Employees of Google and parent company Alphabet announced the creation of a union on Monday, escalating years of confrontation between workers and management of the internet giant. From a report: The Alphabet Workers Union said it will be open to all employees and contractors, regardless of their role or classification. It will collect dues, pay organizing staff and have an elected board of directors. The unionizing effort, a rare campaign within a major U.S. technology company, is supported by the Communications Workers of America as part of a recent tech-focused initiative known as CODE-CWA. Googlers who join the Alphabet Workers Union will also be members of CWA Local 1400. The group, which represents more than 200 workers in the U.S., plans to take on issues including compensation, employee classification and the kinds of work Google engages in. "We will hire skilled organizers to ensure all workers at Google know they can work with us if they actually want to see their company reflect their values," Dylan Baker, software engineer at Google, said in a statement. A letter from the union organizers published in the New York Times said workplace concerns at the company have been dismissed by executives for too long. Google has clashed with some employees in recent years over contracts with the military, the different treatment of contract workers and a rich exit package for an executive ousted for alleged sexual harassment.

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71-year-old Hugh Pickens (Slashdot reader #49,171) is a physicist who explored for oil in the Amazon jungle, commissioned microwave communications systems in Saudi Arabia, and built satellite control stations for Goddard Space Flight Center around the world including Australia, Antarctica, and Guam. After retiring in 1999, he wrote over 1,400 Slashdot posts, and in the site's 23-year history still remains one of its two all-time most active submitters (behind only long-time Slashdot reader theodp). Today theodp shares an article by Hugh Pickens: I am a Covid Survivor," writes former Slashdot contributor extraordinaire Hugh Pickens (aka pickens, aka Hugh Pickens writes, aka Hugh Pickens DOT Com, aka HughPickens.com, aka pcol, aka ...). "I got the Covid six weeks ago and yesterday I was declared virus free. I had what was called a moderate case of Covid. I was never hospitalized. I was never in any real danger of death. But I was in bed for three weeks. "It knocked me on my ass. I have been talking about my Covid when I go out and a lot of people are interested in what it really means to have a moderate case of Covid. I don't claim to speak for every Covid patient. I certainly can't speak for the ones who went into the hospital and are on ventilators. But I think the majority of people have a moderate case of Covid so I thought I would write this up for people that were interested." During those three consecutive weeks in bed, "I guess I ate Jell-O for about two weeks..." Pickens writes. "I was laying in bed all day long. I was sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day..." He lost 25 pounds — and vividly describes having nightmares "every night like clockwork." But the essay ends with him committed to making the most of his second chance. "I'm only going to do what's important from now on... "I'm 71 years old and I may have five more years or ten but I am going to live every day like it's my last."

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"An enormous black hole keeps slipping through astronomers' nets..." reports Space.com: The big galaxy at the core of the cluster Abell 2261, which lies about 2.7 billion light-years from Earth, should have an even larger central black hole — a light-gobbling monster that weighs as much as 3 billion to 100 billion suns, astronomers estimate from the galaxy's mass. But the exotic object has evaded detection so far. For instance, researchers previously looked for X-rays streaming from the galaxy's center, using data gathered by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in 1999 and 2004. X-rays are a potential black-hole signature: As material falls into a black hole's maw, it accelerates and heats up tremendously, emitting lots of high-energy X-ray light. But that hunt turned up nothing. Now, a new study has conducted an even deeper search for X-rays in the same galaxy, using Chandra observations from 2018... But the Chandra data didn't reveal any significant X-ray sources, either in the galactic core or in big clumps of stars farther afield. So the mystery of the missing supermassive black hole persists. That mystery could be solved by Hubble's successor — NASA's big, powerful James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in October 2021. If James Webb doesn't spot a black hole in the galaxy's heart or in one of its bigger stellar clumps, "then the best explanation is that the black hole has recoiled well out of the center of the galaxy," NASA officials wrote.

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CNET reveals 2020's most popular show among video pirates: It probably won't come as a surprise that Disney Plus smash hit series The Mandalorian has won the (unfortunate) title of most-pirated TV show of 2020 — using popular torrenting site BitTorrent. According to analysis from TorrentFreak (via IndieWire), Game of Thrones was the most-pirated TV show seven years running. But the HBO series ended in 2019, leaving The Mandalorian to improve its ranking from third to No. 1. The rest of the list, from IndieWire: Prime Video's irreverent superhero series "The Boys" is at number two, HBO's "Westworld" is number three, Prime Video's "Vikings" is number four, CBS' "Star Trek: Picard" is five, followed by Adult Swim's "Rick and Morty," AMC's "The Walking Dead," HBO's "The Outsider," CW's "The Arrow," and CW's "The Flash."

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This weekend Forbes ran a thought-provoking article by "a digital marketer of 25 years" who now helps marketers audit their digital campaigns for ad fraud: When P&G turned off $200 million of their digital ad spending, they saw NO CHANGE in business outcomes. When Chase reduced their programmatic reach from 400,000 sites showing its ads to 5,000 sites (a 99% decrease), they saw NO CHANGE in business outcomes. When Uber turned off $120 million of their digital ad spending meant to drive more app installs, they saw NO CHANGE in the rate of app installs. When big brands stopped spending on digital ads, nothing happened. Even further back in time, in 2012, eBay turned off their paid search ad spending, and saw NO CHANGE in sales coming from those sources... Big brands turned off millions of dollars of digital ad spending, and saw no change in business outcomes. Small businesses tuned their digital marketing and reduced the number of ad impressions, clicks, and traffic to their sites, but saw business activity go up, instead of down. Much of the problem with digital advertising today stems from marketers' obsession with big numbers. But big numbers of ads and clicks do not translate into more business activity and sales. They are just large numbers in dashboards and spreadsheets. Marketers could be spending far fewer dollars and getting the same levels of business outcomes; or spending the dollars more smartly in digital and getting even more business outcomes than they are now.

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"Axiom Space has announced that it is creating an office park and manufacturing center at the Houston SpacePort at Ellington Field," notes an opinion piece for The Hill by Houston-based space writer Mark R. Whittington. "The development is a hopeful sign that, despite foot dragging by Congress, a commercial replacement for the International Space Station may well happen." The United States has a chance to avoid a "space gap" when the ISS reaches the end of its operational life, like the one that happened between the end of the space shuttle program and the first launch of the SpaceX commercial crew Dragon mission. When Jim Bridenstine became NASA administrator, one of the questions confronting him was what to do about maintaining a presence in low Earth orbit after the ISS. The idea that he and experts at NASA have been pushing is to encourage private companies to build their own space station. NASA would provide needed support by pledging to become an anchor tenant for such orbiting facilities. However, the commercial space stations would also have to find private customers. The problem is that Congress has been remarkably stingy when it comes to putting up real money for this approach. The fiscal 2020 budget request included $150 million for commercial space stations. Congress funded support for private orbiting labs for a grand total of $15 million... Axiom Space has won the nod to attach one of its own modules to the ISS. Not waiting for Congress to cough up funding for NASA, Axiom has announced a facility to manufacture space station modules at the Ellington SpacePort in Houston. The company will also have private astronaut training facilities. Besides employing 1,000 people, the new Axiom facility represents a commitment to creating a commercial space station industry... It is also likely no accident that the Axiom facility is about a five-hour drive from the growing SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica near the southern tip of Texas. No doubt SpaceX CEO Elon Musk would be pleased to launch finished modules to space, using the mighty Starship rocket, and later crews and cargo. In the midst of a pandemic, part of a space future is taking shape in South Texas. This time it's being driven by the private sector. NASA had best jump on board or risk being left behind.

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Heading into the new year, the Atlantic's executive editor penned a scathing warning that vast social networks like Facebook "can harm society just by existing..." Even as Facebook has insisted that it is a value-neutral vessel for the material its users choose to publish, moderation is a lever the company has tried to pull again and again. But there aren't enough moderators speaking enough languages, working enough hours, to stop the biblical flood of shit that Facebook unleashes on the world, because 10 times out of 10, the algorithm is faster and more powerful than a person. At megascale, this algorithmically warped personalized informational environment is extraordinarily difficult to moderate in a meaningful way, and extraordinarily dangerous as a result... We're still in the infancy of this century's triple digital revolution of the internet, smartphones, and the social web, and we find ourselves in a dangerous and unstable informational environment, powerless to resist forces of manipulation and exploitation that we know are exerted on us but remain mostly invisible. The Doomsday Machine offers a lesson: We should not accept this current arrangement. No single machine should be able to control so many people... Anyone who is serious about mitigating the damage done to humankind by the social web should, of course, consider quitting Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and any other algorithmically distorted informational environments that manipulate people. But we need to adopt a broader view of what it will take to fix the brokenness of the social web. That will require challenging the logic of today's platforms — and first and foremost challenging the very concept of megascale as a way that humans gather. If megascale is what gives Facebook its power, and what makes it dangerous, collective action against the web as it is today is necessary for change. The web's existing logic tells us that social platforms are free in exchange for a feast of user data; that major networks are necessarily global and centralized; that moderators make the rules. None of that need be the case. We need people who dismantle these notions by building alternatives. And we need enough people to care about these other alternatives to break the spell of venture capital and mass attention that fuels megascale and creates fatalism about the web as it is now. I still believe the internet is good for humanity, but that's despite the social web, not because of it. We must also find ways to repair the aspects of our society and culture that the social web has badly damaged. This will require intellectual independence, respectful debate, and the same rebellious streak that helped establish Enlightenment values centuries ago. We may not be able to predict the future, but we do know how it is made: through flashes of rare and genuine invention, sustained by people's time and attention. Right now, too many people are allowing algorithms and tech giants to manipulate them, and reality is slipping from our grasp as a result. This century's Doomsday Machine is here, and humming along. It does not have to be this way.

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Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: In India, parents are being aggressively sold the idea that their children must start coding at 4 or 5 or be future failures, prompting Neelesh Misra [a writer, audio storyteller, and founder of a media and organic products company] to ask Do Children Really Need to Learn to Code? [Alternate URL here] In a New York Times Opinion piece that's sparked 1,000+ comments, Misra writes that "Aggressive campaigns pushing Indian parents and schools to embrace coding might help meet corporate targets, but they are creating a fear that a generation of children will lose out if their parents don't sign them up for these coding programs. Parents struggle to resist these shrewdly framed campaigns." From the writer/storyteller/founder's piece: WhiteHat Jr., which operates in India and the United States, mounted an advertising blitzkrieg in India telling parents that our children need to learn coding from the age of 4, 5 or 6 — or they will fall behind in life. Indian celebrities promoted the brand and spread the fear of losing out among families... Although numerous experts advise against teaching children to code, a skill that will soon become redundant, the WhiteHat Jr. campaign taps into a parent's deepest fear: Will my child be left behind...? Relentless advertising campaigns are telling Indian parents that coding is critical because making children code will develop their cognitive skills. Storytelling does all that too. And singing songs. And asking questions or being offered choices or visiting interesting places... I realize that our world is about to change unrecognizably. Robotics, artificial intelligence and virtual and augmented reality shall soon be concepts and a way of living that will be second nature to our children. The future should excite us, not make our children feel afraid and ill equipped. The future should — and I am sure will — have a place for dreamers and doers, and not just those hunched forever over a computer.

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Long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: AMD filed a patent on using chiplets for a GPU with hints on why it has waited this long to extend their CPU strategy to GPUs. The latency between chiplets poses more of a performance problem for GPUs, and AMD is attempting to solve the problem with a new interconnect called high bandwidth passive crosslink. This new interconnect will allow each GPU to more effectively communicate with each other and the CPU. "With NVIDIA working on its own MCM design with Hopper architecture, it's about time that we left monolithic GPU designs in the past and enable truly exponential performance growth," argues Wccftech. And Hot Hardware delves into the details, calling it a "hybrid CPU-FPGA design that could be enabled by Xilinx tech." While they often aren't as great as CPUs on their own, FPGAs can do a wonderful job accelerating specific tasks... [A]n FPGA in the hands of a capable engineer can offload a wide variety of tasks from a CPU and speed processes along. Intel has talked a big game about integrating Xeons with FPGAs over the last six years, but it hasn't resulted in a single product hitting its lineup. A new patent by AMD, though, could mean that the FPGA newcomer might be ready to make one of its own... AMD made 20 claims in its patent application, but the gist is that a processor can include one or more execution units that can be programmed to handle different types of custom instruction sets. That's exactly what an FPGA does... AMD has been working on different ways to speed up AI calculations for years. First the company announced and released the Radeon Impact series of AI accelerators, which were just big headless Radeon graphics processors with custom drivers. The company doubled down on that with the release of the MI60, its first 7-nm GPU ahead of the Radeon RX 5000 series launch, in 2018. A shift to focusing on AI via FPGAs after the Xilinx acquisition makes sense, and we're excited to see what the company comes up with.

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"When you do computer programming, what sort of mental work are you doing?" asks science/tech journalist Clive Thompson: For a long time, folks have speculated on this. Since coding involves pondering hierarchies of symbols, maybe the mental work is kinda like writing or reading? Others have speculated it's more similar to the way our brains process math and puzzles. A group of MIT neuroscientists recently did fMRI brain-scans of young adults while they were solving a small coding challenge using a textual programming language (Python) and a visual one (Scratch Jr.). The results? The brain activity wasn't similar to when we process language. Instead, coding seems to activate the "multiple demand network," which — as the scientists note in a public-relations writeup of their work — "is also recruited for complex cognitive tasks such as solving math problems or crossword puzzles." So, coding is more like doing math than processing language? Sorrrrrrt of ... but not exactly so. The scientists saw activity patterns that differ from those you'd see during math, too. The upshot: Coding — in this (very preliminary!) work, anyway — looks to be a little different from either language or math. As the note, in a media release... "Understanding computer code seems to be its own thing...." Just anecdotally — having interviewed hundreds of coders and computer scientists for my book CODERS — I've met amazing programmers and computer scientists with all manner of intellectual makeups. There were math-heads, and there were people who practically counted on their fingers. There were programmers obsessed with — and eloquent in — language, and ones gently baffled by written and spoken communication. Lots of musicians, lots of folks who slid in via a love of art and visual design, then whose brains just seized excitedly on the mouthfeel of algorithms.

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Last Sunday we reported Bitcoin's price had surged 50% in the previous month. In the week since it's surged another 24.8%. As Bitcoin celebrates its 12th anniversary, a Forbes columnist writes that Bitcoin "soared to $34,000 yesterday — but here's why Warren Buffett will never own Bitcoin." Buffett has called Bitcoin, among other names, "rat poison squared" and has said he won't ever buy the cryptocurrency. "I don't have any cryptocurrency and I never will," Buffett told CNBC in February, when Bitcoin was trading at about $10,000. Here are 3 reasons why Buffett will never own Bitcoin, no matter how high the price of Bitcoin soars: Buffett believes that Bitcoin has no underlying value. As a value investor, Buffett invests in companies that are undervalued, produce stable and recurring cash flow and have the ability to increase in book value. To Buffett, Bitcoin doesn't produce earnings or dividends. Rather, the value of Bitcoin is simply what one person is willing to pay for it. In this regard, Bitcoin is no different than the tulip craze of 1637. Therefore, Buffett believes that Bitcoin has no inherent value... While all investing involves some degree of speculation, Buffett's background is in insurance and risk mitigation. Buffett doesn't invest in "high fliers" — that's not his game. His game is "buy and hold" — forever. He invests in companies that grow over time, steadily and consistently. And the third reason? Warren Buffett "only invests in things he understands." "He prefers to invest in stable consumer goods companies like Coca-Cola and financial services companies like American Express."

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CNN reports that some critics are now questioning whether America's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is equipped to protect the integrity of government systems from adversaries: Some of the nearly half-dozen government agencies affected by the hack have recently reached out to CISA for help with addressing the known vulnerabilities that were exploited in the attack but were told the agency did not have enough resources to provide direct support, according to a source familiar with the requests. The person noted the slow response has only increased the perception that CISA is overstretched. Multiple sources told CNN that CISA, which operates as the Department of Homeland Security's cyber arm, does not have the appropriate level of funding or necessary resources to effectively handle an issue of this magnitude. "It's a two-year-old agency with about 2,000 employees, so clearly that level of responsibility is not commensurate with the resources that they have," Kiersten Todt, a former Obama cybersecurity official and managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute, recently told CNN.... "CISA is not capable," according to James Andrew Lewis, cybersecurity and technology expert at the Center for Strategic and International, who added that the agency's failure to detect the breach months ago was largely due to the fact its attention and resources were consumed by efforts to secure the 2020 presidential election. "CISA has always been and will continue to be slammed by the responsibilities heaped on it by law," Daniel Dister, New Hampshire's chief information security officer, told CNN. "They have been overloaded with work from the start and have had a hard time coming up to the level of expertise that DoD/CYBERCOM/NSA has enjoyed." Yesterday the New York Times noted the breach wasn't detected by any U.S. government cyberdefense agency (or the Department of Homeland Security), but by private cybersecurity firm FireEye. "It's clear the United States government missed it," the Times was told by Senator Mark Warner, ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "And if FireEye had not come forward, I'm not sure we would be fully aware of it to this day." The breach is far broader than first believed. Initial estimates were that Russia sent its probes only into a few dozen of the 18,000 government and private networks they gained access to when they inserted code into network management software made by a Texas company named SolarWinds. But as businesses like Amazon and Microsoft that provide cloud services dig deeper for evidence, it now appears Russia exploited multiple layers of the supply chain to gain access to as many as 250 networks. The hackers managed their intrusion from servers inside the United States, exploiting legal prohibitions on the National Security Agency from engaging in domestic surveillance and eluding cyberdefenses deployed by the Department of Homeland Security. "Early warning" sensors placed by Cyber Command and the National Security Agency deep inside foreign networks to detect brewing attacks clearly failed. There is also no indication yet that any human intelligence alerted the United States to the hacking.

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AmiMoJo quotes Universe Today: Other worlds aren't the only difficult terrain personnel will have to traverse in humanity's exploration of the solar system. There are some parts of our own planet that are inhospitable and hard to travel over. Inner Mongolia, a northern province of China, would certainly classify as one of those areas, especially in winter. But that's exactly the terrain team members from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASTC) had to traverse on December 16th to retrieve lunar samples from the Chang'e-5 mission. What was even more unique is that they did it with the help of exoskeletons. Strangely enough, the workers wearing the exoskeletons weren't there to help with a difficult mountain ascent, or even pick up the payload of the lunar lander itself (which only weighed 2 kg). It was to set up a communications tent to connect the field team back to the main CASTC headquarters in Beijing. The exoskeletons were designed to help people carry approximately twice as much as they would be able to. Local state media described a single person carrying 50kg over 100m of the rough terrain without becoming tired. Setting up communications equipment isn't all the exoskeletons are good for though. They were most recently used by Chinese military logistics and medical staff in the Himalayas, where the country has been facing down the Indian military over a disputed line of control.

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Fast Company's technology editor harrymcc writes: After years of growing technical irrelevance and security concerns, the Flash browser plug-in will reach the end of the road on January 12 when Adobe blocks its ability to display content. The web will survive just fine. But there's a huge library of old Flash games — some of them quirky, interesting, and worth preserving. Over at Fast Company, Jared Newman wrote about several grassroots initiatives that will allow us to continue to enjoy these artifacts of the Flash era even after Flash is history. Some tips from the article: If you have a Windows PC, the best way to replay old Flash content is with FlashPoint, a free program with more than 70,000 web games and 8,000 animations, most of which are Flash-based. (Experimental Mac and Linux versions are also available, but are complicated to set up....) Conifer lets you run a legacy browser with Flash support on a remote machine, insulating you from any security issues... The Internet Archive has made thousands of Flash games and animations playable online in modern web browsers through emulation, so you can play the Helicopter Game or watch Peanut Butter Jelly Time in their original forms. Ruffle is the underlying emulation software that The Internet Archive is using. You can also install it as a standalone program or browser extension... Newgrounds has released its own Flash Player for Windows that safely loads content from its website, so you still get the full experience of using Newgrounds proper. But the article opens with a sentence reminding us that "After all the challenges of 2020, there's one thing we can all look forward to in the new year: Adobe Flash Player will finally be dead."

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Long-time Slashdot reader serviscope_minor wanted to remind us that 2020 also saw the death of science fiction/fantasy author Debra Doyle at the age of 67 from a sudden cardiac event. "Her works were co-written with her husband, James D. Macdonald," notes her entry on Wikipedia: Her first work written with Macdonald was "Bad Blood" in 1988. Their novel Knight's Wyrd was awarded the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature in 1992 and appeared on the New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age list in 1993. They published two series, Mageworlds (7 novels) and The Wizard Apprentice (8 novels), and two alternate history novels, Land of Mist and Snow and Lincoln's Sword. Doyle and Macdonald also published together under other names. They published their first novel, Night of Ghosts and Lightning, in 1989 under the house name Robyn Tallis; two Tom Swift novels under the house name Victor Appleton; Pep Rally, Blood Brothers, and Vampire's Kiss under the house name Nicholas Adams; and two Spider-Man novels as Martin Delrio. Together Doyle and Macdonald made up part of the core membership of the sff.net website and rec.arts.sff newsgroup. Doyle also taught at the Viable Paradise genre writer's workshop on Martha's Vineyard.

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