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Journal Journal: The Metallica Problem 1

Journal by alternative_right

The Metallica Problem occurs when an information-product like music, books, or cinema adapts to what its audience wants, which is by definition less focused than what the original creators envisioned, and so you end up with the same old slop that made shows like "C.H.I.P.S." and "Happy Days" so bonebrained moronic back in the day.

Submission + - Superagers' 'Secret Ingredient' May Be The Growth of New Brain Cells (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: According to a study of 38 adult human brains donated to science, superagers – people who retain exceptional memory as they age – have roughly twice as many immature neurons as their peers who age more typically.

Moreover, people with Alzheimer's disease show a marked reduction in neurogenesis compared to a normal baseline.

Submission + - Workers who love 'synergizing paradigms' might be bad at their jobs (phys.org) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Employees who are impressed by vague corporate-speak like "synergistic leadership," or "growth-hacking paradigms" may struggle with practical decision-making, a new Cornell study reveals. Published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, research by cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell introduces the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR), a tool designed to measure susceptibility to impressive-but-empty organizational rhetoric.

Comment The Metallica Problem (Score 1) 102

The Metallica Problem occurs when an information-product like music, books, or cinema adapts to what its audience wants, which is by definition less focused than what the original creators envisioned, and so you end up with the same old slop that made shows like "C.H.I.P.S." and "Happy Days" so bonebrained moronic back in the day.

The fact is, the 1976 movie was fun: a triumph of integrating character drama with humor, action, and Buck Rogers style sci-fi. Everything since has been mediocre but because the audience was there with lots of money to hand to them, the studios cruised on it.

What happened in 1999 or so was that The Metallica Problem took over and Star Wars became standard slop with a sci-fi adventure flavor, even with Lucas at the helm. The fanbase shaped the movies into the usual junk without intending to.

Submission + - For the first time, light mimics a Nobel Prize quantum effect (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Scientists have pulled off a feat long considered out of reach: getting light to mimic the famous quantum Hall effect. In their experiment, photons drift sideways in perfectly defined, quantized steps—just like electrons do in powerful magnetic fields. Because these steps depend only on nature’s fundamental constants, they could become a new gold standard for ultra-precise measurements. The discovery also hints at tougher, more reliable quantum photonic technologies.

Submission + - "Keep Android Open" Project Demands Software Freedom for Users (keepandroidopen.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: You, the consumer, purchased your Android device believing in Google’s promise that it was an open computing platform and that you could run whatever software you choose on it. Instead, as of September 2026, they will be non-consensually pushing an update to your operating system that irrevocably blocks this right and leaves you at the mercy of their judgement over what software you are permitted to trust.

You, the creator, can no longer develop an app and share it directly with your friends, family, and community without first seeking Google’s approval. The promise of Android — and a marketing advantage it has used to distinguish itself against the iPhone — has always been that it is “open”. But Google clearly feels that they have enough of a lock on the Android ecosystem, along with sufficient regulatory capture, that they can now jettison this principle with prejudice and impunity.

Submission + - A new California law says Linux must verify user age at startup (pcgamer.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The government of California is implementing a law that requires operating system providers to implement some form of age verification into their account setup procedures.

Assembly Bill No. 1043 was approved by California governor Gavin Newsom in October of last year, and becomes active on January 1, 2027 (via The Lunduke Journal). The bill states, among other factors, that "An operating system provider shall do all of the following:"

"(1) Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.

"(2) Provide a developer who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a reasonably consistent real-time application programming interface that identifies, at a minimum, which of the following categories pertains to the user."

The categories are broken into four sections: users under 13 years of age, over 13 years of age under 16, at least 16 years of age and under 18, and "at least 18 years of age."

Submission + - ATM "jackpotting" incidents rising across US, FBI says (kxan.com) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: An analysis found that 700 incidents occurred in 2025 alone and accounted for over $20 million in losses. The FBI has identified about 1,900 jackpotting incidents across the country since 2020.

Jackpotting happens when individuals or groups use malware to infect ATMs and force them to dispense cash. The FBI’s bulletin says the “Ploutus” malware can force an ATM to dispense cash without using a bank card, customer account or bank authorization.

“The malware can be used across ATMs of different manufacturers with very little adjustment to the code as the Windows operating system is exploited during the compromise,” the bulletin said.

Submission + - Alcohol Profoundly Changes The Way Your Brain Communicates, Study Finds (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A few glasses of alcohol are enough to start fragmenting the way the brain works, leading to more localized information processing and reduced brain-wide communication, a new study has discovered.

While plenty of previous research has looked at the ways booze changes the brain, little of it has considered the network-wide effects.

Submission + - Quantum algorithm beats classical tools on complement sampling tasks (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A team of researchers working at Quantinuum in the United Kingdom and QuSoft in the Netherlands has now developed a quantum algorithm that solves a specific sampling task—known as complement sampling—dramatically more efficiently than any classical algorithm. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, establishes a provable and verifiable quantum advantage in sample complexity: the number of samples required to solve a problem.

"We stumbled upon the core result of this work by chance while working on a different project," Harry Buhrman, co-author of the paper, told Phys.org. "We had a set of items and two quantum states: one formed from half of the items, the other formed from the remaining half. Even though the two states are fundamentally distinct, we showed that a quantum computer may find it hard to tell which one it is given. Surprisingly, however, we then realized that transforming one state into the other is always easy, because a simple operation can swap between them."

Submission + - 40,000-year-old Stone Age symbols may have paved the way for writing, long befor (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Over 40,000 years ago, our early ancestors were already carving signs into tools and sculptures. According to a new analysis by linguist Christian Bentz at Saarland University and archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz at the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte (Museum of Prehistory and Early History) in Berlin, these sign sequences have the same level of complexity and information density as the earliest proto-cuneiform script that emerged tens of thousands of years later, around 3,000 B.C.E.

Submission + - Oldest Fossilized Butthole Found in 290-Million-Year-Old Reptile (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The fossil hails from the sedimentary Goldlauter Formation in Germany's Thuringian Forest Basin, and an analysis of the impression left behind shows it was made by a reptile about 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) in length.

In the mud, it left a clear impression of what appears to be belly scales, structures made of hard keratin that act as armor. But the real showstopper is at the base of the tail, where modified scales surround a vent-like opening – what appears to be a cloaca.

It smashes the previous record, a Psittacosaurus butthole dated to around 120 million years ago, and now represents "the earliest fossil record of a cloacal vent in amniotes", the researchers write in their paper, supporting long-held views that the cloaca was present in early reptiles.

Submission + - Colorado Senate Bill Would Require Apple and Google to Embed ID Checks in OSes (reclaimthenet.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Colorado’s latest attempt to regulate minors’ online access differs from its predecessors. Senate Bill 26-051 doesn’t target adult websites directly. Instead, it targets the operating system sitting on your phone.

The bill, currently before the Senate Committee on Business, Labor, and Technology with a hearing scheduled for February 24, would require operating system providers to collect your date of birth when you create an account.

By moving enforcement to the operating system layer, lawmakers are targeting a genuine chokepoint. Apple and Google control the operating systems, app stores, account infrastructure, and software distribution pipelines for virtually every smartphone. Requiring age signals at that layer means a defined compliance target with a limited number of companies to regulate.

The desktop web doesn’t offer that. Browser-based access spans millions of independently operated sites across multiple jurisdictions. There’s no single point of control. Any law that tried to impose universal age verification across the open web would require something far more radical, either mandatory identity verification for internet access, which would end anonymous browsing entirely, or rely on parental controls, which already exist and remain optional.

Submission + - Cosmic Radiation Coincides With Viral Epidemics on Earth (researchsquare.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Global viral outbreak dynamics exhibit statistically robust, multi-scale synchronization with Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) variability. While GCRs are unlikely to act as direct causal agents, they may function as environmental timing cues or permissive triggers that modulate viral emergence or ecological susceptibility windows. Incorporation of heliophysical indicators as contextual environmental risk modi ers may enhance early-warning systems and global outbreak preparedness when integrated with conventional epidemiological surveillance frameworks.

Submission + - Robot clean-up crews tackle litter on Europe's seabed (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: EU researchers are developing AI-guided robot fleets to take over the dangerous, dirty work of finding and removing marine litter from the sea floor. A ship with a crane floats in the Mediterranean sun at a marina in Marseille, France. The crane whirs as it hauls waste from the seabed and, when the wire breaks the surface, the gripper at the end is clutching a rubber tire covered in algae.

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