Fast Company shares an essay from an anthropologist who researches human agency, algorithms, AI, and automation in the context of social systems: With the advent of computational tools for quantitative measurement and metrics, and the development of machine learning based on the big data developed by those metrics, organizations, Amazon among them, started to transition through a period of what I refer to as "extreme data analysis," whereby anything and anyone that can be measured, is. This is a problem. Using counting, metrics, and implementation of outcomes from extreme data analysis to inform policies for humans is a threat to our well-being, and results in the stories we are hearing about in the warehouse, and in other areas of our lives, where humans are too often forfeiting their agency to algorithms and machines. Unfortunately, after decades of building this quantitative scaffolding, a company such as Amazon has pretty much baked it into their infrastructure and their culture....

As the world continues to automate things, processes, and services, humans are put in positions where we must constantly adapt, since at the moment, automation cannot, and does not, cooperate with us outside of its pre-programmed repertoire. Thus, in many instances we must do the yielding of our agency and our choices, to the algorithms or robots, to reach the cooperative outcomes we require.... If every process is eventually automated and restricts human agency, while simultaneously requiring our servitude to function, we will be pinned to the wall with no choices, nothing left to give, and no alternatives for coping with it.
One example provided was the Amazon worker who complained the warehouse temperatures were always kept too hot -- to accommodate the needs of Amazon's robots. But the article argues we also forfeit agency "Every time we use a computer, or any computationally based device...

"We do this by sitting or standing to use a keyboard, by typing, clicking, scrolling, checking boxes, pulling down menus, and filling in data in a way that the machine can understand."

"Big changes are here," writes the official blog for Bluecherry: In 2010 we released our multi-port MPEG4 video capture card with an open source driver (solo6x10) and in 2011 updated the driver to support our multi-port H.264 capture cards. Later, this open source driver was later added into the mainline Linux kernel. In 2013 we released our multi-platform surveillance application client with an open source (GPL) license.

We are proud to announce that Effective April 18, 2019 we have released the entire Bluecherry software application open source with a GPL license.
An anonymous reader writes: This includes the Linux based server application and the Windows / Linux / OS X client.

Bluecherry's GitHub repo is now open for public viewing.

Why would someone build their own Beowulf cluster -- a high-performance parallel computing prototype -- using 12 Raspberry Pi boards? It's using the standard Beowulf cluster architecture found in about 88% of the world's largest parallel computing systems, with an MPI (Message Passing Interface) system that distributes the load over all the nodes.

Matt Trask, a long-time computer engineer now completing his undergraduate degree at Florida Atlantic University, explains how it grew out of his work on "virtual mainframes": In the world of parallel supercomputers (branded 'high-performance computing', or HPC), system manufacturers are motivated to sell their HPC products to industry, but industry has pushed back due to what they call the "Ninja Gap". MPI programming is hard. It is usually not learned until the programmer is in grad school at the earliest, and given that it takes a couple of years to achieve mastery of any particular discipline, most of the proficient MPI programmers are PhDs. And this, is the Ninja Gap -- industry understands that the academic system cannot and will not be able to generate enough 'ninjas' to meet the needs of industry if industry were to adopt HPC technology.

As part of my research into parallel computing systems, I have studied the process of learning to program with MPI and have found that almost all current practitioners are self-taught, coming from disciplines other than computer science. Actual undergraduate CS programs rarely offer MPI programming. Thus my motivation for building a low-cost cluster system with Raspberry Pis, in order to drive down the entry-level costs. This parallel computing system, with a cost of under $1000, could be deployed at any college or community college rather than just at elite research institutions, as is done [for parallel computing systems] today.

The system is entirely open source, using only standard Raspberry Pi 3B+ boards and Raspbian Linux. The version of MPI that is used is called MPICH, another open-source technology that is readily available.
But there's an added visual flourish, explains long-time Slashdot reader iamacat. "To visualize computing, each node is equipped with a servo motor to position itself according to its current load -- lying flat when fully idle, standing up 90 degrees when fully utilized."

Its data comes from the /proc filesystem, and the necessary hinges for this prototype were all generated with a 3D printer. "The first lesson is to use CNC'd aluminum for the motor housings instead of 3D-printed plastic," writes Trask. "We've seen some minor distortion of the printed plastic from the heat generated in the servos."

Russia state news channel Rossiya 24 has introduced a robot presenter for some of its bulletins. The BBC reports that the robot, named Alex, "has already caused a stir, with some viewers complaining about his appearance and accusing him of peddling political propaganda." From the report: The robot was developed by Promobot in the city of Perm. His silicon head is modeled on the face of the company's co-founder Alexei Yuzhakov. At the moment, the robot anchor can only move his facial features and neck. However, the final robot will have fully mobile limbs as well. Production of the robot began in 2017 and should be fully complete later this year, according to Promobot. It said Alex had cost more than one million roubles ($15,600) to develop and that it had received orders for 12 more humanoids.

Rossiya 24 said its newest presenter was of Russian origin with "software and almost all of its components produced inside the country." Alex has delivered a number of bulletins for the channel, presenting news items about agriculture, a nuclear technology forum and micro-finance. Most observers think on-air Alex is a temporary stunt to inject some fun and promote innovative Russian technology in TV news.

Larry Sanger, American internet project developer and co-founder of Wikipedia, argues in a blog post that vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to webcams, smartphone cameras/mics, and other devices that spy on us. He writes: Have you ever noticed that your webcam doesn't have an "off" switch? I looked on Amazon, and I couldn't find any webcams for sale that had a simple on/off switch. When I thought I found one, but it turned out just to have a light that turns on when the camera is in use, and off when not -- not a physical switch you can press or slide. The "clever" solution is supposed to be webcam covers (something Mark Zuckerberg had a hand in popularizing); you can even get a webcam (or a laptop) with such a cover built in. How convenient! I've used tape, which works fine. But a cover doesn't cover up the microphone, which could be turned on without your knowledge.
[...]
It's almost as if the vendors of common, must-have devices want to make it possible to spy on us. An enterprising journalist should ask why they don't make such switches. They certainly have deliberately made it hard for us to stop being spied upon -- even though we're their customers. Think about that. We're their bread and butter, and we're increasingly and rightly concerned about our security. Yet they keep selling us these insecure devices. That's just weird, isn't it? What the hell is going on? [...] If your webcam, or your phone, or any other device with an Internet-connected camera or microphone (think about how many you own) has ever been hacked, these [hardware vendors like Logitech and Apple and large software vendors like Skype and Snapchat] are partly to blame if it was always-on by design. They have a duty to worry about how their products make their users less secure. They haven't been doing this duty. Sanger goes on to urge consumers to care more about our privacy and security, and demand that vendors give us an off switch. "I think we consumers should demand that webcams, smart phones, smart speakers, and laptop cameras and microphones -- and any other devices with cameras and microphones that are connected to the Internet -- be built with hardware 'off' switches that make it impossible for the camera and microphone to be operated," writes Sanger.

Do you agree?

Suren Enfiajyan writes: HDD shipments are continuing to decline. This is about all major HDD vendors with WDC with the most decline yearly -- 26.1% against 11.3% (Toshiba) and 14.4% (Seagate). Desktop HDD shipments are said to have fallen to just 24.5 million units, a drop of nearly 4 million units from the previous quarter. Laptop HDD shipments dropped more than 6 million units to hit the 37 million mark. Enterprise HDDs are said to have rebounded by nearly 1 million units, however, to around 11.5 million hard drives purchased in the quarter. Business customers essentially picked up the slack left by consumers. These shipments were likely affected by many factors. But there's also the simple fact that most people want SSDs instead of HDDs for most of their devices. Nobody wants to wait for their system to boot, their files to load, or their apps to finish routine tasks.

If we're going to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we'll need an energy revolution. But there's a big problem. Making that future a reality will, among other things, require a lot of batteries: batteries to charge our electric cars; batteries to store solar power collected while the sun's up and wind power harnessed when it's gusty out. And as a new report by researchers at the University of Technology Sydney warns, that's likely to drive demand for the metals used to build green batteries -- as well as wind turbines and solar panels -- through the roof.

From a report: In other words the clean tech boom is, at least in the short term, likely to fuel a mining boom. And that won['t come without cost. "We already know about the environmental, social, and human rights impacts extraction is posing to front line communities right now," Payal Sampat, mining program director at Earthworks, which commissioned the new report, told Earther. "It's kind of unimaginable to think about... how it would be considered sustainable to scale up those impacts that many fold and still be reaping benefits."

Much like our smartphones and computers, the high-tech energy infrastructure of tomorrow requires a host of metals and minerals from across the periodic table and the planet. The lithium-ion batteries used in EVs and energy storage require not just lithium, but often cobalt, manganese, and nickel. Electric vehicle engines rely on rare earths, as do the permanent magnet-based generators inside some wind turbines. Solar panels gobbles up a significant share of the world's supply of tellurium, and gallium, along with a sizable fraction of mined silver and indium. Most renewable technologies demand heaps of copper and aluminum.

A former student of The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, has pled guilty to charges that he destroyed tens of thousands of dollars worth of campus computers using a USB device designed to instantly overwhelm and fry their circuitry. The plea was announced today by the Department of Justice, FBI, and Albany Police Department. The Verge reports: Vishwanath Akuthota, the former student, now faces up to 10 years in prison (with up to three years of supervision after release) and a fine totaling up to $250,000. He was arrested and taken into custody in North Carolina on February 22nd, just over a week after he went on a spree of inserting the "USB Killer" device into 66 of Saint Rose's computers around various locations on campus. Such devices can be easily and freely purchased online and can overload the surge protection in many PCs.

Akuthota, 27, apparently made video recordings of himself inserting the malicious USB device into the computers and said "I'm going to kill this guy" as the PCs were overloaded and permanently ruined. So it's fair to say the FBI and APD had all the evidence they needed. In total, Akuthota caused $58,471 worth of damage. As part of his guilty plea, he has agreed to pay back that amount to the college, a small private school in New York's capital city. The Verge reached out to The College of Saint Rose for a statement on today's news, but a spokesperson said the college had been asked by law enforcement to refrain from commenting.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Gamers of a certain age probably remember being wowed by the quick, smooth scaling and rotation effects of the Super Nintendo's much-ballyhooed "Mode 7" graphics. Looking back, though, those gamers might also notice how chunky and pixelated those background transformations could end up looking, especially when viewed on today's high-end screens. Emulation to the rescue. A modder going by the handle DerKoun has released an "HD Mode 7" patch for the accuracy-focused SNES emulator bsnes. In their own words, the patch "performs Mode 7 transformations... at up to 4 times the horizontal and vertical resolution" of the original hardware.

The results, as you can see in the above gallery and the below YouTube video, are practically miraculous. Pieces of Mode 7 maps that used to be boxy smears of color far in the distance are now sharp, straight lines with distinct borders and distinguishable features. It's like looking at a brand-new game. Perhaps the most impressive thing about these effects is that they take place on original SNES ROM and graphics files; DerKoun has said that "no artwork has been modified" in the games since the project was just a proof of concept a month ago. That makes this project different from upscaling emulation efforts for the N64 and other retro consoles, which often require hand-drawn HD texture packs to make old art look good at higher resolutions.

Four Samsung Galaxy Fold review units in the hands of major US tech journalists all experienced device-breaking display failures today. AndroidPolice: Steve Kovach of CNBC, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, and Dieter Bohn of The Verge have reported major failures of their phones' display panels, just two days after receiving them. To say this is a disaster for Samsung is probably underselling it. Well-known YouTuber MKBHD claims to be having similar problems, but hasn't posted any images. Bohn and Kovach claim their displays failed without removing the panel's protective film (Samsung says not to take it off), but both Gurman and Brownlee did. The company has yet to begin shipping the device to consumers. So far it has only handed the phone to select journalists, most of whom reported issue with it today.

The Surface Hub, Microsoft's digital whiteboard designed for conferences and meetings, received a hardware refresh today. From a report: At a press event at Steelcase's swanky New York City hub, the Redmond, Washington company detailed the improved Surface Hub 2S, which boasts a touchscreen that's higher in resolution than the original, plus a 4K front camera that supports video calling, an enhanced 8-microphone far-field microphone array, and other improvements. Surface 2S will ship in June, starting at $8,999 and going up to nearly $12,000. (That's the same base price as the original Surface Hub 2.) A larger version -- the Surface Hub 2S 85-inch -- will also be available at an as-yet-unrevealed price, and stands and wall mounts from Steelcase will be sold separately for $1,449.99 and $249, respectively.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Electric vehicles, still a small percentage of the total automotive market in the U.S., are beginning to gain ground, according to analysis by IHS Markit. There were 208,000 new registrations for electric vehicles in the U.S. last year, more than double the number filed in 2017, IHS said Monday. That growth in EVs was heavily concentrated in California as well as nine other states that have adopted the Zero Emission Vehicle program. California was the first to launch the ZEV program a state regulation that requires automakers to sell electric cars and trucks there. Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont are also ZEV states.

California accounted for nearly 46 percent, or 95,000, of new EV registrations in 2018, IHS said. California has 59 percent of market share of registered electric vehicles in the U.S. More than 350,000 new EVs will be sold in the US in 2020. Those figures will give EVs a still tiny 2 percent share of the total U.S. fleet. By 2025, that figure is expected to rise to more than1.1 million vehicles sold or a 7 percent share, according to recent IHS Markit. The Tesla's Model 3 is the top selling all-electric in the U.S. so far this year, followed by the Chevy Bolt, Tesla Model X, Tesla Model S and the Nissan Leaf, according to estimates by Inside EVs.

HP today announced its latest Elitebook 800 G6 line of business notebooks, boasting additional privacy options and a security software agent that HP says will make them more capable against zero-day attacks. From a report: HP's new models -- the EliteBook 830 G6, HP EliteBook 840 G6, and HP EliteBook 850 G6, plus the HP EliteBook x360 830 G6 -- offer up to 18 hours of battery life, a behind-the-glass privacy shutter, and options for a 1,000-nit screen that can be used outdoors. HP said it will ship most of the models in May, while the x360 model is expected to ship in June. Prices have not been announced. According to specifications provided to PCWorld, all four notebooks will share common Core i5-8265U and Core i7-8565 Whiskey Lake processors from Intel, while the Elitebook 830 G6 and EliteBook x360 830 G6 will offer a Core i3-8145U option as well. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 also appear for the first time in this generation, HP said.

The members of the EliteBook lineup differ by screen size. The EliteBook 830 G6 and x360 830 G6 offer 13.3-inch displays. The 840 G6 is a 14-inch laptop, and the 850 G6 is a 15-inch machine. As many business notebooks do, HP has innovated on two axes: improving the hardware, as well as building in additional software and services. The company seems especially proud of the latter, specifically what it calls Sure Sense. The technology will be included on all of the newly announced EliteBook PCs. With Sure Sense, the company believes the lightweight software agent can react in real time to unknown threats, intelligently deciding whether they represent a risk to the system. The idea, HP said, is to provide an additional layer of security against so-called "zero-day" attacks that may come out of the blue and install ransomware or worse on corporate machines.

Processor progress is harder to come by these days, but Samsung says it'll build chips next year that will give you a bit more battery life or a little more speed. From a report: Through improvements charted by Moore's Law, chip electronic components called transistors get steadily smaller. On Monday, Samsung said it's taken the next step along the Moore's Law path, shrinking a transistor measurement to 5 billionths of a meter -- 5nm -- from 7nm. To get some idea of just how teensy that is, about 2,000 would fit end to end across the width of a human hair. The new petite size means the Korean company will be able to add more electronic abilities to its chips. It also means the chips will get either a 10% speed boost or a 20% savings in power. The development could help not only Samsung, which builds the Exynos processor for its own phones, but also Qualcomm and other companies that rely on Samsung's foundry business to build their chips.

Researchers have 3D-printed a heart using a patient's cells, providing hope that the technique could be used to heal hearts or engineer new ones for transplants. "This is the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart replete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers," Professor Tal Dvir of Tel Aviv University's School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology said in a statement. Dvir is senior author of the research, published Monday in the journal Advanced Science. CNN reports: The process of printing the heart involved a biopsy of the fatty tissue that surrounds abdominal organs. Researchers separated the cells in the tissue from the rest of the contents, namely the extracellular matrix linking the cells. The cells were reprogrammed to become stem cells with the ability to differentiate into heart cells; the matrix was processed into a personalized hydrogel that served as the printing "ink."

The cells and hydrogel were first used to create heart patches with blood vessels and, from there, an entire heart. Next, the researchers plan to train the hearts to behave like hearts, Dvir explained. "The cells need to form a pumping ability; they can currently contract, but we need them to work together." If researchers are successful, they plan to transplant the 3D-printed heart in animal models and, after that, humans.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Workers at the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have begun removing fuel rods from a storage pool near one of the three reactors that suffered meltdowns eight years ago. The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said on Monday that work had begun to remove the first of 566 used and unused fuel assemblies in reactor building No 3. The fuel rods stored in unit No 3's cooling pool were not damaged in the 2011 disaster, when a powerful earthquake and tsunami knocked out Fukushima Daiichi's backup power supply and triggered the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, 25 years earlier.

Tepco said the operation to remove the fuel rods, which are in uncovered pools, would take two years, adding that transferring them to safer ground would better protect them in the event of another catastrophic earthquake. Workers are remotely operating a crane to raise the fuel from a storage rack in the pool and place it into a protective cask. The whole process occurs underwater to prevent radiation leaks. The utility plans to repeat the procedure in the two other reactors that suffered meltdowns.

An anonymous reader quotes the AP: Volkswagen is planning to release a fully-electric SUV in China which could compete with Tesla's Model X. The German automaker said Sunday the ID. ROOMZZ will be unveiled at the upcoming Shanghai Auto Show and will be available in 2021. Volkswagen says the zero-emission vehicle can go approximately 450 kilometers (280 miles) before the battery has to be recharged.
Volkswagen also claims it will have "level 4 autonomous driving," Reuters reports, adding that this electric SUV "is the latest move in Volkswagen's aggressive growth strategy in China, where electric cars are given preferential treatment by authorities..." In fact, the company's chief executive says nearly half of VW's engineers are working on products for the China market, though the electric SUV will eventually be shipped to other markets. "We plan to produce more than 22 million electric cars in the next 10 years."

VW's head of e-mobility also tells Reuters that Volkswagen will convert eight of their factories to mass produce electric Volkswagens, and eight more factories to to mass-produce electric cars under a different brand.

Slashdot reader Dan Drollette shared this article from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists where a specialist in nuclear security analyzes Game of Thones, citing dragons "as living, fire-breathing metaphors for nuclear weapons." Despite the fantasy setting, the story teaches a great deal about the inherent dangers that come with managing these game-changing agents, their propensity for accidents, the relative benefits they grant their masters, and the strain these weapons impose upon those wielding them. "Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and only [Daenerys Targaryen, one of the series' heroines] has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world," George R. R. Martin said in 2011. "But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I'm trying to explore.

"The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn't mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn't give you the power to reform, or improve, or build."

It makes for a bleak outlook. Or, as a character repeatedly warns in the first episode: "Winter is coming."

Josh Dzieza, writing for The Verge: The secrecy and vagueness are frustrating to critics. How do you prove that Foxconn won't build an enormous LCD factory during an industry glut or create a research campus larger than MIT in rural Wisconsin other than by pointing out that experts -- and even, occasionally, Foxconn executives -- say it makes no sense? State House Minority Leader Gordon Hintz recently appointed himself to the board of WEDC, and Foxconn's continued promises of 13,000 jobs make him palpably furious. Speaking in slow, measured tones in his Madison office as he packed for a trip, he said the state needs to "right-size" the project to something realistic, likely a few hundred research jobs, and that Foxconn needs to be honest about its plans. "For something that had a 25-year payback, building a factory because the president wants you to for reasons that have nothing to do with market viability is insane." Hintz believes Foxconn is trying to slow-walk the project until 2020, continuing to use it to win Trump's goodwill in the trade war and waiting to see who's elected. Foxconn has responded. Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge: Today, Foxconn responded to that piece by... announcing another innovation center in Wisconsin, this one in Madison, the state's capital. The building, which currently houses a bank, actually sits directly across the street from the Capitol building, and it will continue to house the bank because Foxconn did not announce when it would be moving in. Here are some other things Foxconn did not announce: how much it had paid for the building, how many floors of the building it would occupy, how many people would work there, or what those people would be doing. It did announce that it would be rebranding the building "Foxconn Place Madison," however.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: On Thursday, the Washington state legislature officially passed one of the most ambitious clean energy bills in the nation. Washington is now committed to making the state's electricity supply carbon neutral by 2030 and 100 percent carbon-free by 2045. The bill makes the fourth state to commit to 100 percent clean energy and adds a feather to the cap of Governor Jay Inslee who requested the bill be introduced. Inslee is running as a climate candidate for president that can get things done in the District if elected, and this bill is a very tangible accomplishment he can now point to.

The bill previously passed the state senate 28-19. After passing the house 56-42 on Thursday, the legislation goes back to the senate for a final vote. Once signed into law, Washington will join, Hawaii, California, and New Mexico as the fourth state committed to 100 percent clean energy. Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico have also made similar commitment as well as more than 90 cities, according to tracking by the Sierra Club. The bill shuts the door on coal, saying it "is the policy of the state to eliminate coal-fired electricity." By calling for energy to come from carbon-free sources by 2045, it leaves the door open for nuclear power. [...] In addition to committing to cutting emissions, the bill is also designed to ensure the transition to renewables and any bumps in energy prices aren't shouldered by the poor. The bill calls says utilities "must make funding available for energy assistance to low-income households."