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[31]Close binspamdupenotthebestofftopicslownewsdaystalestupid freshfunnyinsightfulinterestingmaybe offtopicflamebaittrollredundantoverrated insightfulinterestinginformativefunnyunderrated descriptive typodupeerror [32]MongoDB Atlas: Multi-cloud, modern database on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Get access to our most high performance version ever, with faster and easier scaling at lower cost. [33]× 180518803 story [34]Education [35]'The College Backlash is a Mirage' [36](msn.com) [37]2 Posted by msmash on Monday January 05, 2026 @12:30PM from the how-about-that dept. Public opinion surveys paint a picture of Americans souring dramatically on higher education, as Pew found that the share of adults calling college "very important" dropped from 70% in 2013 to just 35% today, and NBC polling shows that 63% now believe a degree is "not worth the cost," up from 40% over the same period. Yet enrollment data [38]tells a different story. Four-year institutions awarded 2 million bachelor's degrees in 2023, up from 1.6 million in 2010, and the fraction of 25-year-olds holding a bachelor's degree has steadily increased for the past 15 years. The economic case remains strong. The average bachelor's degree holder earns about 70% more than a high-school graduate of similar work experience, and after factoring in financial aid, the cost of attending a public four-year college has fallen by more than 20% since 2015. Even after accounting for student-debt payments, college graduates net about $8,000 more annually than those without degrees. Part of the disconnect may stem from misunderstanding how college pricing works. Nearly half of U.S. adults believe everyone pays the same tuition, though fewer than 20% of families actually pay the published sticker price. apply tags__________ 180518355 story [39]Social Networks [40]Influencers and OnlyFans Models Dominate US 'Extraordinary' Artist Visas [41](ft.com) [42]14 Posted by msmash on Monday January 05, 2026 @11:41AM from the how-about-that dept. The O-1B visa, a work permit reserved for individuals deemed to possess "extraordinary ability" in the arts, has become [43]the pathway of choice for social media influencers and OnlyFans models seeking to build careers in the United States. Immigration attorneys told the Financial Times that influencers now make up more than half their clientele for O-1B applications, a shift that has accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic as lawyers and talent managers have adapted the visa's criteria -- originally designed for traditional artists -- to fit the metrics of online fame. High follower counts and substantial earnings can establish commercial success under the visa's requirements, landing a brand promotion contract can qualify as an endorsement of talent, and appearing at a store opening can count as performing in a "distinguished production." The total number of O-1 visas granted annually increased by more than 50% between 2014 and 2024, even as overall non-immigrant visa issuance grew by just 10%. Fewer than 20,000 O-1 visas were granted in 2024. Some attorneys said they worry the fixation on algorithm-driven metrics could disadvantage traditionally trained artists whose work doesn't generate viral attention. apply tags__________ 180518121 story [44]Music [45]Samsung's CES Concepts Disguise AI Speakers as Turntables and Cassette Players [46](samsungdisplay.com) [47]8 Posted by msmash on Monday January 05, 2026 @11:01AM from the spinning-pixels dept. Samsung is [48]bringing a pair of retro-styled speaker concepts to CES 2026 that combine old-school aesthetics with OLED screens and AI-powered music recommendations, and the company is positioning them as alternatives to conventional Bluetooth speakers that typically depend on a paired smartphone or tablet for content selection. The "AI OLED Cassette" features a 1.5-inch round OLED display, while the larger "AI OLED Turntable" uses a 13.4-inch round panel, and both allow users to receive music suggestions, browse and select content directly on the device, and set ambient moods using images and video playback. apply tags__________ 180517877 story [49]China [50]People of Dubious Character Are More Likely To Enter Public Service [51](economist.com) [52]48 Posted by msmash on Monday January 05, 2026 @10:21AM from the not-the-onion dept. A new working paper from researchers at the University of Hong Kong has found that Chinese graduate students who plagiarized more heavily in their master's theses were significantly more likely to [53]pursue careers in the civil service and to climb the ranks faster once inside. John Liu and co-authors analyzed 6 million dissertations from CNKI, a Chinese academic repository, and cross-referenced them against public records of civil-service exam-takers to identify 120,000 civil servants and their academic work. Those who entered the public sector had plagiarism scores 15.6% above average. Customs and tax officials fared worst -- their scores ran 25% and 26% higher than private-sector peers respectively. Within the civil service, those who plagiarized more were promoted 9% faster during the first five years of their careers. The researchers validated their plagiarism metric through an experiment involving 443 job applicants who were asked to roll dice for rewards without monitoring. Those who had plagiarized more also reported improbably high rolls. apply tags__________ 180517759 story [54]Programming [55]Stack Overflow Went From 200,000 Monthly Questions To Nearly Zero [56](stackexchange.com) [57]55 Posted by msmash on Monday January 05, 2026 @09:40AM from the how-about-that dept. Stack Overflow's monthly question volume has collapsed to about 300 -- levels not seen since the site launched in 2009, according to [58]data from the Stack Overflow Data Explorer that tracks the platform's activity over its sixteen-year history. Questions peaked around 2014 at roughly 200,000 per month, then began a gradual decline that accelerated dramatically after ChatGPT's November 2022 launch. By May 2025, monthly questions had fallen to early-2009 levels, and the latest data through early 2026 shows the collapse has only continued -- the line now sits near the bottom of the chart, barely registering. The decline predates LLMs. Questions began dropping around 2014 when Stack Overflow improved moderator efficiency and closed questions more aggressively. In mid-2021, Prosus [59]acquired Stack Overflow for $1.8 billion. The founders, Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky, exited before the terminal decline became apparent. ChatGPT accelerated what was already underway. The chatbot answers programming questions faster, draws on Stack Overflow's own corpus for training data, and doesn't close questions for being duplicates. apply tags__________ 180517573 story [60]IT [61]Samsung Co-CEO Says Soaring Memory Chip Prices Will 'Inevitably' Impact Smartphone Costs [62](reuters.com) [63]19 Posted by msmash on Monday January 05, 2026 @09:04AM from the shape-of-things-to-come dept. Samsung's co-CEO TM Roh has warned that product [64]price increases are "inevitable" as an unprecedented global memory chip shortage squeezes margins across the company's consumer electronics lineup -- from smartphones to televisions and home appliances. The South Korean giant, one of the top two largest smartphone manufacturers, plans to double the number of mobile devices running its Galaxy AI features to 800 million units this year, up from 400 million at the end of 2025. Galaxy AI is powered by Google's Gemini model and Samsung's own Bixby assistant for different tasks. "As this situation is unprecedented, no company is immune to its impact," Roh told Reuters in his first interview since becoming co-CEO in November. Samsung is working with partners on longer-term strategies to minimize the impact, he said. Market researchers IDC and Counterpoint predict the global smartphone market will shrink this year as the chip shortage threatens to drive up phone prices. The shortage is a boon to Samsung's semiconductor business but pressures margins on its smartphone division, the company's second-largest revenue source. apply tags__________ 180515919 story [65]United States [66]As US Communities Start Fighting Back, Many Datacenters are Blocked [67](apnews.com) [68]54 Posted by EditorDavid on Monday January 05, 2026 @07:34AM from the you-can-fight-city-hall dept. America's tech companies and data center developers "are increasingly losing fights in communities where people don't want to live next to them, or even near them," [69]reports the Associated Press: Communities across the United States are reading about — and learning from — each other's battles against data center proposals that are fast multiplying in number and size to meet steep demand as developers branch out in search of faster connections to power sources... [A]s more people hear about a data center coming to their community, once-sleepy municipal board meetings in farming towns and growing suburbs now feature crowded rooms of angry residents pressuring local officials to reject the requests... A growing number of proposals are going down in defeat, sounding alarms across the data center constellation of Big Tech firms, real estate developers, electric utilities, labor unions and more. Andy Cvengros, who helps lead the data center practice at commercial real estate giant JLL, counted seven or eight deals he'd worked on in recent months that saw opponents going door-to-door, handing out shirts or putting signs in people's yards. "It's becoming a huge problem," Cvengros said. Data Center Watch, a project of 10a Labs, an AI security consultancy, said it is seeing a sharp escalation in community, political and regulatory disruptions to data center development. Between April and June alone, its latest reporting period, it counted 20 proposals valued at $98 billion in 11 states that were blocked or delayed amid local opposition and state-level pushback. That amounts to two-thirds of the projects it was tracking... For some people angry over [70]steep increases in electric bills, their patience is thin for data centers that could bring still-higher increases. Losing open space, farmland, forest or rural character is a big concern. So is the damage to quality of life, property values or health by on-site diesel generators kicking on or the constant hum of servers. Others worry that wells and aquifers could run dry... apply tags__________ 180515581 story [71]Lord of the Rings [72]2025 Ends With Release of J. R. R. Tolkein's Unpublished Story [73](lareviewofbooks.org) [74]14 Posted by EditorDavid on Monday January 05, 2026 @03:34AM from the here-and-back-again dept. 2025'S final months finally saw the publication of J.R.R. Tolkein's The Bovadium Fragments, [75]writes the Los Angeles Review of Books: Anyone who has read Tolkien's letters will know that he is at his funniest when filled with rage, and [76]The Bovadium Fragments is a work brimming with Tolkien's fury — specifically, ire over mankind's obsession with motor vehicles. Tolkien's anger is expressed through a playful satire told from the perspective of a group of future archaeologists who are studying the titular fragments, which tell of a civilization that asphyxiated itself on its own exhaust fumes. Tolkien's fictional fragments use the language of ancient myth, reframing modern issues like traffic congestion and parking with a grandeur that highlights their total absurdity. It is Tolkien at his angriest and funniest, making The Bovadium Fragments a minor treasure in his ever-growing catalog... As Tolkien put it in one of his private letters, "the spirit of '[77]Isengard,' if not of Mordor, is of course always cropping up. The present design of destroying Oxford in order to accommodate motor-cars is a case." Readers of The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) will recognize the allusion. In the author's magnum opus, Isengard is a kind of industrial hell, endlessly feeding its furnaces with felled trees... The Bovadium Fragments brings Tolkien's visceral hatred of such machines to the fore for the first time — on the same level as Isengard or the scoured Shire. In Tolkien's story, the words "Motores" and "monsters" are interchangeable. And with his grand, mythic register, Tolkien defamiliarizes the car enough for modern readers to see it as he does — as truly monstrous. "[T]he Motores continued to bring forth an ever larger progeny," Tolkien writes. "[M]any of the citizens harboured the monsters, feeding them with the costly oils and essences which they required, and building houses for them in their gardens...." One suspects that Tolkien would have preferred to see Oxford return to the era of the donkey cart. That kind of nostalgia is familiar in Tolkien's work — the idea that we developed just a little too far, skipping past an Eden we failed to recognize a generation or two ago. (For Tolkien, the paragon of paradise seems to have been a rural village around the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.) But he also knows that mankind's impulse to develop is something we cannot help. And the inevitable blowback we get from our hubris is something we cannot avoid. That defeatist attitude is suggested in the frame narrative to The Bovadium Fragments, in which the archaeologists smugly declare their superiority to the extinct citizens of old Oxford. "We at any rate are not likely to fall into such folly," one of them says. In their more enlightened future, we are told, they only pursue the more benign science of longevity. Their wish is that one day they shall "at last conquer mortality, and not 'die like animals.'" But humans are animals, Tolkien argues. And in stretching beyond that, we may find progress and modern conveniences like motorcars. But perhaps we also pave a road to Isengard. And we may not recognize that destination until it is too late — until we are trapped within its walls, suffocating on our own exhaust fumes. apply tags__________ 180516029 story [78]HP [79]Workstation Owner Sadly Marks the End-of-Life for HP-UX [80](osnews.com) [81]92 Posted by EditorDavid on Monday January 05, 2026 @12:35AM from the GNU's-not-Unix dept. Wednesday marked the end of support for the last and final version of HP-UX, [82]writes OSNews. They call it "the end of another vestige of the heyday of the commercial UNIX variants, a reign ended by cheap x86 hardware and the increasing popularisation of Linux." I have two HP-UX 11i v1 PA-RISC workstations, one of them being my pride and joy: an [83]HP c8000, the last and fastest PA-RISC workstation HP ever made, back in 2005. It's a behemoth of a machine with two dual-core PA-8900 processors running at 1Ghz, 8 GB of RAM, a FireGL X3 graphics card, and a few other fun upgrades like an internal LTO3 tape drive that I use for keeping a bootable recovery backup of the entire system. It runs HP-UX 11i v1, fully updated and patched as best one can do considering how many patches have either vanished from the web or have never "leaked" from HPE (most patches from 2009 onwards are not available anywhere without an expensive enterprise support contract)... Over the past few years, I've been trying to get into contact with HPE about the state of HP-UX' patches, software, and drivers, which are slowly but surely disappearing from the web. A decent chunk is archived on various websites, but a lot of it isn't, which is a real shame. Most patches from 2009 onwards are unavailable, various software packages and programs for HP-UX are lost to time, HP-UX installation discs and ISOs later than 2006-2009 are not available anywhere, and everything that is available is only available via non-sanctioned means, if you know what I mean. Sadly, I never managed to get into contact with anyone at HPE, and my concerns about HP-UX preservation seem to have fallen on deaf ears. With the end-of-life date now here, I'm deeply concerned even more will go missing, and the odds of making the already missing stuff available are only decreasing. I've come to accept that very few people seem to hold any love for or special attachment to HP-UX, and that very few people care as much about its preservation as I do. HP-UX doesn't carry the movie star status of IRIX, nor the benefits of being available as both open source and on commodity hardware as Solaris, so far fewer people have any experience with it or have developed a fondness for it. As the clocks chimed midnight on New Year's Eve, he advised everyone to "spare a thought for the UNIX everyone forgot still exists." apply tags__________ 180515373 story [84]Privacy [85]39 Million Californians Can Now Legally Demand Data Brokers Delete Their Personal Data [86](techcrunch.com) [87]36 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 04, 2026 @09:34PM from the do-not-call dept. While California's residents have had the right to demand companies stop collecting/selling their data [88]since 2020, doing so used to require a laborious opting out with each individual company," [89]reports TechCrunch. But now Californians can make "a single request that more than 500 registered data brokers delete their information" — using the [90]Delete Requests and Opt-Out Platform (or DROP): Once DROP users verify that they are California residents, they can submit a deletion request that will go to all current and future data brokers registered with the state... Brokers are supposed to start processing requests in August 2026, then they have 90 days to actually process requests and report back. If they don't delete your data, you'll have the option to submit additional information that may help them locate your records. Companies will also be able to keep first-party data that they've collected from users. It's only brokers who seek to buy or sell that data — which can include your social security number, browsing history, email address, phone number, and more — who will be required to delete it... The California Privacy Protection Agency says that in addition to giving residents more control over their data, the tool could result in fewer "unwanted texts, calls, or emails" and also decrease the "risk of identity theft, fraud, AI impersonations, or that your data is leaked or hacked." apply tags__________ 180514893 story [91]Government [92]North Dakota Law Included Fake Critical Minerals Using Lawyers' Last Names [93](northdakotamonitor.com) [94]48 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 04, 2026 @07:49PM from the so-sue-me dept. North Dakota passed a law last May to promote development of rare earth minerals in the state. But the law's language apparently also includes two fake mineral names, [95]according to the Bismarck Tribune, "that appear to be inspired by coal company lawyers who worked on the bill." The inclusion of fictional substances is being called an embarrassment by one state official, a possible practical joke by coal industry leaders and mystifying by the lawmakers who worked on the bill, [96]the North Dakota Monitor reported. The fake minerals are friezium and stralium, apparent references to Christopher Friez and David Straley, attorneys for North American Coal who were closely involved in drafting the bill and its amendments. Straley said they were not responsible for adding the fake names. "I assume it was put in to embarrass us, or to make light of it, or have a practical joke," Straley said, adding it could have been a clerical error. Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring questioned the two substances listed in state law during a recent meeting of the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which is poised to adopt rules based on the legislation... Friezium and stralium first appeared in the bill on the last afternoon of the legislative session as lawmakers hurried to pass several final bills... The [97]amended bill is labeled as prepared by Legislative Council for Rep. Dick Anderson, R-Willow City, the prime sponsor and chair of the conference committee. Anderson said the amendments were prepared by a group of attorneys and legislators, including representatives from the coal industry... Jonathan Fortner, president of the Lignite Energy Council that represents the coal industry, said it's unfortunate this happened in such an important bill. "From the president on down, everyone's interested in developing domestic critical minerals for national security reasons," Fortner said. "While this may have been a legislative joke between some people that somehow got through, the bigger picture is one that is important and is a very serious matter." apply tags__________ 180514735 story [98]Power [99]Are Hybrid Cars Helping America Transition to Electric Vehicles? [100](msn.com) [101]122 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 04, 2026 @06:49PM from the car-talk dept. America's electric car subsidies expired at the end of September, [102]notes Bloomberg. Yet in those last three months, "while fully electric cars and trucks made up 10% of all auto sales in the US... another 15% of transactions were for hybrid vehicles." The EV market is slowing in the U.S., but analysts expect hybrid sales to continue accelerating. CarGurus Inc., a digital listings platform that covers most of the US auto market, predicts nearly one in six new cars next year will be a hybrid, as automakers green-light more and better machines with the technology. And though these cars and trucks will still burn gas, they will quietly move the needle on both transportation emissions and the transition to fully electric cars and trucks... CarGurus [103]calls hybrids the success story of 2025. Indeed, the fastest-selling car in the country this year has been the Hyundai Palisade Hybrid; it sat on lots for fewer than 14 days on average... While carmakers have struggled to turn a profit on fully electric vehicles, analysts say their investments in batteries and electric motors are helping them sell more and better hybrid machines. It's also increasingly difficult to discern a hybrid from a solely gas-powered model, said Scott Hardman, assistant director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at the University of California at Davis. Carmakers today often don't even label a hybrid as such. Consider Toyota's RAV4, one of the best-selling vehicles in America. The 2026 version of the SUV comes in six different variants, all of which include an electric motor and a gas tank. "A hybrid is just a regular car now," Hardman said. "You can buy one by accident...." While not as clean as an electric vehicle, hybrids offer sneaky carbon cuts as well. Americans, on average, drive [104]about 38 miles a day, which requires about one gallon of gas in most basic hybrids. Contemporary plug-in hybrids, which can run on all-battery power, can cover almost that entire range without the gas engine kicking in. And a small crowd of cars will do even better, stretching their batteries well over 40 miles per charge. All told, hybridization can reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of a vehicle by roughly [105]20% to 30%, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. Some interesting statistics from the article: * By 2030 Ford expects fully or partially electrified vehicles will represent half its global sales. Toyota [106]has already reached 50% ("in part thanks to all those hybrid RAV4s"). * Honda is "basing [107]its entire business on hybrids until at least 2030." * Around one-third of America's hybrid drivers "transition to a fully electric vehicle when they next switch cars." * In September 57% of America's car shoppers "were considering a fully electric auto, according to JD Power. However, among hybrid households, that share was almost 70%." apply tags__________ 180514499 story [108]DRM [109]Fleischer Studios Criticized for Claiming Betty Boop is Not Public Domain [110](duke.edu) [111]23 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 04, 2026 @05:36PM from the boop-boop-be-dupe dept. Here it is — [112]Betty Boop's first appearance, which became public domain on Thursday. It's a 60-second song halfway through a longer cartoon about a restaurant titled Dizzy Dishes. (The first scene makes it clear this is a restaurant of anthropomorphized animals — which explains why the as-yet-unnamed character has floppy dog ears...) So [113]Fleischer Studios has now warned that claiming Betty Boop is public domain "is actually not true." Very often, different versions of a character that have been developed later can independently enjoy copyright protection. Also, names and depictions of a character very frequently will remain separately protected by trademark and other laws, regardless of whether the copyright has expired. But is that really true? Fleischer Studios went out of business in 1946, [114]notes Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik: By then it had sold the rights to its cartoons and the Betty Boop character. A new Fleischer Studios was formed in the 1970s by Fleischer descendants, including Max's grandson Mark Fleischer, and set about repurchasing the rights that had been sold. Whether it reacquired the rights to Betty Boop is up for discussion... According to [115]a federal appeals court ruling in 2011, the answer is no. Having navigated its way through the three or four copyright transfers that followed the original rights sale, the appeals court concluded that the original Fleischer studios sold the rights to Betty Boop and the related cartoons to Paramount in 1941 but couldn't verify that the rights to the character had been sold in an unbroken chain placing them with the new studio. The "chain of title" was broken, the appellate judges found — but they didn't say who ended up with Betty Boop. And last month Cory Doctorow pointed out that "while the Fleischer studio (where Betty Boop was created) renewed the copyright on Dizzy Dishes, [116]there were many other shorts that entered the public domain years ago." That means that all the aspects of Betty Boop that were developed for Dizzy Dishes are about to enter the public domain. But also, all the aspects of Betty Boop from those [117]non-renewed [118]shorts are already in the public domain. But some of the remaining aspects of Betty Boop's character design — those developed in subsequent shorts that were also renewed — are also in the public domain, because they aren't copyrightable in the first place, because they're "generic," or "trivial," constitute "minuscule variations," or be so standard or indispensable as to be a "scène à faire...." But we're not done yet! Just because some later aspects of the Betty Boop character design are still in copyright, it doesn't follow that you aren't allowed to use them! U.S. Copyright law has a broad set "limitations and exceptions," including fair use. So while Fleischer Studios insists Betty Boop "will continue to enjoy copyright and trademark protection for years to come," Doctorow has some thoughts on that trademark: Even the Supreme Court has (repeatedly) upheld the principle that trademark can't be used as a backdoor to extend copyright. That's important, because the current Betty Boop license-holders have been sending out baseless legal threats claiming that their trademarks over Betty Boop mean that she's not going into the public domain. They're not the only ones, either! This is a routine, petty scam perpetrated by marketing companies that have scooped up the (usually confused and difficult-to-verify) title to cultural icons and then gone into business extracting rent from people and businesses who want to make new works with them. "Trademarks only prevent you from using character names and depictions in a way that misleads consumers into thinking your work is produced or sponsored by the rightsholder," Duke University [119]clarified in their January 1st explanation of Public Domain Day 2026 — "for example, by putting them on unlicensed merchandise. They do not prevent you from using them in a new creative work clearly unaffiliated with the rights owners..." "Regardless of who owns the later versions of the character, the original Betty Boop character from 1930 is in the public domain." This is another reason why copyright expiration is so important: It brings clarity... Under US copyright law, anyone is free to use characters as they appeared in public domain works. If those characters recur in later works that are still under copyright, the rights only extend to the newly added material in those works, not the underlying material from the public domain works — that content remains freely available. Second, with newer versions of characters, copyright only extends to those new features that qualify for such protection... Dozens of post-1930 Betty Boop cartoons, including [120]Ker-Choo (1932) and [121]Poor Cinderella (1934), did [122]not have renewals. The newly added material in these animations is also in the public domain... To sum up the copyright story so far: in 2026, the underlying Betty Boop character goes into the public domain. She is joined there by the attributes, plot lines, and dialogue that were first introduced in those later cartoons without renewed copyrights, as well as the uncopyrightable attributes of her later instantiations... Certainly, there would be a risk of consumer confusion if you use Betty Boop as a brand identifier on the kind of merchandise Fleischer sells — jewelry, back packs, water bottles, dolls. Trademark law does protect Fleischer against that risk. Contrast these uses with simply putting the Boop character in a new artistic work. This is exactly what copyright expiration is intended to allow. Were trademark law to prevent this, then trademark rights would be leveraged to obtain the effective equivalent of a perpetual copyright — precisely what the Supreme Court said we cannot do... If courts have delineated the line between copyright and trademark, why is there so little clarity in this area? Sadly, companies sometimes claim to have more expansive rights than they actually do, capitalizing on fear, uncertainty, and doubt to collect royalties and licensing fees to which they are not legally entitled. apply tags__________ 180513289 story [123]Earth [124]'Fish Mouth' Filter Removes 99% of Microplastics From Laundry Waste [125](sciencealert.com) [126]66 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 04, 2026 @03:34PM from the cleaned-water dept. "The ancient evolution of fish mouths could help solve a modern source of plastic pollution," [127]writes ScienceAlert. "Inspired by these natural filtration systems, scientists in Germany have [128]invented a way to remove 99 percent of plastic particles from water. It's based on how some fish filter-feed to eat microscopic prey." The research team has already filed a patent in Germany, and in the future, they hope their creation will help curb a ubiquitous [129]form of plastic pollution that many are unaware of. Every time a load of laundry is done, millions of microplastics are washed from the fibers of our clothes into local waterways. By some estimates, up to [130]90 percent of plastic in 'sewage sludge' comes from washing machines. This material is then often used in agriculture as soil or fertilizer, possibly exposing those who eat the resulting crops to these pollutants... Unlike other plastic filtration systems on the market, this one reduces clogging by 85 percent. apply tags__________ 180513159 story [131]Medicine [132]A Drug-Resistant 'Superbug' Fungus Infected 7,000 Americans in 2025 [133](newsweek.com) [134]60 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 04, 2026 @02:34PM from the bug-hunt dept. An anonymous reader shared [135]this report from the Independent: Candida auris, a type of invasive yeast that can cause deadly infections in people with weakened immune systems, has infected at least 7,000 people [in 2025] across 27 U.S. states, according to [136]data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The fungus, which can spread easily in healthcare settings such as hospitals and nursing homes, is gaining virulence and spreading at an "alarming" rate, the CDC says. Some strains of the fungus are particularly troublesome — and even considered a superbug — because they're resistant to all types of antibiotics used to treat fungal infections, [137]The Hill reports. While healthy people may be able to fight off the infection on their own, the fungus can be deadly, especially in healthcare settings, where it can quickly spread amongst a vulnerable population. "If you get infected with this pathogen that's resistant to any treatment, there's no treatment we can give you to help combat it. You're all on your own," Melissa Nolan, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of South Carolina, [138]told Nexstar... A [139]recent study found that Candida auris is gaining virulence and spreading rapidly, not just in the U.S., but also globally. Candida auris has already been found in at least 61 countries on six continents. Some [140]context from Newsweek: There are strategies available to combat Candida auris infection. While the superbug can develop ways to evade the immune response, vaccination and treatment strategies are possible, but researchers would like them to be strengthened. Four classes of antifungal drugs are currently available, with varying degrees of efficacy, and three new drugs are currently in trials or at newly approved stages apply tags__________ [141]« Newer [142]Older » Slashdot Top Deals Slashdot Top Deals [143]Slashdot Deals Slashdot Poll When will AGI be achieved? (*) By the end of 2026 ( ) 2027 to 2030 ( ) 2031 to 2035 ( ) 2035 to 2040 ( ) 2040 to 2050 ( ) Never (BUTTON) vote now [144]Read the 49 comments | 47615 votes Looks like someone has already voted from this IP. If you would like to vote please login and try again. When will AGI be achieved? 0 Percentage of others that also voted for: * [145]view results * Or * * [146]view more [147]Read the 49 comments | 47615 voted Most Discussed * 199 comments [148]The US Invaded Venezuela and Captured Nicolás Maduro - But ChatGPT and Perplexity Disagree * 173 comments [149]Airlines Cancel Hundreds of Flights After U.S. Attack on Venezuela * 164 comments [150]New Tesla Video Shows Tesla Semi Electric Truck Charging at 1.2 MW * 116 comments [151]Are Hybrid Cars Helping America Transition to Electric Vehicles? * 108 comments [152]The US Effort to Break China's Rare-Earth Monopoly [153]Science * [154]'Fish Mouth' Filter Removes 99% of Microplastics From Laundry Waste * [155]A Drug-Resistant 'Superbug' Fungus Infected 7,000 Americans in 2025 * [156]What Happened When Alaska's Court System Tried Answering Questions with an AI Chatbot? * [157]SpaceX Lowering Orbits of 4,400 Starlink Satellites for Safety's Sake * [158]After Half a Decade, the Russian Space Station Segment Stopped Leaking [159]This Day on Slashdot 2010 [160]Slovak Police Planted Explosives On Air Travelers 926 comments 2008 [161]Science Text Attempts to Reconcile Religion and Science 1071 comments 2006 [162]Warp Engines In Development? 1016 comments 2005 [163]What Do You Believe Even If You Can't Prove It? 2353 comments 2003 [164]Why IE Is So Fast ... 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