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BrianFagioli writes: Canonical has officially released the optimized Ubuntu 24.04 image for the Milk-V Mars, a credit-card-sized RISC-V single board computer (SBC) developed by Shenzhen MilkV Technology Co., Ltd. The Milk-V Mars is the world's first high-performance RISC-V SBC of its size. Powered by the StarFive JH7110 quad-core processor, the board is equipped with up to 8GB of LPDDR4 memory and supports various modern interfaces, including USB 3.0, HDMI 2.0 for 4K output, and Ethernet with PoE capabilities. It also offers comprehensive expansion options with M.2 E-Key and extensive MIPI CSI channels, making it an ideal choice for developers and tech enthusiasts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russia may charge domestic companies to use foreign software, the TASS news agency quoted Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadaev as saying on Tuesday, as Moscow seeks to cut dependency on foreign technology and bolster its own. From a report: President Vladimir Putin has made achieving technological independence a key goal, as Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine seek to hamstring Moscow's ability to acquire technology and equipment from abroad that could help it on the battlefield. As part of that push, Putin signed a decree in early May which stated that at least 80% of Russian companies in key economic sectors should transition to using Russian-made software by 2030. Many Russian companies still use foreign software in their daily operations, although an EU sanctions package passed last December prohibits companies from supplying enterprise and design-related software to Russia. Shadaev said that introducing a levy on Russian firms would "equalise" foreign and Russian software.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) showcased a remote-controlled robot on Tuesday that will retrieve small pieces of melted fuel debris from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant later this year. The robot, developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, features an extendable pipe and tongs capable of picking up granule-sized debris. TEPCO plans to remove less than 3 grams of debris during the test at the No. 2 reactor, marking the first such operation since the 2011 meltdown caused by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami. The removal of the estimated 880 tons of highly radioactive melted fuel from the three damaged reactors is crucial for the plant's decommissioning, which critics say may take longer than the government's 30-40 year target.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fintech firm Klarna, one of the early adopters of generative AI said on Tuesday it is using AI for purposes such as running marketing campaigns and generating images, saving about $10 million in costs annually. From a report: The company has cut its sales and marketing budget by 11% in the first quarter, with AI responsible for 37% of the cost savings, while increasing the number of campaigns, the company said. Using GenAI tools like Midjourney, DALL-E, and Firefly for image generation, Klarna said it has reduced image production costs by $6 million.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Commercial dot-matrix printing was yet another arena in which the needs of Chinese character I/O were not accounted for. This is witnessed most clearly in the then-dominant configuration of printer heads -- specifically the 9-pin printer heads found in mass-manufactured dot-matrix printers during the 1970s. Using nine pins, these early dot-matrix printers were able to produce low-resolution Latin alphabet bitmaps with just one pass of the printer head. The choice of nine pins, in other words, was "tuned" to the needs of Latin alphabetic script. These same printer heads were incapable of printing low-resolution Chinese character bitmaps using anything less than two full passes of the printer head, one below the other. Two-pass printing dramatically increased the time needed to print Chinese as compared to English, however, and introduced graphical inaccuracies, whether due to inconsistencies in the advancement of the platen or uneven ink registration (that is, characters with differing ink densities on their upper and lower halves). Compounding these problems, Chinese characters printed in this way were twice the height of English words. This created comically distorted printouts in which English words appeared austere and economical, while Chinese characters appeared grotesquely oversized. Not only did this waste paper, but it left Chinese-language documents looking something like large-print children's books. When consumers in the Chinese-Japanese-Korean (CJK) world began to import Western-manufactured dot-matrix printers, then, they faced yet another facet of Latin alphabetic bias.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The WeWork founder Adam Neumann has shelved his bid to acquire the bankrupt shared office space provider. From a report: It emerged earlier this year that Neumann, who was ousted from the business in 2019 following a botched attempt to take it public on the stock market, was seeking to buy the business. His new real estate venture, Flow Global, submitted a bid of more than $500m to take over WeWork and its assets. On Tuesday morning, however, Neumann confirmed that Flow was walking away from his dream to take back control of the firm. "For several months, we tried to work constructively with WeWork to create a strategy that would allow it to thrive," he told DealBook. "Instead, the company looks to be emerging from bankruptcy with a plan that appears unrealistic and unlikely to succeed." WeWork, with over $13bn in long-term leases, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last November in order to renegotiate these agreements. At its peak, the company had been valued at $47bn as investors including the Japanese multinational SoftBank lined up to back it. As it prepared to go public in 2019, however, analysts gave it a far lower valuation. After it eventually went public, in 2021, its market valuation tumbled to less than $50m.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Just before Microsoft closed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it said that it would take some time to bring the publisher's titles to Game Pass. We've only seen one such addition so far in the form of Diablo IV, but the company has announced another, somewhat notable one. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be available on Game Pass on its release day later this year. Microsoft is banking on the debut of a new Call of Duty title on its subscription service leading to a significant bump in the number of Game Pass members. It's a bit of a gamble, as for nearly every year in recent memory, the latest Call of Duty release has been the best-selling game. Microsoft is likely to see lower direct sales of Black Ops 6 on Xbox and PC, though it will still generate revenue from Game Pass and the PlayStation version (and perhaps even a Nintendo Switch release), as well as through microtransactions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Biden administration on Tuesday laid out for the first time [PDF] a set of broad government guidelines around the use of carbon offsets in an attempt to shore up confidence in a method for tackling global warming that has faced growing criticism. From a report: Companies and individuals spent $1.7 billion last year voluntarily buying carbon offsets, which are intended to cancel out the climate effects of activities like air travel by funding projects elsewhere, such as the planting of trees, that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but that wouldn't have happened without the extra money. Yet a growing number of studies and reports have found that many carbon offsets simply don't work. Some offsets help fund wind or solar projects that likely would have been built anyway. And it's often extremely difficult to measure the effectiveness of offsets intended to protect forests. As a result, some scientists and researchers have argued that carbon offsets are irredeemably flawed and should be abandoned altogether. Instead, they say, companies should just focus on directly cutting their own emissions. The Biden administration is now weighing in on this debate, saying that offsets can sometimes be an important tool for helping businesses and others reduce their emissions, as long as there are guardrails in place. The new federal guidelines are an attempt to define "high-integrity" offsets as those that deliver real and quantifiable emissions reductions that wouldn't have otherwise taken place. [...] The new federal guidelines also urge businesses to focus first on reducing emissions within their own supply chains as much as possible before buying carbon offsets. Some companies have complained that it is too difficult to control their sprawling network of outside suppliers and that they should be allowed to use carbon offsets to tackle pollution associated with, for instance, the cement or steel they use.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sales of SUVs hit a new record in 2023, making up half of all new cars sold globally, data has revealed. Experts warned that the rising sales of the large, heavy vehicles is pushing up the carbon emissions that drive global heating. From a report: The analysis, by the International Energy Agency, found that the rising emissions from SUVs in 2023 made up 20% of the global increase in CO2, making the vehicles a major cause of the intensifying climate crisis. If SUVs were a country, the IEA said, they would be the world's fifth-largest emitter of CO2, ahead of the national emissions of both Japan and Germany. Climate-fuelled extreme weather is increasing, with urgent cuts in emissions needed. But emissions from the global transport sector have risen fast in recent years, outside of the Covid pandemic. SUV sales rose 15% in 2023, compared with a 3% rise for conventional cars. There were more than 360m SUVs on the roads worldwide in 2023, producing 1bn tonnes of CO2 emissions, up about 10% on 2022. As a result, global oil consumption rose by 600,000 barrels a day, more than a quarter of total growth in oil demand, the IEA said. SUVs weigh 200-300kg more than an average medium-sized car and emit about 20% more CO2. In rich countries, almost 20m new SUVs were sold in 2023, surpassing a market share of 50% for the first time. Globally, 48% of new cars were SUVs and, including older cars, one in four cars on the road today are SUVs, according to the IEA.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US stock market is finally as fast as it was about a hundred years ago. Bloomberg News: That was the last time share trades in New York settled in a single day, as they will from Tuesday under new Securities and Exchange Commission rules. The change, halving the time it takes to complete every transaction, also occurred in jurisdictions including Canada and Mexico on Monday. The switch to the system known as T+1 -- abandoned in the earlier era as volumes became unwieldy -- is ultimately intended to reduce risk in the financial system. Yet there are worries about potential teething issues, including that international investors may struggle to source dollars on time, global funds will move at different speeds to their assets, and everyone will have less time to fix errors. The hope is that everything will run smoothly, but even the SEC said last week the transition may lead to a "short-term uptick in settlement fails and challenges to a small segment of market participants." The finance world's main industry group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, has instigated what it calls the T+1 Command Center to identify problems and coordinate a response. Firms across the spectrum have been preparing for months, relocating staff, adjusting shifts and overhauling workflows, and many say they're confident in their own readiness. The worry is whether every other counterparty and intermediary is similarly organized.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PayPal hopes to boost its growth by starting an ad network [non-paywalled link] juiced with something it already owns: data on its millions of users. From a report: The digital payments company plans to build an ad sales business around the reams of data it generates from tracking the purchases as well as the broader spending behaviors of millions of consumers who use its services, which include the more socially-enabled Venmo app. PayPal has hired Mark Grether, who formerly led Uber's advertising business, to lead the effort as senior vice president and general manager of its newly-created PayPal Ads division. In his new role, he will be responsible for developing new ad formats, overseeing sales and hiring staff to fill out the division, he said. PayPal in January introduced Advanced Offers, its first ad product, which uses AI and the company's data to help merchants target PayPal users with discounts and other personalized promotions. Advanced Offers only charges advertisers when consumers make a purchase. Online marketplaces eBay and Zazzle have begun testing it, according to a PayPal spokesman. But PayPal now aims to sell ads not only to its own customers, but to so-called non-endemic advertisers, or those that don't sell products or services through PayPal. Those companies might use PayPal data to target consumers with ads that could be displayed elsewhere, for instance, on other websites or connected TV sets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

T-Mobile said Tuesday that it plans to acquire most of U.S. Cellular, including stores, some of the wireless operator's spectrum and its customers, in a deal worth $4.4 billion. The deal includes cash and up to $2 billion of debt. From a report: T-Mobile said it will use U.S. Cellular wireless spectrum to improve coverage in rural areas while offering better connectivity to U.S. Cellular customers around the United States. The company said it will allow U.S. Cellular customers to keep their current plans or switch to a T-Mobile plan. U.S. Cellular will retain some of its wireless spectrum and towers and will lease space on at least 2,100 additional towers to T-Mobile. The companies expect the deal to close in mid-2025.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI said on Tuesday that it has begun training a new flagship AI model that would succeed the GPT-4 technology that drives its popular online chatbot, ChatGPT. From a report: The San Francisco start-up, which is one of the world's leading A.I. companies, said in a blog post that it expects the new model to bring "the next level of capabilities" as it strives to build "artificial general intelligence," or A.G.I., a machine that can do anything the human brain can do. The new model would be an engine for A.I. products including chatbots, digital assistants akin to Apple's Siri, search engines and image generators. OpenAI also said it was creating a new Safety and Security Committee to explore how it should handle the risks posed by the new model and future technologies. "While we are proud to build and release models that are industry-leading on both capabilities and safety, we welcome a robust debate at this important moment," the company said. OpenAI is aiming to move A.I. technology forward faster than its rivals, while also appeasing critics who say the technology is becoming increasingly dangerous, helping to spread disinformation, replace jobs and even threaten humanity. Experts disagree on when tech companies will reach artificial general intelligence, but companies including OpenAI, Google, Meta and Microsoft have steadily increased the power of A.I. technologies for more than a decade, demonstrating a noticeable leap roughly every two to three years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YouTube's latest move against ad blockers involves skipping videos straight to the end or muting audio for users with ad blockers enabled, according to user reports. This follows previous tests by the Google-owned platform, including blocking playback after three videos and slowing down load times for ad-blocker users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A hacker group called RansomHub said it was behind the cyberattack that hit the Christie's website just days before its marquee spring sales began, forcing the auction house to resort to alternatives to online bidding. From a report: In a post on the dark web on Monday, the group claimed that it had gained access to sensitive information about the world's wealthiest art collectors, posting only a few examples of names and birthdays. It was not immediately possible to verify RansomHub's claims, but several cybersecurity experts said they were a known ransomware operation and that the claim was plausible. Nor was it clear if the hackers had gained access to more sensitive information, including financial data and client addresses. The group said it would release the data, posting a countdown timer that would reach zero by the end of May. At Christie's, a spokesman said in a statement, "Our investigations determined there was unauthorized access by a third party to parts of Christie's network." The spokesman, Edward Lewine, said that the investigations "also determined that the group behind the incident took some limited amount of personal data relating to some of our clients." He added, "There is no evidence that any financial or transactional records were compromised." Hackers said that Christie's failed to pay a ransom when one was demanded.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Similar to the GCC compiler dropping support for the Xeon Phi Knights Mill and Knights Landing accelerators a few days ago, Intel has also gone ahead and seen to the removal of Xeon Phi support for the LLVM/Clang 19 compiler. Since earlier this year in LLVM/Clang 18 the Xeon Phi Knights Mill and Knights Landing support was treated as deprecated. Now for the LLVM 19 release due out around September, the support is removed entirely. This aligns with GCC 14 having deprecated Xeon Phi support too and now in GCC 15 Git having the code removed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Witnessing the blood-red fires of a volcanic eruption on Earth is memorable. But to see molten rock bleed out of a volcano on a different planet would be extraordinary. That is close to what scientists have spotted on Venus: two vast, sinuous lava flows oozing from two different corners of Earth's planetary neighbor. From a report: "After you see something like this, the first reaction is 'wow,'" said Davide Sulcanese, a doctoral student at the Universita d'Annunzio in Pescara, Italy, and an author of a study reporting the discovery in the journal Nature Astronomy, published on Monday. Earth and Venus were forged at the same time. Both are made of the same primeval matter, and both are the same age and size. So why is Earth a paradise overflowing with water and life, while Venus is a scorched hellscape with acidic skies? Volcanic eruptions tinker with planetary atmospheres. One theory holds that, eons ago, several apocalyptic eruptions set off a runaway greenhouse effect on Venus, turning it from a temperate, waterlogged world into an arid desert of burned glass. To better understand its volcanism, scientists hoped to catch a Venusian eruption in the act. But although the planet is known to be smothered in volcanoes, an opaque atmosphere has prevented anyone from seeing an eruption the way spacecraft have spotted them on Io, the hypervolcanic moon of Jupiter. In the 1990s, NASA's spacecraft Magellan used cloud-penetrating radar to survey most of the planet. But back then, the relatively low-resolution images made spotting fresh molten rock a troublesome task.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Retailers are being urged to stop making everyday products such as drinks bottles, outdoor furniture and toys out of brightly coloured plastic after researchers found it degrades into microplastics faster than plainer colours. From a report: Red, blue and green plastic became "very brittle and fragmented," while black, white and silver samples were "largely unaffected" over a three-year period, according to the findings of the University of Leicester-led project. The scale of environmental pollution caused by plastic waste means that microplastics, or tiny plastic particles, are everywhere. Indeed, they were recently found in human testicles, with scientists suggesting a possible link to declining sperm counts in men. In this case, scientists from the UK and the University of Cape Town in South Africa used complementary studies to show that plastics of the same composition degrade at different rates depending on the colour. The UK researchers put bottle lids of various colours on the roof of a university building to be exposed to the sun and the elements for three years. The South African study used plastic items found on a remote beach. "It's amazing that samples left to weather on a rooftop in Leicester and those collected on a windswept beach at the southern tip of the African continent show similar results," said Dr Sarah Key, who led the project. "What the experiments showed is that even in a relatively cool and cloudy environment for only three years, huge differences can be seen in the formation of microplastics." This field study, published in the journal Environmental Pollution, is the first such proof of this effect. It suggests that retailers and manufacturers should give more consideration to the colour of short-lived plastics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has announced Auto SR, an AI-powered image upscaling solution for Windows 11 on Arm devices. The feature, exclusive to Qualcomm's Snapdragon X CPUs, aims to enhance gaming performance on ARM-based systems. Auto SR, however, comes with notable restrictions, including compatibility limitations with certain DirectX versions and the inability to work simultaneously with HDR.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Millions of Americans face the threat of dangerous heatwaves in the coming weeks with another summer of record-breaking temperatures forecast to hit the US. From a report: Most of New Mexico and Utah -- alongside parts of Arizona, Texas and Colorado -- have the highest chance (60% to 70%) of seeing hotter-than-average summer temperatures, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). In addition, the entire north-east -- from Maine down to Pennsylvania and New Jersey -- as well as a large stretch from Louisiana to Arizona, Washington and Idaho, have a 40% to 50% chance of experiencing above-average temperatures from June through August. Only south-west Alaska is expected to have below-normal temperatures. "We can expect another dangerous hot summer season, with daily records already being broken in parts of Texas and Florida," said Kristy Dahl, principal climate scientist for the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "As we warm the planet, we are going to see climate disasters pile up and compound against each other because of the lack of resilience in our infrastructure and government systems." Texas has already been hit with a series of tornadoes, unprecedented floods and record-breaking temperatures. Earlier in May, temperatures spiked as hundreds of thousands of households around Houston were left without power after a destructive storm killed at least seven people and damaged transmission towers and power lines.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vice President Kamala Harris has announced the formation of a new partnership to help provide internet access to 80% of Africa by 2030, up from roughly 40% now. From a report: The announcement comes as follow-through on Harris' visit to the continent last year and in conjunction with this week's visit to Washington by Kenyan President William Ruto. Harris and the Kenyan leader had a public chat on Friday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about how public-private partnerships can increase economic growth. "Many could rightly argue that the future is on the continent of Africa," said Harris, noting that the median age in Africa is 19, a sign of the potential for economic growth. "It is not about, and simply about aid, but about investment and understanding the capacity that exists." Africa has struggled to obtain the capital needed to build up its industrial and technological sectors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bungie has won a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against cheat maker Phoenix Digital.AFrom a report: The case was potentially the first-ever video game cheating jury trial and resulted in Bungie winning $63,210 in damages from Phoenix Digital,Awhich isAalso known as Aimjunkies. While cheating in a game is not illegal, Bungie was able to sue the cheat maker under the argument that reverse engineering the game, specifically Destiny 2, to find those cheats violates the company's copyright. In this case,APCGamer notesAthat Aimjunkies also accused Bungie of violating its copyright by accessing one of its employees' computers,Asomething Bungie argued was just part of its normal detection process for cheating and is covered by the game's EULA. The judge rejected Aimjunkies' claim.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A North Korean rocket carrying its second spy satellite exploded midair on Monday, state media reported, after its neighbors strongly rebuked its planned launch. From a report: The North's official Korean Central News Agency said it launched a spy satellite aboard a new rocket at its main northwestern space center. But KCNA said the rocket blew up during a first-stage flight soon after liftoff due to a suspected engine problem. Earlier Monday, North Korea had notified Japan's coast guard about its plans to launch "a satellite rocket," with a warning to exercise caution in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and China and east of the main Philippine island of Luzon during a launch window from Monday through June 3. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff later said it detected a launch trajectory believed to be of a spy satellite fired from the North's main space center at 10:44 p.m. on Monday. Four minutes later, many fragments were spotted in the waters, it said. Japanese Prime Minister's Office earlier issued a missile alert for the island of Okinawa following North Korea's launch. The alert was lifted soon after. Japan's NHK public television earlier reported that an image captured by a camera in northeastern China showed an orange light in the sky and then an apparent explosion a moment later.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft says the Cortana, Tips, and WordPad applications will be automatically removed on systems upgraded to the upcoming Windows 11 24H2 release. From a report: This was shared in a Thursday blog announcing that Windows 11, version 24H2 (Build 26100.712) is now available for Insiders in the Release Preview Channel. The company removed the Cortana standalone app from Windows 11 in preview build 25967 for Insiders, released in the Canary Channel in early October. It first announced that it would end support for Cortana in a support document published in June and deprecated it in another Canary build in August. In September, Microsoft announced that it would deprecate WordPad -- automatically installed on Windows systems for 28 years, since 1995, and an optional Windows feature since the Windows 10 Insider Build 19551 release in February 2020 -- with a future Windows update. In November, the company also informed users that the Tips app was deprecated and would be removed in a future Windows release.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: As denizens of the Internet, we have all often seen a news item so ridiculous it caused us to think, "This seems like an Onion headline." But as real human beings, most of us have the ability to discern between reality and satire. Unfortunately, Google's newly launched "AI Overview" lacks that crucial ability. The feature, which launched less than two weeks ago (with no way for users to opt-out), provides answers to certain queries at the top of the page above any other online resources. The artificial intelligence creates its answers from knowledge it has synthesized from around the web, which would be great, except not everything on the Internet is true or accurate. Obviously. Ben Collins, one of the new owners of our former sister site, pointed out some of AI Overview's most egregious errors on his social media. Asked "how many rocks should I eat each day," Overview said that geologists recommend eating "at least one small rock a day." That language was of course pulled almost word-for-word from a 2021 Onion headline. Another search, "what color highlighters do the CIA use," prompted Overview to answer "black," which was an Onion joke from 2005.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China has set up its third planned state-backed investment fund to boost its semiconductor industry, with a registered capital of 344 billion yuan ($47.5 billion), according to a filing with a government-run companies registry. Reuters: The hundreds of billions of yuan invested in the sector puts into perspective President Xi Jinping's drive to achieve self-sufficiency for China in semiconductors. That commitment has taken on renewed urgency after the U.S. imposed a series of export control measures over the last couple of years, citing fears Beijing could use advanced chips to boost its military capabilities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nashville-based Yoshi Mobility launched in 2015 to deliver gasoline to vehicle owners, reports Forbes. But this week the company announced they'll begin converting GM electric delivery vans into "mobile EV superchargers" - fast, battery-powered 240 kw DC chargers - for corporate fleets of electric cars."There's kind of this critical grid problem and so we think that we can accelerate towards an EV future and this is a unique way that we can do it," said [cofounder/CEO Bryan] Frist in an interview. "The mobile charger can charge and then it can multiplex all the spots. So we tell people, it can electrify every spot in your parking lot." Each mobile supercharger can service between five and seven vehicles according to Frist. With perhaps two superchargers operating on a fleet operator's lot, one would service a vehicle while the other supercharger would replenish its own charge off the grid and they would alternate, according to Frist. "What we say is we can do that same charge instead of three and a half hours, we can do in 10 minutes, and we can move around your lot," Frist says. "You don't have to put in all the infrastructure. You don't have to build it out. You just contract with us." The company plans to begin with a "handful" of mobile superchargers in [GM's] BrightDrop vans but expects to ramp up production and begin commercializing more widely during the first quarter of 2025... The mobile superchargers will complement Yoshi Mobility's existing offering of high-capacity mobile generators that sit on a fleet operator's lot putting out as much as a megawatt of power and can service a larger number of vehicles than the mobile units.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Studies show ultraprocessed food "encourages overeating but may leave the eater undernourished," writes Ars Technica. But the food industry's response has been "a ferocious campaign against regulation."In part it has used the same lobbying playbook as its fight against labeling and taxation of "junk food" high in calories: big spending to influence policymakers. FT analysis of US lobbying data from non-profit Open Secrets found that food and soft drinks-related companies spent $106 million on lobbying in 2023, almost twice as much as the tobacco and alcohol industries combined. Last year's spend was 21 percent higher than in 2020, with the increase driven largely by lobbying relating to food processing as well as sugar. In an echo of tactics employed by cigarette companies, the food industry has also attempted to stave off regulation by casting doubt on the research of scientists like [Brazilian nutritional scientist Carlos] Monteiro. "The strategy I see the food industry using is deny, denounce, and delay," says Barry Smith, director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London and a consultant for companies on the multisensory experience of food and drink. So far the strategy has proved successful. Just a handful of countries, including Belgium, Israel, and Brazil, currently refer to UPFs in their dietary guidelines. But as the weight of evidence about UPFs grows, public health experts say the only question now is how, if at all, it is translated into regulation. "There's scientific agreement on the science," says Jean Adams, professor of dietary public health at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. "It's how to interpret that to make a policy that people aren't sure of." [...] As researchers have learned more about the link between UPFs and poor health outcomes, companies have remained largely silent about these risks, leaving trade bodies that advocate on their behalf to argue loudly against the validity of the research.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"About 1 in 9 children in the U.S., between the ages of 3 and 17, have been diagnosed with ADHD," reports NPR:That's according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that calls attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder an "expanding public health concern." Researchers found that in 2022, 7.1 million kids and adolescents in the U.S. had received an ADHD diagnosis - a million more children than in 2016. That jump in diagnoses was not surprising, given that the data was collected during the pandemic, says Melissa Danielson, a statistician with the CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities and the study's lead author. She notes that other studies have found that many children experienced heightened stress, depression and anxiety during the pandemic. "A lot of those diagnoses... might have been the result of a child being assessed for a different diagnosis, something like anxiety or depression, and their clinician identifying that the child also had ADHD," Danielson says. The increase in diagnoses also comes amid growing awareness of ADHD - and the different ways that it can manifest in children... The study, which appears in the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, was based on data from the National Survey of Children's Health, which gathers detailed information from parents.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week the Washington Post noted that just last year nearly 1.2 million more electric vehicles were sold in America, "accounting for over 7 percent of total new car sales and a new national record." But "data show that EV sales are far outpacing growth in the U.S. charging network... In 2016, there were seven electric cars for each public charging point; today, there's more than 20 electric cars per charger." The article points out that 80% of America's EV's are just charging at home, according to the U.S. Energy Department. (Which seems to leave one public charger for every four EVs that don't charge at home.) And the article notes several other important caveats:Experts say that there is no "magic number" for the best ratio of EVs on the road to public chargers. "It absolutely depends on the local landscape," said Peter Slowik, U.S. passenger vehicles lead for the International Council on Clean Transportation. Globally, there is about 1 public charger for every 11 EVs, according to the International Energy Agency. But in countries where there are more single-family homes and garages, the ratio could be lower.... In a way, the United States' slow charging build-out could be a benefit in the long-term: Many automakers have now promised to switch to Tesla's charging connector in the next few years, which could help put most cars on the same system. Not everyone agrees there is a delay. Slowik says that his team's research shows that the United States is on-track for building out the charging needed over the next eight years. An increase in the number of EVs per public charger is a natural part of the adoption process, he argues, that will subside with more sales and as more chargers come online. Still, the article argues if Americans continue buying electric cars, public chargers will be essential "to support long road trips, help apartment-dwellers go electric and alleviate overnight pressure on electricity grids." Today U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reiterated America's commitment to having a national network of 500,000 charges by 2030, saying the country is at "the absolute very, very beginning stages of the construction to come."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"64% of Americans live within 2 miles of a public charging station," Pew Research reported this week, citing a survey paired with an analysis of U.S. Energy Department data that found over 61,000 publicly accessible charging stations. And those who live closest to public chargers "view EVs more positively."The vast majority of EV charging occurs at home, but access to public infrastructure is tightly linked with Americans' opinions of electric vehicles themselves. Our analysis finds that Americans who live close to public chargers view EVs more positively than those who are farther away. Even when accounting for factors like partisan identification and community type, Americans who live close to EV chargers are more likely to say they: - Already own an electric or hybrid vehicle- Would consider buying an EV for their next vehicle- Favor phasing out production of new gasoline cars and trucks by 2035- Are confident that the U.S. will build the necessary infrastructure to support large numbers of EVs on the roads The number of EV charging stations has more than doubled since 2020. In December 2020, the Department of Energy reported that there were nearly 29,000 public charging stations nationwide. By February 2024, that number had increased to more than 61,000 stations. Over 95% of the American public now lives in a county that has at least one public EV charging station. EV charging stations are most accessible to residents of urban areas: 60% of urban residents live less than a mile from the nearest public EV charger, compared with 41% of those in the suburbs and just 17% of rural Americans. California is home to about 25% of all of America's charging stations, according to the report. But this means EV-owning Californians "might also have a harder time than residents of many states when it comes to the actual experience of finding and using a charger."Despite having the most charging stations of any state, California's 43,780 individual public charging ports must provide service for the more than 1.2 million electric vehicles registered to its residents. That works out to one public port for every 29 EVs, a ratio that ranks California 49th across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. At the other end of the spectrum, Wyoming (one-to-six), North Dakota (one-to-six) and West Virginia (one-to-eight) have the most ports relative to the much smaller number of EVs registered in their respective states. Another interesting finding? "Attitudes toward EVs don't differ that much based on how often people take long car trips. "In fact, those who regularly drive more than 100 miles are slightly more likely to say they currently own an electric vehicle or hybrid - and also to say they'd consider purchasing an EV in the future - when compared with those who make these trips less often."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Will Major League Baseball games use "automated" umpires next year to watch pitches from home plate and call balls and strikes? "We still have some technical issues," baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday. NBC News reports:"We haven't made as much progress in the minor leagues this year as we sort of hoped at this point. I think it's becoming more and more likely that this will not be a go for '25." Major League Baseball has been experimenting with the automated ball-strike system in minor leagues since 2019. It is being used at all Triple-A parks this year for the second straight season, the robot alone for the first three games of each series and a human with a [robot-assisted] challenge system in the final three. In "challenge-system" games, robo-umpires are only used for quickly ruling on challenges to calls from human umpires. (As demonstrated in this 11-second video.) CBS Sports explains:Each team is given a limited number of "incorrect" challenges per game, which incentivizes judicious use of challenges... In some ways, the challenge system is a compromise between the traditional method of making ball-strike calls and the fully automated approach. That middle ground may make approval by the various stakeholders more likely to happen and may lay the foundation for full automation at some future point. Manfred cites "a growing consensus in large part" from Major League players that that's how they'd want to see robo-umpiring implemented, according to a post on X.com from The Athletic's Evan Drellich. (NBC notes one concern is eliminating the artful way catchers "frame" caught pitches to convince umpires a pitch passed through the strike zone.) But umpires face greater challenges today, adds CBS Sports:The strong trend, stretching across years, of increased pitch velocity in the big leagues has complicated the calling of balls and strikes, as has the emphasis on high-spin breaking pitches. Discerning balls from strikes has always been challenging, and the stuff of the contemporary major-league pitcher has made anything like perfect accuracy beyond the capabilities of the human eye. Big-league umpires are highly skilled, but the move toward ball-strike automation and thus a higher tier of accuracy is likely inevitable. Manfred's Wednesday remarks reinforce that perception.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Merged this Friday evening into the Linux 6.10 kernel is the new mseal() system call for memory sealing," reports Phoronix:The mseal system call was led by Jeff Xu of Google's Chrome team. The goal with memory sealing is to also protect the memory mapping itself against modification. The new mseal Linux documentation explains: "Modern CPUs support memory permissions such as RW and NX bits. The memory permission feature improves security stance on memory corruption bugs, i.e. the attacker can't just write to arbitrary memory and point the code to it, the memory has to be marked with X bit, or else an exception will happen. Memory sealing additionally protects the mapping itself against modifications. This is useful to mitigate memory corruption issues where a corrupted pointer is passed to a memory management system... Memory sealing can automatically be applied by the runtime loader to seal .text and .rodata pages and applications can additionally seal security-critical data at runtime. A similar feature already exists in the XNU kernel with the VM_FLAGS_PERMANENT flag and on OpenBSD with the mimmutable syscall." The mseal system call is designed to be used by the likes of the GNU C Library "glibc" while loading ELF executables to seal non-writable memory segments or by the Google Chrome web browser and other browsers for protecting security sensitive data structures.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"While general-purpose languages like Python, C++, and Java remain popular in AI development," writes VentureBeat, "the resurgence of AI-first languages signifies a recognition that AI's unique demands require specialized languages tailored to the domain's specific needs... designed from the ground up to address the specific needs of AI development." Bend, created by Higher Order Company, aims to provide a flexible and intuitive programming model for AI, with features like automatic differentiation and seamless integration with popular AI frameworks. Mojo, developed by Modular AI, focuses on high performance, scalability, and ease of use for building and deploying AI applications. Swift for TensorFlow, an extension of the Swift programming language, combines the high-level syntax and ease of use of Swift with the power of TensorFlow's machine learning capabilities... At the heart of Mojo's design is its focus on seamless integration with AI hardware, such as GPUs running CUDA and other accelerators. Mojo enables developers to harness the full potential of specialized AI hardware without getting bogged down in low-level details. One of Mojo's key advantages is its interoperability with the existing Python ecosystem. Unlike languages like Rust, Zig or Nim, which can have steep learning curves, Mojo allows developers to write code that seamlessly integrates with Python libraries and frameworks. Developers can continue to use their favorite Python tools and packages while benefiting from Mojo's performance enhancements... It supports static typing, which can help catch errors early in development and enable more efficient compilation... Mojo also incorporates an ownership system and borrow checker similar to Rust, ensuring memory safety and preventing common programming errors. Additionally, Mojo offers memory management with pointers, giving developers fine-grained control over memory allocation and deallocation... Mojo is conceptually lower-level than some other emerging AI languages like Bend, which compiles modern high-level language features to native multithreading on Apple Silicon or NVIDIA GPUs. Mojo offers fine-grained control over parallelism, making it particularly well-suited for hand-coding modern neural network accelerations. By providing developers with direct control over the mapping of computations onto the hardware, Mojo enables the creation of highly optimized AI implementations. According to Mojo's creator, Modular, the language has already garnered an impressive user base of over 175,000 developers and 50,000 organizations since it was made generally available last August. Despite its impressive performance and potential, Mojo's adoption might have stalled initially due to its proprietary status. However, Modular recently decided to open-source Mojo's core components under a customized version of the Apache 2 license. This move will likely accelerate Mojo's adoption and foster a more vibrant ecosystem of collaboration and innovation, similar to how open source has been a key factor in the success of languages like Python. Developers can now explore Mojo's inner workings, contribute to its development, and learn from its implementation. This collaborative approach will likely lead to faster bug fixes, performance improvements and the addition of new features, ultimately making Mojo more versatile and powerful. The article also notes other languages "trying to become the go-to choice for AI development" by providing high-performance execution on parallel hardware.Unlike low-level beasts like CUDA and Metal, Bend feels more like Python and Haskell, offering fast object allocations, higher-order functions with full closure support, unrestricted recursion and even continuations. It runs on massively parallel hardware like GPUs, delivering near-linear speedup based on core count with zero explicit parallel annotations - no thread spawning, no locks, mutexes or atomics. Powered by the HVM2 runtime, Bend exploits parallelism wherever it can, making it the Swiss Army knife for AI - a tool for every occasion... The resurgence of AI-focused programming languages like Mojo, Bend, Swift for TensorFlow, JAX and others marks the beginning of a new era in AI development. As the demand for more efficient, expressive, and hardware-optimized tools grows, we expect to see a proliferation of languages and frameworks that cater specifically to the unique needs of AI. These languages will leverage modern programming paradigms, strong type systems, and deep integration with specialized hardware to enable developers to build more sophisticated AI applications with unprecedented performance. The rise of AI-focused languages will likely spur a new wave of innovation in the interplay between AI, language design and hardware development. As language designers work closely with AI researchers and hardware vendors to optimize performance and expressiveness, we will likely see the emergence of novel architectures and accelerators designed with these languages and AI workloads in mind. This close relationship between AI, language, and hardware will be crucial in unlocking the full potential of artificial intelligence, enabling breakthroughs in fields like autonomous systems, natural language processing, computer vision, and more. The future of AI development and computing itself are being reshaped by the languages and tools we create today. In 2017 Modular AI's founder Chris Lattner (creator of the Swift and LLVM) answered questions from Slashdot readers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished in 2014 - and efforts continue to find it. In 2018 a UK-based video producer claimed to have discovered the crashed aircraft on Google Maps - but Newsweek pointed out the same wreckage "is visible in imagery dating back to January 1, 2004 - more than a decade before MH370 disappeared." Marine robotics company Ocean Infinity also failed to find the aircraft after a five-month search in 2018 - but has returned to the headlines this March, writes the Independent, "claiming that they have scientific evidence" for the flight's final resting place. (The company's CEO says the last six years they've been "innovating with technology and robotics to further advance our ocean search capabilities.") And this week Indian Express reported that researchers from the UK's Cardiff University investigating the mystery "have come up with a novel plan to unravel it - sea explosions." More from the Economic Times:Scientists have said that airplanes crashing over oceans create unique acoustic signatures that can travel more than 3,000km through water. These acoustic signatures can be recorded by a network of 11 hydroacoustic stations worldwide that are dotted along the seabed. Researchers at Cardiff University have said that a series of controlled underwater explosions or air gunfire along the 7th arc [where the plane last communicated] can be done to see whether they can isolate a more precise location for MH370. More details from NDTV:"[W]ithin the time frame and location suggested by the official search, only a single, relatively weak signal was identified,'' Dr Kadri said... ''Similar exercises were performed in the search and rescue mission for the ARA San Juan, a submarine that vanished off the coast of Argentina in 2017. This shows us that it is relatively straightforward and feasible and could provide a means to determine the signal's relevance to MH370, prior to resuming with another extensive search. If found to be related, this would significantly narrow down, almost pinpoint, the aircraft's location,'' Dr Kadri added... Despite the largest search in aviation history, the plane has never been found. An announcement from Cardiff University adds that "The experiments would also help develop the use of hydroacoustic technology as a tool for authorities to draw upon when narrowing down potential crash locations for airplanes in the future."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Space.com calls it a movie "adding more combustible material to the inferno of AI unease sweeping the globe." Its director tells them James Cameron was a huge inspiration, saying Atlas "has an Aliens-like vibe because of the grounded, grittiness to it." (You can watch the movie's trailer here...) But Tom's Guide says "the reviews are just as shocking as the movie's AI." Its "audience score" on Rotten Tomatoes is 55% - but its aggregate score from professional film critics is 16%. The Hollywood Reporter called it "another Netflix movie to half-watch while doing laundry." ("The star plays a data analyst forced to team up with an AI robot in order to prevent an apocalypse orchestrated by a different AI robot...") The site Giant Freakin Robot says "there seems to be a direct correlation between how much money the streaming platform spends on green screen effects and how bad the movie is" (noting the film's rumored budget of $100 million)... But Tom's Guide defends it as a big-budget sci-fi thriller that "has an interesting premise that makes you think about the potential dangers of AI progression."Our world has always been interested in computers and machines, and the very idea of technology turning against us is unsettling. That's why "Atlas" works as a movie, but professional critics have other things to say. Ross McIndoe from Slant Magazine said: "Atlas seems like a story that should have been experienced with a gamepad in hand...." Todd Gilchrist from Variety didn't enjoy the conventional structure that "Atlas" followed... However, even though the score is low and the reviews are pretty negative, I don't want to completely bash this movie... If I'm being completely honest, most movies and TV shows nowadays are taken too seriously. The more general blockbusters are supposed to be entertaining and fun, with visually pleasing effects that keep you hooked on the action. This is much like "Atlas", which is a fun watch with an unsettling undertone focused on the dangers of evolving AI... Being part of the audience, we're supposed to just take it in and enjoy the movie as a casual viewer. This is why I think you should give "Atlas" a chance, especially if you're big into dramatic action sequences and have enjoyed movies like "Terminator" and "Pacific Rim".Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The fact it's possible at all is a credit to the ingenuity of the open-source community," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu:Switchroot is an open-source project that allows Android and Linux-based distros like Ubuntu to run on the Nintendo Switch - absolutely not something Nintendo approves of much less supports, endorses, or encourages, etc! I covered the loophole that made this possible back in 2018. Back then the NVIDIA Tegra X1-powered Nintendo Switch was still new and Linux support for much of the console's internal hardware in a formative state (a polite way to say 'not everything worked'). But as the popularity of Nintendo's handheld console ballooned (to understate it) so the 'alternative OS' Switch scene grew, and before long Linux support for Switch hardware was in full bloom... A number of Linux for Switchroot (L4S) distributions have since been released, designated as Linux for Tegra (L4T) builds. As these can boot from a microSD card it's even possible to dualboot the Switch OS with Linux, which is neat! Recently, a fresh set of L4T Ubuntu images were released based on the newest Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release. These builds work on all Switch versions, from the OG (exploit-friendly) unit through to newer, patched models (where a modchip is required)... I'm told all of the Nintendo Switch internal hardware now works under Linux, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sleep mode, accelerated graphics, the official dock... Everything, basically. And despite being a 7 year old ARM device the performance is said to remain decent. "Upstream snafus have delayed the release of builds with GNOME Shell..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Rust Foundation blog post begins by reminding readers that Rust programs "are unable to compile if memory management rules are violated, essentially eliminating the possibility of a memory issue at runtime." But then it goes on to explore "Unsafe Rust in the wild" (used for a small set of actions like dereferencing a raw pointer, modifying a mutable static variable, or calling unsafe functions). "At a superficial glance, it might appear that Unsafe Rust undercuts the memory-safety benefits Rust is becoming increasingly celebrated for. In reality, the unsafe keyword comes with special safeguards and can be a powerful way to work with fewer restrictions when a function requires flexibility, so long as standard precautions are used." The Foundation lists those available safeguards - which "make exploits rare - but not impossible." But then they go on to analyze just how much Rust code actually uses the unsafe keyword:The canonical way to distribute Rust code is through a package called a crate. As of May 2024, there are about 145,000 crates; of which, approximately 127,000 contain significant code. Of those 127,000 crates, 24,362 make use of the unsafe keyword, which is 19.11% of all crates. And 34.35% make a direct function call into another crate that uses the unsafe keyword [according to numbers derived from the Rust Foundation project Painter]. Nearly 20% of all crates have at least one instance of the unsafe keyword, a non-trivial number. Most of these Unsafe Rust uses are calls into existing third-party non-Rust language code or libraries, such as C or C++. In fact, the crate with the most uses of the unsafe keyword is the Windows crate, which allows Rust developers to call into various Windows APIs. This does not mean that the code in these Unsafe Rust blocks are inherently exploitable (a majority or all of that code is most likely not), but that special care must be taken while using Unsafe Rust in order to avoid potential vulnerabilities... Rust lives up to its reputation as an excellent and transformative tool for safe and secure programming, even in an Unsafe context. But this reputation requires resources, collaboration, and constant examination to uphold properly. For example, the Rust Project is continuing to develop tools like Miri to allow the checking of unsafe Rust code. The Rust Foundation is committed to this work through its Security Initiative: a program to support and advance the state of security within the Rust Programming language ecosystem and community. Under the Security Initiative, the Rust Foundation's Technology team has developed new tools like [dependency-graphing] Painter, TypoMania [which checks package registries for typo-squatting] and Sandpit [an internal tool watching for malicious crates]... giving users insight into vulnerabilities before they can happen and allowing for a quick response if an exploitation occurs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week Red Hat announced one of America's leading pediatric hospitals is using AI to analyze X-rays, "to improve image quality and the speed and accuracy of image interpretation." Red Hat's CTO said the move exemplifies "the positive impact AI can have in the healthcare field".Before Boston Children's Hospital began piloting AI in radiology, quantitative measurements had to be done manually, which was a time-consuming task. Other, more complex image analyses were performed completely offline and outside of the clinical workflow. In a field where time is of the essence, the hospital is piloting Red Hat OpenShift via the ChRIS Research Integration Service, a web-based medical image platform. The AI application running in ChRIS on the Red Hat OpenShift foundation has the potential to automatically examine x-rays, identify the most valuable diagnostic images among the thousands taken and flag any discrepancies for the radiologist. This decreases the interpretation time for radiologists. But it also seems to be a big win for openness:Innovation developed internally is immediately transferable to public research clouds such as the Massachusetts Open Cloud, where large-scale data sharing and additional innovation can be fostered. Boston Children's Hospital aims to extend the reach of advanced healthcare solutions globally through this approach, amplifying their impact on patient well-being worldwide. "Red Hat believes open unlocks the world's potential," the announcement concludes, "including the potential to share knowledge and build upon each other's discoveries. Additionally, Red Hat believes innovation - including AI - should be available everywhere, making any application, anywhere a reality. "With open source, enabling AI-fueled innovation across hybrid IT environments that can lead to faster clinical breakthroughs and better patient outcomes is a reality."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Microsoft has confirmed plans to pull the plug on VBScript in the second half of 2024 in a move that signals the end of an era for programmers," writes Tech Radar. Though the language was first introduced in 1996, Microsoft's latest announcement says the move was made "considering the decline in VBScript usage":Beginning with the new OS release slated for later this year [Windows 11, version 24H2], VBScript will be available as features on demand. The feature will be completely retired from future Windows OS releases, as we transition to the more efficient PowerShell experiences. Around 2027 it will become "disabled by default," with the date of its final removal "to be determined." But the announcement confirms VBScript will eventually be "retired and eliminated from future versions of Windows."This means all the dynamic link libraries (.dll files) of VBScript will be removed. As a result, projects that rely on VBScript will stop functioning. By then, we expect that you'll have switched to suggested alternatives. The post recommends migirating applications to PowerShell or JavaScript. This year's annual "feature update" for Windows will also include Sudo for Windows, Rust in the Windows kernel, "and a number of user interface tweaks, such as the ability to create 7-zip and TAR archives in File Explorer," reports the Register. "It will also include the next evolution of Copilot into an app pinned to the taskbar." But the downgrading of VBScript "is part of a broader strategy to remove Windows and Office features threat actors use as attack vectors to infect users with malware," reports BleepingComputer:Attackers have also used VBScript in malware campaigns, delivering strains like Lokibot, Emotet, Qbot, and, more recently, DarkGate malware.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's "one of the most talked about devices in Silicon Valley," according to tech writer/investor Om Malik. The company's web site calls it "the computer, de-invented," promising a tablet with "the world's first full-speed paper-like display." But Its founder has structured the company as a Public Benefit Corporation, with its web site describing the eyestrain-relieving tablet as "designed for deep focus and wellbeing. We refuse to accept a future where our devices are exhausting, addictive, and distracting." Malik writes that Daylight Computer founder Anjan Katta suffers from ADHD, and "wanted something that allowed him few distractions and allowed him to work with intent."What the company has created is a beautiful tablet - about the size of a normal iPad Air. It is just a "little less than white," white, with a gorgeous screen. It is very simple, elegant, and lovely. It has an e-ink screen, and the matte monochrome paper-like display is optimized for reading, writing, and note-taking. It refreshes at 60 frames per second, a pretty big deal for e-ink displays. This different screen technology developed by the company is called LivePaper and it feels as snappy as anything you have experienced on an iPad. This is what puts it a notch above other e-ink tablets. This is precisely why the new Daylight tablet is much less stressful on the eye and easy to use even in direct sunlight. It has 8 GB memory, about 128 GB in-built storage, an 8-core chip, microphones, speakers, and a powerful battery. There is no camera - thank God! An ad from the company suggests the tablet "might change the way you think about screens," promising their device is "less distraction. Less addiction. Less eyestrain. Less blue light... Technology that feels a little bit more human, a bit less demanding." The blog of product designer Arun Venkatesan calls it one of those devices that "signals an exciting new era where we can harness the power of technology without sacrificing our ability to live intentional, balanced lives." Tom's Guide notes the tablet "is designed to run normal Android apps, and comes pre-installed with apps like Audible, Kindle, Google Docs and more" - and this may be the only the beginning:Based on various podcast interviews we could find of Katta, the DC1 isn't the end goal of the company. Katta wants to see the Live Paper display in all kinds of devices like monitors, laptops and watches. Is the Daylight DC1 a technology flash in the pan or will we see a wave of Live Paper devices in the future? It'll be interesting to see how this devices truly works once its in people's hands.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2011 Ross Ulbricht launched an anonymous, Tor-hidden "darknet" marketplace (with transactions conducted in bitcoin). By 2015 he'd been sentenced to life in prison for crimes including money laundering, distributing narcotics, and trafficking in fraudulent identity documents - without the possibility of parole. Today a U.S. presidential candidate promised to commute that life sentence - Donald Trump, speaking at the national convention of the Libertarian Party as it prepares to nominate its own candidate for president. Commuting Ulbricht's life sentence is "a top demand" of a political movement that intends to run its own candidate against Trump, reports Semafor:"On day one, we will commute the sentence," Trump said, offering to free the creator of what was once the internet's most infamous drug clearinghouse. "We will bring him home." His speeches more typically include a pledge to execute drug dealers, citing China as a model. "It's time to be winners," said Trump, asking rhetorically if third party delegates wanted to go on getting single-digit protest votes. "I'm asking for the Libertarian Party's endorsement, or at least lots of your votes...." "I've been indicted by the government on 91 different things," Trump said. "So if I wasn't a libertarian before, I sure as hell am a libertarian now." More coverage from NBC News:At times, Trump turned on the crowd, criticizing libertarians' turnout at previous elections. "You can keep going the way you have for the last long decades and get your 3% and meet again, get another 3%," Trump said following jeers from the crowd. Another high-profile supporter for commuting Ulbricht's sentence is actor-turned documentary maker Alex Winter. Best known for playing slacker Bill S. Preston Esq in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and its sequels, Winter also directed, wrote, and co-produced the 2015 documentary Deep Web: The Untold Story of Bitcoin and the Silk Road (narrated by Keanu Reeves). Writing earlier this month in Rolling Stone, Winter called Silk Road "inarguably a criminal operation" but also "a vibrant and diverse community of people from around the world. They were not only there for drugs but for the freedom of an encrypted and anonymous space, to convene and discuss everything from politics to literature and art, philosophy and drugs, drug recovery, and the onerous War on Drugs..."It's my firm opinion, and the opinion of many prison-system and criminal-law experts, that [Ulbricht's] sentence is disproportionate to his charges and that he deserves clemency. This case indeed reflects just one of the millions of unjust sentences in the long and failed War on Drugs... No matter what one thinks of Ulbricht, Silk Road, or the crimes that may have been committed, 10 years in prison is more than sufficient and customary punishment for those offenses or sins. Ross Ulbricht should be free.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Concrete and steel production are major sources of CO2 emissions," writes New Atlas, "but a new solution from Cambridge could recycle both at the same time."Throwing old concrete into steel-processing furnaces not only purifies iron but produces "reactivated cement" as a byproduct. If done using renewable energy, the process could make for completely carbon-zero cement. Concrete is the world's most used building material, and making it is a particularly dirty business - concrete production alone is responsible for about 8% of total global CO2 emissions. Unfortunately it's not easy to recycle back into a form that can be used to make new concrete structures... For the new study, Cambridge researchers investigated how waste concrete could be converted back into clinker, the dry component of cement, ready to be used again. "I had a vague idea from previous work that if it were possible to crush old concrete, taking out the sand and stones, heating the cement would remove the water, and then it would form clinker again," said Dr. Cyrille Dunant, first author of the study... An electric arc furnace needs a "flux" material, usually lime, to purify the steel. This molten rocky substance captures the impurities, then bubbles to the surface and forms a protective layer that prevents the new pure steel from becoming exposed to air. At the end of the process, the used flux is discarded as a waste material. So for the Cambridge method, the lime flux was swapped out for the recycled cement paste. And sure enough, not only was it able to purify the steel just fine, but if the leftover slag is cooled quickly in air, it becomes new Portland cement. The resulting concrete has similar performance to the original stuff. Importantly, the team says this technique doesn't add major costs to either concrete or steel production, and significantly reduces CO2 emissions compared to the usual methods of making both. If the electric arc furnace was powered by renewable sources, it could essentially make for zero-emission cement. "The first industrial-scale trials are underway this month," the article adds. "Producing zero emissions cement is an absolute miracle, but we've also got to reduce the amount of cement and concrete we use," said Professor Julian Allwood, who led the research. And the professor has also recorded a thoughtful video visualizing the process - and explaining the significance of their breakthrough.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the future, "Probably none of us will have a job," Elon Musk said Thursday, speaking remotely to the VivaTech 2024 conference in Paris. Instead, jobs will be optional - something we'd do like a hobby - "But otherwise, AI and the robots will provide any goods and services that you want." CNN reports that Musk added this would require "universal high income" - and "There would be no shortage of goods or services." In a job-free future, though, Musk questioned whether people would feel emotionally fulfilled. "The question will really be one of meaning - if the computer and robots can do everything better than you, does your life have meaning?" he said. "I do think there's perhaps still a role for humans in this - in that we may give AI meaning." CNN accompanied their article with this counterargument:In January, researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab found workplaces are adopting AI much more slowly than some had expected and feared. The report also said the majority of jobs previously identified as vulnerable to AI were not economically beneficial for employers to automate at that time. Experts also largely believe that many jobs that require a high emotional intelligence and human interaction will not need replacing, such as mental health professionals, creatives and teachers. CNN notes that Musk "also used his stage time to urge parents to limit the amount of social media that children can see because 'they're being programmed by a dopamine-maximizing AI'."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Founded in 1963, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers held a special event Sunday that they said would be "inspiring engineering for the next 50 years." The event featured talks on the origins of the internet from 80-year-old "father of the internet" Vint Cerf, along with John Shoch (who helped develop the Ethernet and internetwork protocols at Xerox PARC), Judith Estrin (who worked with Cerf on the TCP project), and Robert Kahn (who with Cerf first proposed the IP and TCP protocols). Ethernet co-inventor Bob Metcalfe also spoke at the end of the event. Long-time Slashdot reader repett0 was an onsite volunteer, and shares that "it was incredible to meet and greet such a wonderful mix of people making technology happen... [T]he event celebrated many key technologies and innovators from the past 50 years and considerations of what is to come in the next 50 years." Video streams are available and more are coming online (including interviews with key innovators, society leadership, and more). If you could not make this event event, follow-on activities continue, including the People-Centered Internet Imagine Workshop where a mix of society is working together to consider how to improve humanity's intersection with ever-expanding abilities thanks to technology. They add that the event was made possible "through the collaboration of many professional computing societies" including the IEEE, People-Centered Internet, Google, Internet Society, IEEE Computer Society, GIANT Protocol, IEEE Foundation - and volunteers from the SF Bay Area ACM and Internet Society.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roughly 160,000 U.S.-based amateur radio enthusiasts belong to the American Radio Relay League, a nonprofit with 100 full-time and part-time staff members. Nine days ago it announced "that it suffered a cyberattack that disrupted its network and systems," reports BleepingComputer, "including various online services hosted by the organization.""We are in the process of responding to a serious incident involving access to our network and headquarters-based systems. Several services, such as Logbook of The World and the ARRL Learning Center, are affected," explained ARRL in a press release... [T]he ARRL took steps to allay members' concerns about the security of their data, confirming that they do not store credit card information or collect social security numbers. However, the organization confirmed that its member database contains some private information, including names, addresses, and call signs. While they do not specifically state email addresses are stored in the database, one is required to become a member of the organization. "The ARRL has not specifically said that its member database has been accessed by hackers," Security Week points out, "but its statement suggests it's possible." The site adds that it has also "reached out to ARRL to find out if this was a ransomware attack and whether the attackers made any ransom demand." Thanks to Slashdot reader AzWa Snowbird for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thursday long-time Slashdot reader mschaffer reported that "Microsoft's search engine isn't working correctly, and many alternative search engines that rely on it are down, too." Bing started "having issues" around 1:30 a.m. EST, reports SearchEngineLand (citing Downdector.com, and sharing screenshots of Bing.com searches failing - even on partner sites like DuckDuckGo). By Thursday morning search capabilities for ChatGPT, Copilot, DuckDuckGo, and other platforms had stopped working, reports the Verge, saying the issues "appeared to be linked to Bing's API and any service that relies upon it." While Microsoft's own web search engine, Bing, was also seemingly affected, according to TechCrunch, it came back online eventually. By 11AM ET, OpenAI posted a note indicating the issue had been resolved, saying, "Between around 10:10 PM PT yesterday and 6:50 AM PT today, we experienced a partial outage affecting ChatGPT's web-browsing capabilities due to Bing being unavailable." DuckDuckGo posted that "we're coming back up" at around 10:30AM ET, and so did Ecosia, which is "the search engine that plants trees." Copilot users experienced "a loading loop that prevented users from accessing the service," according to the article, while ChatGPT users attempting a web search got error messages instead. Ars Technica adds that it also stopped searches from Microsoft's Edge browsers (that hadn't changed their default search settings). But they also had a disturbing observation for people worried that web search is dominated by Google: "most of your other major options were brought down by a single API outage...The overwhelming majority of search tools offering an alternative" to Google are using Google, Bing, or Yandex... Yandex, being based in Russia, is a non-starter for many people around the world at the moment." But their article digs deep into the alternatives, starting with this list compiled by undergraduate CS major Rohan Kumar of search sites with their own indexes - including Mojeek, Stract, and Right Dao and Yep...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UPI reports that the British government covered up "a multi-decade tainted blood scandal, leading to thousands of related deaths, a report published Monday found."Britain's National Health Service allowed blood tainted with HIV and Hepatitis to be used on patients without their knowledge, leading to 3,000 deaths and more than 30,000 infections, according to the 2,527-page final report by Justice Brian Justice Langstaff, a former judge on the High Court of England and Wales. Langstaff oversaw a five-year investigation into the use of tainted blood and blood products in Britain's healthcare system between 1970 and 1991. The report blames multiple administrations over the time period for knowingly exposing victims to unacceptable risks... In several cases, health officials lied about the risks to patients... The NHS also gave patients false reassurances, an attempt to "save face," failing victims "not once but repeatedly...." The situation could "largely, though not entirely, have been avoided," Langstaff found... The British government on Monday began operating a support phone line for people and their families affected by the tainted blood scandal. The article notes that Langstaff described the coverup as "subtle" but "pervasive" and "chilling in its implications... "To save face and to save expense, there has been a hiding of much of the truth." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Besides investigations into Cruise and Waymo, America's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also announced it's examining two rear-end collisions between motorbikes and Amazon's steering wheel-free Zoox vehicles being tested in San Francisco, Seattle, and Las Vegas. This means all three major self-driving vehicle companies "are facing federal investigations over potential flaws linked to dozens of crashes," notes the Washington Post, calling it "a sign of heightened scrutiny as the fledging industry lays plans to expand nationwide."The industry is poised for growth: About 40 companies have permits to test autonomous vehicles in California alone. The companies have drawn billions of dollars in investment, and supporters say they could revolutionize how Americans travel... Dozens of companies are testing self-driving vehicles in at least 10 states, with some offering services to paying passengers, according to the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association. The deployments are concentrated in a handful of Western states, especially those with good weather and welcoming governors. According to a Washington Post analysis of California data, the companies in test mode in San Francisco collectively report millions of miles on public roads every year, along with hundreds of mostly minor collisions. An industry association says autonomous vehicles have logged a total of 70 million miles, a figure that it compares with 293 trips to the moon and back. But it's a tiny fraction of the almost 9 billion miles that Americans drive every day. The relatively small number of miles the vehicles have driven makes it difficult to draw broad conclusions about their safety. Key quotes from the article:"Together, the three investigations opened in the past year examine more than two dozen collisions potentially linked to defective technology. The bulk of the incidents were minor and did not result in any injuries...""But robotic cars are still very much in their infancy, and while the bulk of the collisions flagged by NHTSA are relatively minor, they call into question the companies' boasts of being far safer than human drivers...""The era of unrealistic expectations and hype is over," said Matthew Wansley, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York who specializes in emerging automotive technologies. "These companies are under a microscope, and they should be. Private companies are doing an experiment on public roads.""Innocent people are on the roadways, and they're not being protected as they need to be," said Cathy Chase, the president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Apple's done a fantastic job of really innovating on the Mac," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the Wall Street Journal in a video interview this week. .Then he said "We are gonna outperform them" with the upcoming Copilot+ laptops from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung that have been completely reengineered for AI - and begin shipping in less than four weeks. Satya Nadella: Qualcomm's got a new [ARM Snapdragon X] processor, which we've optimized Windows for. The battery lab, I've been using it now - I mean, it's 22 hours of continuous video playback... [Apple also uses ARM chips in its MacBooks]. We finally feel we have a very competitive product between Surface Pro and the Surface laptops. We have essentially the best specs when it comes to ARM-based silicon and performance or the NPU performance. WSJ: Microsoft says the Surfaces are 58% faster than the MacBook Air with M3, and has 20% longer battery life. The video includes a demonstration of local live translation powered by "small language models" stored on the device. ("It can translate live video calls or in-person conversations from 44 different languages into English. And it's fast.") And in an accompanying article, the Journal's reporter also tested out the AI-powered image generator coming to Microsoft Paint. As a longtime MS Paint stick-figure and box-house artist, I was delighted by this new tool. I typed in a prompt: "A Windows XP wallpaper with a mountain and sky." Then, as I started drawing, an AI image appeared in a new canvas alongside mine. When I changed a color in my sketch, it changed a color in the generated image. Microsoft says it still sends the prompt to the cloud to ensure content safety. Privacy was also touched on. Discussing the AI-powered "Recall" search functionality, the Journal's reporter notes that users can stop it from taking screenshots of certain web sites or apps, or turn it off entirely... But they point out "There could be this reaction from some people that this is pretty creepy. Microsoft is taking screenshots of everything I do." Nadella reminds them that "it's all being done locally, right...? That's the promise... That's one of the reasons why Recall works as a magical thing: because I can trust it, that it is on my computer." Copilot will be powered by OpenAI's new GPT-4o, the Journal notes - before showing Satya Nadella saying "It's kind of like a new browser effectively." Satya Nadella: So, it's right there. It sees the screen, it sees the world, it hears you. And so, it's kind of like that personal agent that's always there that you want to talk to. You can interrupt it. It can interrupt you. Nadella says though the laptop is optimized for Copilot, that's just the beginning, and "I fully expect Copilot to be everywhere" - along with its innovatively individualized "personal agent" interface. "It's gonna be ambient.... It'll go on the phone, right? I'll use it on WhatsApp. I'll use it on any other messaging platform. It'll be on speakers everywhere." Nadella says combining GPT-40 with Copilot's interface is "the type of magic that we wanna bring - first to Windows and everywhere else... The future I see is a computer that understands me versus a computer that I have to understand. The interview ends when the reporter holds up the result - their own homegrown rendition of Windows XP's default background image "Bliss."Read more of this story at Slashdot.