| Python Developer Survey: 55% Use Linux, 6% Use Python 2 Sep 1st 2024, 02:59, by EditorDavid More than 25,000 Python developers from nearly 200 countries took the 7th annual Python Developers Survey between November 2023 and February 2024, with 85% saying Python was their main language. Some interesting findings: Though Python 2 reached "end-of-life" status in April of 2020, last year's survey found 7% of respondents were still using Python 2. This year's survey found that number has finally dropped... to 6%. "Almost half of Python 2 holdouts are under 21 years old," the survey results point out, "and a third are students. Perhaps courses are still using Python 2?" Meanwhile, 73% are using one of the last three versions of Python (3.10, 3.11, or 3.12) "The share of developers using Linux as their development environment has decreased through the years: compared with 2021, it's dropped by 8 percentage points." [The graphic is a little confusing, showing 55% using Linux, 55% using Windows, 29% on MacOS, 2% on BSD, and 1% on "Other."] Visual Studio Code is the most popular IDE (22%), followed by Jupyter Notebook (20%) and Vim (17%). The next-most popular IDEs were PyCharm Community Edition (13%), JupyterLab (12%), NotePad++ (11%) and Sublime Text (9%). Interestingly, just 23% of the 25,000 respondents said they only used one IDE, with 38% saying they used two, 21% using three, and 19% using four or more. [The annual survey is a collaboration between the Python Software Foundation and JetBrains.] 37% said they'd contributed to open-source projects within the last year. (77% of those contributed code, while 38% contributed documentation, 35% contributed governance/leadership/maintainer duties, and 33% contributed tests...) For "age range," nearly one-third (32%) said 21-29 (with another 8% choosing 18-20). Another 33% said 30-39, while 16% said 40-49, 7% said 50-59, and 3% chose "60 or older." 49% of respondents said they had less than two years of programming experience, with 33% saying "less than 1 year" and 16% saying "1-2 years." (34% of developers also said they practiced collaborative development.) And here's how the 25,000 developers answered the question: how long have you been programming in Python? Less than 1 year: 25%1-2 years: 16%3-5 years: 26%6-10 years: 19%11+ years: 13% So what are they doing with Python? Among those who'd said Python was their main language: Data analysis: 44%Web development: 44%Machine learning: 34%Data engineering: 28%Academic research: 26%DevOps / Systems administration / Writing automation scripts 26%Programming of web parsers / scrapers / crawlers: 25% 62% were "fully employed by a company," while the next-largest category was "student" (12%) with another 5% in "working student". There were also categories for "self-employed" (6%), "freelancer" (another 6%), and "partially employed by a company" (4%). Another 4% said they were unemployed. In other news, the Python Software Foundation board has also "decided to invest more in connecting and serving the global Python community" by hosting monthly "office hours" on their Discord channel.   Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | 'Is It Ethical to Have Children in the Face of Climate Change?' Aug 31st 2024, 22:34, by EditorDavid A climate newsletter from the Los Angeles Times asked the question: Is it ethical to have children in the face of climate change? And they start by noting many people ask that question: A Pew Research Survey published in July found that among U.S. adults aged 18 to 49 who don't plan on having kids, more than a quarter — 26% — cited "concerns about the environment, including climate change," as a major factor. Of the people over 50 who did not have kids, 6% cited the same reason, pointing to a generational divide that may be fueled by growing awareness of the issue, as well as increasing exposure to worsening climate hazards... I worry about the well-being of these kids: What kind of world will they live in? Will there be clean air and water? Will it be too hot or smoky to play outside? (To be blunt, the outlook on these matters doesn't look great under most emissions scenarios.) But the other side of the coin involves the well-being of the planet. Is it wrong to add more people at a moment when resources are so strained — when, say, the Colorado River is shrinking to record lows and the global average temperature is soaring to record highs? Each new child, after all, will bring not only a cute little footprint but a carbon footprint as well... [T]he fact is that climate change is also affecting reproduction. Hotter temperatures and air pollution, for instance, have been linked to increased stillbirths, preterm births, lower birth weight and increased risk of hospitalization for newborns and infants, among other negative outcomes. Pregnant people are also especially vulnerable to climate hazards, which can trigger hypertension and other health issues and contribute to reduced fertility rates. The newsletter makes many other points, but ultimately concludes that "children, after all, are one of the clearest symbols of how we, as a society, feel about the future." And it includes this quote from the book The Quickening, in which author Elizabeth Rush visits the melting Thwaites Glacier in Antarctic. "I can celebrate the idea that to have a child means having faith that the world will change, and more importantly, committing to being a part of the change yourself." Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Tech Worker Builds Free AI-Powered Tool For Fighting US Health Insurance Denials Aug 31st 2024, 21:34, by EditorDavid The online news site San Francisco Standard profiles an open-source platform "that takes advantage of large language models to help users generate health insurance appeals with AI... "A Fight Health Insurance user can scan their insurance denial, and the system will craft several appeal letters to choose from and modify." With the slogan "Make your health insurance company cry too," [San Francisco tech worker Holden Karau's site] makes filing appeals faster and easier. A recent study found that Affordable Care Act patients appeal only about 0.1% of rejected claims, and she hopes her platform will encourage more people to fight back... The "dirty secret" of the insurance industry is that most denials can be successfully appealed, according to Dr. Harley Schultz, a patient advocate in the Bay Area. "Very few people know about the process, and even fewer take advantage of it, because it's rather cumbersome, arcane, and confusing, by design," he said. "But if you fight hard enough and long enough, most denials get overturned...." While some doctors have turned to artificial intelligence themselves to fight claims, Karau's service puts the power in the hands of patients, who likely have more time and motivation to dedicate to their claims. "In an ideal world, we would have a different system, but we don't live in an ideal world, so what I'm shooting for here is incremental progress and making the world suck a little less," she said. Karau estimates she's spent about $10,000 building the platform, according to the article, which adds that "it's free for users, though she might eventually charge for added services like faxing appeals." Thanks to Slashdot reader mirro_dude for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Oceanographers Mapping Underwater Mountain Find Flying Spaghetti Monster Aug 31st 2024, 20:34, by EditorDavid Though the ocean covers about 70% of earth, we humans have only mapped a quarter of its floor to a high resolution, reports CNN. Many of the world's highest mountains aren't visible on land — they rise up thousands of meters from the seafloor. An expedition to the Nazca Ridge, 900 miles off the coast of Chile, has mapped and explored a newly discovered seamount four times taller than the world's tallest building. What's more, the underwater mountain's peaks, crags and ridges are home to coral gardens that host rare deep-dwelling octopuses, squids and creatures known as flying spaghetti monsters, some of which hadn't been well documented before this research. The undersea mountain is 1.9 miles (3,109 meters) tall, according to another article, which notes that the researchers also used a sonar system to bounce waves to the ocean floor, timing how long they took to reach the surface: The researchers documented a ghostly white Casper octopus, marking the first time this deep-dwelling cephalopod has been seen in the southern Pacific. They also spotted two rare Bathyphysa siphonophores, sometimes known as flying spaghetti monsters for their stringlike appearance. "The (Casper) octopus has never been captured, so it doesn't actually have a scientific name yet," Virmani said. The team also recorded the first footage of a live Promachoteuthis squid, known only from a few collected specimens. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Washington Post Calls Telegram 'a Haven for Free Speech - and Child Predators' Aug 31st 2024, 19:34, by EditorDavid The Washington Post writes that Telegram's "anything-goes approach" to its 950 million users "has also made it one of the internet's largest havens for child predators, experts say...." "Durov's critics say his public idealism masks an opportunistic business model that allows Telegram to profit from the worst the internet has to offer, including child sexual abuse material, or CSAM... " [Telegram is] an app of choice for political organizing, including by dissidents under repressive regimes. But it is equally appealing for terrorist groups, criminal organizations and sexual predators, who use it as a hub to share and consume nonconsensual pornography, AI "deepfake" nudes, and illegal sexual images and videos of exploited minors, said Alex Stamos, chief information security officer at the cybersecurity firm SentinelOne. "Due to their advertised policy of not cooperating with law enforcement, and the fact that they are known not to scan for CSAM, Telegram has attracted large groups of pedophiles trading and selling child abuse materials," Stamos said. That reach comes even though many Telegram exchanges don't actually use the strong forms of encryption available on true private messaging apps, he added. Telegram is used for private messaging, public posts and group chats. Only one-to-one conversations can be encrypted in a way that even Telegram can't access them. And that occurs only if users choose the option, meaning the company could turn over everything else to governments if it wanted to... French prosecutors argue that Durov is in fact responsible for Telegram's emergence as a global haven for illegal content, including CSAM, because of his reluctance to moderate it and his refusal to help authorities police it, among other allegations... David Kaye, a professor at University of California, Irvine School of Law and former U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression... said that while Telegram has at times banned groups and taken down [CSAM] content in response to law enforcement, its refusal to share data with investigators sets it apart from most other major tech companies. Unlike U.S.-based platforms, Telegram is not required by U.S. law to report instances of CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC. Many online platforms based overseas do so anyway — but not Telegram. "NCMEC has tried to get them to report, but they have no interest and are known for not wanting to work with [law enforcement agencies] or anyone in this space," a NCMEC spokesperson said. The Post also writes that Telegram "has repeatedly been revealed to serve as a tool to store, distribute and share child sexual imagery." (They cite several examples, including two different men convicted to minimum sentences of at least 10 years for using the service to purchase CSAM and solicit explicit photos from minors.) Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Inside Boeing's Factory Lapses That Led To the Alaska Air Blowout Aug 31st 2024, 18:34, by EditorDavid Remember when a door-sized panel blew off a Boeing aircraft back in January? The Seattle Times reports that the "door plug" incident "was caused by two distinct manufacturing errors by different crews" in a Boeing assembly plant in Renton, Washington last fall. (And that Boeing's quality control system "failed to catch the faulty work.") But the details tell a larger story. The newspaper bases their conclusion on "transcripts of federal investigators' interviews of a dozen Boeing workers, synchronized with an internal Boeing document obtained by The Seattle Times," tracing the whole history of that panel's production. Within a day of its fuselage arriving at the factory, "a small defect was discovered: Five rivets installed by Spirit on the door frame next to the door plug were damaged." That day, the Friday before the Labor Day weekend, repair of those rivets was handed to Spirit, which has contract mechanics on-site in Renton to do any rework on its fuselage. In the meantime, inspectors gave mechanics the OK to install insulation blankets, which covered the door plug. By the following Thursday, a Spirit mechanic had logged an entry in the official Federal Aviation Administration-required record of this aircraft's assembly — the Common Manufacturing Execution System or CMES, pronounced "sea-mass" by the mechanics — that the rivet repair was complete: "removed and replaced rivets." But that day, a Boeing inspector responded with a scathing rebuttal, stating that the rivets had not been replaced but just painted over. "Not acceptable," read the work order. On Sept. 10, records show Spirit was ordered a second time to remove and replace the rivets... ["Shipside Action Tracker"] entries show that after several days, the still-unfinished work order was elevated to higher-level Boeing managers. On Sept. 15, Boeing cabin interiors manager Phally Meas, who needed the work finished so he could get his crew to install cabin walls and seats, texted on-site Spirit manager Tran Nguyen to ask why the rivet work hadn't been done, NTSB interview transcripts show. Spirit mechanics couldn't get to the rivets unless the plug door was opened, Nguyen responded. He sent Meas a photo from his phone showing it was closed, according to the transcripts. It wasn't Spirit's job to open the sealed door plug. Boeing's door team would have to do that, the records show. "He kept asking me how come there wasn't work yet," Nguyen told the NTSB. "The door was not open. That's why there wasn't work yet." By Sept. 17, the door was still closed, the rivets still unrepaired. The job was elevated again, to the next level of managers. On that day, according to the SAT record, senior managers worked with Ken McElhaney, the door crew manager in Renton, "to determine if the door can just merely be opened or if it needs removal...." [On September 18] at 6:48 a.m., a Boeing mechanic identified as a Door Master Lead texted a young Trainee mechanic on his team to come to the Alaska jet and open the door. The NTSB interviewed but did not name the Trainee or the Door Master Lead, who had almost 16 years at Boeing. Filling in for the veteran mechanic on vacation, the Trainee was perhaps the least equipped to do this atypical job. He'd been at Boeing for about 17 months, his only previous jobs being at KFC and Taco Bell. "He's just a young kid," the Door Master Lead said... More key quotes from the article: Boeing put both employees on paid administrative leave. "A company investigator accused one of them of lying. That employee told the NTSB that Boeing has set the pair up as scapegoats." "A 35-year veteran on the door team told NTSB investigators that he is 'the only one that can work on all the doors' and he was typically the only mechanic who would work on door plugs. That mechanic was on vacation on the two critical days, September 18 and 19 last year, when the door plug on the Alaska MAX 9 had to be opened and closed..." "No quality inspection of the door plug was conducted, since no record of its opening and closing was ever entered in the system, documents show." The FBI ís investigating Boeing "for potential criminal negligence," according to the article, "and has issued subpoenas using a Seattle grand jury." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Long Covid Knocked a Million Americans Off Their Career Paths Aug 31st 2024, 17:34, by EditorDavid The Wall Street Journal reports that long Covid "has pushed around one million Americans out of the labor force, economists estimate." More than 5% of adults in the U.S. have long Covid, and it is most prevalent among Americans in their prime working years. About 3.6 million people reported significantly modifying their activities because of the illness in a recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Long Covid is a chronic condition with symptoms lasting at least three months after a Covid infection, according to the CDC. Symptoms include fatigue, changes in memory, shortness of breath and trouble concentrating. Long Covid can make tasks as simple as responding to an email arduous, people with the condition say. They struggle to summon the right word or manage stress. Among its many symptoms is post-exertional malaise, which can worsen after even minor physical or mental activity. "People can't go back to work or have to significantly cut down on the amount of work that they can handle," said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunobiology professor at Yale School of Medicine. Researchers don't know how long symptoms can last. Few people with long Covid have fully recovered within two years. Patients say their doctors have tried everything from antihistamines to blood thinners to physical therapy to acupuncture. Some people might live with the condition for the rest of their lives, said Dr. Paul Volberding, a professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco... Some people with long Covid, which the federal government has classified as a disability, have stayed in their jobs. Human-resource managers have made accommodations including remote work, flexible hours or modified responsibilities, said Rue Dooley of the Society for Human Resource Management. "It's not going away," he said. "It's going to be one of another 100 conditions that we have to grapple with." People were more likely to develop long Covid at the start of the pandemic, according to a study published in July in the New England Journal of Medicine. The proliferation of vaccines and changes to the virus have made people infected with Covid less likely to develop long Covid. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | How Not To Hire a North Korean IT Spy Aug 31st 2024, 16:34, by EditorDavid CSO Online reports that North Korea "is actively infiltrating Western companies using skilled IT workers who use fake identities to pose as remote workers with foreign companies, typically but not exclusively in the U.S." Slashdot reader snydeq shares their report, which urges information security officers "to carry out tighter vetting of new hires to ward off potential 'moles' — who are increasingly finding their way onto company payrolls and into their IT systems." The schemes are part of illicit revenue generation efforts by the North Korean regime, which faces financial sanctions over its nuclear weapons program, as well as a component of the country's cyberespionage activities. The U.S. Treasury department first warned about the tactic in 2022. Thosands of highly skilled IT workers are taking advantage of the demand for software developers to obtain freelance contracts from clients around the world, including in North America, Europe, and East Asia. "Although DPRK [North Korean] IT workers normally engage in IT work distinct from malicious cyber activity, they have used the privileged access gained as contractors to enable the DPRK's malicious cyber intrusions," the Treasury department warned... North Korean IT workers present themselves as South Korean, Chinese, Japanese, or Eastern European, and as U.S.-based teleworkers. In some cases, DPRK IT workers further obfuscate their identities by creating arrangements with third-party subcontractors. Christina Chapman, a resident of Arizona, faces fraud charges over an elaborate scheme that allegedly allowed North Korean IT workers to pose as U.S. citizens and residents using stolen identities to obtain jobs at more than 300 U.S. companies. U.S. payment platforms and online job site accounts were abused to secure jobs at more than 300 companies, including a major TV network, a car manufacturer, a Silicon Valley technology firm, and an aerospace company... According to a U.S. Department of Justice indictment, unsealed in May 2024, Chapman ran a "laptop farm," hosting the overseas IT workers' computers inside her home so it appeared that the computers were located in the U.S. The 49-year-old received and forged payroll checks, and she laundered direct debit payments for salaries through bank accounts under her control. Many of the overseas workers in her cell were from North Korea, according to prosecutors. An estimated $6.8 million were paid for the work, much of which was falsely reported to tax authorities under the name of 60 real U.S. citizens whose identities were either stolen or borrowed... Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, 27, of Kyiv, was separately charged over a years-long scheme to create fake accounts at U.S. IT job search platforms and with U.S.-based money service transmitters. "Didenko sold the accounts to overseas IT workers, some of whom he believed were North Korean, and the overseas IT workers used the false identities to apply for jobs with unsuspecting companies," according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Didenko, who was arrested in Poland in May, faces U.S. extradition proceedings... How this type of malfeasance plays out from the perspective of a targeted firm was revealed by security awareness vendor KnowBe4's candid admission in July that it unknowingly hired a North Korean IT spy... A growing and substantial body of evidence suggests KnowBe4 is but one of many organizations targeted by illicit North Korean IT workers. Last November security vendor Palo Alto reported that North Korean threat actors are actively seeking employment with organizations based in the U.S. and other parts of the world... Mandiant, the Google-owned threat intel firm, reported last year that "thousands of highly skilled IT workers from North Korea" are hunting work. More recently, CrowdStrike reported that a North Korean group it dubbed "Famous Chollima" infiltrated more than 100 companies with imposter IT pros. The article notes the infiltrators use chatbots to tailor the perfect resume "and further leverage AI-created deepfakes to pose as real people." And the article includes this quote from a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Air Force turned cybersecurity strategist at Sysdig. "In some cases, they may try to get jobs at tech companies in order to steal their intellectual property before using it to create their own knock-off technologies." The article closes with its suggested "countermeasures," including live video-chats with prospective remote-work applicants — and confirming an applicant's home address. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | |
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