthquake detection is a fundamental part of seismology, but there are many other data processing tasks that have yet to be disrupted. The biggest potential impacts, all the way to earthquake forecasting, haven't materialized yet.

"It really was a revolution," said Joe Byrnes, a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. "But the revolution is ongoing."
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The main tool that scientists traditionally use is a seismometer. These record the movement of the Earth in three directions: up–down, north–south, and east–west. If an earthquake happens, seismometers can measure the shaking in that particular location.
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Before good algorithms, earthquake cataloging had to happen by hand. Byrnes said that "traditionally, something like the lab at the United States Geological Survey would have an army of mostly undergraduate students or interns looking at seismograms."
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"The field of seismology historically has always advanced as computing has advanced," Bradley told me.

There's a big challenge with traditional algorithms, though: They can't easily find smaller quakes, especially in noisy environments.
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earthquakes have a characteristic "shape." The magnitude 7.7 earthquake above looks quite different from the helicopter landing, for instance.

So one idea scientists had was to make templates from human-labeled datasets. If a new waveform correlates closely with an existing template, it's almost certainly an earthquake.