The oldest human on record, Jeanne Calment of France, lived to the age of 122. What are the odds that the rest of us get there, too? Not high, barring a transformative medical breakthrough, according to research published this week in the journal Nature Aging. From a report: The study looked at data on life expectancy at birth collected between 1990 and 2019 from some of the places where people typically live the longest: Australia, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Data from the United States was also included, though the country's life expectancy is lower.

The researchers found that while average life expectancies increased during that time in all of the locations, the rates at which they rose slowed down. The one exception was Hong Kong, where life expectancy did not decelerate. The data suggests that after decades of life expectancy marching upward thanks to medical and technological advancements, humans could be closing in on the limits of what's possible for average life span. "We're basically suggesting that as long as we live now is about as long as we're going to live," said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois Chicago, who led the study. He predicted maximum life expectancy will end up around 87 years -- approximately 84 for men, and 90 for women -- an average age that several countries are already close to achieving.

The rapid increases in life expectancy seen in the 20th century have slowed significantly, according to a new analysis published in the journal Nature. The Guardian reports: According to the study, children born recently in regions with the oldest people are far from likely to become centenarians. At best, the researchers predict 15% of females and 5% of males in the oldest-living areas will reach 100 this century. "If you're planning for retirement, it's probably not a good idea to assume you're going to make it to 100," said Jay Olshansky, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "You'd probably have to work for at least 10 years longer than you'd think. And you want to enjoy the last phase of your life, you don't necessarily want to spend it working to save for time you're not going to experience."

Advances in public health and medicine sparked a longevity revolution in the 20th century. In the previous 2,000 years, life expectancy crept up, on average, one year every century or two. In the 20th century, average life expectancy rocketed, with people gaining an extra three years every decade. For the latest study, Olshansky delved into national statistics from the US and nine regions with the highest life expectancies, focusing on 1990 to 2019, before the Covid pandemic struck. The data from Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Australia, France, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Spain showed that rises in life expectancy had slowed dramatically. In the US, life expectancy fell [T]he researchers describe how on average, life expectancy in the longest-living regions rose only 6.5 years between 1990 and 2019. They predict that girls born recently in the regions have only a 5.3% chance of reaching 100 years old, while boys have a 1.8% chance.

"In the modern era we have, through public health and medicine, manufactured decades of life that otherwise would not exist," Olshansky said. "These gains must slow down. The longevity game we're playing today is different to the longevity game we played a century ago when we were saving infants and children and women of child-bearing age and the gains in life expectancy were large. Now the gains are small because we're saving people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s." Olshansky said it would take radical new treatments that slow ageing, the greatest risk factor for many diseases, to achieve another longevity revolution. Research in the field is afoot with a dozen or so drugs shown to increase the lifespan of mice.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Wikipedia's "Timeline of the Far Future" is one of my favorite webpages from the internet's pre-slop era. A Londoner named Nick Webb created it on the morning of December 22, 2010. "Certain events in the future of the universe can be predicted with a comfortable level of accuracy," he wrote at the top of the page. He then proposed a chronological list of 33 such events, beginning with the joining of Asia and Australia 40 million years from now. He noted that around this same time, Mars's moon Phobos would complete its slow death spiral into the red planet's surface. A community of 1,533 editors have since expanded the timeline to 160 events, including the heat death of the universe. I like to imagine these people on laptops in living rooms and cafes across the world, compiling obscure bits of speculative science into a secular Book of Revelation.

Like the best sci-fi world building, the Timeline of the Far Future can give you a key bump of the sublime. It reminds you that even the sturdiest-seeming features of our world are ephemeral, that in 1,100 years, Earth's axis will point to a new North Star. In 250,000 years, an undersea volcano will pop up in the Pacific, adding an extra island to Hawaii. In the 1 million years that the Great Pyramid will take to erode, the sun will travel only about 1/200th of its orbit around the Milky Way, but in doing so, it will move into a new field of stars. Our current constellations will go all wobbly in the sky and then vanish.

Some aspects of the timeline are more certain than others. We know that most animals will look different 10 million years from now. We know that the continents will slowly drift together to form a new Pangaea. Africa will slam into Eurasia, sealing off the Mediterranean basin and raising a new Himalaya-like range across France, Italy, and Spain. In 400 million years, Saturn will have lost its rings. Earth will have replenished its fossil fuels. Our planet will also likely have sustained at least one mass-extinction-triggering impact, unless its inhabitants have learned to divert asteroids.

doc1623 writes: Advocacy groups behind a so-called suicide capsule said Sunday they have suspended the process of taking applications to use it -- which numbered over 370 last month -- as a criminal investigation into its first use in Switzerland is completed. The president of Switzerland-based The Last Resort, Florian Willet, is being held in pretrial detention, said the group and Exit International, an affiliate founded in Australia over a quarter century ago. Swiss police arrested Willet and several other people following the death of an unidentified 64-year-old woman from the U.S. Midwest who on Sept. 23 became the first person to use the device, known as the "Sarco," in a forest in the northern Schaffhausen region near the German border. Others initially detained were released from custody, authorities have said.

Long-time Slashdot reader Bismillah writes: Python New Zealand has gone through some rough times lately, with its then-treasurer stealing money from the society.. Things were looking really serious for a while, with Python NZ looking at being liquidated due to the theft of funds.

However, there is a silver lining to the story, as the free and open source movement rallied behind Python NZ and got them out of a serious pickle.
"Our friends at Linux Australia and at the Python Software Foundation went well above and beyond to support us, and save us," says Tom Eastman president of Python New Zealand, in an article from interest.co.nz.

He also says he hopes the treasure is ordered by the court to pay restitution. (In the article the treasurer confirms that he's pleaded guilty to the theft, which took place between February 2019 and October 2023 — leaving Python NZ owing conference supplies around $55,000.) "We had $26 in the bank accounts," Eastman tells the site.

The group now has new transparency and accountability measures...

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from Australia's public broadcaster ABC: Ecovacs robot vacuums, which have been found to suffer from critical cybersecurity flaws, are collecting photos, videos and voice recordings — taken inside customers' houses — to train the company's AI models.

The Chinese home robotics company, which sells a range of popular Deebot models in Australia, said its users are "willingly participating" in a product improvement program.

When users opt into this program through the Ecovacs smartphone app, they are not told what data will be collected, only that it will "help us strengthen the improvement of product functions and attached quality". Users are instructed to click "above" to read the specifics, however there is no link available on that page.

Ecovacs's privacy policy — available elsewhere in the app — allows for blanket collection of user data for research purposes, including:

- The 2D or 3D map of the user's house generated by the device
- Voice recordings from the device's microphone
— Photos or videos recorded by the device's camera

"It also states that voice recordings, videos and photos that are deleted via the app may continue to be held and used by Ecovacs..."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Google said Friday it will stop linking to New Zealand news content and will reverse its support of local media outlets if the government passes a law forcing tech companies to pay for articles displayed on their platforms. The vow to sever Google traffic to New Zealand news sites -- made in a blog post by the search giant on Friday -- echoes strategies the firm deployed as Australia and Canada prepared to enact similar laws in recent years. It followed a surprise announcement by New Zealand's government in July that lawmakers would advance a bill forcing tech platforms to strike deals for sharing revenue generated from news content with the media outlets producing it.

The government, led by center-right National, had opposed the law in 2023 when introduced by the previous administration. But the loss of more than 200 newsroom jobs earlier this year -- in a national media industry that totaled 1,600 reporters at the 2018 census and has likely shrunk since -- prompted the current government to reconsider forcing tech companies to pay publishers for displaying content. The law aims to stanch the flow offshore of advertising revenue derived from New Zealand news products. If the media law passes, Google New Zealand Country Director Caroline Rainsford said the firm would need to change its involvement in the country. "Specifically, we'd be forced to stop linking to news content on Google Search, Google News, or Discover surfaces in New Zealand and discontinue our current commercial agreements and ecosystem support with New Zealand news publishers."

Google's licensing program in New Zealand contributed "millions of dollars per year to almost 50 local publications," she added.

Law enforcement from 12 countries arrested four individuals linked to the LockBit ransomware gang, including a developer and a bulletproof hosting administrator. The operation also resulted in the seizure of LockBit infrastructure and involved sanctions targeting affiliates of both LockBit and Evil Corp. BleepingComputer reports: According to Europol, a suspected LockBit ransomware developer was arrested in August 2024 at the request of French authorities while on holiday outside of Russia. The same month, the U.K.'s National Crime Agency (NCA) arrested two more individuals linked to LockBit activity: one believed to be associated with a LockBit affiliate, while the second was apprehended on suspicion of money laundering. In a separate action, at Madrid airport, Spain's Guardia Civil arrested the administrator of a bulletproof hosting service used to shield LockBit's infrastructure. Today, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States also revealed sanctions against an individual the UK NCA believes is a prolific LockBit ransomware affiliate linked to Evil Corp.

The United Kingdom sanctioned 15 more Russian nationals involved in Evil Corp's criminal activities, while the United States sanctioned six individuals and Australia targeted two. "These actions follow the massive disruption of LockBit infrastructure in February 2024, as well as the large series of sanctions and operational actions that took place against LockBit administrators in May and subsequent months," Europol said.

In November, ByteDance's TikTok Music will be shut down in all the countries it currently operates in, including Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, and Mexico. A notice on the service's website reads: "We are sorry to inform you that TikTok Music will be closing on 28 November 2024." TechCrunch reports: Subscribers can continue to use the service until November 28, after which renewals will be automatically canceled, the notice said. Users who want to transfer their playlists to other streaming services will need to do so by October 28, and refund requests need to be submitted by November 28. TikTok said that it will continue partnering with music streaming services rather than competing with them. In February, the company launched the "Add to Music" feature on TikTok that lets users add tracks directly to a playlist on Apple Music, Amazon Music, or Spotify.

TikTok Music was rooted in a ByteDance product called Resso, which was first launched in India and Indonesia in 2019 and later expanded to Brazil. In 2023, ByteDance rebranded Resso to TikTok Music in Brazil and Indonesia, and soon after expanded it to Singapore, Australia, and Mexico. Resso was banned early this year in India. "Our Add to Music App feature has already enabled hundreds of millions of track saves to playlists on partner music streaming services. We will be closing TikTok Music at the end of November in order to focus on our goal of furthering TikTok's role in driving even greater music listening and value on music streaming services, for the benefit of artists, songwriters, and the industry," Ole Obermann, global head of Music Business Development, TikTok, said in a statement.

Google is getting ready to show off updated Street View imagery in nearly 80 countries. The Verge: In a now-removed blog post seen by The Verge, Google announced that the new images are coming to countries like Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Japan, the Philippines, Rwanda, Serbia, South Africa, and more. Google is also bringing Street View to a handful of countries where it's never been available, including Bosnia, Namibia, Lichtenstein, and Paraguay. The company said its more portable Street View camera, which launched in 2022, will help offer images of "even more places in the future."

Google Maps and Google Earth are getting sharper satellite imagery as well, thanks to the company's cloud-removal AI tool that takes out clouds, shadows, haze, and mist. This should result in "brighter, more vibrant" images, according to Google.

International police forces have taken down an encrypted communication platform and arrested 51 people, marking a success for co-ordinated efforts to crack down on anonymous messaging services used by criminal groups. FT: Europol and law enforcement agencies from nine countries dismantled Ghost [non-paywalled source], an online platform which used three different encryption standards and allowed users to destroy all messages by sending a specific code, Europol announced on Wednesday. The crackdown is the latest operation by international agencies to decode encrypted messaging services used by criminals to manage their international operations, following the takedown of platforms such as EncroChat and Sky ECC in recent years.

[...] McLean said Ghost was administered by a 32-year-old man from Australia, one of the operation's principal targets. As a result of the decryption operation, where officers broke the app's code so they could read users' messages, the death or injury of as many as 50 people could have been prevented, McLean said.

Facebook has admitted that it scrapes the public photos, posts and other data of Australian adult users to train its AI models and provides no opt-out option, even though it allows people in the European Union to refuse consent. From a report: Meta's global privacy director Melinda Claybaugh was pressed at an inquiry as to whether the social media giant was hoovering up the data of all Australians in order to build its generative artificial intelligence tools, and initially rejected that claim. Labor senator Tony Sheldon asked whether Meta had used Australian posts from as far back as 2007 to feed its AI products, to which Ms Claybaugh responded "we have not done that".

But that was quickly challenged by Greens senator David Shoebridge.

Shoebridge: "The truth of the matter is that unless you have consciously set those posts to private since 2007, Meta has just decided that you will scrape all of the photos and all of the texts from every public post on Instagram or Facebook since 2007, unless there was a conscious decision to set them on private. That's the reality, isn't it?
Claybaugh: "Correct."

Ms Claybaugh added that accounts of people under 18 were not scraped, but when asked by Senator Sheldon whether public photos of his own children on his account would be scraped, Ms Claybaugh acknowledged they would.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Agence France-Presse: Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, the prime minister said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and "onto the footy fields." Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, Anthony Albanese said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a "scourge." The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said. The prime minister said his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16. An age verification trial to test various approaches is being conducted over the coming months, the centre-left leader said. [...]

It is not even clear that the technology exists to reliably enforce such bans, said the University of Melbourne's associate professor in computing and information technology, Toby Murray. "The government is currently trialling age assurance technology. But we already know that present age verification methods are unreliable, too easy to circumvent, or risk user privacy," he said. But the prime minister said parents expected a response to online bullying and the access social media gave to harmful material. "These social media companies think they're above everyone," he told a radio interviewer. "Well, they have a social responsibility and at the moment, they're not exercising it. And we're determined to make sure that they do," he said.

Scientists have finally solved a long-standing mystery about the geologic process behind these large pieces of gold found in quartz rock. From a report: Gold has always been a hot commodity. But these days, finding a nugget isn't too tricky: Much of the world's gold is mined from natural veins of quartz, a glassy mineral that streaks through large chunks of Earth's squashed-up crust. But the geologic process that put gold nuggets there in the first place was a mystery. Now, a new study published today in Nature Geoscience has come up with a convincing, and surprising, answer: electricity, and earthquakes -- lots of them.

Those nuggets owe their existence to the strange electrical properties of common quartz. When squished or jiggled, the mineral generates electricity. That drags gold particles out of fluid in Earth's crust. The particles crystallize out as grains of gold -- and, over time, with enough electrical stimulation, those grains bloom into nuggets. "If you shake quartz, it makes electricity. If you make electricity, gold comes out," says Christopher Voisey, a geologist at Monash University in Australia and the lead author of the new paper. Earthquakes are the most likely natural source of that shaking, and the team's lab experiments show that earthquakes can make gold nuggets.

The idea that gold nuggets appear because of electricity instead of a more conventional geologic process is, at first, a peculiar thought. But "it makes complete sense," says Thomas Gernon, a geoscientist at the University of Southampton in England and who was not involved with the new work. Quartz veins host a disproportionate number of gold nuggets and their environments experience plenty of earthquakes.

Millions of Australians just got official permission to ignore their bosses outside of working hours, thanks to a new law enshrining their "right to disconnect." From a report: The law doesn't strictly prohibit employers from calling or messaging their workers after hours. But it does protect employees who "refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact or attempted contact outside their working hours, unless their refusal is unreasonable," according to the Fair Work Commission, Australia's workplace relations tribunal. That includes outreach from their employer, as well as other people "if the contact or attempted contact is work-related."

The law, which passed in February, took effect on Monday for most workers and will apply to small businesses of fewer than 15 people starting in August 2025. It adds Australia to a growing list of countries aiming to protect workers' free time. "It's really about trying to bring back some work-life balance and make sure that people aren't racking up hours of unpaid overtime for checking emails and responding to things at a time when they're not being paid," said Sen. Murray Watt, Australia's minister for employment and workplace relations. The law doesn't give employees a complete pass, however.

Australia's competition regulator has announced that it will closely monitor domestic air fares between metropolitan cities after local carrier Regional Express withdrew from the market last month as it entered voluntary administration. From a report: Rex is the second domestic airline to take that route this year. Low-cost airline Bonza was the first. It said in April it had suspended flights, and would assess the viability of its business. The collapse of Bonza and the withdrawal of Rex between metropolitan cities means that no domestic route had more than two competing airline groups as of July, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Australian sea lions glide and dart through underwater tunnels, over seagrass beds and rocky reefs, searching for a meal and dancing with dolphins around a giant bait ball of fish -- all the action captured by a camera stuck on their back. "I can watch this stuff for hours," says Prof Simon Goldsworthy. "It's like the best slow TV ever. You just don't know what you're going to see next." The Australian sea lion is in trouble. They were hunted until the early 20th century. Commercial fishing nets and pots have proved to be a more modern threat. Numbers have crashed by 60% in the past 40 years, leaving only about 10,000 of them mostly spread thinly across 80 breeding sites along Australia's south and west coastline.

Goldsworthy's "slow TV" is the result of new efforts to employ the sea lions to map the ocean floor -- and their own habitats -- by sticking cameras with satellite tracking to their backs. So far, eight females from two seal colonies have filmed almost 90 hours of footage across more than 500km, helping scientists to map 5,000 sq km of habitat. The sea lions have mapped rocky reefs and seagrass meadows along the continental shelf, and shown humans the places that are important to them. With that information, conservationists will have much clearer ideas on how to protect the country's only endemic seal. A study outlining the sea lions' camera work has been published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The government of Australia's most populous state ordered all public employees to work from their offices by default beginning Tuesday and urged stricter limits on remote work, after news outlets provoked a fraught debate about work-from-home habits established during the pandemic. Chris Minns, the New South Wales premier, said in a notice to agencies Monday that jobs could be made flexible by means other than remote working, such as part-time positions and role sharing, and that "building and replenishing public institutions" required "being physically present." His remarks were welcomed by business and real estate groups in the state's largest city, Sydney, who have decried falling office occupancy rates since 2020, but denounced by unions, who pledged to challenge the initiative if it was invoked unnecessarily.

The instruction made the state's government, Australia's largest employer with more than 400,000 staff, the latest among a growing number of firms and institutions worldwide to attempt a reversal of remote working arrangements introduced as the coronavirus spread. But it defied an embrace of remote work by the governments of some other Australian states, said some analysts, who suggested lobbying by a major newspaper prompted the change. "It seems that the Rupert Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph in Sydney has been trying to get the New South Wales government to mandate essentially that workers go back to the office," said Chris F. Wright, an associate professor in the discipline of work at the University of Sydney. The newspaper cited prospective economic boons for struggling businesses.

The newspaper wrote Tuesday that the premier's decision "ending the work from home era" followed its urging, although Minns did not name it as a factor. But the union representing public servants said there was scant evidence for the change and warned the state government could struggle to fill positions. "Throughout the New South Wales public sector, they're trying to retain people," said Stewart Little, the General Secretary of the Public Service Association. "In some critical agencies like child protection we're looking at 20% vacancy rates, you're talking about hundreds of jobs." Little added that government offices have shrunk since 2020 and agencies would be unable to physically accommodate every employee on site. Minns said the state would lease more space, according to the Daily Telegraph. Further reading: Ordered Back To the Office, Top Tech Talent Left Instead, Study Finds

Seattle is the smartest city in America, with Miami and then Austin close behind. That's according to a promotional study from smart-building tools company ProptechOS. Newsweek reports: The evaluation of tech infrastructure and connectivity was based on several factors, including the number of free Wi-Fi hot spots, the quantity and density of AI and IoT companies, average broadband download speeds, median 5G coverage per network provider, and the number of airports. Meanwhile, green infrastructure was assessed based on air quality, measured by exposure to PM2.5, tiny particles in the air that can harm health. Other factors include 10-year changes in tree coverage, both loss and gain; the number of electric vehicle charging points and their density per 100,000 people; and the number of LEED-certified green buildings. The tech job market was evaluated on the number of tech jobs advertised per 100,000 people.
Seattle came in first after assessing 16 key indicators across connectivity/infrastructure, sustainability, and tech jobs — "boasting 34 artificial intelligence companies and 13 Internet of Things companies per 100,000 residents." In terms of sustainability, Seattle has enhanced its tree coverage by 13,700 hectares from 2010 to 2020 and has established the equivalent of 10 electric vehicle charging points per 100,000 residents. Seattle has edged out last year's top city, Austin, to claim the title of the smartest city in the U.S., with an overall score of 75.7 out of 100. Miami wasn't far behind, achieving a score of 75.4. However, Austin still came out on top for smart city infrastructure, scoring 86.2 out of 100. This is attributed to its high broadband download speed of 275.60 Mbps — well above the U.S. average of 217.14 Mbps — and its concentration of 337 AI companies, or 35 per 100,000 people.
You can see the full listings here. The article notes that the same study also ranked Paris as the smartest city in Europe — slipping ahead of London — thanks to Paris's 99.5% 5G coverage, plus "the second-highest number of AI companies in Europe and the third-highest number of free Wi-Fi hot spots. Paris is also recognized for its traffic management systems, which monitor noise levels and air quality."

Newsweek also shares this statement from ProptechOS's founder/chief ecosystem officer. "Advancements in smart cities and future technologies such as next-generation wireless communication and AI are expected to reduce environmental impacts and enhance living standards."

In April CNBC reported on an alternate list of the smartest cities in the world, created from research by the World Competitiveness Center. It defined smart cities as "an urban setting that applies technology to enhance the benefits and diminish the shortcomings of urbanization for its citizens." And CNBC reported that based on the list, "Smart cities in Europe and Asia are gaining ground globally while North American cities have fallen down the ranks... Of the top 10 smart cities on the list, seven were in Europe." Here are the top 10 smart cities, according to the 2024 Smart City Index.

- Zurich, Switzerland
- Oslo, Norway
- Canberra, Australia
- Geneva, Switzerland
- Singapore
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Lausanne, Switzerland
- London, England
- Helsinki, Finland
- Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Notably, for the first time since the index's inception in 2019, there is an absence of North American cities in the top 20... The highest ranking U.S. city this year is New York City which ranked 34th, followed by Boston at 36th and Washington DC, coming in at 50th place.

Intel's stock plunged as much as 30% on Friday after the company issued disappointing guidance and announced plans for a substantial workforce reduction. According to Bloomberg, it was the company's biggest single-day drop since at least 1982. Markets Insider reports: The decline comes after the software company announced quarterly revenue of $12.83 billion, down 1% from the previous year and missing analyst expectations of $12.94 billion, according to LSEG estimates. The company also lowered its revenue forecast for the current quarter to a range between $12.5 billion and $13.5 billion, down from analyst estimates of $14.35 billion. Intel executives pointed to unexpected trends in the most recent quarter to explain how it performed this way even with product milestones.

"Our Q2 financial performance was disappointing, even as we hit key product and process technology milestones," CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a press release. "Second-half trends are more challenging than we previously expected, and we are leveraging our new operating model to take decisive actions that will improve operating and capital efficiencies." Those operations and efficiency improvements include plans to lay off over 15% of staff by the end of this year, realign structure and operations, and cut operations expenses by over $10 billion next year. Technology shares fell across the globe following underwhelming earnings and fears of a U.S. economic recession grew. Stock markets in Europe, Asia and New York tumbled on Friday.

"Japanese equities suffered their worst day since the Covid-19 pandemic rocked markets in 2020; the Nikkei 225 share index tumbled by 5.8% to its lowest closing level since January," reports The Guardian. "The broader Japanese Topix fell 6.1%, Australia's ASX fell 2.5% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 2.1%."

"Europe's main stock indices also declined on Friday, with European technology stocks falling to their lowest level in more than six months."