An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Meta continues to hit walls with its heavily scrutinized plan to comply with the European Union's strict online competition law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), by offering Facebook and Instagram subscriptions as an alternative for privacy-inclined users who want to opt out of ad targeting. Today, the European Commission (EC) announced preliminary findings that Meta's so-called "pay or consent" or "pay or OK" model -- which gives users a choice to either pay for access to its platforms or give consent to collect user data to target ads -- is not compliant with the DMA. According to the EC, Meta's advertising model violates the DMA in two ways. First, it "does not allow users to opt for a service that uses less of their personal data but is otherwise equivalent to the 'personalized ads-based service." And second, it "does not allow users to exercise their right to freely consent to the combination of their personal data," the press release said.

Now, Meta will have a chance to review the EC's evidence and defend its policy, with today's findings kicking off a process that will take months. The EC's investigation is expected to conclude next March. Thierry Breton, the commissioner for the internal market, said in the press release that the preliminary findings represent "another important step" to ensure Meta's full compliance with the DMA. "The DMA is there to give back to the users the power to decide how their data is used and ensure innovative companies can compete on equal footing with tech giants on data access," Breton said. A Meta spokesperson told Ars that Meta plans to fight the findings -- which could trigger fines up to 10 percent of the company's worldwide turnover, as well as fines up to 20 percent for repeat infringement if Meta loses. The EC agreed that more talks were needed, writing in the press release, "the Commission continues its constructive engagement with Meta to identify a satisfactory path towards effective compliance." Meta continues to claim that its "subscription for no ads" model was "endorsed" by the highest court in Europe, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), last year.

"Subscription for no ads follows the direction of the highest court in Europe and complies with the DMA," Meta's spokesperson said. "We look forward to further constructive dialogue with the European Commission to bring this investigation to a close."

Meta rolled out its ad-free subscription service option last November. "Depending on where you purchase it will cost $10.5/month on the web or $13.75/month on iOS and Android," said the company in a blog post. "Regardless of where you purchase, the subscription will apply to all linked Facebook and Instagram accounts in a user's Accounts Center. As is the case for many online subscriptions, the iOS and Android pricing take into account the fees that Apple and Google charge through respective purchasing policies."

A new study suggests at least 10% of scientific abstracts in 2024 were processed using large language models, researchers from the University of Tubingen and Northwestern University report. Analyzing 14 million PubMed abstracts from 2010-2024, the team identified an unprecedented surge in certain "style words" following LLMs' widespread adoption in late 2022.

Words like "delves" and "showcasing" saw a 25-fold and 9-fold increase respectively in 2024 abstracts compared to pre-LLM trends. Common terms such as "potential" and "findings" also spiked in usage. The researchers drew parallels to studies measuring COVID-19's impact through excess deaths, applying a similar methodology to detect "excess word usage" in scientific writing.

Apple's decision not to launch its own AI features in the EU is a "stunning declaration" of its anticompetitive behavior, European Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said. From a report: About two weeks ago, Apple announced it will not launch its homegrown AI features in the EU, saying that interoperability required by the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) could hurt user privacy and security. A few days later, the Commission accused Apple's App Store of DMA breaches. Apple's move to roll back its AI plans in Europe is the most "stunning, open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already," Vestager, the Commission's vice president for a Europe fit for the digital age and Commissioner for Competition, told a Forum Europa event.

The "short version of the DMA [Digital Markets Act]" is that to operate in Europe, companies have to be open for competition, said Vestager. The DMA foresees fines of up to 10% of annual revenue, which in Apple's case could be over $32.2 billion, based on its previous financial performance. For repeated infringements, that percentage could double.

In 1994, college student Jim Hall created FreeDOS (in response to Microsoft's plan to gradually phase out MS-DOS). After celebrating its 30th anniversary last week, Hill wrote a new article Saturday for OpenSource.net: "What I've learned about Open Source community over 30 years."

Lessons include "every Open Source project needs a website," but also "consider other ways to raise awareness about your Open Source software project." ("In the FreeDOS Project, we've found that posting videos to our YouTube channel is an excellent way to help people learn about FreeDOS... The more information you can share about your Open Source project, the more people will find it familiar and want to try it out.")

But the larger lesson is that "Open Source projects must be grounded in community." Without open doors for new ideas and ongoing development, even the most well-intentioned project becomes a stagnant echo chamber...

Maintain open lines of communication... This can take many forms, including an email list, discussion board, or some other discussion forum. Other forums where people can ask more general "Help me" questions are okay but try to keep all discussions about project development on your official discussion channel.
The last of its seven points stresses that "An Open Source project isn't really Open Source without source code that everyone can download, study, use, modify and share" (urging careful selection for your project's licensing). But the first point emphasizes that "It's more than just code," and Hall ends his article by attributing FreeDOS's three-decade run to "the great developers and users in our community." In celebrating FreeDOS, we are celebrating everyone who has created programs, fixed bugs, added features, translated messages, written documentation, shared articles, or contributed in some other way to the FreeDOS Project... Here's looking forward to more years to come!
Jim Hall is also Slashdot reader #2,985, and back in 2000 he answered questions from Slashdot's readers — just six years after starting the project. "Jim isn't rich or famous," wrote RobLimo, "just an old-fashioned open source contributor who helped start a humble but useful project back in 1994 and still works on it as much as he can."

As the years piled up, Slashdot ran posts celebrating FreeDOS's 10th, 15th, and 20th anniversary.

And then for FreeDOS's 25th, Hall returned to Slashdot to answer more questions from Slashdot readers...

America's Justice Department "is pushing for Boeing to plead guilty to a criminal charge," reports Reuters, "after finding the planemaker violated a settlement over fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people, two people familiar with the matter said on Sunday." Boeing previously paid $2.5 billion as part of the deal with prosecutors that granted the company immunity from criminal prosecution over a fraud conspiracy charge related to the 737 MAX's flawed design. Boeing had to abide by the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement for a three-year period that ended on Jan. 7. Prosecutors would then have been poised to ask a judge to dismiss the fraud conspiracy charge. But in May, the Justice Department found Boeing breached the agreement, exposing the company to prosecution.
A guilty plea could "carry implications for Boeing's ability to enter into government contracts," the article points out, "such as those with the U.S. military that make up a significant portion of its revenue..." The proposal would require Boeing to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in connection with the fatal crashes, the sources said. The proposed agreement also includes a $487.2 million financial penalty, only half of which Boeing would be required to pay, they added. That is because prosecutors are giving the company credit for a payment it made as part of the previous settlement related to the fatal crashes of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights. Boeing could also likely be forced to pay restitution under the proposal's terms, the amount of which will be at a judge's discretion, the sources said.

The offer also contemplates subjecting Boeing to three years of probation, the people said. The plea deal would also require Boeing's board to meet with victims' relatives and impose an independent monitor to audit the company's safety and compliance practices for three years, they said.
"Should Boeing refuse to plead guilty, prosecutors plan to take the company to trial, they said..." the article points out.

"Justice Department officials revealed their decision to victims' family members during a call earlier on Sunday."

An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from the Verge: Threads will now let people like and see replies to their Threads posts that appear on other federated social media platforms, the company announced on Tuesday.

Previously, if you made a post on Threads that was syndicated to another platform like Mastodon, you wouldn't be able to see responses to that post while still inside Threads. That meant you'd have to bounce back and forth between the platforms to stay up-to-date on replies... [I]n a screenshot, Meta notes that you can't reply to replies "yet," so it sounds like that feature will arrive in the future.
"Threads is Meta's first app built to be compatible with the fediverse..." according to a Meta blog post. "Our vision is that people using other fediverse-compatible servers will be able to follow and interact with people on Threads without having a Threads profile, and vice versa, connecting communities..." [If you turn on "sharing"...] "Developers can build new types of features and user experiences that can easily plug into other open social networks, accelerating the pace of innovation and experimentation."

And this week Instagram/Threads top executive Adam Mosseri posted that Threads is "also expanding the availability of the fediverse beta experience to more than 100 countries, and hope to roll it out everywhere soon."

Tom's Hardware reports that Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (working with the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies and Nokia Bell) set a 402 terabits per second data transfer record — over commercially available optical fiber cables. The NICT and its partners were able to transmit signals through 1,505 channels over 50 km (about 31 miles) of optic fiber cable for this experiment. It used six types of amplifiers and an optical gain equalizer that taps into the unused 37 THz bandwidth to enable the 402 Tb/s transfer speed. One of the amplifiers this was demonstrated with is a thulium-based doped fiber amplifier, which uses C-band or C+L band systems. Additionally, semiconductor optical amplifiers and Raman amplifiers were used, which achieved 256 Tb/s data rate through almost 20 THz. Other amplifiers were also used for this exercise which provided a cumulative bandwidth of 25 THz for up to 119 Tb/s data rate.

As a result, its maximum achievable result surpassed the previous data rate capacity by over 25 percent and increased transmission bandwidth by 35 percent.
"This is achievable with currently available technology used by internet service providers..." the article points out.

"With 'beyond 5G' potential speeds achievable through commercially available cables, it will likely further a new generation of internet services."

According to a report from The Information, Apple is developing a new "electrically induced adhesive debonding" technology that would make iPhone batteries easier to replace. 9to5Mac reports: Currently, replacing an iPhone battery requires using tweezers to remove the existing battery, which is held in place by adhesive strips. Then, you must use a "specialized machine and tray" to press the new battery into place. The new process uses metal instead of foil to cover the battery, as The Information explains: "The new technology --- known as electrically induced adhesive debonding -- involves encasing the battery in metal, rather than foil as it is currently. That would allow people to dislodge the battery from the chassis by administering a small jolt of electricity to the battery, the people said. Consumers still have to pry open the iPhone themselves, which is not an easy process because of the adhesives and screws that keep the iPhone's screen sealed in place."

Even with this change, however, Apple will still recommend that iPhone users visit a professional to replace their battery. If Apple's development of this new bonding technology goes according to plan, it could debut it with at least one iPhone 16 model this year. According to the report, it would then expand to all versions of the iPhone 17 next year.

Samantha Cole reports via 404 Media: A woman is suing Microsoft and two major U.S. sex toy retailers with claims that their websites are tracking users without their consent, despite promising they wouldn't do that. In a complaint (PDF) filed on June 25 in the Northern District of California, San Francisco resident Stella Tatola claims that Babeland and Good Vibrations -- both owned by Barnaby Ltd., LLC -- allowed Microsoft to see what visitors to their websites searched for and bought.

"Unbeknownst to Plaintiff and other Barnaby website users, and constituting the ultimate violation of privacy, Barnaby allows an undisclosed third-party, Microsoft, to intercept, read, and utilize for commercial gain consumers' private information about their sexual practices and preferences, gleaned from their activity on Barnaby's websites," the complaint states. "This information includes but is not limited to product searches and purchase initiations, as well as the consumer's unique Microsoft identifier." The complaint claims that Good Vibrations and Babeland sites have installed trackers using Microsoft's Clarity software, which does "recording in real time," and tracks users' mouse movements, clicks or taps, scrolls, and site navigation. Microsoft says on the Clarity site that it "processes a massive amount of anonymous data around user behavior to gain insights and improve machine learning models that power many of our products and services."

"By allowing undisclosed third party Microsoft to eavesdrop and intercept users' PPSI in such a manner -- including their sexual orientation, preferences, and desires, among other highly sensitive, protected information -- Barnaby violates its Privacy Policies, which state it will never share such information with third parties," the complaint states. The complaint includes screenshots of code from the sexual health sites that claims to show them using Machine Unique Identifier ("MUID") cookies that "identifies unique web browsers visiting Microsoft sites," according to Microsoft, and are used for "advertising, site analytics, and other operational purposes." The complaint claims that this violates the California Invasion of Privacy Act, the Federal Wiretap Act, and Californians' reasonable expectation of privacy.

After launching in the United States earlier this year, Apple's Vision Pro is now available to buy in China, Japan, and Singapore. "The Apple Vision Pro will also roll out to Germany, France, Australia, the UK, and Canada on July 12th, with preorders for those regions available starting today at 5AM PT," notes The Verge. Apple is documenting the international launch via a recent blog post.

According to CNBC, the device starts at $4,128 (29,999 yuan) in China, compared to $3,500 in the U.S. Meanwhile, Apple is already hard at work on a more budget-friendly model. In Bloomberg's "Power On" newsletter, Apple news-breaker Mark Gurman reports today that the tech giant is "working on a cheaper headset, a second Vision Pro model and augmented-reality glasses to better compete with Meta."

Parks Kugle reports via the Daily Dot: A mechanic went viral when he posted a TikTok about technicians being locked out of computer systems in a new Dodge Ram. TikTok user Shorty of Shorty's Speed Shop (@shortysspeedshop) garnered over 301,000 views when he showed viewers what mechanics had to do to be able to repair newer car models. "It has officially happened. 2024 Ram 3500, authorization denied," Shorty said as he showed viewers the computer screen. "Cannot get into anything on this except generic OBD2 Software."

Shorty went on to explain that this update made his "manufacturer software 100 percent irrelevant." Then, Shorty showed viewers the Vehicle Security Professional (VSP) Registry on the National Automaker Service Task Force (NASTF) website. According to NASTF, automakers require mechanics to become credentialed VSPs if they want to purchase key and immobilizer codes, PIN numbers, and special tool access from Automaker websites. A VSP is required to "verify proof of ownership/authority prior to performing any security operation." "It's all part of the NASTF Security Professional Registery," Shorty explained.

Shorty believes that this rule allows manufacturers to lock mechanics out of anything they "deem security sensitive." Shorty then broke down the "requirements to gain VSP access." According to him, these include a $325 fee "every two years" and a $100 fee for every subsequent two-year license renewal. He says mechanics also need "commercial liability insurance of $1 million" and a "fidelity or employee dishonesty bond of $100,000." The VSP application page on NASTF's website confirms that there is a $100 Application Fee that covers a "Two Year Renewal" and a $325 Primary Account fee that covers a "Two Year License." It also confirms his claims about the required commercial liability insurance and fidelity or employee dishonesty bond. "There's a lot of people that don't know that this is going on, and it's going to affect everybody getting their cars fixed," Shorty remarked.

An anonymous reader quotes an op-ed for Slate, written by Amanda Chen: In August 2009, Wired magazine ran a cover story on Craigslist founder Craig Newmark titled "Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess." The opening paragraphs excoriate almost every aspect of the online classifieds platform as "underdeveloped," a "wasteland of hyperlinks," and demands that we, the public, ought to have higher standards. The same sentiment can found across tech forums and trade publications, a missed opportunity that the average self-professed LinkedIn expert on #UX #UI #design will have you believe that they are the first to point out. But as sites like Craigslist increasingly turn into digital artifacts, more people, myself included, are starting to see the beauty that belies those same features. Without them, where else on the internet could you find such ardent professions of desire or loneliness, or the random detritus of a life so steeply discounted?

The site has changed relatively little in both functionality and appearance since Newmark launched it in 1995 as a friends and family listserv for jobs and other opportunities. Yet in spite of that, it remains a household name whose niche in the contemporary digital landscape has yet to be usurped, with an estimated 180 million visits in May 2024. Though, it's certainly not for a lack of newcomers attempting to stake their claims on the booming C2C market; in the U.S., Facebook Marketplace, launched in 2016, is its closest direct competitor, followed by platforms like Nextdoor and OfferUp. Craigslist's business model is quite simple: Users in a few categories -- apartments in select cities, jobs, vehicles for sale -- pay a small but reasonable fee to make posts. Everything else is free. Its Perl-backed tech is straightforward. The team is relatively lean, as the company considers functions like sales and marketing superfluous. This strategy has allowed Craigslist to stay extremely profitable throughout the years without implementing sophisticated recommendation algorithms or inundating the webpage with third-party advertisements. Its runaway success threatens decades-old industry gospels of growth, disruption, and innovation, and might force tech evangelists to admit they don't fully understand what people want. [...]

These days I find myself casually browsing Craigslist in lieu of Instagram. Like readers of a local paper, I use it to keep a pulse on what's happening around me, even if I'll never know who these people are. That's beside the point. Perhaps Craigslist's single greatest cultural contribution, and my favorite place to lurk, is the "missed connections." The feature has inspired countless copycats, artistic reinterpretations, human interest stories, and analyses (one in particular extrapolated that Monday evenings are the most lovelorn time across the country). There is something deeply comforting about seeing those intangible threads of yearning which permeate a city so plainly laid out, as confirmation that you're not alone in wanting to be seen by others alive in the same place and time as you. Sometimes I'll peruse random job listings or the "free" section. This leads to the ever-amusing exercise, which I'll often invite friends to participate in, of speculating about the motivations and circumstances behind an object's acquisition and imminent relinquishment. I'll even visit the clunky, dial-up era-style discussion forums, subdivided into topics labeled things like "death and dying" or "haiku hotel," where a unique penchant for whimsy and romance can be felt deeply throughout. On Craigslist, a post can be a shout into the void that may or may not be returned, an affirmation of life, but regardless, in 45 days it's gone. Positioned somewhere in between digital ephemera and archive, the site's images and language are often utilitarian, occasionally unintelligible, and just when you least expect it, absurd, poetic, and profound. "Frequently, technologists remain convinced that the market will eventually reveal a solution for all of our deep-seated societal problems, something that we can hack if only granted access to better tech," writes Chen, in closing. "From the start, the industry has advanced the idea that change is inherently good, even if only for its own sake, which can be viewed as symptomatic of the accelerating conditions of late-stage capitalism. Of course, there are many ways in which change is desperately needed in this moment, but when it comes to the particular case of Craigslist, it hardly seems necessary."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Starting with those builds, Windows 11 will show a Game Pass recommendation / ad within the Settings app. The advertisement will appear on both Windows 11 Home and Windows 11 Pro if you actively play games on your PC. Microsoft lists this feature first under the "Highlights" section of its blog post about the update. Some users aren't pleased. "Microsoft has gone too far," news blog TechRadar wrote.

T-Mobile is facing customer outrage after announcing a $5-per-line price increase on plans that were marketed with a "lifetime" price guarantee. The move has sparked over 1,600 complaints to the Federal Communications Commission, ArsTechnica reports

Kathleen Odean, 70, of Rhode Island, is among the affected customers. "The promise was absolutely clear," she told Ars. "It's right there in writing: 'T-Mobile will never change the price you pay for your T-Mobile One plan.'" T-Mobile claims an FAQ page allows for price changes, but customers argue this caveat was never prominently disclosed. The company's 2017 press release touted the guarantee without mentioning exceptions.

Google is severing its trust in Entrust after what it describes as a protracted period of failures around compliance and general improvements. From a report: Entrust is one of the many certificate authorities (CA) used by Chrome to verify that the websites end users visit are trustworthy. From November 1 in Chrome 127, which recently entered beta, TLS server authentication certificates validating to Entrust or AffirmTrust roots won't be trusted by default.

Google pointed to a series of incident reports over the past few years concerning Entrust, saying they "highlighted a pattern of concerning behaviors" that have ultimately seen the security company fall down in Google's estimations. The incidents have "eroded confidence in [Entrust's] competence, reliability, and integrity as a publicly trusted CA owner," Google stated in a blog. The move follows a May publication by Mozilla, which compiled a sprawling list of Entrust's certificate issues between March and May this year. Entrust -- after an initial PR disaster -- acknowledged its procedural failures and said it was treating the feedback as a learning opportunity.

The Japanese government plans to create zero-emissions logistics links between major cities, potentially using massive conveyor belts or autonomous electric carts. The initiative aims to shift millions of tons of cargo, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and alleviate the anticipated 30% shortfall in parcel deliveries by 2030 due to a lack of drivers. New Atlas reports: According to The Japan News, the project has been under discussion since February by an expert panel at the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism ministry. A draft outline of an interim report was released Friday, revealing plans to complete an initial link between Tokyo and Osaka by 2034. Japan's well-known population collapse issues foretell severe labor squeezes in the coming years, and one specific issue this project aims to curtail is the continuing rise in online shopping, with a forecast decline in the numbers of delivery drivers that can move goods around. The country is expecting some 30% of parcels simply won't make it from A to B by 2030, because there'll be nobody to move them. Hence this wild logistical link, the first iteration of which the team says will move as much small cargo between Tokyo and Osaka as 25,000 trucks.

Exactly how it'll do this is yet to be nailed down, but individual pallets will carry up to a ton of small cargo items, and they'll move without human interference from one end to the other. One possibility is to use massive conveyor belts to cover the 500-km (310-mile) distance between the two cities, running alongside the highway or potentially through tunnels underneath the road. Alternatively, the infrastructure could simply provide flat lanes or tunnels, and the pallets could be shifted by automated electric carts. A 500-km tunnel, mind you, would be insanely expensive at somewhere around $23 billion before any conveyor belts or autonomous carts are factored in. And one does have to wonder if autonomous electric trucks might be able to do the job without any of the infrastructure requirements [...].

Mark Zuckerberg has criticized the notion of a singular, dominant AI in a new interview. He argued against the idea of AI technology being "hoarded" by one company, taking aim at unnamed competitors who he suggested view themselves as "creating God." Zuckerberg advocated for open-source AI development, emphasizing the need for diverse AI systems reflecting varied interests.

He likened the future AI landscape to the current ecosystem of phone apps, content creators, and businesses, where no single entity dominates. Meta announced early U.S. tests of AI Studio, software enabling creators to build AI avatars for Instagram messaging. These AIs will be clearly labeled to avoid confusion. Zuckerberg stressed the importance of empowering many to experiment with AI, stating, "That's what culture is, right? It's not one group of people getting to dictate everything for people."

Nine astronauts aboard the International Space Station were forced to take shelter late Wednesday when a satellite broke up in low Earth orbit. This "debris-generating event" created "over 100 pieces of trackable [space junk]," according to U.S. space-tracking firm LeoLabs. Space.com reports: The Expedition 71 crew on the International Space Station (ISS) went to their three spacecraft, including Boeing Starliner, shortly after 9 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT), according to a brief NASA update on X, formerly known as Twitter. As the ISS follows a time zone identical to GMT, according to the European Space Agency, the astronauts were likely in their sleep period when the incident occurred. The procedure was a "precautionary measure", NASA officials added, stating that the crew only stayed in their spacecraft for about an hour before they were "cleared to exit their spacecraft, and the station resumed normal operations."

NASA did not specify which satellite was associated with the incident, but satellite monitoring and collision detection firm LeoLabs identified a "debris-generating event" that same evening. "Early indications are that a non-operational Russian spacecraft, Resurs-P1 [or] SATNO 39186, released a number of fragments," the company wrote on X. U.S. Space Command also reported the Resurs-P1 event, saying on X that over 100 pieces of trackable debris were generated. The military said it "observed no immediate threats and is continuing to conduct routine conjunction assessments." (A conjunction refers to a close approach of two objects in orbit to one another.)

Google has unveiled its largest-ever expansion of Translate, adding 110 new languages powered by its PaLM 2 AI model. The update spans major world languages and endangered tongues, covering an additional 614 million speakers globally.

Highlights include Cantonese, long-requested by users, and a quarter of the new offerings from Africa. Some additions, like Manx from the Isle of Man, showcase dramatic revival stories. The expansion reflects Google's ambitious "1,000 Languages Initiative" and follows its 2022 addition of 24 languages using zero-shot machine translation. Challenges in implementation included navigating regional varieties and non-standardized forms, the company wrote in a blog post.

The US Conference of Mayors, which speaks for the administrations of more than 1,400 cities with a population of at least 30,000 people, adopted a resolution over the weekend at its annual meeting that voiced an objection to HR 3557, a draft law known as the American Broadband Deployment Act of 2023. From a report: The bill, which was introduced by House Rep Earl Carter (R-GA) last May and is awaiting further consideration by Congress, is ostensibly designed to make it easier for telcos to build infrastructure and run additional cables on state and locally managed land, ideally allowing fast broadband connectivity to reach more and more folks.

Rep Carter went as far as saying his proposals will ensure "more Americans have access to internet and the United States can maintain its competitive edge against China." Meanwhile, the mayors say HR 3557 strips local governments of authority to oppose bad projects. What raises particular ire are provisions in the draft law that would provide a very short window for opposition. What we have here, basically, is a classic example of one side trying to strip away what is perceived to be bureaucracy and red tape, and the other side insisting that checks and balances are sorely needed.