Nobody Cares! (Science & Tech Edition)

[Free]

Time to Change Your DNA: 23andMe Lost Data for 6.9 Million People

23andMe, the world’s leading consumer DNA harvesting enterprise, announced Friday that hackers stole about 14,000 people’s ancestry information, as well as “a significant number of files” about other users. It turns out the word “significant” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. According to TechCrunch, 23andMe lost data about 6.9 million users, including people’s genetic information.

In case you don’t have a calculator handy, that’s almost 50,000% higher than the number 23andMe first reported.

In an email, a 23andMe spokesperson confirmed that hackers stole data from about 5.5 million users who opted-in to the company’s “DNA Relatives” feature, including the person’s name, birth year, relationship labels, the percentage of DNA users shared with relatives, ancestry reports, and location. An additional 1.4 million people who opted-in to DNA Relatives also “had their Family Tree profile information accessed.”

Oops?

 

[Erich Templar]

Pliosaur discovery: Huge sea monster emerges from Dorset cliffs

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Pnglui mgwlnafth pliosaur fhtagn.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Academic publishing has been broken for a long time. I have never gotten above the rank of Lecturer largely because I don't want to deal with that bullshit to get on to tenure track. I want to be a better teacher instead. AI has just made the flaws more obvious.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

A fascinating thread on the moon of Venus that isn't

 

[Free]

A fascinating thread on the moon of Venus that isn't

I'm surprised The Wikipedia page for it didn't come up in his Google search. (It's received a ton of edits since his Xweet. But the page has mentioned the asteroid being a quasi-satellite/quasi-moon of Venus for quite some years.)

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Topical:

Scientists aghast at bizarre AI rat with huge genitals in peer-reviewed article

It's unclear how such egregiously bad images made it through peer-review.

arstechnica.com

Appall and scorn ripped through scientists' social media networks Thursday as several egregiously bad AI-generated figures circulated from a peer-reviewed article recently published in a reputable journal. Those figures—which the authors acknowledge in the article's text were made by Midjourney—are all uninterpretable. They contain gibberish text and, most strikingly, one includes an image of a rat with grotesquely large and bizarre genitals, as well as a text label of "dck."

While it's tempting to focus on how hilarious this incidentally is (srsly, check out the images, they're a hoot) this is a real problem as Innula has already brought up; Frontiers' journals are supposed to be peer-reviewed and while it's completely believable that a handful of researchers submitted an AI-faked research paper to game publication credit, it's really just not possible that any human editor looked at this article before it was approved for publication in the journal and said that it was okay.

It brings to mind certain allegations about Frontiers that were made a few years back.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Sanalinth on the jelcke!

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Sanalinth on the jelcke!

I'm sensing some immouminomuduodiuilatiuciaton in this post

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Death, Lonely Death — Crooked Timber

 

[Free]

SpaceX successfully launched its Starship, but the vehicle was ‘lost’ after reentry

Contact was lost, however, shortly before its expected splashdown.

www.theverge.com

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

PERFECT

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I'm Xenonsexual. It's a noble calling.

 

[Free]

I'm Xenonsexual. It's a noble calling.

For a moment I thought you wrote Xenasexual. I was about to grab you over such a television-based unexpurgated revelation.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Black Country student sounds bostin’ after actor donates voice

Daniel Challis, who has cerebral palsy, sounds like his family for the first time after Eli Lane, from Walsall, recorded 3,500 words for his speech synthesiser

www.thetimes.co.uk

Evernote link

ETA This has the voice in use

Man with robot voice finally finds his Walsall accent

Daniel Challis, who uses a communication device, wanted a regional accent to sound like his family.

www.bbc.com

 

[Beebo Brink]

This is just wild!

Dentist finds ancient human jawbone embedded in his parents’ tile floor - The Washington Post

Dentist Discovers Human-Like Jawbone and Teeth in a Floor Tile at His Parents' Home | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine

Travertine forms when a change in chemical conditions cause dissolved calcium carbonate to harden into solid rock. It usually solidifies in layers, giving travertine tiles their distinctive and visually appealing look. These layers can trap anything that falls into them, such as leaves, feathers and even dead animals.

 

[Cindy Claveau]