"If we carry on the way we're going, we're going to have to concrete the whole planet just to store the data that we're generating," explains a deputy lab director at Microsoft Research Cambridge in a new video.

Fortunately, "A small sheet of glass can now hold several terabytes of data, enough to store approximately 1.75 million songs or 13 years' worth of music," explains a Microsoft Research web page about "Project Silica". (Data is retrieved by a high-speed, computer-controlled microscope from a library of glass disks storing data in three-dimensional pixels called voxels): Magnetic storage, although prevalent, is problematic. Its limited lifespan necessitates frequent re-copying, increasing energy consumption and operational costs over time. "Magnetic technology has a finite lifetime," says Ant Rowstron, Distinguished Engineer, Project Silica. "You must keep copying it over to new generations of media. A hard disk drive might last five years. A tape, well, if you're brave, it might last ten years. But once that lifetime is up, you've got to copy it over. And that, frankly, is both difficult and tremendously unsustainable if you think of all that energy and resource we're using."

Project Silica aims to break this cycle. Developed under the aegis of Microsoft Research, it can store massive amounts of data in glass plates roughly the size of a drink coaster and preserve the data for thousands of years. Richard Black, Research Director, Project Silica, adds, "This technology allows us to write data knowing it will remain unchanged and secure, which is a significant step forward in sustainable data storage." Project Silica's goal is to write data in a piece of glass and store it on a shelf until it is needed. Once written, the data inside the glass is impossible to change.

Project Silica is focused on pioneering data storage in quartz glass in partnership with the Microsoft Azure team, seeking more sustainable ways to archive data. This relationship is symbiotic, as Project Silica uses Azure AI to decode data stored in glass, making reading and writing faster and allowing more data storage... The library is passive, with no electricity in any of the storage units. The complexity is within the robots that charge as they idle inside the lab, awakening when data is needed... Initially, the laser writing process was inefficient, but after years of refinement, the team can now store several TB in a single glass plate that could last 10,000 years. For a sense of scale, each plate could store around 3,500 movies. Or enough non-stop movies to play for over half a year without repeating. A glass plate could hold the entire text of War and Peace — one of the longest novels ever written — about 875,000 times.
And most importantly, it can store data in a fraction of the space of a datacenter...

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Kirschey for sharing the article.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: New York State officials on Wednesday unveiled a bill to protect young people from potential mental health risks by prohibiting minors from accessing algorithm-based social media feeds unless they have permission from their parents. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Letitia James, the state attorney general, announced their support of new legislation to crack down on the often inscrutable algorithms, which they argue are used to keep young users on social media platforms for extended periods of time -- sometimes to their detriment. If the bill is passed and signed into law, anyone under 18 in New York would need parental consent to access those feeds on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and other social media platforms that use algorithms to display personalized content. While other states have sought far-reaching bans and measures on social media apps, New York is among a few seeking to target the algorithms more narrowly.

The legislation, for example, would target TikTok's central feature, its ubiquitous "For You" feed, which displays boundless reams of short-form videos based on user interests or past interactions. But it would not affect a minor's access to the chronological feeds that show posts published by the accounts that a user has decided to follow. The bill would also allow parents to limit the number of hours their children can spend on a platform and block their child's access to social media apps overnight, from midnight until 6 a.m., as well as pause notifications during that time.

The bill in New York, which could be considered as soon as January when the 2024 legislative session begins, is likely to confront resistance from tech industry groups. The bill's sponsors, State Senator Andrew Gounardes and Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, said they were readying for a fight. But Ms. Hochul's enthusiastic support of the bill -- she rarely joins lawmakers to introduce bills -- is a sign that it could succeed in the State Capitol, which Democrats control. A second bill unveiled on Wednesday is meant to protect children's privacy by prohibiting websites from "collecting, using, sharing, or selling personal data" from anyone under 18 for the purpose of advertising, unless they receive consent, according to a news release. Both bills would empower the state attorney general to go after platforms found in violation.

Google has agreed to stop advertising YouTube TV as "$600 less than cable" after losing an appeal of a previous ruling that went against the company. Google said it will "modify or cease the disputed advertising claim." From a report: The case was handled in the advertising industry's self-regulatory system, not in a court of law. The National Advertising Review Board (NARB) announced today that it rejected Google's appeal and recommended that the company discontinue the YouTube TV claim. YouTube TV launched in 2017 for $35 a month, but the base package is $72.99 after the latest price hike in March 2023. Google's "$600 less than cable" claim was challenged by Charter, which uses the brand name Spectrum and is the second-biggest cable company after Comcast. The National Advertising Division (NAD) previously ruled in Charter's favor but Google appealed the decision to the NARB in August.

"Charter contended the $600 figure was inaccurate, arguing that its Spectrum TV Select service in Los Angeles only cost around $219 a year more than Google's YouTube TV service," according to a MediaPost article in August. A Google ad claimed that YouTube TV provided $600 in "annual average savings" compared to cable as of January 2023. A disclosure on the ad said the price was for "new users only" and that the $600 annual savings was "based on a study by SmithGeiger of the published cost of comparable standalone cable in the top 50 Nielsen DMAs, including all fees, taxes, promotion pricing, DVR box rental and service fees, and a 2nd cable box."

A new survey from investment bank Piper Sandler found that teens in the U.S. consume more videos on YouTube than Netflix. CNBC reports: Teens polled by the bank said they spent 29.1% of their daily video consumption time on Google-owned YouTube, beating out Netflix for the first time at 28.7%. Time on YouTube rose since the spring, adding nearly a percentage point, while Netflix fell more than two percentage points. The data point shows that the streaming business is getting more competitive, and highlights YouTube's strong position as a free provider of online video, especially among young people. "We wonder if this is a push or a pull in regards to the changing consumption habits, as content on YouTube appears to be improving over time and the streaming industry becomes more and more competitive," Piper Sandler analysts wrote.

Black Parrot (Slashdot reader #19,622) pointed out a historic anniversary this week: On October 6, 1923, Edwin Hubble got a photo of Andromeda that showed that it contained a variable star, and therefore was an actual galaxy, ending the Great Debate over whether the universe consisted of anything beyond our own galaxy.

Unless you're more than 100 years old you grew up with a completely different understanding of the universe than anyone who lived before. Even Einstein did not know about it when he proposed the theory of general relativity.

It was later in the decade before Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding.
A century later, the European Space Agency was announcing... A very rare, strange burst of extraordinarily bright light in the universe just got even stranger â" thanks to the eagle-eye of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The phenomenon, called a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), flashed onto the scene where it wasnâ(TM)t expected to be found, far away from any host galaxy. Only Hubble could pinpoint its location. The Hubble results suggest astronomers know even less about these objects than previously thought by ruling out some possible theories.
Bill Kendrick (Slashdot reader #19,287) writes: Edwin Hubble's discovery — thanks to a Cepheid Variable star — that the "Andromeda Nebula" was actually an entire galaxy 2.5 million light years away... NASA's Astronomy Photo of the Day for today celebrates this with an image of the original photo plate from October 6, 1923. Notice the "N" (for nova) crossed off, and "VAR!" (for variable) next to the star!

The discovery of Cepheids, and the important fact that their brightening and dimming was regular, and could be used to determine a star's intrinsic brightness, was thanks to Henrietta Swan Leavitt about a decade earlier.

David Butler's "How Far Away Is It?" series has an excellent episode on Andromeda on YouTube.

Long-time Slashdot reader alaskana writes: In late 2022 it was revealed that early samples of what was to be the "Pentium 5" processor, codenamed Tejas and Jayhawk were in development and made it as far as being released to board partners for evaluation. A few of these samples made it (of course) onto Ebay and then — not surprisingly — into the hands of a YouTuber. To be fair, tech site Anandtech arguably got the first scoop on this P4 successor way back in 2004, but that story seemingly never gained much traction at that time.

They wrote that Intel Prescott CPUs "could hit 5GHz+ but had huge power and temperature numbers, but Tejas was expected to clock higher than Prescott — with Intel chasing the huge 10GHz CPU clocks within 10 years between 2000 and 2011 — but it ended up not happening at all."

In what was supposed to be a continuation of the "GHz is king" days of the early aughts, the Pentium 5 was in spirit a continuation of the "faster-is-better" philosophy of the P4 architecture, efficiency be damned. Speeds in excess of 7 GHz(!), and a pipeline upwards of 50 stages were rumored to be targeted by Intel, but reality (and physics) reared their ugly heads as always. WCCF Tech transcribed the remarks of Intel engineer Steve Fischer, who was involved with the project. "The thing had a pipeline depth of around 50 stages and an expected clock target at one point north of 7 GHz. I call the thing "the Death Star of processors" and half-jokingly reasoned that consumer acceptance of liquid-cooled chassis would not be a big deal."

Intel kicked off Project Tejas in 2003, expected in 2004 and later pushed into 2005 after issues forced Intel to redesign the chip. Before the company could do that, the Tejas Project was shelved on May 7, 2004. In the end efficiency and parallelization was to be the rule of future CPU development, but the fact that Intel had (at least briefly) had planned on taking the P4 paradigm just a wee bit further with a true Pentium 5 is a fascinating look into the past of a future that never was to be for the venerable Pentium line.

Climate activists are calling out Shell for partnering with popular video gamers and online youth influencers to promote fossil fuels to a younger generation. From a report: The oil giant, which in July reported quarterly profits of more than $5bn, worked with Fortnite creators and paid popular gamers on multiple platforms to showcase its "ultimate road trips" promotion, part of a marketing campaign for a new gasoline it calls V-Power Nitro+.

According to the group Media Matters for America, the company is targeting young players on Twitch, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, encouraging them to fill up virtual vehicles at interactive Shell gas stations and post screenshots of the game with a #Shellroadtrips hashtag. Research by the non-profit group revealed Shell sponsored livestreams of gameplay on Twitch by at least six streamers with a combined 5.5m followers. It also identified three more content creators on other platforms who were paid to promote the campaign in their videos. Those influencers, Media Matters said, have a combined 1.5 million Instagram followers, 8.5 million on TikTok and 11.6 million on YouTube.

Google Japan's latest DIY project is for people who can't get keyboards off their heads. From a report: Google isn't making this product. Instead, the Gboard CAPS project is another of Google Japan's joke keyboard ideas, like the 5.25-foot-long, single-row Gboard Stick Version keyboard shown off last year, used to promote Google's Gboard app. However, Google Japan seemingly prototyped the keyboard in real life. Everything you need to make this typing topper, including the firmware and hardware, is open source and available on GitHub. How do you type with the hat? It has a 6-axis sensor that reads its position. Turn the hat to select a character and press its top to enter. It pairs via Bluetooth, runs on a 3.7V, 120mAh battery, and charges via USB-C.

At CES 2023, a startup called Displace introduced their "truly wireless" TV with swappable batteries and a vacuum suction system that can keep the display adhered to walls without traditional mounting. To address concerns about what would happen when those batteries become depleted or when the wall/surface the TV is mounted to cracks, Displace says it has designed a built-in landing gear safety system to protect the $3,000 wireless TV. The Verge reports: Here, friends, is where Displace's "self-lowering landing gear technology" comes in. And I'm just going to quote directly from the press release so you can get the full rundown on how it supposedly works: "Sensors within the Displace TV constantly measure the battery level and pressure in the vacuum suction system, analyze the wall's surface, and check leakage on the vacuum pumps. If the vacuum pumps are in danger of not maintaining a seal or the wall's integrity falters, the Displace TV automatically deploys four quick adhesives for stability and initiates a self-lowering landing gear system. The adhesives work as anchor points, as the Displace TV begins to lower itself gently on a zipline (from as high as 10 feet) and deploys a reusable foam at the bottom to protect the TV screen."

When a problem is detected, the Displace attaches an adhesive frame onto the wall and begins lowering the display to the floor (with rope) from that frame. As all of this is happening, the TV generates a lot of sound and even flashing lights in an attempt to keep the area clear of children or animals. Once it's safely on the ground, you can pull the frame off the wall and reinsert it into the back of the TV. [...] The self-landing technology works at heights of up to 10 feet. When you're ready to put the TV back in its place, you just push the foam feet back into the TV, replace the adhesive tapes, and that's it. You can watch a demo of the safety system on YouTube.

Jason Koebler writes via 404 Media: An independent repair shop in Germany has invented a tool that can break through anti-repair locks Apple has put on a specific sensor on the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. The Nerd.Tool.1 was invented by Stephan Steins of Dortmund's Notebook Nerds repair shop. It is specifically designed to allow independent repair shops to replace the display angle sensor on broken MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops. This was formerly a replacement that only Apple could do because the replacement part had to be "calibrated" with the specific device, which only Apple could do, until now. This sensor detects when the laptop lid is closed, and turns the screen and fan off, and puts the laptop to sleep. If it's broken, the laptop's screen will remain on even when the lid is closed, which drains the battery, can keep the fans running, and generally shorten the life of the computer.

The Nerd.Tool.1 recalibrates replacement sensors, allowing repair techs to replace them without any fuss. "We are calibrating new sensors nearly the same way Apple does," Steins told me. "They can do it via their T2 [security chip] or their M1/M2 chips. We are using the nerd.tool.1 for this task. The sensor holds all the data. It is not serialized or paired to the logic board so we are just calibrating it." "We broke Apple's lock," independent repair advocate and repair pro Louis Rossmann explained in a YouTube video demoing the Nerd.Tool.1. "To whoever it is at Apple who decided to not make this available to technicians, 'Fuck you, we win,'" Rossman said.

"We are selling the nerd.tool.1 to be able to spend time in developing other solutions," added Steins. "We will do our best to get nerd.tool.2 to fix other issues which repair shops are facing. The response has been awesome! The community is very kind, which shows how painful these missing tools are for many independent repair shops."

Bill Omar Carrasquillo, better known by his YouTube name Omi In a Hellcat, has been arrested after the feds found Carrasquillo had amassed a $30 million fortune with a large-scale piracy scheme in which he was buying and reselling copyrighted material from cable TV. Jalopnik reports: He was sentenced to five years in prison for "piracy of cable TV, access device fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of copyright infringement," along with having to forfeit his millions and pay $15 million in restitution. Those millions helped pay for the car collection now going up for auction.

[Road & Track reports Omi In A Hellcat's entire 57 vehicle collection is up for auction.] As of this writing, the auction features 32 cars and 25 bikes and off road vehicles. Despite his crimes, the man had decent taste in cars. There's good stuff to be had like.

U2's inaugural performance at the opening of Las Vegas's Sphere included a generative AI video collage projected hundreds of feet into the air — showing hundreds of surreal renderings of Elvis Presley.

An anonymous reader shares this report from Time magazine: The video collage is the creation of the artist Marco Brambilla, the director of Demolition Man and Kanye West's "Power" music video, among many other art projects. Brambilla fed hours of footage from Presley's movies and performances into the AI model Stable Diffusion to create an easily searchable library to pull from, and then created surreal new images by prompting the AI model Midjourney with questions like: "What would Elvis look like if he were sculpted by the artist who made the Statue of Liberty...?"

While Brambilla's Elvises prance across the Sphere's screen — which is four times the size of IMAX — the band U2 will perform their song "Even Better Than The Real Thing," as part of their three-month residency at the Sphere celebrating their 1991 album Achtung Baby... Earlier this year, U2 commissioned several artists, including Brambilla and Jenny Holzer, to create visual works that would accompany their performances of specific songs. Given U2's love for the singer and the lavish setting of the Sphere, Brambilla thought a tribute to Elvis would be extremely fitting. He wanted to create a maximalist work that encapsulated both the ecstatic highs and grimy lows of not only Elvis, but the city of Las Vegas itself. "The piece is about excess, spectacle, the tipping point for the American Dream," Brambilla said in a phone interview.

Brambilla was only given three-and-a-half months to execute his vision, less than half the time that he normally spends on video collages. So he turned to AI tools for both efficiency and extravagance. "AI can exaggerate with no end; there's no limit to the density or production value," Brambilla says. And this seemed perfect for this project, because Elvis became a myth; a larger-than-life character..." Brambilla transplanted his MidJourney-created images into CG (computer graphics) software, where he could better manipulate them, and left some of the Stable Diffusion Elvis incarnations as they were. The result is a kaleidoscopic and overwhelming video collage filled with video clips both historical and AI-generated, that will soon stretch hundreds of feet above the audience at each of U2's concerts.

"I wanted to create the feeling that by the end of it," Brambilla says, "We're in a place that is so hyper-saturated and so dense with information that it's either exhilarating or terrifying, or both."
Brambilla created an exclusive video excerpting from the larger collage for TIME. The magazine reports that one of the exact prompts he entered was:

"Elvis Presley in attire inspired by the extravagance of ancient Egypt and fabled lost civilizations in a blissful state. Encircling him, a brigade of Las Vegas sorceresses, twisted and warped mid-chant, reflect the influence of Damien Hirst and Andrei Riabovitchev, creating an atmosphere of otherworldly realism, mirroring the decadence and illusion of consumption."

Wednesday seven U.S. Republican candidates for President held their second debate before the 2024 primary — during which TikTok led to some surprisingly heated attacks against entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy:

Moderator: Mr. Ramaswamy, TikTok is banned on government-issed devices because of its ties to the Chinese government. Yet you joined TikTok at the dinner with boxer and influencer Jake Paul. Should the commander in chief be so easily persuaded by an influencer?

Vivek Ramaswamy: So the answer is, I have a radical idea for the Republican party: we need to win elections. And part of how we win elections is reaching the next generation of young Americans where they are. So when I get into office, I've been very clear. Kids under the age of 16 should not be using addictive social media. We're only going to ever get to declaring independence from China, which I favor, if we actually win. So while the Democrats are running rampant reaching the next generation three-to-one, there's exactly one person in the Republican party — which talks a big game about reaching young people — and that's me.... [Scattered applause]
Donald Trump declined to participate in the debate. But his former vice president Mike Pence immediately interrupted to say that "TikTok is controlled by the Chinese communist party." Continuing criticisms he'd made in an earlier interview, Pence said that TikTok "compromises the privacy of Americans every day."

Ramaswamy responded "And that is why we will end it once we win this election."

This immediately drew a strong response from from South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (also a former US ambassador to the UN): Nikki Haley: This is infuriating, because TikTok is one of the most dangerous social media apps —

Ramaswamy: Yes it is.

Haley: — that we could have. And once you've got — honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say. Because I can't believe that — here you've got a TikTok situation. What they're doing is these — 150 million people are on TikTok. That means they can get your contacts, they can get your financial information, they can get your emails, they can get —

Ramaswamy: Let me just say —

Haley: — your text messages, they can get all of these things.

Ramaswamy: Hurling — this is important. This is very important for our party —

Haley: China knows exactly what they're doing.

Ramaswamy: This is very important for our party, and I'm going to say it —

Haley: And what we've seen is you've gone and you've helped China go make medicines in China, not America.

Ramaswamy: Excuse me, excuse me —

Haley: You're now wanting kids to go and get on this social media that's dangerous for all of us. You went and you were in business with the Chinese... We can't trust you. We can't trust you. We can't have TikTok in our kids' lives. We need to ban it. [Loud applause]

Moderator: You have 15 seconds, Mr. Ramaswamy.

Ramaswamy: I think we would be better served as a Republican party if we're not sitting here hurling personal insults, and actually have a legitimate debate.

slack_justyb writes: Richard Stallman revealed his diagnosis of lymphoma at the GNU Hacker's meeting in Biel, Switzerland yesterday. He did not share much about his health condition but did indicate that it is "manageable" and that he expects to be around for many more years ahead.

Kyle Orland writes via Ars Technica: The "first official Unity user group in the world" has announced that it is dissolving after 13 years because "the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded." The move comes as many developers are saying they will continue to stay away from the company's products even after last week's partial rollback of some of the most controversial parts of its fee structure plans.

Since its founding in 2010, the Boston Unity Group (BUG) has attracted thousands of members to regular gatherings, talks, and networking events, including many technical lectures archived on YouTube. But the group says it will be hosting its last meeting Wednesday evening via Zoom because the Unity of today is very different from the Dave Helgason-led company that BUG says "enthusiastically sanctioned and supported" the group at its founding.

"Over the past few years, Unity has unfortunately shifted its focus away from the games industry and away from supporting developer communities," the group leadership wrote in a departure note. "Following the IPO, the company has seemingly put profit over all else, with several acquisitions and layoffs of core personnel. Many key systems that developers need are still left in a confusing and often incomplete state, with the messaging that advertising and revenue matter more to Unity than the functionality game developers care about."

BUG says the install-fee terms Unity first announced earlier this month were "unthinkably hostile" to users and that even the "new concessions" in an updated pricing model offered late last week "disproportionately affect the success of indie studios in our community." But it's the fact that such "resounding, unequivocal condemnation from the games industry" was necessary to get those changes in the first place that has really shaken the community to its core. "We've seen how easily and flippantly an executive-led business decision can risk bankrupting the studios we've worked so hard to build, threaten our livelihoods as professionals, and challenge the longevity of our industry," BUG wrote. "The Unity of today isn't the same company that it was when the group was founded, and the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded."

Google Podcasts is shutting down in 2024 after YouTube Music picks up full global availability of podcasts, which is expected before the end of 2023. As 9to5Google reports, YouTube Music "will be Google's one podcasting app and service going forward." From the report: The big advantage of Google Podcasts was its simplicity and wide availability on Android (through the Google Search app). A "simple migration tool" will move your existing subscriptions from Google Podcasts. Notably, there will be the ability in YouTube Music to add podcasts via RSS feeds, "including shows not currently hosted by YouTube." Google will also provide a non-YTM export option via "OPML file of their show subscriptions" that will work with other podcast players.

On the podcaster front, YouTube will allow for RSS uploads instead of requiring a video version. The next step over the coming weeks and months will see Google "gather feedback to make the migration process from Google Podcasts to YouTube Music as simple and easy as possible." "For now, nothing is changing and fans will continue to have access to YouTube, YouTube Music and Google Podcasts," says YouTube. "We're committed to being transparent in communicating future changes with our users and podcasters and will have more to share about this process in the coming months."

Mark Tyson writes via Tom's Hardware: A future version of [Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology] is likely to include full neural rendering, hinted Bryan Catanzaro, a Nvidia VP of Applied Deep Learning Research. In a round table discussion organized by Digital Foundry (video), various video game industry experts talked about the future of AI in the business. During the discussion, Nvidia's Catanzaro raised a few eyebrows with his openness to predict some key features of a hypothetical "DLSS 10." [...]

We've seen significant developments in Nvidia's DLSS technology over the years. First launched with the RTX 20-series GPUs, many wondered about the true value of technologies like the Tensor cores being included in gaming GPUs. The first ray tracing games, and the first version of DLSS, were of questionable merit. However, DLSS 2.X improved the tech and made it more useful, leading to it being more widely utilized -- and copied, first via FSR2 and later with XeSS. DLSS 3 debuted with the RTX 40-series graphics cards, adding Frame Generation technology. With 4x upscaling and frame generation, neural rendering potentially allows a game to only fully render 1/8 (12.5%) of the pixels. Most recently, DLSS 3.5 offered improved denoising algorithms for ray tracing games with the introduction of Ray Reconstruction technology.

The above timeline raises questions about where Nvidia might go next with future versions of DLSS. And of course, "Deep Learning Super Sampling" no longer really applies, as the last two additions have targeted other aspects of rendering. Digital Foundry asked that question to the group: "Where do you see DLSS in the future? What other problem areas could machine learning tackle in a good way?" Bryan Catanzaro immediately brought up the topic of full neural rendering. This idea isn't quite as far out as it may seem. Catanzaro reminded the panel that, at the NeurIPS conference in 2018, Nvidia researchers showed an open-world demo of a world being rendered in real-time using a neural network. During that demo the UE4 game engine provided data about what objects were in a scene, where they were, and so on, and the neural rendering provided all the on-screen graphics. "DLSS 10 (in the far far future) is going to be a completely neural rendering system," Catanzaro added. The result will be "more immersive and more beautiful" games than most can imagine today.

"New York City is now turning to robots to help patrol the Times Square subway station," quipped one local newscast.

The non-profit New York City blog Gothamist describes the robot as "almost as tall as the mayor — but at least three-times as wide around the waist," with a maximum speed of 3 miles per hour-- but a 360-degree field of vision, equipped with four cameras to send live video (without audio) to the police. A 420-pound, 5-foot-2-inch robocop with a giant camera for a face will begin patrolling the Times Square subway station overnight, the New York Police Department announced Friday morning. At a press conference held underground in the 42nd Street subway station, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the city is launching a two-month pilot program to test the Knightscope K5 Autonomous Security Robot. During the press conference, the K5 robot — which is shaped like a small, white rocketship — stood silently along with uniformed officers and city officials in suits. Stripes of glowing blue lights indicated it was "on."

The K5 will act as a crime deterrent and provide real-time information on how to best deploy human officers to a safety incident, the mayor said. It features multiple cameras, a button that can connect the public with a real person, and a speaker for live audio communication... During the pilot program, the K5 will patrol the Times Squares subway station from midnight to 6 a.m. with a human NYPD handler that will help introduce it to the public. After two months, the mayor said the handler will no longer be necessary, and the robot will go on solo patrol...

Knightscope, which manufactures the robot, reports that it has been deployed to 30 clients in 10 states, including at malls and hospitals. The K5 has been in some sticky situations in other cities. One was toppled and slathered in barbecue sauce in San Francisco, while another was beaten by an intoxicated man in Mountain View, California, according to news reports. Another robot fell into a pool of water outside an office building in Washington, D.C.

When asked whether the robot was at risk of vandalism in New York City, the mayor strode over to it and gave it a few firm shoves. "Let's be clear, this is not a pushover. 420 pounds. This is New York tested," he said.
The city is leasing the robot for $9 an hour — And yes, local newscasts couldn't resist calling it a robocop. One shows the mayor announcing "We will continue to stay ahead of those who want to harm everyday New Yorkers."

Though the robot is equipped with facial recognition capability, it will not be activated.

Since 1999, Slashdot has been covering the annual Ig Nobel prize ceremonies — which honor real scientific research into strange or surprising subjects. "Each winner (or winning team) has done something that makes people LAUGH, then THINK," explains the ceremony web page, promising that "a gaggle of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel laureates handed the Ig Nobel Prizes to the new Ig Nobel winners." As co-founder Marc Abrahams says on his LinkedIn profile, "All these things celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology."

You can watch this year's entire goofy webcast online. (At 50 minutes there's a jaw-droppingly weird music video about running on water...) Slashdot reader Thorfinn.au shares this summary of this year's winning research: CHEMISTRY and GEOLOGY PRIZE [POLAND, UK] — Jan Zalasiewicz, for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks.

LITERATURE PRIZE [FRANCE, UK, MALAYSIA, FINLAND] — Chris Moulin, Nicole Bell, Merita Turunen, Arina Baharin, and Akira O'Connor for studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times.

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PRIZE [INDIA, CHINA, MALAYSIA, USA] — Te Faye Yap, Zhen Liu, Anoop Rajappan, Trevor Shimokusu, and Daniel Preston, for re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools.

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE [SOUTH KOREA, USA] — Seung-min Park, for inventing the Stanford Toilet a computer vision system for defecation analysis et al.

COMMUNICATION PRIZE [ARGENTINA, SPAIN, COLOMBIA, CHILE, CHINA, USA] — María José Torres-Prioris, Diana López-Barroso, Estela Càmara, Sol Fittipaldi, Lucas Sedeño, Agustín Ibáñez, Marcelo Berthier, and Adolfo García, for studying the mental activities of people who are expert at speaking backward.

MEDICINE PRIZE [USA, CANADA, MACEDONIA, IRAN, VIETNAM] — Christine Pham, Bobak Hedayati, Kiana Hashemi, Ella Csuka, Tiana Mamaghani, Margit Juhasz, Jamie Wikenheiser, and Natasha Mesinkovska, for using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person's two nostrils.

NUTRITION PRIZE [JAPAN] — Homei Miyashita and Hiromi Nakamura, for experiments to determine how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change the taste of food.

EDUCATION PRIZE [HONG KONG, CHINA, CANADA, UK, THE NETHERLANDS, IRELAND, USA, JAPAN] — Katy Tam, Cyanea Poon, Victoria Hui, Wijnand van Tilburg, Christy Wong, Vivian Kwong, Gigi Yuen, and Christian Chan, for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students.

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [USA] — Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz for 1968 experiments on a city street to see how many passersby stop to look upward when they see strangers looking upward.

PHYSICS PRIZE [SPAIN, GALICIA, SWITZERLAND, FRANCE, UK] — Bieito Fernández Castro, Marian Peña, Enrique Nogueira, Miguel Gilcoto, Esperanza Broullón, Antonio Comesaña, Damien Bouffard, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato, and Beatriz Mouriño-Carballido, for measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has been trying to publicly pressure Apple into adopting the GSMA's RCS (Rich Communications Service) messaging protocol for a long time now, with nothing to show for it. As a matter of fact, Apple CEO Tim Cook seemed to completely dismiss the idea when he answered a question on the subject by saying that consumers should buy their moms an iPhone. Google and its Android platform aren't giving up that easily and they've just released a snarky ad to continue criticizing Apple's preferred messaging platform.

The ad's called "iPager" and mimics Apple's marketing language to reveal a retro-styled beeper, indicating that Apple's behind the curve with its chosen messaging platform. The spot states that the iPager uses "outdated messaging tech" to "text with Android," citing many of the perceived disadvantages of sticking with SMS technology when communicating with Android phones. Google didn't invent this comparison whole-cloth, as the 30-year-old SMS tech actually dates back to old-school pagers.