In Chernobyl, wolves (close relatives of dogs) seem to have developed altered immune systems to resist cancer – which could help humans, in time. CC-licensed photo by Surreal Name Given on Flickr.
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It’s Friday, so there’s another post due at the Social Warming Substack at about 0845 UK time.
A selection of 10 links for you. Not eleven?! I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Mutant Chernobyl wolves evolve anti-cancer abilities 35 years after nuclear disaster • Newswise
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In 1986, a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant exploded, releasing cancer-causing radiation and irradiated debris into the environment, and resulting in the world’s worst nuclear accident. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) is a 1000 square mile parcel of the surrounding area chronically exposed to radiation and abandoned by people. Yet wildlife like horses, wolves, forests, and fungi have recolonized. Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist and ecotoxicologist in Shane Campbell-Staton’s lab at Princeton University, has combined her passion for conservation and nature-based solutions to study how the wolves of Chernobyl survive and thrive despite generations of exposure and the accumulation of radioactive particles in their bodies.
In 2014, Love and colleagues went to the CEZ, radio-collared wolves, and took blood to understand the wolves’ responses to cancer-causing radiation. Using these specialty GPS collars armed with radiation dosimeters, “we get real time measurements of where they are and how much [radiation] they are exposed to,” said Love. They discovered that Chernobyl wolves are exposed to upwards of 11.28 millirem of radiation everyday for their entire lives, over six times the legal safety limit for the average human worker.
Unlike wolves living exclusively outside the CEZ, Love found that Chernobyl wolves have altered immune systems, similar to cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment. And most promising, she has identified specific regions of the wolf genome that seem resilient to increased cancer risk. Most human research has found mutations increasing cancer risk (like BRCA does with breast cancer), but Love’s work hopes to identify protective mutations that increase the odds of surviving cancer. It seems even Fido’s family has new tricks to teach.
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Most useful because domestic dogs develop and fight cancer more like humans than lab mice do, making them a better source. Canis lupus, the gray wolf, is a near relative.
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World’s first year-long breach of key 1.5ºC warming limit • BBC News
Mark Poynting:
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For the first time, global warming has exceeded 1.5ºC across an entire year, according to the EU’s climate service.
World leaders promised in 2015 to try to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5ºC, which is seen as crucial to help avoid the most damaging impacts. This first year-long breach doesn’t break that landmark Paris agreement, but it does bring the world closer to doing so in the long-term.
Urgent action to cut carbon emissions can still slow warming, scientists say. “This far exceeds anything that is acceptable,” Prof Sir Bob Watson, a former chair of the UN’s climate body, told the BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme. “Look what’s happened this past year with only 1.5ºC – we’ve seen floods, we’ve seen droughts, we’ve seen heatwaves and wildfires all over the world.”
The period from February 2023 to January 2024 reached 1.52ºC of warming, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The latest climate warning comes amid news that the Labour Party is ditching its policy of spending £28bn a year on its green investment plan in a major U-turn. The Conservatives also pushed back on some key targets in September.
This means the UK’s two main parties have scaled back the type of pledges that many climate scientists say are needed globally if the worst impacts of warming are to be avoided.
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The 1.5ºC breach was only a matter of time – turns out to have come sooner rather than later – but the lamentable retreat by the Labour party is going to impress nobody: not its core voters (who wanted it), or floating voters (who would probably see it as necessary, especially if you could sell it as “insulation for your home to reduce your energy bills”).
How long before the 2ºC year? A decade? Less? Brace yourself.
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The number of monarch butterflies at their Mexico wintering sites has plummeted this year • Phys.org
Mark Stevenson:
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The number of monarch butterflies at their wintering areas in Mexico dropped by 59% this year to the second lowest level since record keeping began, experts said Wednesday, blaming heat, drought and loss of habitat.
The butterflies’ migration from Canada and the United States to Mexico and back again is considered a marvel of nature. No single butterfly lives to complete the entire journey.
The annual butterfly count doesn’t calculate the individual number of butterflies, but rather the number of acres they cover when they clump together on tree branches in the mountain pine and fir forests west of Mexico City. Monarchs from east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada overwinter there.
Mexico’s Commission for National Protected Areas said the butterflies covered an area equivalent to 2.2 acres (0.9 hectares), down from 5.4 acres (2.21 hectares) last year.
The lowest level was in 2013 at 1.65 acres (0.67 hectares).
Experts said heat and drought appeared to be the main culprits in this year’s drought.
“It has a lot to do with climate change,” said Gloria Tavera, the commission’s conservation director.
Experts noted there were almost no butterflies at some traditional wintering grounds, because the monarchs appeared to have moved to higher, cooler mountain tops nearby. About two-thirds of the butterflies counted this year were found outside the traditional reserves.
“The monarchs looked for other sites … they are looking for lower temperatures,” Tavera said. Because some of the newer wintering sites aren’t included in the population count, there may have been more monarchs this year than the numbers suggest.
But the number of a smaller population, the western monarch butterflies that overwinter in California, has dropped, too.
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Everything is connected. Is there the same amount of food up in the mountain tops as there was in the mountain pines?
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Dark mode v light mode preferences by region, gender, politics, age and social grade • YouGov
Fascinating result: what is it about turning 25 that makes people realise dark mode is bad, do you think? (Amusingly the tweet from YouGov uses an image in dark mode.)
Apple is developing foldable clamshell iPhones, reports The Information • Reuters
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Apple is building prototypes of at least two iPhones that fold widthwise like a clamshell, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing a person with direct knowledge of the situation.
The foldable iPhones are in early development and are not on the company’s mass production plans for 2024 or 2025, according to the report.
Apple recently approached at least one manufacturer in Asia for components related to two foldable iPhones of different sizes, the report said.
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It would be amazing if Apple weren’t trying out prototypes of folding phones, but they’re really not the sort of thing you should expect to see in a year, or even two. Foldables are about 1% of smartphone sales (and hence about 0.2% of the installed base), and will stay there unless Apple jumps in.
Notable though that The Information is specific about it being a widthways fold – which means like a flip phone, if I’m interpreting it correctly, rather than lengthways which would be like a phone that folds out into a tablet.
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China on cusp of next-generation chip production despite US curbs • FT
Qianer Lu:
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China’s national chip champions expect to make next-generation smartphone processors as early as this year, despite US efforts to restrict their development of advanced technologies.
The country’s biggest chipmaker SMIC has put together new semiconductor production lines in Shanghai, according to two people familiar with the move, to mass produce the chips designed by technology giant Huawei.
That plan supports Beijing’s goals of chip self-sufficiency, with President Joe Biden’s administration tightening export restrictions for advanced chipmaking equipment in October, citing national security concerns. The US has also been working with the Netherlands and Japan to block China’s access to the latest chip tools, such as machines from the Dutch maker ASML.
According to two people with knowledge of the plans, SMIC is aiming to use its existing stock of US and Dutch-made equipment to produce more-miniaturised 5-nanometre chips. The production line will make Kirin chips designed by Huawei’s HiSilicon unit and destined for new versions of its premium smartphones.
While 5nm chips remain a generation behind the current cutting-edge 3nm ones, the move would show China’s semiconductor industry is still making gradual progress, despite US export controls.
“With the new 5nm node, Huawei is well on track to upgrade its new flagship handset and data centre chips,” said one person familiar with the plans.
Huawei had surprised the industry and analysts with its advances when its Mate 60 Pro premium smartphone launched in August featuring a 7nm processor. The phone helped it to increase shipments in China by nearly 50% in the fourth quarter, according to Canalys research, as it proved a big hit with consumers.
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5nm will probably suffice for a few years yet, though SMIC’s/China’s real problem here is volume: it’s all well and good producing enough for Huawei, but can it make enough chips to satisfy every Chinese smartphone maker if, by some ill fortune (or American manoeuvring) it gets cut off from TSMC’s output?
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Wearing Apple Vision Pro with glasses works, but it’s risky • UploadVR
Kyle Riesenbeck:
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For purchase on top of the $3,500 headset, UploadVR and everyone else has been told that the only option is to buy the Zeiss-branded corrective lens inserts. This is Apple’s policy, and all of their documentation echoes this requirement.
When I eventually found myself alone with a Vision Pro, though, without the forbidding gaze of an Apple employee or anyone to tell me to stop, I tried the headset with my glasses on.
It seemed to work. It was a very snug fit with my current style of glasses, but I was able to get the headset on with my glasses firmly pressed against my face and the distance between my own lenses and the Vision Pro’s millimeters from collision. I watched as the green outlines inside Apple Vision Pro adjusted to my eyes and set up eye tracking. I had a reduced field of view as with every other VR headset I’d worn.
After I removed the headset, cleaned my smudged glasses, and put Vision Pro back on, I noticed that I did have to adjust everything a bit to get back into proper calibration. As has been my experience with every other headset, The Apple Vision Pro can be used while wearing my own glasses, though I didn’t use the headset long enough to see the impact of my glasses to Apple’s eye-tracked distortion correction.
So why even bother trying this? Apple Vision Pro isn’t a several hundred dollar headset. It’s a multi-thousand dollar headset. The gamble of scratching the lenses on such an expensive piece of hardware increases tenfold when you cram your own glasses into it. Apple’s warranty notes that it doest not apply “to damage caused by operating the Apple Product outside Apple’s published guidelines” and AppleCare+ warns it will not repair any damage caused by “abnormal or improper use”. AppleCare+ is available for the Vision Pro for $499 for two years as a supplement to the one year limited warranty. Even if AppleCare+ covered it, a repair would still cost you $299.
The Zeiss corrective inserts start at $100 and are a logical choice for your own personal device. You have to ask yourself if the costly risk of wearing your own glasses is a smarter choice than spending $150 for a pair of removable prescription inserts.
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TL;DR I tried it but ehh not really worthwhile, so now you don’t have to ask.
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Google’s Gemini AI now has a new app and works across Google products • The Verge
David Pierce on the renaming of “Bard” to “Gemini”:
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Gemini’s mobile apps will likely be the place most people encounter the new tool. If you download the new app on Android, it can set Gemini as your default assistant, meaning it replaces Google Assistant as the thing that responds when you say, “Hey Google” or long-press your home button.
So far, it doesn’t seem Google is getting rid of Assistant entirely, but the company has been deprioritizing Assistant for a while now, and it clearly believes Gemini is the future. “I think it’s a super important first step towards building a true AI assistant,” says Sissie Hsiao, who runs Bard (now Gemini) at Google. “One that is conversational, it’s multimodal, and it’s more helpful than ever before.”
There’s no dedicated Gemini app for iOS (and you can’t set a non-Siri assistant as the default anyway), but you’ll be able to access all the AI features in the Google app. And just to give you a sense of how important Gemini is to Google: there’s going to be a toggle at the top of the app that lets you switch from Search to Gemini. For the entirety of Google’s existence, Search has been the most important product by a mile; it’s beginning to signal that Gemini might matter just as much. (For now, by the way, Google’s in-search AI is still called Search Generative Experience, but it’s probably safe to bet that’ll be Gemini eventually, too.)
The other changes to Gemini are mostly just branding. Google is ditching the Bard name, but otherwise its chatbot will feel the way it has previously
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Given that most searches are now done on mobile, the decision to do this on mobile first is quite telling. Google is all in on this.
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Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff? • The Guardian
Keith Stuart:
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During lockdown, there was an explosion of interest in video games. The effect was twofold: strong sales for titles such as Animal Crossing and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare boosted revenue and sent share prices soaring, thereby attracting the attention of external investors who flooded the industry with funds. In response, hubristic publishers commissioned more ambitious projects, hiring accordingly.
But the bubble didn’t last. With lockdowns easing, sales fell as people got on with their lives. “We’ve seen a number of games cancelled in recent months. I imagine a lot more were cancelled that we don’t know about,” says [editor-in-chief of gameindustry.biz, James] Batchelor. “If you’re cancelling a project and focusing on a handful of games that you know are going to do well for your studio, unfortunately that puts jobs at risk for the people attached to those projects that are getting scrapped.”
Colin Macdonald is a veteran game developer and now director of Games Jobs Live, an industry recruitment platform. He sees a combination of three key factors behind many of the job losses: revenue projection corrections, raised interest rates and high inflation. “These three themselves are linked,” he says. “While many of the revenue projection corrections came from the delayed realisation that the Covid bubble was just a bubble, recent inflation levels have outstripped industry growth (and pushed costs up), as well as forcing interest rate increases, which put pressure on everyone accustomed to the financing available when more traditional forms of investment weren’t providing good returns.”
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Easy to think of the pandemic as being well in the rear view mirror, but the whiplash continues, along with the effects (perhaps bigger) of the end of zero interest rates.
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Android users in Singapore to be blocked from installing unverified apps • The Straits Times
Osmond Chia:
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Android users here will be blocked from installing apps from unverified sources, a process called sideloading, as part of a new trial by Google to crack down on malware scams.
The security tool will work in the background to detect apps that demand suspicious permissions, like those that grant the ability to spy on screen content or read SMS messages, which scammers have been known to abuse to intercept one-time passwords.
Singapore is the first country to begin the gradual roll-out of the security feature over the next few weeks, done in collaboration with the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore, according to a statement on Feb 7 by Google, which develops the Android software.
The update will progressively arrive on all Android users’ devices and will be enabled by default through Google Play Protect, said Google’s director of android security strategy Eugene Liderman…
…Sideloaded apps can come in the form of apps used by overseas businesses that do not use the Google ecosystem, to device customisation tools and free versions of paid apps. But users have also been tricked into installing apps that allow fraudsters to spy on their devices and enter their bank accounts.
In a malware scam, victims are typically directed to download an Android package kit file through such websites or messaging apps to receive gifts or deals. This was the mode of operations employed in major malware scam campaigns to hijack victims’ devices and steal their money.
More than 1,400 victims fell prey to malware scams between January and August, with total losses amounting to at least $20.6m, the police said.
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Somewhere in Apple’s headquarters someone is printing out this story and putting it into the growing folder called “yeah we warned you European Union with your Digital Markets Act stuff but would you listen? Would you?”
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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