AmiMoJo writes: Users of AI image generator Stable Diffusion are angry about an update to the software that "nerfs" its ability to generate NSFW output and pictures in the style of specific artists. Stability AI, the company that funds and disseminates the software, announced Stable Diffusion Version 2 early this morning European time. The update re-engineers key components of the model and improves certain features like upscaling (the ability to increase the resolution of images) and in-painting (context-aware editing). But, the changes also make it harder for Stable Diffusion to generate certain types of images that have attracted both controversy and criticism. These include nude and pornographic output, photorealistic pictures of celebrities, and images that mimic the artwork of specific artists.

"They have nerfed the model," commented one user on a Stable Diffusion sub-reddit. "It's kinda an unpleasant surprise," said another on the software's official Discord server. Users note that asking Version 2 of Stable Diffusion to generate images in the style of Greg Rutkowski -- a digital artist whose name has become a literal shorthand for producing high-quality images -- no longer creates artwork that closely resembles his own. "What did you do to greg," commented one user on Discord.

Inventors have been refining them for centuries. What are they trying to achieve? From a report: Today, there are only a few kinds of mousetraps available at a typical hardware store: snap traps, glue traps, electric traps, bucket traps, and live-capture traps. And yet, inventors have filed more than forty-five hundred U.S. patents for animal traps, about a thousand of which are specifically related to mice. (Many inventors don't specify the intended targets of their traps.) Presumably, some mousetrap inventors have been spurred on by a quote widely attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." Emerson probably never said exactly this; what he did write down, in a journal, was that the world would beat a path to the door of anyone who sold better corn, wood, boards, pigs, chairs, knives, crucibles, or church organs. There's nothing uniquely profitable about mousetraps. Still, people keep inventing them, probably because mice are such a widespread nuisance.

Some inventors come up with mousetraps because of firsthand rodent experiences. One company well known for traps that can hold multiple mice at once, for instance, was founded by a janitor at an Iowa high school who noticed that mice were eating the students' lunches. But, just as there are too many mice, there are too many mousetraps. In a 2011 paper, Dagg, the schoolteacher, found that only four per cent of the mousetraps patented in the United States have been commercially produced -- and many designs are never even patented. The Trap History Museum, outside Columbus, Ohio, houses what is very likely the world's largest collection of mousetraps. Many of the designs on view there would be prohibitively expensive to mass-produce, given their unwieldy size or reliance on wacky technologies. Others barely work, having apparently been designed to function on only the rarest of occasions. Some designs are dreamy and imaginative; like contemporary art, they are valued for those qualities, not because they make it easier to keep a mouse-free home. You wouldn't pee in a toilet mounted on a gallery wall. Likewise, you wouldn't get much use out of a trap, patented in 1908, that affixes a jangly collar to a mouse so that it will annoy other mice until they flee their compatriot for the great outdoors.

Russian internet giant Yandex's Dutch holding company on Friday said it planned to divest ownership and control of most of Yandex Group, with the international divisions of some services to be developed outside Russia. From a report: Yandex N.V. said it had started a "strategic process to review options to restructure the group's ownership and governance in light of the current geopolitical environment."

"As part of the intended restructuring of the group, the board anticipates that Yandex N.V. will in due course be renamed, with the business to be divested retaining exclusive rights for the use of the Yandex brand," Yandex N.V. said in a statement. Russian President Vladimir Putin and former finance minister Alexei Kudrin addressed the future of Yandex in a late-night meeting, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday. Sources told Reuters that Kudrin, a long-time colleague of the president, is expected to leave his role as head of Russia's Audit Chamber to take up a position with Yandex. One of the sources said that could happen in the coming weeks.

Brace for yet another expansion to the UK's Online Safety Bill: The Ministry of Justice has announced changes to the law which are aimed at protecting victims of revenge porn, pornographic deepfakes and other abuses related to the taking and sharing of intimate imagery without consent -- in a crackdown on a type of abuse that disproportionately affects women and girls. From a report: The government says the latest amendment to the Bill will broaden the scope of current intimate image offences -- "so that more perpetrators will face prosecution and potentially time in jail."

Other abusive behaviors that will become explicitly illegal include "downblousing" (where photographs are taken down a women's top without consent); and the installation of equipment, such as hidden cameras, to take or record images of someone without their consent. The government describes the planned changes as a comprehensive package of measure to modernize laws in this area.

Intel has officially revealed its Intel On Demand program that will activate select accelerators and features of the company's upcoming Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids processor. The new pay-as-you-go program will allow Intel to reduce the number of SKUs it ships while still capitalizing on the technologies it has to offer. From a report: Furthermore, its clients will be able to upgrade their machines without replacing actual hardware or offering additional services to their clients. Intel's upcoming Intel's 4th Generation Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids processors are equipped with various special-purpose accelerators and security technologies that all customers do not need at all times. To offer such end-users additional flexibility regarding investments, Intel will deliver them to buy its CPUs with those capabilities disabled but turn them on if they are needed at some point. The Software Defined Silicon (SDSi) technology will also allow Intel to sell fewer CPU models and then enable its clients or partners to activate certain features if needed (to use them on-prem or offer them as a service). The list of technologies that Intel wants to make available on demand includes Software Guard Extensions, Dynamic Load Balancer (DLB), Intel Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA), Intel In-Memory Analytics Accelerator (IAA), Intel In-Memory Analytics Accelerator, and Intel QuickAssist Technology (QAT) to accelerate specific workloads.

Google is working on a secretive project that uses machine learning to train code to write, fix, and update itself. From a report: This project is part of a broader push by Google into so-called generative artificial intelligence, which uses algorithms to create images, videos, code, and more. It could have profound implications for the company's future and developers who write code. The project, which began life inside Alphabet's X research unit and was codenamed Pitchfork, moved into Google's Labs group this summer, according to people familiar with the matter. By moving into Google, it signaled its increased importance to leaders. Google Labs pursues long-term bets, including projects in virtual and augmented reality.

Pitchfork is now part of a new group at Labs named the AI Developer Assistance team run by Olivia Hatalsky, a long-term X employee who worked on Google Glass and several other moonshot projects. Hatalsky, who ran Pitchfork at X, moved to Labs when it migrated this past summer. Pitchfork was built for "teaching code to write and rewrite itself," according to internal materials seen by Insider. The tool is designed to learn programming styles and write new code based on those learnings, according to people familiar with it and patents reviewed by Insider. "The team is working closely with the Research team," a Google representative said. "They're working together to explore different use cases to help developers."

Google has disclosed several security flaws for phones that have Mali GPUs, such as those with Exynos chipsets. From a report: The company's Project Zero team says it flagged the problems to ARM (which produces the GPUs) back in the summer. ARM resolved the issues on its end in July and August. However, smartphone manufacturers including Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Google itself hadn't deployed patches to fix the vulnerabilities as of earlier this week, Project Zero said.

Researchers identified five new issues in June and July and promptly flagged them to ARM. "One of these issues led to kernel memory corruption, one led to physical memory addresses being disclosed to userspace and the remaining three led to a physical page use-after-free condition," Project Zero's Ian Beer wrote in a blog post. "These would enable an attacker to continue to read and write physical pages after they had been returned to the system." Beer noted that it would be possible for a hacker to gain full access to a system as they'd be able to bypass the permissions model on Android and gain "broad access" to a user's data. The attacker could do so by forcing the kernel to reuse the afore-mentioned physical pages as page tables.

EU countries agreed to a 45-billion-euro ($46.6 billion) plan to fund the production of chips, putting the 27-country bloc a step closer to its goal of reducing its reliance on U.S. and Asian manufacturers. From a report: EU envoys unanimously backed an amended version of the European Commission's proposal, the Czech Republic which holds the rotating EU presidency said. European Union ministers will meet on Dec. 1 to rubber stamp the chip plan that will still need to be debated with the European Parliament next year before it can become law. The EU executive, which is hoping state subsidies will help the bloc achieve a 20% share of global chip capacity by 2030, came up with its proposal after a global chip shortage and supply chain bottlenecks hit car makers, healthcare providers and telecoms operators.

A programmer is suing Microsoft, GitHub and OpenAI over artificial intelligence technology that generates its own computer code. From a report: In late June, Microsoft released a new kind of artificial intelligence technology that could generate its own computer code. Called Copilot, the tool was designed to speed the work of professional programmers. As they typed away on their laptops, it would suggest ready-made blocks of computer code they could instantly add to their own. Many programmers loved the new tool or were at least intrigued by it. But Matthew Butterick, a programmer, designer, writer and lawyer in Los Angeles, was not one of them. This month, he and a team of other lawyers filed a lawsuit that is seeking class-action status against Microsoft and the other high-profile companies that designed and deployed Copilot.

Like many cutting-edge A.I. technologies, Copilot developed its skills by analyzing vast amounts of data. In this case, it relied on billions of lines of computer code posted to the internet. Mr. Butterick, 52, equates this process to piracy, because the system does not acknowledge its debt to existing work. His lawsuit claims that Microsoft and its collaborators violated the legal rights of millions of programmers who spent years writing the original code. The suit is believed to be the first legal attack on a design technique called "A.I. training," which is a way of building artificial intelligence that is poised to remake the tech industry. In recent years, many artists, writers, pundits and privacy activists have complained that companies are training their A.I. systems using data that does not belong to them.

The lawsuit has echoes in the last few decades of the technology industry. In the 1990s and into the 2000s, Microsoft fought the rise of open source software, seeing it as an existential threat to the future of the company's business. As the importance of open source grew, Microsoft embraced it and even acquired GitHub, a home to open source programmers and a place where they built and stored their code. Nearly every new generation of technology -- even online search engines -- has faced similar legal challenges. Often, "there is no statute or case law that covers it," said Bradley J. Hulbert, an intellectual property lawyer who specializes in this increasingly important area of the law.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Microsoft has warned that malicious hackers are exploiting a discontinued web server found in common Internet of Things (IoT) devices to target organizations in the energy sector. In an analysis published on Tuesday, Microsoft researchers said they had discovered a vulnerable open-source component in the Boa web server, which is still widely used in a range of routers and security cameras, as well as popular software development kits (SDKs), despite the software's retirement in 2005. The technology giant identified the component while investigating a suspected Indian electric grid intrusion first detailed by Recorded Future in April, where Chinese state-sponsored attackers used IoT devices to gain a foothold on operational technology (OT) networks, used to monitor and control physical industrial systems.

Microsoft said it has identified one million internet-exposed Boa server components globally over the span of a one-week period, warning that the vulnerable component poses a "supply chain risk that may affect millions of organizations and devices." The company added that it continues to see attackers attempting to exploit Boa flaws, which include a high-severity information disclosure bug (CVE-2021-33558) and another arbitrary file access flaw (CVE-2017-9833). "The known [vulnerabilities] impacting such components can allow an attacker to collect information about network assets before initiating attacks, and to gain access to a network undetected by obtaining valid credentials," Microsoft said, adding that this can allow the attackers to have a "much greater impact" once the attack is initiated. "The company has warned that mitigating these Boa flaws is difficult due to both the continued popularity of the now-defunct web server and the complex nature of how it is built into the IoT device supply chain," reports TechCrunch. "Microsoft recommends that organizations and network operators patch vulnerable devices where possible, identify devices with vulnerable components, and to configure detection rules to identify malicious activity."

Frederick P. Brooks Jr., whose innovative work in computer design and software engineering helped shape the field of computer science, died on Thursday at his home in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 91. His death was confirmed by his son, Roger, who said Dr. Brooks had been in declining health since having a stroke two years ago. The New York Times reports: Dr. Brooks had a wide-ranging career that included creating the computer science department at the University of North Carolina and leading influential research in computer graphics and virtual reality. But he is best known for being one of the technical leaders of IBM's 360 computer project in the 1960s. At a time when smaller rivals like Burroughs, Univac and NCR were making inroads, it was a hugely ambitious undertaking. Fortune magazine, in an article with the headline "IBM's $5,000,000,000 Gamble," described it as a "bet the company" venture.

Until the 360, each model of computer had its own bespoke hardware design. That required engineers to overhaul their software programs to run on every new machine that was introduced. But IBM promised to eliminate that costly, repetitive labor with an approach championed by Dr. Brooks, a young engineering star at the company, and a few colleagues. In April 1964, IBM announced the 360 as a family of six compatible computers. Programs written for one 360 model could run on the others, without the need to rewrite software, as customers moved from smaller to larger computers. The shared design across several machines was described in a paper, written by Dr. Brooks and his colleagues Gene Amdahl and Gerrit Blaauw, titled "Architecture of the IBM System/360." "That was a breakthrough in computer architecture that Fred Brooks led," Richard Sites, a computer designer who studied under Dr. Brooks, said in an interview.

But there was a problem. The software needed to deliver on the IBM promise of compatibility across machines and the capability to run multiple programs at once was not ready, as it proved to be a far more daunting challenge than anticipated. Operating system software is often described as the command and control system of a computer. The OS/360 was a forerunner of Microsoft's Windows, Apple's iOS and Google's Android. At the time IBM made the 360 announcement, Dr. Brooks was just 33 and headed for academia. He had agreed to return to North Carolina, where he grew up, and start a computer science department at Chapel Hill. But Thomas Watson Jr., the president of IBM, asked him to stay on for another year to tackle the company's software troubles. Dr. Brooks agreed, and eventually the OS/360 problems were sorted out. The 360 project turned out to be an enormous success, cementing the company's dominance of the computer market into the 1980s. "Fred Brooks was a brilliant scientist who changed computing," Arvind Krishna, IBM's chief executive and himself a computer scientist, said in a statement. "We are indebted to him for his pioneering contributions to the industry."

Dr. Brooks published a book in 1975 titled, "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering." It was "a quirky classic, selling briskly year after year and routinely cited as gospel by computer scientists," reports the Times.

The U.S. Navy was found guilty of piracy and is ordered to pay a software company $154,400 for a lawsuit filed back in 2016. Gizmodo reports: The company, Bitmanagement Software GmbH, filed a complaint against the Navy, accusing the military branch of copyright infringement. GmbH claimed they had issued 38 copies of their 3D virtual reality software, BS Contact Geo, but while they were still in negotiations for additional licenses, the Navy installed the software onto at least 558,466 machines between 2013 and 2015. In the court filing (PDF), GmbH claimed, "Without Bitmanagement's advance knowledge or consent, the Navy installed BS Contact Go onto hundreds of thousands of computers. Bitmanagement did not license or otherwise authorize these uses of its software, and the Navy has never compensated Bitmanagement for these uses of Bitmanagement's software."

The company sued the Navy for nearly $600 million for "willful copyright infringement" of the software which, according to the vendor's website, is a 3D viewer that "enables you to visualize and interact with state of the art 2D/3D content," and is based on digital data captured from "various sources (land surveys, CAD, satellite imagery, airborne laser scanning, etc)." The court filings stated that after GmbH filed the lawsuit in July 2016, the Navy uninstalled the BS Contact Geo software from all of its computers and "subsequently reinstalled the software on 34 seats, for inventory purposes." GmbH wrote in the court filing, "The government knew or should have known that it was required to obtain a license for copying Bitmanagement software onto each of the devices that had Bitmanagement software installed. The government nonetheless failed to obtain such licenses."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) for running GNU/Linux environments on Windows 10 and Windows 11 has reached version 1.0.0 and is now generally available. Microsoft has been building WSL, including its own custom Linux kernel, for several years now. At first, WSL and WSL2 were an optional component within Windows, but last October Microsoft made the preview WSL available in the Microsoft Store as a separate app. The Store version could deliver users -- mostly developers and IT pros -- faster updates and features independently of updates to Windows.

As well as WSL shedding the "preview" label, Microsoft is making the WSL app from the Store the default for new users. As Microsoft noted last October at the release of Windows 11, the long term plan was to move WSL users to the Store version. However, Windows 11 still supported the "inbox version" of WSL while it continued developing the Store version. With this release, Microsoft is backporting WSL functionality to Windows 10 and 11 to make the Store version of WSL the default experience. The latest backport is available to "seekers" who click "Check for Updates" in Windows Settings, but in mid-December it will be pushed automatically to devices. The updates are available for Windows 10 version 21H1, 21H2, or 22H2, or on Windows 11 21H2 with all of the November updates applied.

Microsoft detailed a number of changes to commands now that the Store version of WSL is the default version, noting "wsl.exe --install will now automatically install the Store version of WSL, and will no longer enable the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" optional component, or install the WSL kernel or WSLg MSI packages as they are no longer needed." The virtual machine platform optional component will still be enabled, and by default Ubuntu will still be installed. One of the main new additions to WSL 1.0 is that users can opt in to support for systemd, the at-one-point maligned Linux system and service manager, which runs by default in several Linux distros, including Ubuntu and Debian. Also, Windows 10 users can use Linux GUI apps, a capability that was previously exclusive to Windows 11 users.

Twitch is cracking down on accounts belonging to users under the age of 13 as part of its efforts to protect children on the platform. From a report: In a post on Twitch's safety center, the Amazon-owned company announced that it's improving its methods for detecting and terminating the accounts belonging to young users and is also working on ways to block users who were previously suspended for being under 13. These changes come after a report from Bloomberg revealed rampant child predation on the platform. The report, first published in September, analyzed 1,976 accounts on Twitch with follower lists made up of 70 percent or more users who are kids or young teenagers. According to Bloomberg, a total of 279,016 children were targeted by these alleged predators on Twitch.

In addition to "expanding the signals" it uses to catch and block users under the age of 13, Twitch is going to introduce mandatory phone verification requirements to "potentially vulnerable accounts" before they can start livestreaming. While Twitch doesn't expand on how it will identify these accounts, it says this should help the platform prevent young users who lie about their age from becoming exposed to child predators during livestreams.

Can a change in the weather trigger a landslide? Sometimes, yes, according to research. From a report: Most landslides are set in motion by an earthquake or torrential rain, but some have no obvious trigger. In 2009, scientists were stunned to discover that the stop-start Slumgullion landslide in the Rocky Mountains -- which has been inching down the hillside for 700 years -- is triggered by changes in atmospheric pressure. So is Slumgullion a rare exception? To find out, scientists fed weather and landslide data from Taiwan -- whose typhoons and steep hills create a perfect natural landslide laboratory -- into a landslide model. Their results, which are published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, demonstrate that when the eye of a storm passes over a hillside, the change in atmospheric pressure can provide the final push, but its ability to do this depends upon the weather over the preceding months.

Shipments of integrated and discrete graphics processing units dropped to a 10-year low in the third quarter as PC OEMs reduced procurements of CPUs, and gamers lowered their purchases of existing graphics cards while waiting for next-generation products. From a report: In contrast, miners ceased to buy graphics boards due to changes that happened to Ethereum. In general, sales of standalone graphics cards for desktops hit a multi-year low. Usually, PC makers increase procurement of PC hardware components in the third quarter as they assemble computers to sell them in back-to-school and holiday seasons when sales are high. But as demand for PCs softened recently, manufacturers initiated inventory corrections and lowered their components buying to sell off what they already have. As a result, sales of integrated and discrete GPU dropped to 75.5 million units in Q3 2022, down 10.5% sequentially and 25.1% year-over-year, according to Jon Peddie Research. In addition, shipments of desktop GPUs fell by 15.43%, and notebook GPUs decreased by 30%, which is the most significant drop since the 2009 recession, JPR notes.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In April 1992, Vanessa Williams' "Save the Best for Last" topped the Billboard 100, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was running for the White House, "Who's the Boss?" aired its final episode, and the babies born to Rachel and Philip Ridgeway a couple of weeks ago were frozen as embryos. Born on October 31, Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway were born from what may be the longest-frozen embryos to ever result in a live birth, according to the National Embryo Donation Center. The previous known record holder was Molly Gibson, born in 2020 from an embryo that had been frozen for nearly 27 years. Molly took the record from her sister Emma, who was born from an embryo that had been frozen for 24 years. It's possible an older frozen embryo may have been used; although the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks success rates and data around reproductive technologies, it does not track how long embryos have been frozen. But there's no evidence of an older embryo resulting in a live birth.

"There is something mind-boggling about it," Philip Ridgeway said as he and his wife cradled their newborns in their laps at their home outside Portland, Oregon. "I was 5 years old when God gave life to Lydia and Timothy, and he's been preserving that life ever since. In a sense, they're our oldest children, even though they're our smallest children," Ridgeway added. The Ridgeways have four other children, ages 8, 6, 3 and almost 2, none conceived via IVF or donors. The embryos were created for an anonymous married couple using in-vitro fertilization. The husband was in his early 50s, and they used a 34-year-old egg donor. The embryos were frozen on April 22, 1992.

The Securities and Exchange Commission was seeking information from collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX earlier this year, the Prospect reported Wednesday, bringing a new perspective to an effort by a bipartisan group of congressmembers to slow down that investigation. From the report: The March letter [PDF] from eight House members -- four Democrats and four Republicans -- questioned the SEC's authority to make informal inquiries to crypto and blockchain companies, and intimated that the requests violated federal law. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), whom the Republican caucus just elected as majority whip, the number three position in the House GOP leadership, led the letter. In a contemporaneous Twitter thread, Emmer wrote: "My office has received numerous tips from crypto and blockchain firms that SEC Chair Gary Gensler's information reporting 'requests' to the crypto community are overburdensome, don't feel particularly ... voluntary ... and are stifling innovation."

We now know that FTX was one of those firms receiving information requests from the SEC, about the very activities that have brought down the firm. This raises the question of whether Emmer and the other congressmembers were acting on behalf of FTX (which has been credibly accused of snatching customer money to make risky bets) to try to chill an ongoing investigation from an independent regulatory and law enforcement agency. Some of the "Blockchain Eight," as the Prospect termed them in March, have benefited from crypto largesse. Five of the eight members received campaign donations from FTX employees, ranging from $2,900 to $11,600. Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC), one of the signatories, received half a million dollars in support from a Super PAC created by FTX co-CEO Ryan Salame.

Mercedes is the latest manufacturer to lock auto features behind a subscription fee, with an upcoming "Acceleration Increase" add-on that lets drivers pay to access motor performance their vehicle is already capable of. From a report: The $1,200 yearly subscription improves performance by boosting output from the motors by 20-24 percent, increasing torque, and shaving around 0.8 to 0.9 seconds off 0-60 mph acceleration when in Dynamic drive mode. The subscription doesn't come with any physical hardware upgrades -- instead, it simply unlocks the full capabilities of the vehicle, indicating that Mercedes intentionally limited performance to later sell as an optional extra. Acceleration Increase is only available for the Mercedes-EQ EQE and Mercedes-EQ EQS electric car models. As global sales for new cars have fallen in recent years, car manufacturers have pivoted toward selling software updates and features as subscriptions to generate a continuous revenue stream long after a car has been purchased.

Perfect referees are a soccer fan's nightmare, it is increasingly appearing. From a report: The past four years have smoothed out some of those early kinks. Offside calls are now hyper-accurate and semiautomated. And VAR really has done some good: It has eliminated the worst officiating mistakes and ensured that we will not see another hand of God-type abomination, in which a particularly egregious bit of foul play somehow goes unspotted and changes the course of a match. Even so, you'd be hard-pressed to find a soccer fan who thinks VAR is great as is. The Ecuador-Qatar decision is a clear example of why. It was, in the narrowest, most annoying sense, the correct decision. To the naked eye, or even to those watching a television replay, the infraction was virtually invisible amid the chaos. But VAR spotted it.

Congratulations, officials -- you got it right. But for what? Sports are, in the end, entertainment, and officiating must always be a balance between accuracy and watchability. If the former were our only and ultimate concern, we would put every potential infraction under the microscope ... and the game would be utterly unwatchable. The plays that officials review -- that they ought to review -- are the ones where the call, if allowed to stand, would seem genuinely unfair. No one (except maybe the opposing team's fans) likes to see a legitimate-looking goal disallowed. When Valencia's header found the net, he and his teammates did not delay their celebration. The Qatari players did not turn to the referee in protest. The fans did not hesitate to lose their minds. Not even the commentators seemed to have considered the possibility that the goal might not stand, and so television audiences didn't either. No one was asking for this. Had the game proceeded, no one would have thought twice.

VAR is useful only insofar as it makes soccer better for the fans. It can do that only if it can alert them that a check is under way soon enough and return a verdict fast enough that it doesn't make celebrating goals impossible for fear of a reversal. It should rule out only those goals where, when you look back at the replay, people might reasonably think, Yeah, that's offside. Some sort of modified tie-goes-to-the-runner rule would help here by eliminating the scourge of the "toenail offside." You could even give the attacker a buffer of a foot or two.