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A Nice Little Cryptography Primer

By itss | 28/06/2021
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Pun Intended.

Category: Technology
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  • Low Emission Zone Led To Better Lung Size, Function Among London Children
    by EditorDavid on 22/08/2026 at 7:00 pm

    Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from the Guardian: Children's lungs grew bigger and stronger after the most polluting vehicles were restricted from entering London, a study has found. Examinations of London schoolchildren before and after the introduction of the city's ultra-low emission zone found a restoration of lung capacity that had been stunted by exposure to pollution... "Traffic pollution in cities damages children's health and development," said Chris Griffiths, a professor of primary care at the University of Oxford and Queen Mary University of London, and the study's joint senior author. "We provide the strongest evidence yet on how these harms can be prevented. Ambitious clean-air zones should be considered a priority for cities globally with traffic-related air pollution." Air pollution from traffic has stunted the development of children's lungs in London for decades. Previous research found that by the age of eight or nine, children from the most polluted areas had 5-10% less lung capacity than their peers elsewhere. That impairment, which scientists said was the result of exposure to nitrogen dioxide, put them at increased risk as adults of developing respiratory diseases, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular and metabolic disease, and premature death. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Moderna-Merck Vaccine Cuts Recurrence And Spread of Melanoma, Raises New Treatment Hope
    by EditorDavid on 22/08/2026 at 6:00 pm

    Reuters reports "a major success in a new field of cancer treatment this week, as Moderna and Merck announced a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine "reduced the risk of recurrence and spread of melanoma in a late-stage trial". The vaccine was tested with Merck's widely used immunotherapy drug Keytruda: Thousands of patients who have undergone surgery to remove high-risk melanoma tumors could benefit as soon as next year if regulators approve the vaccine, Moderna President Stephen Hoge said in an interview. This is the first positive late-stage trial result for an mRNA cancer vaccine, which trains a patient's immune system to fight tumors by targeting specific mutations in those cells, and the first such study to show that adding a treatment to Keytruda worked better than that therapy alone... Interim results of the ongoing study, released on Wednesday, found the treatment, Intismeran, met both its primary target of reducing cancer recurrence and its secondary goal of preventing tumors from spreading to other parts of the body, compared with Keytruda alone. When the vaccine is injected into a patient, the patient's cells produce copies of mutations for the immune system to recognize and destroy... Merck said the companies are already in talks with regulators about the treatment. "Merck, Moderna and other companies are testing similar approaches against lung, breast and pancreatic cancers," the article points out. It adds that Karen Knudsen, CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, "said the Moderna results could signal a new era for treating solid-tumor cancers." More from CNN: The trial result is "a monumental leap forward," validating mRNA technology as a cancer treatment, said Dr. Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology... Roche and BioNTech, whose mRNA technology was used in the Pfizer COVID vaccines, are testing a similar treatment called autogene cevumeran in mid-stage studies in colon and pancreatic cancer patients who have undergone surgery. Results of the colon cancer trial are expected in 2027, with pancreatic trial results to follow in 2031. "We should be hearing results from multiple studies over the next few years and there's every reason to hope now, with this news, that many of them will be positive," said Dr. Robert Vonderheide, director of Penn Medicine's Abramson Cancer Center and president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Is AI Really to Blame for High Unemployment Among Recent Graduates? What Economists Say
    by EditorDavid on 22/08/2026 at 5:00 pm

    47% of recent graduates say AI has already impacted hiring in their field, according to an April survey from ZipRecruiter. "But is AI really the problem, or is it more complicated?" asks NPR. "Here's what economists have to say." According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for recent graduates — which it defines as 22-to-27-year-olds with a new bachelor's degree or higher — was 5.7% as of June, more than the rate for all workers, which stands at 4.1%... Stanford University economist Erik Brynjolfsson says AI is impacting the labor market for entry-level roles. "AI is not the whole story, but it's part of the story and the evidence is building," he says. Using payroll data, Brynjolfsson and his co-authors found that since late 2022 — when large language models like ChatGPT started popping up — early-career workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed roles, like software developers and marketing managers, have experienced a 16% relative employment decline. In comparison, employment rates for older workers in AI-exposed fields and for all workers in jobs that aren't easily automated — like home health aides, physical therapists and construction workers — remained stable or have grown over that same time period... [Though he also says often when companies pull back on hiring, they cut junior roles first.] Harvard University economist David Deming isn't convinced that AI is to blame for the challenging early-career job market. "If you look very carefully at the timing, it looks like the decline in junior hiring actually started a bit like six months before ChatGPT was released. And so what that tells me is it's something else," Deming says. "I think it's more like remote work." A recent analysis from the New York Fed found that companies are less likely to hire recent college grads into roles that can be done remotely. As remote jobs increased following the COVID-19 pandemic, so did unemployment among younger college grads, the New York Fed found. The analysis also found that AI didn't explain the rise in unemployment among younger workers and that remote work was more of a driving force... Employers hiring for remote jobs may be less likely to choose an entry-level candidate because it's harder to train them from afar... [And with remote positions, there's many more senior candidates to choose from.] And here's another thing to consider: University of Chicago economist Anders Humlum says if AI were replacing entry-level jobs, you'd expect to see companies that rely heavily on AI to hire fewer workers. But that's not what the data shows. Humlum points to a study done by the financial accounting firm Ramp and the workforce research company Revelio Labs. The study examined AI spending and employee head count across more than 21,000 U.S. firms, from early 2021 to early 2026. It found that at companies making the largest AI investments, entry-level head count grew by 12% over the two years following AI adoption. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Firefox Announces Free VPN and 'Startpage' Search Engine Rolling Out to Android, iOS - Plus GeForce NOW Support
    by EditorDavid on 22/08/2026 at 4:00 pm

    Firefox 154 "brings a number of usability improvements," writes PC World: The free built-in VPN, introduced with Firefox 149, continues to offer a selection of virtual locations — temporarily extended to 28 countries until the end of August... The free VPN is currently available to Firefox users in the US, Canada, the UK, France, and Germany. In addition, the free VPN can now also be used in Firefox for Android (rolling out gradually) with iOS to follow soon. Firefox 154 also begins adding the privacy-focused search engine Startpage to its address-bar search options for desktop users in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands (the home markets for the Netherlands-based search engine). And Startpage is also coming soon to Android and iOS. "When so much of the web experience is decided by a handful of very large companies, a search option that's private by design and European by origin isn't a small thing," explains a Mozilla blog post, with Ajit Varma, Head of Firefox, saying this now gives millions of people in Europe one-click access to "real results, zero profiling, AI-free." Queries aren't stored or linked to you, and there are no AI answers pushed above your search results. In fact, there's no AI at all. Based in the Netherlands, Startpage built its product around a simple idea: great search and personal privacy can go hand in hand... Firefox users were choosing Startpage long before today — to the tune of more than a billion searches a year, every one of them required some assembly: an extension, a manual setting, a workaround... Startpage ranks among the most-requested search engines in the Firefox community. When demand is this clear, our job is to remove the friction... Most browsers have already decided how you're going to search. Firefox hasn't. Pick your search engine, control what happens to your queries, decide who sees data about you, even turn AI on or off. It should always be your call. Not everyone wants the same thing from search, and a browser shouldn't pretend they do. "Firefox has always been the browser for people who want to make their own decisions about the web," said Startpage President Stewart Marlborough, "which makes it a natural home for private search." Nvidia's GeForce NOW cloud-gaming platform is also now officially supported on Firefox, expanding access across even more devices," according to a Nvidia blog post: Members can outfox big downloads and jump into high-performance PC gaming directly from the browser — no waiting on lengthy game installs or updates. The experience delivers GeForce RTX-powered performance at up to 1440p and 120 frames per second for GeForce NOW Ultimate members. Simply download the latest version of Firefox, head to play.geforcenow.com and start playing. The cloud handles the heavy lifting, so games are ready to play without taking up valuable storage space on the device. Firefox joins Chrome, Edge and Opera in supporting GeForce NOW on Windows browsers. Mozilla's own blog post even includes an animation of the Firefox mascot playing games: Gamers put real effort into making their rigs their own, and Firefox gets that. Users can choose themes, custom colors, and tab settings to customize their setup, instead of sitting there like just another window. We also know online gaming doesn't happen in just one window. It's social and sometimes spontaneous. With Firefox, you can have a Discord call running in Split View, a guide open in another tab, or Reddit pulled up between matches. Then go full screen when you're ready to play, no need to switch browsers to stream games. "In the security report for Firefox 154, Mozilla lists 58 resolved security vulnerabilities, 54 of which were discovered and reported by external security researchers," notes PC World. ("Mozilla classifies 17 of these vulnerabilities as high risk.") With Firefox 155 (scheduled for September 1), Mozilla is switching to a fortnightly release cycle for major versions, like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • New York Dethrones San Francisco Bay Area As Largest Tech Talent Market
    by BeauHD on 22/08/2026 at 3:00 pm

    fjo3 shares a report from SFGATE: The San Francisco Bay Area, epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom, is home to a massive amount of tech workers employed by some of the world's most valuable companies, from Apple to Nvidia. But for the first time, New York has eclipsed the Bay Area as the home of the largest "tech talent workforce," a report by real estate and investment firm CBRE shows. The firm has published the annual report for 13 years. Last year, the New York Metro Area's tech talent workforce reached 394,300, surpassing the Bay Area's 375,730, according to the report. Fueled by mass layoffs, the Bay Area's tech talent workforce dropped by 6% from 2022 to 2025. New York's tech talent workforce, on the other hand, grew by more than 8% during that period "The Bay Area is likely to remain ... the central location for the AI industry and for innovation. But as we've seen during past cycles, as it tends to grow, that spreads out to all the key markets," Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE's Tech Insights Center, said during a news conference Tuesday. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Over 1 Million People Have Clicked LinkedIn's AI Slop Button
    by BeauHD on 22/08/2026 at 11:00 am

    According to a post from chief product officer Hari Srinivasan, "over a million people" have clicked on LinkedIn's new "Seems like AI slop" button, which launched after one analysis found 41% of the platform's longform posts were fully AI-generated. The Verge reports: In Thursday's post, Srinivasan said that users are overall "now experiencing 40% less views on what we classify as AI slop from just a few weeks ago." LinkedIn is also adding a new message that will tell users who make a post if "Some members told us this post seems like AI." "We approached this assuming good intent; I know I'm increasingly conscious on how to not sound like AI & the goal is to provide helpful feedback," Srinivasan said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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