LinuxWebLog.com

Linux update adds support for 128 terabyte SD cards— SDUC and UHS-II SD cards are now supported  Tom's Hardware

Linux update adds support for 128 terabyte SD cards— SDUC and UHS-II SD cards are now supported  Tom's Hardware

Linux update adds support for 128 terabyte SD cards— SDUC and UHS-II SD cards are now supported  Tom's Hardware

Linux update adds support for 128 terabyte SD cards— SDUC and UHS-II SD cards are now supported  Tom's Hardware

"Scientists have found what seems to be the oldest direct evidence of hot water flowing on Mars during its ancient past," reports Space.com. "The discovery could further indicate that the Red Planet, despite its arid and desolate appearance today, may have been capable of supporting life long ago." The evidence was delivered to Earth and sealed within the well-known Martian meteorite NWA7034, found in the Sahara Desert in 2011. Due to its black, highly polished appearance, the Martian rock is also known as "Black Beauty." At an estimated 2 billion years old, Black Beauty is the second oldest Martian meteorite ever discovered. However, the Curtin University team discovered something even older within it: a 4.45 billion-year-old zircon grain that harbors the fingerprints of fluids rich in water. Team member Aaron Cavosie from Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences thinks this discovery will open up new avenues to understanding hydrothermal systems associated with the activity of volcanic magma that once ran through Mars. "We used nano-scale geochemistry to detect elemental evidence of hot water on Mars 4.45 billion years ago," Cavosie said in a statement. "Hydrothermal systems were essential for the development of life on Earth, and our findings suggest Mars also had water, a key ingredient for habitable environments, during the earliest history of crust formation...." [T]his new research implies that water in liquid form may have existed on Mars even earlier than previously expected in the planet's pre-Noachian period.

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Just Starting in the Linux Terminal? Here Are Some Setup Tips  How-To Geek

Virtual CPUFreq Driver Coming With Linux 6.13 For Better Power/Performance Within VMs  Phoronix

Linux 6.13 Will Report The Number Of Hung Tasks Since Boot  Phoronix

Week in review: 0-days exploited in Palo Alto Networks firewalls, two unknown Linux backdoors identified  Help Net Security

Week in review: 0-days exploited in Palo Alto Networks firewalls, two unknown Linux backdoors identified  Help Net Security

Week in review: 0-days exploited in Palo Alto Networks firewalls, two unknown Linux backdoors identified  Help Net Security

Week in review: 0-days exploited in Palo Alto Networks firewalls, two unknown Linux backdoors identified  Help Net Security

Week in review: 0-days exploited in Palo Alto Networks firewalls, two unknown Linux backdoors identified  Help Net Security

Slashdot reader Bruce66423 shared this report from the Guardian: Staff have resigned at Starling Bank after its new chief executive demanded thousands of workers attend its offices more frequently, despite lacking enough space to host them. In his first major policy change since taking over from the UK digital bank's founder, Anne Boden, in March, Raman Bhatia has ordered all hybrid staff — many of whom were in the office only one or two days a week, or on an ad-hoc basis — to travel to work for a minimum of 10 days each month. But the bank, which operates online only, admitted that some of its offices would not be equipped to handle the influx... "We are considering ways in which we can create more space," an email sent by Starling's human resources team and seen by the Guardian said. Starling has 3,231 staff, the vast majority of whom are in the UK with some also in Dublin. However, the Guardian understands that the bank has only about 900 desks, including 260 at its Cardiff site, 320 in its London headquarters and 155 in Southampton. The bank has a further 160 desks in its newest site in Manchester, where it has signed a 10-year lease to occupy the fifth floor of the Landmark building, which also houses Santander UK and HSBC staff... Some staff have already resigned over the "rushed" announcement, while others have threatened to do so... The return to office announcement came a month after the Financial Conduct Authority hit Starling with a £29m fine after discovering "shockingly lax" controls that it said left the financial system "wide open to criminals". That included failures in its automated screening system for individuals facing government sanctions. Starling Bank issued this statement to explain its reasoning. "By bringing colleagues together in person, our aim is to achieve greater collaboration that will benefit our customers as we enter Starling's next phase of growth." The article also notes that the U.K. supermarket chain Asda "has also toughened its stance, making it compulsory for thousands of workers at its offices in Leeds and Leicester to spend at least three days a week at their desks from the new year."

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NBC News reports that a newly identified chemical byproduct "may be present in drinking water in about a third of U.S. homes, a study found." "Scientists do not yet know whether the byproduct is dangerous. But some are worried that it could have toxic properties because of similarities to other chemicals of concern." The newly identified substance, named "chloronitramide anion," is produced when water is treated with chloramine, a chemical formed by mixing chlorine and ammonia. Chloramine is often used to kill viruses and bacteria in municipal water treatment systems. Researchers said the existence of the byproduct was discovered about 40 years ago, but it was only identified now because analysis techniques have improved, which finally enabled scientists to determine the chemical's structure. It could take years to figure out whether chloronitramide anion is dangerous — it's never been studied. The researchers reported their findings Thursday in the journal Science, in part to spur research to address safety concerns. The scientists said they have no hard evidence to suggest that the compound represents a danger, but that it bears similarities to other chemicals of concern. They think it deserves scrutiny because it's been detected so widely... David Reckhow, a research professor in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was not involved with the study, said the finding was an important step. The ultimate goal, he said, is understanding whether the substance is a hazard; he concurred that it was likely toxic. "It's a pretty small molecule and it can probably for that reason enter into biological systems and into cells. And it is still a reactive molecule," he said. "Those are the kinds of things you worry about." "It's estimated more than 113 million people drink chloraminated processed water in the U.S.," according to a follow-up article by ABC News. But they also include this quote from Dr. Stephanie Widmer, a board-certified medical toxicologist and emergency medicine physician. "The reality is that no one really knows too much about this chloronitramide and its impact on human health, and more research needs to be done. These disinfecting chemicals have been giving us clean drinking water for decades, so no reason to fear drinking water as a result of this study." Although ABC News tacks on this sentence. "The study authors suggest, in general, adding a carbon filter to a sink or a standalone pitcher may be a good option for those concerned." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Greymane for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Rust community has "recognized the unsafety of Rust (if used incorrectly)," according to a blog post by Amazon Web Services. So now AWS and the Rust Foundation are "crowdsourcing an effort to verify the Rust standard library," according to an article at DevClass.com, "by setting out a series of challenges for devs and offering financial rewards for solutions..." Rust includes ways to bypass its safety guarantees though, with the use of the "unsafe" keyword... The issue AWS highlights is that even if developers use only safe code, most applications still depend on the Rust standard library. AWS states that there are approximately 7.5K unsafe functions in the Rust Standard Library and notes that 57 "soundness issues" and 20 CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) have been reported in the last three years. [28% of the soundness issues were discovered in 2024.] Marking a function as unsafe does not mean it is vulnerable, only that Rust does not guarantee its safety. AWS plans to reduce the risk by using tools and techniques for formal verification of key library code, but believes that "a single team would be unable to make significant inroads" for reasons including the lack of a verification mechanism in the Rust ecosystem and what it calls the "unknowns of scalable verification." The plan therefore is to turn this over to the community, by posing challenges and rewarding developers for solutions.... A GitHub repository provides a fork of the Rust code and includes a set of challenges, currently 13 of them... The Rust Foundation says that there is a financial reward tied to each challenge, and that the "challenge rewards committee is responsible for reviewing activity and dispensing rewards." How much will be paid though is not stated. Despite the wide admiration for Rust, there is no formal specification for the language, an issue which impacts formal verification efforts. Thanks to Slashdot reader sean-it-all for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Will be updated regularly. Amazon Black Friday 2024 is here. Is it Black Friday Week? Black Friday Month? Who knows anymore. Hopefully this curated post will help you find the good stuff. I also like to check this “Buy Again” tab for any steep discounts on the specific stuff that you already buy. There are also several refreshed promos for linking certain credit cards as payment methods and/or using their points. I recommend trying all the links again.

(Note: If you are reading this in an email/RSS reader, unfortunately I am not allowed to include any Amazon affiliate links in e-mails, so they have been removed. Please click here to view the links.)

Some deals require a Prime membership. New members can sign up for a 30-day free trial. Amazon Prime Student (age 18-24) has a 6-month free trial or 50% off the paid membership. If you’ve already done the trial, you can simply buy a month of Prime for $14.99 ($6.99 with SNAP, EBT or Medicaid card).

Deals and Offers

• List of all current Black Friday deals (updated constantly).
• Don’t have the Prime Visa? Get a $200 instant Amazon gift card (limited-time offer).
• Already have the Prime Visa? Get 10% back on these Prime Card Bonus items.
• Amazon Device Deals (Echo, Blink, Eero, Ring, Kindle, Fire, etc).
• Apple Deals (Apple Watch, Airpods, Macbook, AirTags, etc).
• Samsung Deals (Galaxy Phones, Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Watch, etc).
• YETI Deals (YETI tumblers, bottles, coolers, etc)
• Sony Deals (headphones, earbuds, cameras)
• Playstation Deals (headphones, earbuds, cameras)
• Dyson Deals
• Apple iPad (10th Gen, 64 GB) – $279 (20% off)

Amazon-related Services

• Kindle Unlimited – 3 months for $1 trial. Usually $11.99 a month. Targeted.
• Amazon Music – 3 months free. Usually $10.99 a month. Targeted.
• Audible Premium Plus – $0.99/month for 3 months + $20 Audible credit. Includes 1 free credit per month, so that could be 4 free audiobooks. Targeted.
• Amazon Photos – $15 credit with first-time use.

Credit card linking bonuses (check again if targeted). Offers for simply adding a specific credit card type as Amazon payment method.

• Get $15 off when adding your eligible American Express Card to Amazon. Promo code 24AMEX15OFF.
• Get $15 off when adding your Discover® Card to Amazon. Promo code 24DISCOQ4.

Set as default payment method bonus (check again if targeted). Offers for simply making a specific credit card type your default payment method.

• Get $15 off when you make Discover your default card.

Shop with points (check again if targeted). Offers for using your rewards points to offset your Amazon purchase. If you haven’t linked your card, you may enroll your card and check back in after 24 hours.

• Get $10 off with Discover® rewards. Minimum spend $75.
• Get 15% off with Membership Rewards points. Maximum discount $15.
• Get $ off with American Express Reward Dollars.
• Get $ off with Chase Ultimate Rewards points.
• Get $ off with Capitol One Rewards points.
• Get $ off with US Bank Rewards points.
• Get $ off with Citi ThankYou points.

Stuff I Like

• Apple Watch SE (2nd Gen) [GPS + Cellular 40mm] . Now $219. See Apple Watch as Standalone Phone For Kids. Still working well with daily use, even with a $9 fun stretchy band.
• Dyson V11 Origin Cordless Vacuum. Expensive. Powerful. Useful. Daily driver.
• Amazon Eero mesh WiFi router system (3-pack). This is the older model now, but it’s also only $115 now and has the same coverage area size as the new model. Used reliably every day for years now.
• Amazon Eero 6+ mesh WiFi router system (3-pack) (newest model) . Supports WiFi 6 with faster speeds and bandwidth, $195.
• COSORI Air Fryer 5 Qt. Love this air fryer. We use it almost daily, just like a microwave, except it keeps things crispy instead of soggy. Easy to clean.
• Vitamix 5200 blender. Had it for many years. Kitchen staple, sometimes we use it a lot, sometimes rarely, but it’s always there ready and powerful.
• Takeya Patented Deluxe Cold Brew Coffee Maker. I like that I can store this thing sideways and it never leaks.
• KitchenAid Artisan Series 5 Quart Tilt Head Stand Mixer. 20 years of use on ours and counting.

Microsoft-owned GitHub published a blog post asking "Does GitHub Copilot improve code quality? Here's what the data says." Its first paragraph includes statistics from past studies — that GitHub Copilot has helped developers code up to 55% faster, leaving 88% of developers feeling more "in the flow" and 85% feeling more confident in their code. But does it improve code quality? [W]e recruited 202 [Python] developers with at least five years of experience. Half were randomly assigned GitHub Copilot access and the other half were instructed not to use any AI tools... We then evaluated the code with unit tests and with an expert review conducted by developers. Our findings overall show that code authored with GitHub Copilot has increased functionality and improved readability, is of better quality, and receives higher approval rates... Developers with GitHub Copilot access had a 56% greater likelihood of passing all 10 unit tests in the study, indicating that GitHub Copilot helps developers write more functional code by a wide margin. In blind reviews, code written with GitHub Copilot had significantly fewer code readability errors, allowing developers to write 13.6% more lines of code, on average, without encountering readability problems. Readability improved by 3.62%, reliability by 2.94%, maintainability by 2.47%, and conciseness by 4.16%. All numbers were statistically significant... Developers were 5% more likely to approve code written with GitHub Copilot, meaning that such code is ready to be merged sooner, speeding up the time to fix bugs or deploy new features. "While GitHub's reports have been positive, a few others haven't," reports Visual Studio magazine: For example, a recent study from Uplevel Data Labs said, "Developers with Copilot access saw a significantly higher bug rate while their issue throughput remained consistent." And earlier this year a "Coding on Copilot" whitepaper from GitClear said, "We find disconcerting trends for maintainability. Code churn — the percentage of lines that are reverted or updated less than two weeks after being authored — is projected to double in 2024 compared to its 2021, pre-AI baseline. We further find that the percentage of 'added code' and 'copy/pasted code' is increasing in proportion to 'updated,' 'deleted,' and 'moved 'code. In this regard, AI-generated code resembles an itinerant contributor, prone to violate the DRY-ness [don't repeat yourself] of the repos visited."

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June, 2023: "Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings." November, 2024: "The Business-School Scandal That Just Keeps Getting Bigger." A senior editor at the Atlantic raises the possibility of systemic dishonesty-rewarding incentives where "a study must be even flashier than all the other flashy findings if its authors want to stand out," writing that "More than a year since all of this began, the evidence of fraud has only multiplied." And the suspect isn't just Francesca Gino, a Harvard Business School professor. One person deeply affected by all this is Gino's co-author, a business school professor from the University of California at Berkeley — Juliana Schroeder — who launched an audit of all 138 studies conducted by Francesca Gino (called "The Many Coauthors Project"): Gino was accused of faking numbers in four published papers. Just days into her digging, Schroeder uncovered another paper that appeared to be affected — and it was one that she herself had helped write... The other main contributor was Alison Wood Brooks, a young professor and colleague of Gino's at Harvard Business School.... If Brooks did conduct this work and oversee its data, then Schroeder's audit had produced a dire twist. The Many Co-Authors Project was meant to suss out Gino's suspect work, and quarantine it from the rest... But now, to all appearances, Schroeder had uncovered crooked data that apparently weren't linked to Gino.... Like so many other scientific scandals, the one Schroeder had identified quickly sank into a swamp of closed-door reviews and taciturn committees. Schroeder says that Harvard Business School declined to investigate her evidence of data-tampering, citing a policy of not responding to allegations made more than six years after the misconduct is said to have occurred... In the course of scouting out the edges of the cheating scandal in her field, Schroeder had uncovered yet another case of seeming science fraud. And this time, she'd blown the whistle on herself. That stunning revelation, unaccompanied by any posts on social media, had arrived in a muffled update to the Many Co-Authors Project website. Schroeder announced that she'd found "an issue" with one more paper that she'd produced with Gino... [Schroeder] said that the source of the error wasn't her. Her research assistants on the project may have caused the problem; Schroeder wonders if they got confused... What feels out of reach is not so much the truth of any set of allegations, but their consequences. Gino has been placed on administrative leave, but in many other instances of suspected fraud, nothing happens. Both Brooks and Schroeder appear to be untouched. "The problem is that journal editors and institutions can be more concerned with their own prestige and reputation than finding out the truth," Dennis Tourish, at the University of Sussex Business School, told me. "It can be easier to hope that this all just goes away and blows over and that somebody else will deal with it...." [Tourish also published a 2019 book decrying "Fraud, Deception and Meaningless Research," which the article notes "cites a study finding that more than a third of surveyed editors at management journals say they've encountered fabricated or falsified data."] Maybe the situation in her field would eventually improve, [Schroeder] said. "The optimistic point is, in the long arc of things, we'll self-correct, even if we have no incentive to retract or take responsibility." "Do you believe that?" I asked. "On my optimistic days, I believe it." "Is today an optimistic day?" "Not really."

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Meta wants to force Apple and Google to verify the ages of people downloading apps from their app stores, reports the Washington Post — and now Meta's campaign "is picking up momentum" with legislators in the U.S. Congress. Federal and state lawmakers have recently proposed a raft of measures requiring that platforms such as Meta's Facebook and Instagram block users under a certain age from using their sites. The push has triggered fierce debate over the best way to ascertain how old users are online. Last year Meta threw its support behind legislation that would push those obligations onto app stores rather than individual app providers, like itself, as your regular host and Naomi Nix reported. While some states have considered the plan, it has not gained much traction in Washington. That could be shifting. Two congressional Republicans are preparing a new age verification bill that places the burden on app stores, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans... The bill would be the first of its kind on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have called for expanding guardrails for children amid concerns about the risks of social media but where political divisions have bogged down talks. The measure would give parents the right to sue an app store if their child was exposed to certain content, such as lewd or sexual material, according to a copy obtained by the Tech Brief. App stores could be protected against legal claims, however, if they took steps to protect children against harms, such as verifying their ages and giving parents the ability to block app downloads. The article points out that U.S. lawmakers "have the power to set national standards that could override state efforts if they so choose..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.