cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/84989

tl;dr (copied from the abstract): "Here, a generic effect for continuous energy harvesting from air humidity is reported, [...]. The common feature of these materials is that they are engineered with appropriate nanopores to allow air water to pass through and undergo dynamic adsorption–desorption exchange at the porous interface, resulting in surface charging." "The work opens a wide door for the broad exploration of sustainable electricity from air."

*Link to study (also in article): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202300748 *

*DOI URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202300748 *

They call the effect an 'air-gen effect' so more articles can be seen here: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=Air-gen+effect&ia=news

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/628792

From the article:

"Beehaw is relatively new and relatively small at the moment, but it's one of the closest approximations of what Reddit is that you're going to find, and well worth investigating as a Reddit replacement. The interface even looks a lot like Reddit, albeit without a lot of the on-screen features and furniture that build up over almost two decades of operation.

Have a read of the Beehaw mission statement and you'll see the platform is committed to avoiding the "hate speech" and "disinformation" that's prevalent elsewhere. The communities available right now cover everything from neurodivergence and people of color to literature and gardening, so you're sure to find something of interest here."

Since Internet search has and will change, which search engines do you use successfully, and what are their advantages?

This is a translation of an article I've just written in Spanish. If there is any error, let me know.

tl;dr:

FCC chair to investigate exactly how much everyone hates data caps ISPs clearly have technical ability to offer unlimited data, chair's office says.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wants the FCC to open a formal inquiry into how data caps harm Internet users and why broadband providers still impose the caps.

The inquiry could eventually lead to the FCC regulating how Internet service providers such as Comcast impose limits on data usage.

"As we emerge from the pandemic, there are many lessons to learn about what worked and what didn't work, especially around what it takes to keep us all connected. When we need access to the Internet, we aren't thinking about how much data it takes to complete a task, we just know it needs to get done. It's time the FCC take a fresh look at how data caps impact consumers and competition."

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/127188

Have you ever heard of “net metering”?

It means that if your electric company gives you net metering, you can connect a generator or solar panels to your house and sell excess electricity back to the utility at the same price that they bill you for.

Sounds great right?

No, actually its a major problem for the utility.

The reason is that power plants take a significant amount of time to throttle up or down. If everyone in the area has solar power feeding back into the power grid, sudden changes in sunlight can cause major fluctuations and destabilize the power grid.

So what is the solution?

Dynamic pricing. Some areas already do this. How it works is that the price you pay (or receive) for electricity depends on the conditions on the power grid at the moment, updating as fast as possible.

When the grid has a deficit of power at the moment (maybe a power plant is struggling to throttle up to meet demand) the price goes way up.

If the grid has a surplus power at the moment, the price goes down, even going negative.(meaning you must pay to dump your power into the grid, or be paid for consuming excess power)

What this does is create an economic incentive for people to invest in equipment that actually stabilizes and supports the power grid.

For example if you have an electric car charging in your garage, it knows the price of power, and it can start charging faster when the price drops, or it can dump its battery power back into the grid when the price is high. The battery in your car is actually earning money as it sits idle!

Same with solar panels. Even if the installation doesn’t have batteries, the system can choose to stop selling power to the grid when it isn’t wanted.

Likewise, your heated pool can choose to absorb electricity when the price is low.

This is the future of the renewable energy economy in my opinion.

I keep thinking this would have been a much better sell to devs and to users. I have always used Sync, and Boost. I tried the official app a few times, but really only used it for the chat feature. I didn't want to pay for it, but (I am embarrassed to admit it) I would pay premium to keep my app. I think this would have worked out better for Reddit than the garbage they are pulling right now.

Would that have been a more reasonable solution in your opinion as well?

Huffman said he saw Musk’s handling of Twitter, which he purchased last year, as an example for Reddit to follow.

The writing is on the wall. Those who are staying on Reddit despite everything u/spez said recently are literally asking to be shit on and will fully deserve it.

EDIT: Maybe a false alert after all, my thread is now visible to all. Still weird that it stayed "deleted" for hours though.

I believe Reddit is now automatically deleting threads about Lemmy (or containing links to Lemmy instances)? A thread I made on r/Save3rdPartyApps got deleted with no explanation within seconds of me creating it and I don't believe it's the sub's mods who did that.

(However, I can see it while logged in. So it's a kind of shadow-deletion)

Can anyone confirm whether referencing Lemmy and/or an instance gets your thread insta-removed?

After being scammed into thinking her daughter was kidnapped, an Arizona woman testified in the US Senate about the dangers side of artificial intelligence technology when in the hands of criminals.

Jennifer DeStefano told the Senate judiciary committee about the fear she felt when she received an ominous phone call on a Friday last April.

Thinking the unknown number was a doctor’s office, she answered the phone just before 5pm on the final ring. On the other end of the line was her 15-year-old daughter – or at least what sounded exactly like her daughter’s voice.

“On the other end was our daughter Briana sobbing and crying saying ‘Mom’.”

Briana was on a ski trip when the incident took place so DeStefano assumed she injured herself and was calling let her know.

DeStefano heard the voice of her daughter and recreated the interaction for her audience: “‘Mom, I messed up’ with more crying and sobbing. Not thinking twice, I asked her again, ‘OK, what happened?’”

She continued: “Suddenly a man’s voice barked at her to ‘lay down and put your head back’.”

Panic immediately set in and DeStefano said she then demanded to know what was happening.

“Nothing could have prepared me for her response,” Defano said.

Defano said she heard her daughter say: “‘Mom these bad men have me. Help me! Help me!’ She begged and pleaded as the phone was taken from her.”

“Listen here, I have your daughter. You tell anyone, you call the cops, I am going to pump her stomach so full of drugs,” a man on the line then said to DeStefano.

The man then told DeStefano he “would have his way” with her daughter and drop her off in Mexico, and that she’d never see her again.

At the time of the phone call, DeStefano was at her other daughter Aubrey’s dance rehearsal. She put the phone on mute and screamed for help, which captured the attention of nearby parents who called 911 for her.

DeStefano negotiated with the fake kidnappers until police arrived. At first, they set the ransom at $1m and then lowered it to $50,000 when DeStefano told them such a high price was impossible.

She asked for a routing number and wiring instructions but the man refused that method because it could be “traced” and demanded cash instead.

DeStefano said she was told that she would be picked up in a white van with bag over her head so that she wouldn’t know where she was going.

She said he told her: “If I didn’t have all the money, then we were both going to be dead.”

But another parent with her informed her police were aware of AI scams like these. DeStefano then made contact with her actual daughter and husband, who confirmed repeatedly that they were fine.

“At that point, I hung up and collapsed to the floor in tears of relief,” DeStefano said.

When DeStefano tried to file a police report after the ordeal, she was dismissed and told this was a “prank call”.

A survey by McAfee, a computer security software company, found that 70% of people said they weren’t confident they could tell the difference between a cloned voice and the real thing. McAfee also said it takes only three seconds of audio to replicate a person’s voice.

DeStefano urged lawmakers to act in order prevent scams like these from hurting other people.

She said: “If left uncontrolled, unregulated, and we are left unprotected without consequence, it will rewrite our understanding and perception what is and what is not truth. It will erode our sense of ‘familiar’ as it corrodes our confidence in what is real and what is not.”

Takeaways Voicebox is a generative AI model that can help with audio editing, sampling and styling.

This type of technology could be used in the future to help creators easily edit audio tracks, allow visually impaired people to hear written messages from friends in their voices, and enable people to speak any foreign language in their own voice.

Do you think this will be self host able?

How do you envision Voicebox being used by content creators beyond just basic audio editing - could it potentially revolutionize the way we create music or podcasts, for example?

he seems really on defensive

I switched away from Twitter for all the problems since Musk took over and there is no end in sight as their revenues continue to crumble, moderation and infrastructure breaks down and so on.

Mastodon feels very mature on the provided functionality level, but lacks in many areas.

When to expect a proper inclusion of algorithms? For example I like some accounts, but they flood my timeline into unusability due to high post frequency.

I was trying to search for more news with the #reddit hashtag and get mostly shown irrelevant gonewild posts.

I prefer the Elk UI for various reasons as it seems to be more mature. However trends, hashtags, especially clustered by countries or language is inaccessible on it and the popularities what the hot topics are never feel right, missing out on usable information.

There is a lack of focus on the like button, leaving a lot of engagement and interesting stuff on the table. I do not quite understand why reposts only function as a boost instead of a possible accompanied comment.

As Twitter has still the primary status, many official accounts of companies simply do not exist on Mastodon. Sometimes entire communities are still strongly tied to Twitter and one can only hope to catch crossposts from the birdsite on it.

But I do not see myself on Twitter anymore, because the content is overall quality wise up there and just about broad enough to feel informed about random happenings in the world.

What is your future outlook for Mastodon?