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MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations New submitter gam shares an announcement from MIT: Standing by its commitment to provide equitable and open access to scholarship, MIT has ended negotiations with Elsevier for a new journals contract. Elsevier was not able to present a proposal that aligned with the principles of the MIT Framework for Publisher Contracts. Developed by the MIT Libraries in collaboration with the Ad Hoc Task Force on Open Access to MITs Research and the Committee on the Library System in October 2019, the MIT Framework is grounded in the conviction that openly sharing research and educational materials is key to the Institutes mission of advancing knowledge and bringing that knowledge to bear on the worlds greatest challenges. It affirms the overarching principle that control of scholarship and its dissemination should reside with scholars and their institutions, and aims to ensure that scholarly research outputs are openly and equitably available to the broadest possible audience, while also providing valued services to the MIT community. More than 100 institutions, ranging from multi-institution consortia to large research universities to liberal arts colleges, decided to endorse the MIT Framework in recognition of its potential to advance open scholarship and the public good. "We hope to be able to resume productive negotiations if and when Elsevier is able to provide a contract that reflects our communitys needs and values and advances MITs mission," said Chris Bourg, director of the MIT Libraries. "In the meantime, we will continue to use the framework to pursue new paths to achieving open access to knowledge..." 12 June 2020, 00:40:00

PlayStation 5 Console Revealed At a live event today, Sony officially unveiled its PlayStation 5 console. Eurogamer reports: The sleek and curved box will come in two flavors -- one with a disc drive, and one without. Meet the PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition. No pricing or launch date details were announced today. The white-colored console can be orientated horizontally or vertically. Both versions have a USB and USB-C port in the front. Also shown: a controller charging station which docks two DualSense pads, a headset featuring 3D audio support and noise-cancelling microphones and a media remote with built-in microphone. You can watch the PS5 hardware reveal trailer here. Sony also offered a first extended look at actual games running on the upcoming hardware. 12 June 2020, 00:23:00

Spider-Man, Ratchet and Clank, Gran Turismo and More Are Coming To PS5 An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nearly three months after laying out some of the PlayStation 5s technological underpinnings, Sony today offered a first extended look at actual games running on the upcoming hardware during a live event. The event started off with a glimpse of an "expanded and enhcanced" version of Grand Theft Auto V, which is coming to the PlayStation 5 in 2021, in case you need an excuse to buy the game again. PlayStation 5 owners will also get GTA Online free at launch in 2021, while PS4 owners of GTAV will get $1 million in monthly online GTA Cash every month until the PS5 version launches. A follow-up to last years Spider-Man featuring Miles Morales will be hitting the PS5 in Holiday 2020. "A hero is just someone who doesnt give up," an unseen narrator says over the footage. "Your dad said that. He was right. Now its your turn. Go be a hero Miles." Though the footage shown is tagged with a "captured on PS5," (and a ""Be greater, be yourself" slogan), its unclear if it will also be available on older PS4 systems. Ratchet and Clank are back for more madcap run and gun mayhem in Rift Apart, a game that seems focused on warping quickly between dimensions that are randomly collapsing in on one another. The trailer shows the duo riding dragons, facing pirates, sliding down futuristic buildings, and more. And one dimension even features a female member of Ratchets species, which is sure to satisfy a particular type of fan. Other games mentioned in the report that are coming to Sonys next-gen console include: Square Enix and Luminous Productions Project Athia, Annapurnas Stray, Housemarque and PlayStation Studios Returnal, LittleBigPlanets A Big Adventure, Destruction Allstars, Ember Labs Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Goodbye Volcano High, Soulstorm, Ghostwire Tokyo, Superbrothers The Far Shore, Gearbox and Counterplay Games Godfall, Solar Ash, Hitman 3, Astros Playroom, and Little Devil Inside. Developing... 12 June 2020, 00:03:00

Biden Prepares Attack on Facebooks Speech Policies The Biden presidential campaign, emboldened by a recent surge in support, is going after a new target: Facebook. From a report: After months of privately battling the tech giant over President Trumps free rein on its social network, the campaign will begin urging its millions of supporters to demand that Facebook strengthen its rules against misinformation and to hold politicians accountable for harmful comments. On Thursday, the campaign will circulate a petition and an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks chief executive, to change the companys hands-off approach to political speech. The petition will be sent to millions of supporters on its email and text message lists and through social media, including Facebook, imploring them to sign the letter. The campaign will also release a video this week to be shared across social media to explain the issue. "Real changes to Facebooks policies for their platform and how they enforce them are necessary to protect against a repeat of the role that disinformation played in the 2016 election and that continues to threaten our democracy today," said Bill Russo, a spokesman for the Biden campaign. The move puts the Biden camp in the center of a raging debate about the role and responsibility of tech platforms. Civil rights leaders, Democratic lawmakers and many of Facebooks own employees say that big tech companies have a responsibility to prevent false and hateful information from being shared widely. 11 June 2020, 23:25:00

Scientists Have Made Bose-Einstein Condensates in Space for the First Time On board the International Space Station since May 2018 is a mini-fridge-size facility called the Cold Atom Lab (CAL), capable of chilling atoms in a vacuum down to temperatures one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero. It is, for all intents and purposes, one of the coldest spots in the known universe. And according to a new study published in Nature, scientists have just used it to create a rare state of matter for the first time ever in space. From a report: Bose-Einstein condensates, sometimes called the fifth state of matter, are gaseous clouds of atoms that stop behaving like individual atoms and start to behave like a collective. BECs, as theyre often called, were first predicted by Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose over 95 years ago, but they were first observed in the lab by scientists just 25 years ago. The general idea when making a BEC is to inject atoms (in the case of CAL, rubidium and potassium) into an ultra-cold chamber to slow them down. A magnetic trap is then created in the chamber with an electrified coil, which is used along with lasers and other tools to move the atoms into a dense cloud. At this point the atoms "kind of blur into one another," says David Aveline, a physicist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the lead author of the new study. To run experiments using a BEC, you need to turn down or release the magnetic trap. The cloud of crowded atoms will expand, which is useful because BECs need to stay cold, and gases tend to cool off as they expand. But if the atoms in a BEC get too far apart, they no longer behave like a condensate. This is where the microgravity of low Earth orbit comes into play. If you try to increase the volume on Earth, says Aveline, gravity will just pull the atoms in the center of the BEC cloud down to the bottom of the trap until they spill out, distorting the condensate or ruining it entirely. But in microgravity, the tools in the CAL can hold the atoms together even as the traps volume increases. That makes for a longer-lived condensate, which in turn allows scientists to study it longer than they could on Earth (this initial demonstration ran for 1.118 seconds, although the goal is to be able to detect the cloud for up to 10 seconds). Though only a first step, the CAL experiment could one day allow BECs to form the basis of ultra-sensitive instruments that detect faint signals from some of the universes most mysterious phenomena, like gravitational waves and dark energy. From a more practical perspective, Aveline believes the teams work could pave the way for better inertial sensors. "The applications range from accelerometers and seismometers to gyroscopes," he says. 11 June 2020, 22:45:00

As Virus Infections Surge, Countries End Lockdowns Still struggling with rising coronavirus cases, India, Mexico, Russia, Iran and Pakistan have decided they must end lockdowns and restart their economies. From a report: At Nigambodh Ghat, the oldest cremation grounds in Indias capital, the bodies keep coming. One ambulance arrives with five inside. Then another. Then another, in an endless display of death. As the coronavirus pandemic surges in New Delhi, a public health care system that was already strained might be reaching its breaking point. People cant get tested. They cant find a hospital bed. The situation has become so grim that government officials have proposed commandeering some of New Delhis fanciest hotels to turn into hospitals. But ready or not, much of Indias coronavirus lockdown has ended, as have those in other countries struggling to balance economic damage with coronavirus risk. In many places -- India, Mexico, Russia, Iran and Pakistan, among others -- leaders have come to feel they have no choice but to take the surge of cases on the chin and prioritize the economy. Some of these leaders, especially those in the developing world, said they couldnt sustain the punishing lockdowns without risking economic catastrophe, especially for their poorest citizens. So the thinking has shifted, from commanding people to stay indoors and avoid the virus and other people at all costs, to now openly accepting some illness and death to try to limit the damage to livelihoods and to individual lives. A glimpse from the streets, reported by correspondents in countries especially hard hit, reveals a sharp rise in person-to-person contact in recent days -- precisely at the time that the World Health Organization is warning that infections from this highly contagious disease are roaring toward a new peak. India is now producing more new daily infections, around 10,000, than all but two countries, the United States and Brazil. 11 June 2020, 22:05:00

Activists Rally To Save Internet Archive as Lawsuit Threatens Site The Internet Archive is a massive endeavor -- its an online library aiming to "provide Universal Access to All Knowledge." It has digitized millions of web pages, movies, photos, recordings, software programs, and books that might otherwise be lost to history. But its neither un-censorable nor outside the bounds of copyright law. And now open internet supporters are wondering how to save it before it disappears. 11 June 2020, 21:25:00

Apple Launches $100 Million Racial Justice Initiative; YouTube Creates $100 Million Fund for Black Creators and Artists Apple CEO Tim Cook on Thursday announced a $100 million project focused on the systemic barriers to opportunity and dignity faced by the black community, with special emphasis on education, economic equality and criminal justice reform. Details: The effort will begin in the U.S., then expand internationally over time.It will be led by Lisa Jackson, the former EPA administrator who has led Apples environmental efforts for the last several years.Apple is also addressing internal issues, promising to boost its hiring of underrepresented minorities and increase its spending with black-owned suppliers. YouTube announced a multiyear, $100 million fund dedicated to "amplifying and developing the voices of Black creators and artists and their stories," according to CEO Susan Wojcicki. From a report: "At YouTube, we believe Black lives matter and we all need to do more to dismantle systemic racism," Wojcicki wrote in a blog post. "Were committed to doing better as a platform to center and amplify Black voices and perspectives." As an example of content being funded under the new initiative, Wojcicki announced that this Saturday, June 13, YouTube will host livestream fundraising event produced by YouTube Originals, called "Bear Witness, Take Action." 11 June 2020, 20:46:00

Trillions of Words Analyzed, OpenAI Sets Loose AI Language Colossus Over the past few months, OpenAI has vacuumed an incredible amount of data into its artificial intelligence language systems. It sucked up Wikipedia, a huge swath of the rest of the internet and tons of books. This mass of text -- trillions of words -- was then analyzed and manipulated by a supercomputer to create what the research group bills as a major AI breakthrough and the heart of its first commercial product, which came out on Thursday. From a report: The product name -- OpenAI calls it "the API" -- might not be magical, but the things it can accomplish do seem to border on wizardry at times. The software can perform a broad set of language tasks, including translating between languages, writing news stories and poems and answering everyday questions. Ask it, for example, if you should keep reading a story, and you might be told, "Definitely. The twists and turns keep coming." OpenAI wants to build the most flexible, general purpose AI language system of all time. Typically, companies and researchers will tune their AI systems to handle one, limited task. The API, by contrast, can crank away at a broad set of jobs and, in many cases, at levels comparable with specialized systems. While the product is in a limited test phase right now, it will be released broadly as something that other companies can use at the heart of their own offerings such as customer support chat systems, education products or games, OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said. [...] The API product builds on years of research in which OpenAI has compiled ever larger text databases with which to feed its AI algorithms and neural networks. At its core, OpenAI API looks over all the examples of language it has seen and then uses those examples to predict, say, what word should come next in a sentence or how best to answer a particular question. "It almost gets to the point where it assimilates all of human knowledge because it has seen everything before," said Eli Chen, CEO of startup Veriph.ai, who tried out an earlier version of OpenAIs product. "Very few other companies would be able to afford what it costs to build this type of huge model." 11 June 2020, 20:13:00

Microsoft Wont Sell Police Its Facial-Recognition Technology Microsoft joined the list of tech giants whove decided to limit the use of its facial-recognition systems, announcing that it will not sell the controversial technology to police departments until there is a federal law regulating the technology. From a report: The move, announced by Microsoft president Brad Smith at a Post Live event Thursday morning, follows similar decisions by Amazon and IBM, and comes as protesters across the nation press for an end to police brutality and racial profiling. Smith said that Microsoft has not sold its facial-recognition technology to law enforcement. "We will not sell facial-recognition technology to police departments in the United States until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights that will govern this technology," Smith said. The company also plans to put in place "review factors" that Smith said would "go even beyond what we already have" to determine the use of the technology beyond law enforcement. 11 June 2020, 19:23:00

System76 Launches AMD Ryzen-Powered Serval WS Portable Linux Workstation Linux computer maker/seller System76 has been offering AMD processors in its Thelio desktop computers, but believe it or not, the company has never offered an AMD-powered laptop -- until now, that is. From a report: You see, starting today, you can buy a "Serval WS" powered by AMD. No, System76 is not offering mobile Ryzen chips in this laptop, but instead, desktop-class processors. As you can expect, this 15-inch portable Linux workstation is quite chunky and heavy as a result. With that said, it is simply impossible to cram this much power into a thin and light notebook. "The Serval WS comes with either the 3rd Gen Ryzen 3600, 3700X, or 3900 CPU. The latter is equipped with 12 Cores and 24 Threads, making this laptop perfect for taking on heavy computational loads. Having this kind of desktop-caliber power in a laptop body helps if you need to run complex simulations at your desk or quickly render 3D scenes while on the road. AMD CPUs are also known for having the an extremely high price per performance, which means you get maximum bang-for-buck," says System76. The laptop starts at $1,300 -- and BetaNews has all the specs. 11 June 2020, 18:44:00

Podcast Apps Pocket Casts and Castro Removed From Apples China Store Before June each year, content and media platforms in China anxiously anticipate a new round of censorship as the government tightens access to information in the lead-up to the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. This year, Chinese users lost access to two podcast apps -- Pocket Casts and Castro Podcasts. From a report: Neither apps are searchable within Apples Chinese App Store at the time of writing. Pocket Casts, which was acquired by a group of American public radio companies in 2018, tweeted that it "has been removed from the Chinese App Store by Apple, at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China," the countrys internet watchdog. When Pocket Casts asked for clarification, Apples app review team told the podcast firm to contact the CAC directly, an email seen by TechCrunch showed. "We will most likely contact them to find out more, though we werent given that option to stop the app from being removed, only as a potential solution to have it re-instated. The very small amount of warning we were given between there being a problem, and our app being completely removed from the Chinese app store was quite alarming," a spokesperson for Pocket Casts told TechCrunch. "We assumed that what theyd want us to remove are specific podcasts, and possible some of the Black Lives Matter content wed posted." 11 June 2020, 18:05:00

EU To Hit Amazon With Antitrust Charges Over Treatment of Third-Party Sellers, Report Says The European Union is preparing to file antitrust charges against Amazon over the e-commerce giants treatment of third-party sellers on its site, according to a report Thursday from The Wall Street Journal. From a report: The European Commission, the unions top antitrust regulator, could file official charges as early as next week, according to the Journal. The charges will reportedly accuse Amazon of using data on independent sellers on its platform to launch competing products. The European Unions antitrust regulators opened an investigation into Amazon in July 2019. The goal is to explore whether the e-commerce giant breached the EUs competition rules with its use of data from independent retailers. Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is in charge of the EUs competition policy, said at the time that European customers shop online for the selection and pricing. "We need to ensure that large online platforms dont eliminate these benefits through anti-competitive behaviour," Vestager said. "I have therefore decided to take a very close look at Amazons business practices and its dual role as marketplace and retailer, to assess its compliance with EU competition rules." 11 June 2020, 17:25:00

30,000 Unsuspecting Rose Bowl Attendees Were Scooped Up in a Facial Recognition Test On New Years Day 2020, more than 90,000 college football fans piled into the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California, to watch the Oregon Ducks play the Wisconsin Badgers. It turns out some of those fans were being watched, too. From a report: Before they even entered the stadium, thousands of attendees were being captured by a facial recognition system in the Rose Bowls FanFest activity area by an ad tech company called VSBLTY. Four cameras hidden underneath digital signs captured data on attendees, generating 30,000 points of data on how long they looked at advertisements, their gender and age, and an analysis to try and identify weapons or whether they were on a watch list of suspicious persons. Three fans who attended the Rose Bowl game and spoke to OneZero said they didnt remember seeing any notice that they were being surveilled. [...] The data gathering and surveillance operation has not been reported in the mainstream press before and was revealed after VSBLTY issued a press release of its findings. Neither VSBLTY nor the Rose Bowl Stadium responded to multiple requests for comment or questions about how data was gathered, whether fans were informed, and where the watch list of suspicious persons came from. "Facts about fans, their habits and actions -- in addition to demographic and psychographic information -- will help plan audience activities as well as serve as a tool to validate the value of on-site advertising impressions to sponsors," wrote Jay Hutton, VSBLTYs CEO. VSBLTY is a small, Philadelphia-based company that anticipates generating $15 million to $20 million in revenue in 2020, according to a company slide deck targeted at investors reviewed by OneZero. The company has fewer than 50 employees according to LinkedIn data. Despite its relatively small size, the company has contracts around the world, including conducting real-time facial recognition in Mexico City through a partnership with intelligent lighting company Energetika. 11 June 2020, 16:46:00

Why Facebook Staffers Wont Quit Over Trumps Posts Even fed-up tech workers are paralyzed by Silicon Valleys culture. From a column: Its easier for tech workers to talk about taking a stand than to do so. For one, big technology companies such as Facebook and Google are viciously competitive about acquiring talent. They hire or poach the best people, sometimes just to prevent a competitor from having access to them instead. Some workers dont want to rock the boat for fear they might get blacklisted, Ian McCarthy, a vice president of product at Yahoo, said. And ironically, the brokenness at companies such as Facebook and Uber can also make their jobs enticing. Disruption is appealing, and the promise to move fast and break things (even priceless and irrecoverable ones, such as democracy) can be a recruiting tool. Others already in a companys employ may see an opportunity to fix some of its ills. One product manager at a large tech firm, who also advises many early-career professionals, spoke with me on the condition of anonymity because she fears reprisal from within the industry. She told me about her "activist" friends who refuse to leave jobs at Facebook, even if they disagree with the companys practices. "They came to change the world," she said, "and stayed to work within the system on issues they cared about." The same drive that makes these workers care about the consequences of Facebooks impact on democracy also makes them want to stick it out in an effort to improve the service. Even so, Facebook seems to have crossed the line of tolerable abhorrence for some tech workers. Inside the business, nextplayism may offer the best, and maybe the only, way for them to show their distaste. "The vast majority of people I know at the director-and-up level, when they are leaving a company and looking for a new gig, theyre Never Facebookers," McCarthy, who is also an occasional collaborator of mine, said, referring to senior-level roles. "Theyre offended if you even offer to do introductions to someone at Facebook." But that is a privileged attitude. Much of the magical operation of online services is driven by rote laborers, such as moderators, AI-training wranglers, and gig workers. They arent counted as members of the industry, except perhaps as its casualties. 11 June 2020, 16:08:00

Google Nieuws over Slashdot:

• NY AG sues Citibank for failing to protect customers from hackers and scammers - CNN
  NY AG sues Citibank for failing to protect customers from hackers and scammers  CNN
• Japan to phase out floppy disks and CD-ROMs for submitting official documents @slashdot @engadget - Adafruit Blog
  Japan to phase out floppy disks and CD-ROMs for submitting official documents @slashdot @engadget  Adafruit Blog
• Anonymous “Anonymous Cowards” are, for now, not welcome on Slashdot - Ars Technica
  Anonymous “Anonymous Cowards” are, for now, not welcome on Slashdot  Ars Technica
• Review: Half-Life 2 - Slashdot
  Review: Half-Life 2  Slashdot
• Slashdot Media to Merge with BIZX, LLC, Creating a Market Leader in B2B, Software, Technology, and Data - PR Newswire
  Slashdot Media to Merge with BIZX, LLC, Creating a Market Leader in B2B, Software, Technology, and Data  PR Newswire
• Slashdot and Dice: why did a jobs site buy 'news for nerds'? - The Verge
  Slashdot and Dice: why did a jobs site buy 'news for nerds'?  The Verge
• Ten Years of Google Maps, From Slashdot to Ground Truth - Vox.com
  Ten Years of Google Maps, From Slashdot to Ground Truth  Vox.com
• The SourceForge Controversy, and the Ongoing Fall of Slashdot Media, Explained - MUO - MakeUseOf
  The SourceForge Controversy, and the Ongoing Fall of Slashdot Media, Explained  MUO - MakeUseOf
• Check Out The Sleek Redesign of "News For Nerds" Site Slashdot - Business Insider
  Check Out The Sleek Redesign of "News For Nerds" Site Slashdot  Business Insider
• How Did GitLab Scale Up for the Slashdot Effect? Point and Click - Data Center Knowledge
  How Did GitLab Scale Up for the Slashdot Effect? Point and Click  Data Center Knowledge
• Slashdot's CmdrTaco Looks Back at 10 Years of 'News for Nerds' - WIRED
  Slashdot's CmdrTaco Looks Back at 10 Years of 'News for Nerds'  WIRED
• Digg vs. Slashdot (or, traffic vs. influence) - kottke.org
  Digg vs. Slashdot (or, traffic vs. influence)  kottke.org
• Slashdot is 20 - Boing Boing
  Slashdot is 20  Boing Boing
• Bitcoin Gets 'Slashdotted' and the Creation of Mt. Gox - Bitcoin Magazine
  Bitcoin Gets 'Slashdotted' and the Creation of Mt. Gox  Bitcoin Magazine
• Dice Holdings buys Slashdot, SourceForge, & Freecode for $20M cash - VentureBeat
  Dice Holdings buys Slashdot, SourceForge, & Freecode for $20M cash  VentureBeat
• A Scroll Down Meme Lane - Slashdot
  A Scroll Down Meme Lane  Slashdot
• Slashdot's new interface could kill what keeps Slashdot relevant - Ars Technica
  Slashdot's new interface could kill what keeps Slashdot relevant  Ars Technica
• Slashdot Founder Rob 'Cmdr Taco' Malda Resigns - WIRED
  Slashdot Founder Rob 'Cmdr Taco' Malda Resigns  WIRED
• Kingdom Hearts II Review - Slashdot
  Kingdom Hearts II Review  Slashdot
• UK spies continue “quantum insert” attack via LinkedIn, Slashdot pages - Ars Technica
  UK spies continue “quantum insert” attack via LinkedIn, Slashdot pages  Ars Technica
• Check Out The Sleek Redesign of 'News For Nerds' Site Slashdot - Yahoo Finance
  Check Out The Sleek Redesign of 'News For Nerds' Site Slashdot  Yahoo Finance
• Robot Maid - Slashdot
  Robot Maid  Slashdot
• Slashdot launches redesigned website in beta form, we check it out - TweakTown
  Slashdot launches redesigned website in beta form, we check it out  TweakTown
• Tech Web Icon Slashdot Turns 15, We Feel a Little Older Too - Hot Hardware
  Tech Web Icon Slashdot Turns 15, We Feel a Little Older Too  Hot Hardware