An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The heads of UK and US security services have made an unprecedented joint appearance to warn of the threat from China. FBI director Christopher Wray said China was the "biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security" and had interfered in politics, including recent elections. MI5 head Ken McCallum said his service had more than doubled its work against Chinese activity in the last three years and would be doubling it again. MI5 is now running seven times as many investigations related to activities of the Chinese Communist Party compared to 2018, he added. The FBI's Wray warned that if China was to forcibly take Taiwan it would "represent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen."

The first ever joint public appearance by the two directors came at MI5 headquarters in Thames House, London. McCallum also said the challenge posed by the Chinese Communist Party was "game-changing," while Wray called it "immense" and "breath-taking." Wray warned the audience -- which included chief executives of businesses and senior figures from universities -- that the Chinese government was "set on stealing your technology" using a range of tools. He said it posed "an even more serious threat to western businesses than even many sophisticated businesspeople realized." He cited cases in which people linked to Chinese companies out in rural America had been digging up genetically modified seeds which would have cost them billions of dollars and nearly a decade to develop themselves. He also said China deployed cyber espionage to "cheat and steal on a massive scale," with a hacking program larger than that of every other major country combined.

The MI5 head said intelligence about cyber threats had been shared with 37 countries and that in May a sophisticated threat against aerospace had been disrupted. McCallum also pointed to a series of examples linked to China. [...] The MI5 head said new legislation would help to deal with the threat but the UK also needed to become a "harder target" by ensuring that all parts of society were more aware of the risks. He said that reform of the visa system had seen over 50 students linked to the Chinese military leaving the UK. "China has for far too long counted on being everybody's second-highest priority," Wray said, adding: "They are not flying under the radar anymore."

British scientists and academic researchers have been dealt a blow after 115 grants from a flagship EU research programme were terminated because of the continuing Brexit row over Northern Ireland. From a report: One academic said he was "relieved" to be exiting the country and feared the UK was going down a "dark path" like Germany in the 1930s. One hundred and fifty grants were approved for British applicants after the then Brexit minister, David Frost, successfully negotiated associate membership of the $95.3bn Horizon Europe programme but most will now be cancelled. Beneficiaries in the UK were told by the European Research Council (ERC) that unless associate membership had been approved by 29 June, the grants would not be available unless the researchers moved their work to a European institution.

Ratification of the membership has been in abeyance because the UK has not implemented the Brexit trading arrangements agreed under the Northern Ireland protocol. With the deadline passed, it has emerged that just 18 of the 150 academics will take up the grants but must move to an EU institution to get the funds. Thiemo Fetzer, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick who was approved for $1.53m of funding for research into media and geopolitics, confirmed he was one of the 18 who had reluctantly decided to move to the EU. He said: "I am relieved as this whole Brexit process has eroded my trust in the UK's institutions and this Horizon Europe association was just another incarnation of this."

The U.K.'s competition watchdog on Wednesday opened an investigation into Microsoft's proposed acquisition of video game publisher Activision Blizzard. From a report: In a statement, the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority said its investigation would consider whether the deal may harm competition -- "for example, through higher prices, lower quality, or reduced choice." The CMA set a Sept. 1 deadline for its initial decision. The regulator said it wants feedback from interested third parties, with a consultation running until July 20.

Lisa Tanzi, Microsoft's corporate vice president and general counsel, said regulatory scrutiny of the deal was to be expected, adding the company would "fully cooperate" with the CMA. "We're committed to answering questions from regulators and ultimately believe a thorough review will help the deal close with broad confidence, and that it will be positive for competition," Tanzi said. "We remain confident the deal will close in fiscal year 2023 as initially anticipated."

Amazon is being investigated by Britain's antitrust watchdog over concerns that some of its practices in the UK may be anticompetitive and result in a worse deal for shoppers. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will look at whether Amazon is distorting competition by giving an unfair advantage to its own retail business or sellers that use its services, compared with other third-party sellers in the Amazon UK Marketplace. The investigation will look at how the tech giant is using third-party seller data and how it decides the criteria for selling under the Prime label.

The CMA will also scrutinise how Amazon selects the preferred choice in the "Buy Box", which is displayed prominently on Amazon's product pages and provides customers with one-click options to "Buy Now" or "Add to Basket" from a specific seller. Sarah Cardell, general counsel at the CMA, said: "Millions of people across the UK rely on Amazon's services for fast delivery of all types of products at the click of a button."

AmiMoJo writes: Finnish researchers have installed the world's first fully working 'sand battery' which can store green power for months at a time. The developers say this could solve the problem of year-round supply, a major issue for green energy. Using low-grade sand, the device is charged up with heat made from cheap electricity from solar or wind. The device has been installed in the Vatajankoski power plant which runs the district heating system for the area. Low-cost electricity warms the sand up to 500C by resistive heating (the same process that makes electric fires work). This generates hot air which is circulated in the sand by means of a heat exchanger. Sand is a very effective medium for storing heat and loses little over time. The developers say that their device could keep sand at 500C for several months. So when energy prices are higher, the battery discharges the hot air which warms water for the district heating system which is then pumped around homes, offices and even the local swimming pool.

Royal Mail's stamps are finally entering the digital world, with printed codes that can be used to track letters or linked to videos. Collectors, traditionalists and royalists are not amused. From a report: In February, Royal Mail introduced a new design for its standard stamps, which have changed so little since the launch of the Penny Black in 1840 that they are officially known as "definitives." The new stamps -- "plum purple" for first class, "holly green" for second -- still feature the same regal profile introduced more than 50 years ago. But what is most bothering purists -- and leading Johnson to the brink of direct action -- is the addition next to the Queen of a digital barcode. The rectangular codes -- which look like QR codes but are apparently not QR codes, which are a particular, and trademarked, kind of code -- are designed to stop counterfeiting and to enable the tracking of all letters to improve efficiency. Correspondents will soon be able to share photo or video messages by linking digital content to their coded stamps. Recipients will view it via the Royal Mail app (currently the codes link to a short film featuring Shaun the Sheep and a plasticine postwoman).

[...] David Gold, the head of public affairs and policy at Royal Mail Group, knew the coded stamps would create a stir. "Collectors, traditionalists and royalists feel a sense of ownership over stamps," he says. It's why the new stamps, the designs for which had to be approved by Buckingham Palace, include a fake perforation as a kind of dignity screen between code and Queen (who is also, notably, facing the other way). Gold says the codes mean Royal Mail can track all letters, allowing it to better monitor, predict and respond to regional changes in demand, for example. He is also confident the unique codes will stop the fraudulent washing of postmark ink and resale of used stamps -- a crime that he claims costs Royal Mail "tens of millions" of pounds a year.

The government is failing to enact the policies needed to reach the UK's net zero targets, its statutory advisers have said, in a damning progress report to parliament. From a report: The Climate Change Committee (CCC) voiced fears that ministers may renege on the legally binding commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, noting "major policy failures" and "scant evidence of delivery." Lord Deben, the chair of the committee and a former Conservative environment secretary, said the government had set strong targets on cutting emissions but policy to achieve them was lacking. "The government has willed the ends, but not the means," he said. "This report showed that present plans will not fulfil the commitments [to net zero]."

He said net zero policies were also the best way to reduce the soaring cost of living. Average household bills would be about $151.3 lower today if previous plans on green energy and energy efficiency had been followed through. "If you want to deal with the cost of living crisis, this is exactly what you need to do," he said. The greatest failure was the insulation policy. Britain's homes are the draughtiest in western Europe, heating costs are crippling household budgets, and heating is one of the biggest single sources of carbon emissions, but the government has no plans to help most people insulate their homes.

Reuters shares the results of its investigation into what it calls "mercenary hackers": Reuters identified 35 legal cases since 2013 in which Indian hackers attempted to obtain documents from one side or another of a courtroom battle by sending them password-stealing emails. The messages were often camouflaged as innocuous communications from clients, colleagues, friends or family. They were aimed at giving the hackers access to targets' inboxes and, ultimately, private or attorney-client privileged information.

At least 75 U.S. and European companies, three dozen advocacy and media groups and numerous Western business executives were the subjects of these hacking attempts, Reuters found.

The Reuters report is based on interviews with victims, researchers, investigators, former U.S. government officials, lawyers and hackers, plus a review of court records from seven countries. It also draws on a unique database of more than 80,000 emails sent by Indian hackers to 13,000 targets over a seven-year period. The database is effectively the hackers' hit list, and it reveals a down-to-the-second look at who the cyber mercenaries sent phishing emails to between 2013 and 2020.... The targets' lawyers were often hit, too. The Indian hackers tried to break into the inboxes of some 1,000 attorneys at 108 different law firms, Reuters found....

"It is an open secret that there are some private investigators who use Indian hacker groups to target opposition in litigation battles," said Anthony Upward, managing director of Cognition Intelligence, a UK-based countersurveillance firm.

The legal cases identified by Reuters varied in profile and importance. Some involved obscure personal disputes. Others featured multinational companies with fortunes at stake. From London to Lagos, at least 11 separate groups of victims had their emails leaked publicly or suddenly entered into evidence in the middle of their trials. In several cases, stolen documents shaped the verdict, court records show.
Reuters spoke to email experts including Linkedin, Microsoft and Google to help confirm the authenticity of the data they'd received, and reports that one high-profile victim was WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann. (After Reuters told him he'd been targetted starting in 2017, Neumann hired a law firm.) "Reuters reached out to every person in the database — sending requests for comment to each email address — and spoke to more than 250 individuals. Most of the respondents said the attempted hacks revealed in the email database occurred either ahead of anticipated lawsuits or as litigation was under way."

America's FBI has been investigating the breachers since at least early 2018, Reuters reports, adding that pressure is now increasing on private eyes who acted as go-betweens for interested clients.

Meanwhile, Reuters found former employees of the mercenary firms, who told them that the firms employed dozens of workers — though "a month's salary could be as low as 25,000 rupees (then worth about $370), according to two former workers and company salary records...

"Asked about the hacker-for-hire industry, an official with India's Ministry of Justice referred Reuters to a cybercrime hotline, which did not respond to a request for comment."

The UK is rattling off a series of international science agreements with a message to the European Union: if you don't want our money, we'll do deals elsewhere. From a report: Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed a memorandum of understanding with his New Zealand counterpart, Jacinda Ardern, on Friday, aimed at easing UK access to the Pacific nation's quantum and agricultural technology. The UK has already negotiated similar agreements with Israel, Switzerland and Canada -- as well as EU member Sweden, and is hoping to seal more with Japan, Singapore, South Korea and certain US states. The drive comes as the government seeks to diversify the country's scientific collaboration after the UK was frozen out of the EU's $96 billion Horizon research program because of tensions stemming from Britain's plan to override the part of the Brexit deal governing Northern Ireland. The majority of the UK's international science budget -- around $18 billion -- is usually spent helping to fund Horizon.

The EU has moved to rein in the "wild west" of crypto assets by agreeing a groundbreaking set of rules for the sector, adding to pressure on the UK and US to introduce their own curbs. From a report: Representatives from the European parliament and EU states inked an agreement late on Thursday that contains measures to guard against market abuse and manipulation, as well as requiring that crypto firms provide details of the environmental impact of their assets. "Today, we put order in the wild west of crypto assets and set clear rules for a harmonised market," said Stefan Berger, the German MEP who led negotiations on behalf of the parliament. Referring to the recent slump in cryptocurrency prices -- the total value of the market has fallen from $3tn last year to less than $900bn -- Berger added: "The recent fall in the value of digital currencies shows us how highly risky and speculative they are and that it is fundamental to act." The markets in crypto assets (MiCA) law is expected to come into force at about the end of 2023. Globally, crypto assets are largely unregulated, with national operators in the EU required only to show controls for combating money laundering.

Thomas Claburn writes via The Register: California lawmakers met in Sacramento today to discuss, among other things, proposed legislation to protect children online. The bill, AB2273, known as The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, would require websites to verify the ages of visitors. Critics of the legislation contend this requirement threatens the privacy of adults and the ability to use the internet anonymously, in California and likely elsewhere, because of the role the Golden State's tech companies play on the internet.

"First, the bill pretextually claims to protect children, but it will change the Internet for everyone," said Eric Goldman, Santa Clara University School of Law professor, in a blog post. "In order to determine who is a child, websites and apps will have to authenticate the age of ALL consumers before they can use the service. No one wants this." The bill, Goldman argues, will put an end to casual web browsing, forcing companies to collect personal information they don't want to store and protect -- and that consumers don't want to provide -- in order to authenticate the age of visitors. And since age authentication generally requires identity details, that threatens the ability to use the internet anonymously.

Goldman also objects to this American state-level bill being modeled after the UK's Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) because European law makes compliance a matter of engagement and dialogue with regulators, in contrast to the US rules-based approach that allows more certainty about what is or not allowed. Furthermore, he contends that the scope of the bill reaches beyond children's privacy and implicates consumer protection and content moderation. He thus considers the bill "a trojan horse for comprehensive regulation of Internet services" and would turn the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) into a general internet regulation agency.

The UK's Intellectual Property Office has decided artificial-intelligence systems cannot patent inventions for the time being. The BBC reports: A recent IPO consultation found many experts doubted AI was currently able to invent without human assistance. Current law allowed humans to patent inventions made with AI assistance, the government said, despite "misperceptions" this was not the case. Last year, the Court of Appeal ruled against Stephen Thaler, who had said his Dabus AI system should be recognized as the inventor in two patent applications, for: a food container [and] a flashing light. The judges sided, by a two-to-one majority, with the IPO, which had told him to list a real person as the inventor. "Only a person can have rights - a machine cannot," wrote Lady Justice Laing in her judgement. "A patent is a statutory right and it can only be granted to a person." But the IPO also said it would "need to understand how our IP system should protect AI-devised inventions in the future" and committed to advancing international discussions, with a view to keeping the UK competitive.

Many AI systems are trained on large amounts of data copied from the internet. And, on Tuesday, the IPO also announced plans to change copyright law to allow anyone with lawful access - rather than only those conducting non-commercial research, as now -- to do this, to "promote the use of AI technology, and wider 'data mining' techniques, for the public good." Rights holders will still be able to control and charge for access to their works but no longer charge extra for the ability to mine them.

In the consultation, the IPO noted the UK was one of only a handful of countries to protect computer-generated works with no human creator. The "author" of a "computer-generated work" is defined as "the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken," it says. And protection lasts for 50 years from when the work is made. Performing-arts workers' union Equity had called for copyright law to be changed to protect actors' livelihoods from AI content such as "deepfakes," generated from images of their face or voice. The IPO took this issue seriously, it said, but "at this stage, the impacts of AI technologies on performers remain unclear." "We will keep these issues under review," it added.

Celebrity-endorsed cryptocurrency scams in the UK are on pace to almost double this year, Banco Santander SA's local unit said. From a report: "Case volumes" jumped 61% in the first quarter from the prior three months, Santander said in a statement on its website on Tuesday. The average value of the scams was $14,540, up 65% from a year earlier. Around $2.4 million was lost to such schemes in the quarter, according to the bank. "We're seeing a worrying rise in 'celebrity-endorsed' cryptocurrency scams, where familiar faces are being misused on social media in order to con people out of often life-changing sums of money," said Chris Ainsley, Santander UK's head of fraud risk management, said in the statement. Crypto scams are getting increased attention as regulators and politicians grapple with how to encourage technological innovation while at the same time protecting unsuspecting consumers. Santander said it expects the number of celebrity-endorsed crypto scams to rise 87% in 2022 based on the current rate of growth.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Drive: AMcMurtry Speirling piloted by former F1 and IndyCar racing driver Max Chilton broke the Goodwood hill record Sunday, crushing the previous record set by the VW ID.R by nearly a full second. The electric fan car rocketed -- almost literally -- up the hill in a staggering 39.08 seconds, compared to the electric prototype's 39.90. The Speirling is the creation of a British-Irish startup that set out to build a ridiculously powerful and lightweight car that could be driven on the track and on the streets (a road-legal version of the Goodwood fan car is in the works). The batmobile-looking machine reportedly weighs less than 1,000 kilograms (less than 2,200 pounds), yet boasts over 1,000 horsepower courtesy of its dual electric motors. While boasting a power-to-weight ratio of 1,000 bhp per ton surely played a role at the Goodwood Festival of Speed over the weekend, it's the car's twin fans hidden within the bespoke chassis that really helped it achieve that record-setting time. Much like Gordon Murray's T.50 supercar, the Speirling's fans essentially suck the car to the ground and provide it with other-worldly downforce. Factor in the massive rear wing and other external bodywork, and the EV is essentially glued to the road while cornering at high speed. You can watch video of the impressive feat here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Independent: The so-called "blank check" company behind former president Donald Trump's Truth Social platform now appears to be the subject of an investigation by federal prosecutors who are looking into whether the company or its executives violated federal securities laws. Shares of the Special Purpose Acquisition Company, known as Digital World Acquisition Corporation, fell nine percent in early trading on Monday after CEO Patrick Orlando filed a statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to report that the company, which is pursuing a merger with the former president's Trump Media and Technology Group, was issued a subpoena by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York.

Mr Orlando also wrote that each member of DWAC's board of directors has also been issued a subpoena by the same grand jury. The grand jury subpoenas, he said, appear to be "seeking various documents and information" that are substantially similar to subpoenas issued to the company by the SEC earlier this year, as well as documents relating to the company's previous SEC filings, "communications with or about multiple individuals, and information regarding Rocket One Capital," a venture capital and private equity firm. The US securities regulator is probing whether DWAC executives violated laws which ban negotiations between the company and Mr Trump's tech firm before DWAC went public in late 2021. After Mr Trump announced his company's pending deal with DWAC, shares in the public company skyrocketed by over 400 per cent.

A previous filing by Mr Orlando stated that the SEC subpoena sought documents concerning "among other things, Digital World's due diligence regarding TMTG, communications regarding and due diligence of potential targets other than TMTG, relationships between and among Digital World (and/or certain of Digital World's officers and directors) and other entities (including ARC Global Investments II LLC, Digital World's sponsor, and certain advisors, including Digital World's underwriter and financial advisor in its initial public offering)." Additionally, the pending merger is also the subject of an investigation by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a commercial entity that acts as a self-regulator for brokerage firms and securities exchange markets.

Svelte Origins: The Documentary tells the story of how Svelte came to be, what makes Svelte different, and how it changes the game as a JavaScript framework. From the description of the documentary, which was recommended by several Slashdot readers: Filmed in locations throughout Europe and the US, it features Svelte's creator Rich Harris and members from the core community who contributed to making Svelte what it is today. Svelte Origins was filmed in late 2021, produced by OfferZen and directed by Dewald Brand, with shoots in the USA, the UK, Ireland, Sweden and Germany.

Last week a headline in the Los Angeles Times proclaimed "Look! Up in the sky! It's an air taxi. They're coming to Los Angeles."

Even the British newspaper the Times took notice: Air taxis will be flying through the skies above Los Angeles in time for the summer Olympics of 2028 if city officials and entrepreneurs have their way.

A Silicon Valley company is the latest to claim that it is close to creating viable electric vehicles that can offer short hops above the traffic-choked streets for not much more than the cost of an Uber ride. Adam Goldstein, chief executive of Archer Aviation, told the Los Angeles Times that his vertical take-off aircraft, designed to travel 60 miles on a single charge at up to 150mph, would "completely change the way we live, the way we work", and could be flying within two years.
The Los Angeles Times cited estimates of $1 billion spent testing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, known as eVTOL, just last year, and noted the "hundreds of companies competing" to build a new "transportation empire." And their opening paragraph paints the scene: Imagine avoiding that soul-crushing, hourlong slog — say from Santa Monica to downtown L.A. on a Tuesday morning. Instead, you hail a high-tech cab that will hop over the gridlock and get you there in nine minutes.... The promise of flying cars — for generations a Hollywood staple of a space-age future, from "The Jetsons" to "Blade Runner" — is finally becoming a reality, so much so that a Swedish company is already selling a single-passenger vehicle called Jetson 1. Los Angeles transportation officials are preparing for this new era and expect drone-like electric air taxis to be operational by the time the 2028 Summer Olympics roll around, if not far sooner....

While many detractors doubt that such travel will soon be viable, affordable or safe, the industry is working with cities to make the technology a reality in the next five years.
The Observer also noted that another eVTOL pioneer, Germany's Volocopter, plans to launch commercial service for its two-seat VoloCity aircraft in 2024 in Europe, with a four-seater by 2026. But are there possible downsides? In cities like New York, wealthy commuters are already taking helicopter rides on a regular basis, and complaints about helicopter noise have skyrocketed in recent years, prompting the city to introduce a bill last week to ban non-essential helicopter uses, such as sightseeing and short-distance travel, in parts of Manhattan.

eVTOLs are quieter than helicopters by design, but they are by no means silent.
Even the Los Angeles Times acknowledges "There are concerns about safety, quality of life and affordability." While a single air taxi may be relatively quiet, what happens when there is a constant stream of them coming in and out of a landing spot? Should there be nighttime restrictions on flights? Will this just be a means for the ultra-wealthy to buzz over poor neighborhoods to Dodger Stadium or Crypto.com Arena?
But the Times' article still drew angry letters to the editor, with one calling air taxis "a disaster waiting to happen." Instead of boosterism reporting and parroting industry marketing claims that these aircraft are some kind of a godsend, how about reporting on how many decibels these flying bubbles for the elite will blare onto the plebes below...? [T]he paper's naive reporting on the technology are disappointing.
They'd also called the Times' claim of $50-a-flight prices "fanciful" — and a second letter writer also expressed skepticism about that low estimated cost. "That reminds one of the outlandish initial promise we were given that the bullet train would cost $33 billion to build."

Esquire celebrates the 40th anniversary of the movie Blade Runner: Based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, Scott's film created a world so rich, so dirty and wet and worn out, so visually stunning, that imitation was an inevitability. Less gym-bro than The Terminator, less wacky than Terry Gilliam's Brazil, and less all-out apocalyptic than Mad Max, Blade Runner arguably defined not just 1980s science fiction, but in the forty years since its initial release, sci-fi films in general. From Ghost In The Shell, to Total Recall and Minority Report and even Black Panther, Blade Runner is owed a debt of gratitude.

Working from a formula he perfected in 1979's Alien, Scott brought his world of grimy industry and neon-lit shadows, rogue androids and put-upon protagonists to California, swapping Alien's body horror for the police procedural. Granted, Deckard isn't Ellen Ripley, but in its portrayal of the battered and bruised detective battling against the system, Blade Runner is a Chinatown of the future. That it was only Scott's third film as director makes it all the more impressive. (As an aside, has Harrison Ford's three film run of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), and Blade Runner (1982) ever been beaten?).

Famously, the film was a critical and commercial flop in the U.S. with VHS sales and endless re-edits eventually leading to its cult status. (In 2004, it was even voted as the best science fiction film of all time by a panel of global scientists). Today, it's difficult to picture a sci-fi film that doesn't play homage. Would HBO's Westworld have updated its 1973 film version so successfully and stylishly without Blade Runner paving the way both visually and in terms of its musings on free will? And, decades before Elon Musk looked set to take over the world, Blade Runner's Tyrell Corporation (and indeed, Alien's Weyland-Yutani) was inspiring evil empires from Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation to RoboCop's Omni Consumer Products and The Terminator's Cyberdyne Systems.
The article argues that Rutger Hauer's replicant character Roy Batty "delivers one of the greatest speeches in cinematic history in his 'Tears in rain' soliloquy."

And it points out that fans of Ridley Scott's prequels to Alien speculate those movies also exist in the same cinematic universe.

Long-time Slashdot reader Artem S. Tashkinov shares a blog post from indie game programmer who complains "The special upload tool I had to use today was a total of 230MB of client files, and involved 2,700 different files to manage this process." Oh and BTW it gives error messages and right now, it doesn't work. sigh.

I've seen coders do this. I know how this happens. It happens because not only are the coders not doing low-level, efficient code to achieve their goal, they have never even SEEN low level, efficient, well written code. How can we expect them to do anything better when they do not even understand that it is possible...? It's what they learned. They have no idea what high performance or constraint-based development is....

Computers are so fast these days that you should be able to consider them absolute magic. Everything that you could possibly imagine should happen between the 60ths of a second of the refresh rate. And yet, when I click the volume icon on my microsoft surface laptop (pretty new), there is a VISIBLE DELAY as the machine gradually builds up a new user interface element, and eventually works out what icons to draw and has them pop-in and they go live. It takes ACTUAL TIME. I suspect a half second, which in CPU time, is like a billion fucking years....

All I'm doing is typing this blog post. Windows has 102 background processes running. My nvidia graphics card currently has 6 of them, and some of those have sub tasks. To do what? I'm not running a game right now, I'm using about the same feature set from a video card driver as I would have done TWENTY years ago, but 6 processes are required. Microsoft edge web view has 6 processes too, as does Microsoft edge too. I don't even use Microsoft edge. I think I opened an SVG file in it yesterday, and here we are, another 12 useless pieces of code wasting memory, and probably polling the cpu as well.

This is utter, utter madness. Its why nothing seems to work, why everything is slow, why you need a new phone every year, and a new TV to load those bloated streaming apps, that also must be running code this bad. I honestly think its only going to get worse, because the big dumb, useless tech companies like facebook, twitter, reddit, etc are the worst possible examples of this trend....

There was a golden age of programming, back when you had actual limitations on memory and CPU. Now we just live in an ultra-wasteful pit of inefficiency. Its just sad.
Long-time Slashdot reader Z00L00K left a comment arguing that "All this is because everyone today programs on huge frameworks that have everything including two full size kitchen sinks, one for right handed people and one for left handed." But in another comment Slashdot reader youn blames code generators, cut-and-paste programming, and the need to support multiple platforms.

But youn adds that even with that said, "In the old days, there was a lot more blue screens of death... Sure it still happens but how often do you restart your computer these days." And they also submitted this list arguing "There's a lot more functionality than before."

• Some software has been around a long time. Even though the /. crowd likes to bash Windows, you got to admit backward compatibility is outstanding
• A lot of things like security were not taken in consideration
• It's a different computing environment.... multi tasking, internet, GPUs
• In the old days, there was one task running all the time. Today, a lot of error handling, soft failures if the app is put to sleep
• A lot of code is due to to software interacting one with another, compatibility with standards
• Shiny technology like microservices allow scaling, heterogenous integration

So who's right and who's wrong? Leave your own best answers in the comments.

And are today's programmers leaving too much code bloat?

LinkedIn recently added 'dyslexic thinking' as an official skill.

And now the U.K. national newspaper the Telegraph reports on scientists arguing that dyslexia is not a "disorder" — but an evolutionarily beneficial willingness to explore: The experts suggested that dyslexia, which causes difficulty reading, writing and spelling, is a useful specialisation and not a "neurocognitive condition"....

About one in five people have dyslexia, and their tendency to push the envelope would have been balanced out by other members of a prehistoric society, leading to a well-rounded group with equally useful skill sets. However, Dr Helen Taylor, from the University of Strathclyde, and Dr Martin Vestergaard, from the University of Cambridge, said that dyslexia was now seen as a problem because modern education systems focused on the things sufferers struggled with and neglected what they excelled at. They reassessed past studies on dyslexic individuals and disagreed with the prevailing theory that it was a cognitive deficit....

[S]ince the invention of written language, dyslexia has been seen as a problem, not a talent. "Schools, academic institutes and workplaces are not designed to make the most of explorative learning," said Dr Taylor. "We urgently need to start nurturing this way of thinking to allow humanity to continue to adapt and solve key challenges." They posit that dyslexic people are naturally more skilled "in realms like discovery, invention and creativity" and that this specialisation stems from millennia of human evolution.... Without the streak of curiosity and willingness to investigate that is commonplace in dyslexic brains, groups of people would likely struggle to survive, they said.

"The deficit-centred view of dyslexia isn't telling the whole story," said Dr Taylor. "We believe that the areas of difficulty experienced by people with dyslexia result from a cognitive trade-off between exploration of new information and exploitation of existing knowledge, with the upside being an explorative bias that could explain enhanced abilities observed in certain realms like discovery, invention and creativity.
The researchers argue this "explorative specialization in people with dyslexia could help explain why they have difficulties with tasks related to exploitation, such as reading and writing.

"It could also explain why people with dyslexia appear to gravitate towards certain professions that require exploration-related abilities, such as arts, architecture, engineering and entrepreneurship."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the story