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Libreboot is a distribution of coreboot "aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS firmware contained by most computers," according to Wikipedia. It was briefly part of the GNU project, until maintainer Leah Rowe and the GNU project agreed to part ways in 2017. But here in 2023, the GNU project has created a fork of Libreboot named GNU Boot... The GNU Boot fork "currently does not have a website and does not have any releases of its own," points out Libreboot's Leah Rowe, adding "My intent is to help them, and they are free - encouraged - to re-use my work... " But things have gotten messy, writes Rowe:They forked Libreboot, due to disagreement with Libreboot's Binary Blob Reduction Policy. This is a pragmatic policy, enacted in November 2022, to increase the number of coreboot users by increasing the amount of hardware supported in Libreboot... I wish GNU Boot all the best success. Truly. Although I think their project is entirely misguided (for reasons explained by modern Libreboot policy), I do think there is value in it. It provides continuity for those who wish to use something resembling the old Libreboot project... When GNU Boot first launched, as a failed hostile fork of Libreboot under the same name, I observed: their code repository was based on Libreboot from late 2022, and their website based on Libreboot in late 2021. Their same-named Libreboot site was announced during LibrePlanet 2023... [N]ow they are calling themselves GNU Boot, and it is indeed GNU, but it still has the same problem as of today: still based on very old Libreboot, and they don't even have a website. According to [the FSF's Savannah software repository], GNU Boot was created on 11 June 2023. Yet no real development, in over a month since then... I've decided that I want to help them... I decided recently that I'd simply make a release for them, exactly to their specifications (GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines), talking favourably about FSF/GNU, and so on. I'm in a position to do it (thus scratching the itch), so why not? I did this release for them - it's designated non-GeNUine Boot 20230717, and I encourage them to re-use this in their project, to get off the ground. This completely leapfrogs their current development; it's months ahead. Months. It's 8 months ahead, since their current revision is based upon Libreboot from around ~October 2022... The GNU Boot people actually sent me a cease and desist email, citing trademark infringement. Amazing... I complied with their polite request and have renamed the project to non-GeNUine Boot. The release archive was re-compiled, under this new brand name and the website was re-written accordingly. Personally, I like the new name better.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Monday a researcher with Google Information Security posted about a new vulnerability he independently found in AMD's Zen 2 processors. Tom's Hardware reports:The 'Zenbleed' vulnerability spans the entire Zen 2 product stack, including AMD's EPYC data center processors and the Ryzen 3000/4000/5000 CPUs, allowing the theft of protected information from the CPU, such as encryption keys and user logins. The attack does not require physical access to the computer or server and can even be executed via JavaScript on a webpage... AMD added the AMD-SB-7008 Bulletin several hours later. AMD has patches ready for its EPYC 7002 'Rome' processors now, but it will not patch its consumer Zen 2 Ryzen 3000, 4000, and some 5000-series chips until November and December of this year... AMD hasn't given specific details of any performance impacts but did issue the following statement to Tom's Hardware: "Any performance impact will vary depending on workload and system configuration. AMD is not aware of any known exploit of the described vulnerability outside the research environment..." AMD describes the exploit much more simply, saying, "Under specific microarchitectural circumstances, a register in "Zen 2" CPUs may not be written to 0 correctly. This may cause data from another process and/or thread to be stored in the YMM register, which may allow an attacker to potentially access sensitive information." The article includes a list of the impacted processors with a schedule for the release of the updated firmware to OEMs. The Google Information Security researcher who discovered the bug is sharing research on different CPU behaviors, and says the bug can be patched through software on multiple operating systems (e.g., "you can set the chicken bit DE_CFG[9]") - but this might result in a performance penalty. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader waspleg for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Over the past week, a Reddit employee has posted to subreddits with ousted mods, asking for new volunteers," reports Ars Technica. But it's not always going smoothly...A Reddit employee going by ModCodeofConduct (Reddit has refused to disclose the real names of admins representing the company on the platform) has posted to numerous subreddits over recent days, including r/IRLEasterEggs, r/donthelpjustfilm, r/ActLikeYouBelong, r/malefashionadvice, and r/AccidentalRenaissance... Like most official Reddit posts since the API war began, the comments under the job ads display users' discontent. "May I nominate a mod? I think u/ConspirOC would be a great mod, as he created this subreddit and has successfully run it for years, before you forcibly removed him," a user going by LittleManOnACan wrote on ModCodeofConduct's post seeking replacement r/IRLEasterEggs mods. "Additionally, fire Steve Huffman (Fuck u/Spez)." There's also a desire among Reddit users for a return to not just how things were but an acknowledgment of the efforts made by many previous moderators, how things changed, and why things are different now. A Redditor going by QuicklyThisWay wrote on ModCodeofConduct's post for news mods for r/IRLEasterEggs: "Just to be clear for anyone 'applying' to be a moderator. The user that created the subreddit and any other mods were removed by admins for making the community private. Even though the option to change to private is available to all subreddits at any time, the admins have not and will not respect any 'autonomy' moderators appear to have... As Ars has previously detailed, user protests didn't prevent third-party Reddit apps from closing. However, they have disrupted the platform. Reddit didn't answer questions Ars sent about its replacement mod criteria or how it'll help ensure new mods can properly handle their newfound volunteer duties... "mods Ars has spoken with over the weeks have frequently pointed to the potential for burnout, death threats, long training sessions (from other volunteer mods), and rapid turnover for Reddit mods..." the article notes, adding "Without mods proven to be dedicated and experienced, it's unclear how fervently such efforts will continue in the future... "Disgruntled mods and ex-mods continue seeking new platforms to continue community discussions, including Lemmy and Discord. And as of this writing, there are still 1,900 subreddits private, per the Reddark_247 tracker." Meanwhile, the third annual edition of Reddit's annual pixel-placing event r/Place "turned into a battleground for dunking on the CEO," reports Polygon.A Reddit spokesperson declined to comment about this year's edition of r/Place, telling Polygon via email "redditors are going to reddit." Gizmodo's article includes a timelapse video (from YouTube) that they say captures "the whimsy - and anger - of its users," including "plenty of protest art directed at CEO Steve Huffman, who goes by u/spez on the platform..."While there are plenty of examples of "Fuck Spez" to go around, the most creative moment occurred at the end of the project. As r/Place wound to a close, users were able to place a pixel once every thirty seconds, but the pixel had to be white - an effort to wipe the slate clean. However, in the final moments of the project, users collaborated to leave one massive "FUCK SPEZ" across the canvas.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Friday America's Department of Energy announced plans to re-purpose some of the land it owns - "portions of which were previously used in the nation's nuclear weapons program" - for generating clean energy. They'll be leasing them out for "utility-scale clean energy projects" in an initiative called "Cleanup to Clean Energy." The agency has identified 70,000 acres for potential development, in New Mexico, Nevada, South Carolina, Idaho, and Washington:"We are going to transform the lands we have used over decades for nuclear security and environmental remediation by working closely with tribes and local communities together with partners in the private sector to build some of the largest clean energy projects in the world," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. "Through the Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative, the Department of Energy will leverage areas that were previously used to protect our national security and will repurpose them to the same end - this time, generating clean energy that will help save the planet and protect our energy independence." The announcement notes that in December 2021, President Biden directed U.S. federal agencies to "authorize use of their real property assets, including land for the development of new clean electricity generation and storage through leases, grants, permits, or other mechanisms." "As the leading Federal agency on clean energy research and development, DOE has both a unique opportunity and a clear responsibility to lead by example and identify creative solutions to achieve the President's mandate."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"This week, social media has been aflutter over a claim for a new superconductor that works not only well above room temperatures, but also at ambient pressure," writes Science magazine.If true, the discovery would be one of the biggest ever in condensed matter physics and could usher in all sorts of technological marvels, such as levitating vehicles and perfectly efficient electrical grids. However, the two related papers, posted to the arXiv preprint server by Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim of South Korea's Quantum Energy Research Centre and colleagues on 22 July, are short on detail and have left many physicists skeptical... "They come off as real amateurs," says Michael Norman, a theorist at Argonne National Laboratory. "They don't know much about superconductivity and the way they've presented some of the data is fishy." On the other hand, he says, researchers at Argonne and elsewhere are already trying to replicate the experiment. "People here are taking it seriously and trying to grow this stuff." Nadya Mason, a condensed matter physicist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign says, "I appreciate that the authors took appropriate data and were clear about their fabrication techniques." Still, she cautions, "The data seems a bit sloppy...." What are the reasons for skepticism? There are several, Norman says. First, the undoped material, lead apatite, isn't a metal but rather a nonconducting mineral. And that's an unpromising starting point for making a superconductor. What's more, lead and copper atoms have similar electronic structures, so substituting copper atoms for some of the lead atoms shouldn't greatly affect the electrical properties of the material, Norman says. "You have a rock, and you should still end up with a rock." On top of that, lead atoms are very heavy, which should suppress the vibrations and make it harder for electrons to pair, Norman explains. The papers don't provide a solid explanation of the physics at play. But the researchers speculate that within their material, the doping slightly distorts long, naturally occurring chains of lead atoms... [Mason] notes that Lee and Kim also suggest that a kind of undulation of charge might exist in the chains and that similar charge patterns have been seen in high-temperature superconductors. "Maybe this material really just hits the sweet spot of a strongly interacting unconventional superconductor," she says. The big question will be whether anybody can reproduce the observations...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oxide Computer Company spent four years working toward "The power of the cloud in your data center... bringing hyperscaler agility to the mainstream enterprise." And on June 30, Oxide finally shipped its very first server rack. Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland shares this report:It's the culmination of years of work - to fulfill a long-standing dream. In December of 2019, Oxide co-founder Jess Frazelle had written a blog post remembering conversations over the year with people who'd been running their own workloads on-premises... "Hyperscalers like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have what I like to call 'infrastructure privilege' since they long ago decided they could build their own hardware and software to fulfill their needs better than commodity vendors. We are working to bring that same infrastructure privilege to everyone else!" Frazelle had seen a chance to make an impact with "better integration between the hardware and software stacks, better power distribution, and better density. It's even better for the environment due to the energy consumption wins." Oxide CTO Bryan Cantrill sees real problems in the proprietary firmware that sits between hardware and system software - so Oxide's server eliminates the BIOS and UEFI altogether, and replaces the hardware-managing baseboard management controller (or BMC) with "a proper service processor." They even wrote their own custom, all-Rust operating system (named Hubris). On the Software Engineering Daily podcast, Cantrill says "These things boot like a rocket." And it's all open source. "Everything we do is out there for people to see and understand..." Cantrill added. On the Changelog podcast Cantrill assessed its significance. "I don't necessarily view it as a revolution in its own right, so much as it is bringing the open source revolution to firmware." Oxide's early funders include 92-year-old Pierre Lamond (who hired Andy Grove at Fairchild Semiconductor) - and customers who supported their vision. On Software Engineering Daily's podcast Cantrill points out that "If you're going to use a lot of compute, you actually don't want to rent it - you want to own it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A new group of automotive super friends is banding together," reports the Verge, "promising to build the next big North American electric vehicle charging network."These worldwide automakers - BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, and Stellantis - announced a planned joint venture Wednesday to erect easy-to-activate DC fast chargers along US and Canadian highways and in urban environments. The grand plan for the currently unnamed partnership is to install "at least" 30,000 high-speed EV chargers by 2030, with the first ones to open summer 2024 in the US. The collective plans to leverage National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) funding in the US and will also use other private and public funding from state and federal sources to build out the network... The new stations will connect and charge EV models made by the partnered automakers without having to fumble with another charging station app. The companies also plan to integrate the developing "Plug and Charge" standard that the Federal Highway Administration is attempting to standardize... All stations will include the standardized Tesla North American Charging Standard (NACS) ports and also the current widely used Combined Charging System (CCS) plugs. "The new joint venture is also planned to be entirely powered by renewable energy," the article adds. But "It's not known if renewable energy will directly power them or if the companies plan to buy credits like Rivian announced Tuesday."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"NASA took a significant step Tuesday toward allowing humans on the moon to 'live off the land,'" reports the Washington Post. NASA awarded several contracts "to build landing pads, roads and habitats on the lunar surface, use nuclear power for energy, and even lay a high-voltage power line over half a mile..."Instead of going to the moon and returning home, as was done during the Apollo era of the 1960s and early '70s, NASA intends to build a sustainable presence focusing on the lunar South Pole, where there is water in the form of ice. The contracts awarded Tuesday are some of the first steps the agency is taking toward developing the technologies that would allow humans to live for extended periods of time on the moon and in deep space. Materials on the moon must be used to extract the necessities such as water, fuel and metal for construction, said Prasun Desai, NASA's acting associate administrator for space technology. "We're trying to start that technology development to make that a reality in the future," he said. The largest award, $34.7 million, went to billionaire Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin space venture, which has been working on a project since 2021 called Blue Alchemist to build solar cells and transmission wire out of the moon's regolith - rocks and dirt. In a blog post this year, Blue Origin said it developed a reactor that reaches temperatures of nearly 3,000 degrees and uses an electrical current to separate iron, silicon and aluminum from oxygen in the regolith. The testing, using a lunar regolith simulant, has created silicon pure enough to make solar cells to be used on the lunar surface, the company said. [NASA says it could also be used to make wires.] The oxygen could be used for humans to breathe. "To make long-term presence on the moon viable, we need abundant electrical power," the company wrote in the post. "We can make power systems on the moon directly from materials that exist everywhere on the surface, without special substances brought from Earth." The award is another indication that Blue Origin is trying to position itself as a key player in helping NASA build a permanent presence on and around the moon as part of the Artemis program... The company said it is developing a solar-powered storage tank to keep propellants at 20 degrees Kelvin, or about minus-423 degrees Fahrenheit, so spacecraft can refuel in space instead of returning to Earth between missions. Other winners cited in the article:Zeno Power, which "intends to use nuclear energy to provide power on the moon," received a $15 million contract (partnering with Blue Origin).Astrobotic - which plans to launch a lander to the moon this year - got a $34.6 million contract "to build a power line that would transmit electricity from a lunar lander's solar arrays to a rover. It ultimately intends to build a larger power source using solar arrays on the moon's surface."Redwire won a $12.9 million contract "to help build roads and landing pads on the moon. It would use a microwave emitter to melt the regolith and transform treacherous rocky landscapes into smooth, solid surfaces, said Mike Gold, Redwire's chief growth officer."The technologies - which include in-space 3D printing - "will expand industry capabilities for a sustained human presence on the Moon," NASA said in a statement. The U.S. space agency will contribute a total of $150 million, with each company contributing at least 10-25% of the total cost (based on their size). "Partnering with the commercial space industry lets us at NASA harness the strength of American innovation and ingenuity," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. "The technologies that NASA is investing in today have the potential to be the foundation of future exploration." "Our partnerships with industry could be a cornerstone of humanity's return to the Moon under Artemis," said acting associate administrator Desai. "By creating new opportunities for streamlined awards, we hope to push crucial technologies over the finish line so they can be used in future missions. "These innovative partnerships will help advance capabilities that will enable sustainable exploration on the Moon."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After Red Hat's decision to only share RHEL source code with subscribers, AlmaLinux asked their bug report submitters to "attempt to test and replicate the problem in CentOS Stream as well, so we can focus our energy on correcting it in the right place." Red Hat told Ars Technica they are "eager to collaborate" on their CentOS Stream distro, "even if we ultimately compete in a business sense. Differentiated competition is a sign of a healthy ecosystem." But Red Hat still managed to ruffled some feathers, reports ZDNet:AlmaLinux Infrastructure Team Leader Jonathan Wright recently posted a CentOS Stream fix for CVE-2023-38403, a memory overflow problem in iperf3. Iperf3 is a popular open-source network performance test. This security hole is an important one, but not a huge problem. Still, it's better by far to fix it than let it linger and see it eventually used to crash a server. That's what I and others felt anyway. But, then, a senior Red Hat software engineer replied, "Thanks for the contribution. At this time, we don't plan to address this in RHEL, but we will keep it open for evaluation based on customer feedback." That went over like a lead balloon. The GitLab conversation proceeded: AlmaLinux: "Is customer demand really necessary to fix CVEs?" Red Hat: "We commit to addressing Red Hat defined Critical and Important security issues. Security vulnerabilities with Low or Moderate severity will be addressed on demand when [a] customer or other business requirements exist to do so." AlmaLinux: "I can even understand that, but why reject the fix when the work is already done and just has to be merged?" At this point, Mike McGrath, Red Hat's VP of Core Platforms, AKA RHEL, stepped in. He explained, "We should probably create a 'what to expect when you're submitting' doc. Getting the code written is only the first step in what Red Hat does with it. We'd have to make sure there aren't regressions, QA, etc. ... So thank you for the contribution, it looks like the Fedora side of it is going well, so it'll end up in RHEL at some point." Things went downhill rapidly from there... On Reddit, McGrath said, "I will admit that we did have a great opportunity for a good-faith gesture towards Alma here and fumbled." Finally, though the Red Hat Product Security team rated the CVE as "'Important,' the patch was merged. Coincidentally, last month AlmaLinux announced that its move away from 1:1 compatibility with RHEL meant "we can now accept bug fixes outside of Red Hat's release cycle." This Thursday AlmaLinux also reiterated that they're "fully committed to delivering the best possible experience for the community, no matter where or what you run." And in an apparent move to beef up compatibility testing, they announced they'd be bringing openQA to the RHEL ecosystem. (They describe openQA as a tool using virtual machines that "simplifies automated testing of the whole installation process of an operating system in a wide combination of software and hardware configurations.")Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"For years scientists have believed that when it comes to weight gain, all calories are created equal," the Washington Post reported last month. "But an intriguing new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that's not true. The body appears to react differently to calories ingested from high-fiber whole foods vs. ultra-processed junk foods."The reason? Cheap processed foods are more quickly absorbed in your upper gastrointestinal tract, which means more calories for your body and fewer for your gut microbiome, which is located near the end of your digestive tract. But when we eat high-fiber foods, they aren't absorbed as easily, so they make the full journey down your digestive tract to your large intestine, where the trillions of bacteria that make up your gut microbiome are waiting. By eating a fiber-rich diet, you are not just feeding yourself, but also your intestinal microbes, which, the new research shows, effectively reduces your calorie intake. The study reveals that inside all of us, our gut microbes are in a tug of war with our bodies for calories, said Karen D. Corbin, an investigator at the AdventHealth Translational Research Institute of Metabolism and Diabetes in Orlando and the lead author of the study. The closely-tracked study participants ate foods "like crispy puffed rice cereal, white bread, American cheese, ground beef, cheese puffs, vanilla wafers, cold cuts and other processed meats, and sugary snacks and fruit juices." Then they switched to the "microbiome enhancer diet," with foods like "oats, beans, lentils, chickpeas, brown rice, quinoa and other whole grains" (plus fruits, nuts and vegetables). Despite getting "the same amount of calories and similar amounts of protein, fat and carbohydrates," the Post reports that "On average, they lost 217 calories a day on the fiber-rich diet, about 116 more calories than they lost on the processed-food diet."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Python's Global Interpreter Lock "allows only one thread to hold the control of the Python interpreter," according to the tutorial site Real Python. (They add, "it can be a performance bottleneck in CPU-bound and multi-threaded code.") Friday the Python Steering Council "announced its intent to accept PEP 703 (Making the Global Interpreter Lock Optional in CPython), with initial support possibly showing up in the 3.13 release," reports LWN.net. From the Steering Council's announcement:It's clear that the overall sentiment is positive, both for the general idea and for PEP 703 specifically. The Steering Council is also largely positive on both. We intend to accept PEP 703, although we're still working on the acceptance details... Our base assumptions are: - Long-term (probably 5+ years), the no-GIL build should be the only build. We do not want to create a permanent split between with-GIL and no-GIL builds (and extension modules). - We want to be very careful with backward compatibility. We do not want another Python 3 situation, so any changes in third-party code needed to accommodate no-GIL builds should just work in with-GIL builds (although backward compatibility with older Python versions will still need to be addressed). This is not Python 4. We are still considering the requirements we want to place on ABI compatibility and other details for the two builds and the effect on backward compatibility. - Before we commit to switching entirely to the no-GIL build, we need to see community support for it. We can't just flip the default and expect the community to figure out what work they need to do to support it. We, the core devs, need to gain experience with the new build mode and all it entails. We will probably need to figure out new C APIs and Python APIs as we sort out thread safety in existing code. We also need to bring along the rest of the Python community as we gain those insights and make sure the changes we want to make, and the changes we want them to make, are palatable. - We want to be able to change our mind if it turns out, any time before we make no-GIL the default, that it's just going to be too disruptive for too little gain. Such a decision could mean rolling back all of the work, so until we're certain we want to make no-GIL the default, code specific to no-GIL should be somewhat identifiable. The current plan is to "add the no-GIL build as an experimental build mode, presumably in 3.13... [A]fter we have confidence that there is enough community support to make production use of no-GIL viable, we make the no-GIL build supported but not the default (yet), and set a target date/Python version for making it the default... We expect this to take at least a year or two, possibly more." "Long-term, we want no-GIL to be the default, and to remove any vestiges of the GIL (without unnecessarily breaking backward compatibility)... We think it may take as much as five years to get to this stage."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thursday Bill Gates launched a new podcast called "Unconfuse Me." ("What do you do when you can't solve a problem? I like to talk to smart people who can help me understand the subject better...")Join me on my learning journey as I talk to brilliant guests about Alzheimer's, artificial intelligence, the future of education, plant-based meat, the evolution of language, marijuana, and more. The first words of the first episode are a clip of Seth Rogen saying "Edibles? I don't mess with that. Snoop Dogg doesn't eat edibles. Like, that's how wild the variation on edibles is, and I do not recommend this." Then Bill Gates' voice says "I love learning, even if a topic's complex, I like to see if I can figure it out..." People reports that the 67-year-old Microsoft co-founder and former CEO also spoke to Rogen and his wife Lauren Miller about the future of Alzheimer's research: With studies showing that "40% of cases" are preventable, according to Rogen, the "five brain healthy habits" in their framework are important: sleep, exercise, nutrition, mental fitness and emotional well-being. He even confessed that his being a celebrity encourages people to better care for themselves. "I taught this coursework of brain health, and we've also had a neurologist teach the coursework, and we scientifically proved that people retain information better from celebrities than doctors, which is it's a heavy burden," he joked, adding that this information "was published..." Miller also shared that she goes to a neurologist and the pair are both "open" with their doctors about their habits, and "no one" in the medical world has told them that smoking weed is bad for their brain health. They even believe its benefits of boosting hunger and relieving stress might be good for preventing Alzheimer's. "It's not federally legal, so there isn't money to fund research," Miller said. Gates later concluded the podcast with his own funny anecdote, laughing about his first time he ever smoked weed - back when it was a "rebellious" thing to do. "In school out of the, say 105 people in my class I think, there were three or four who didn't smoke," he said. "Because it was kind of a, 'Hey, I'm an adult! Hey I can break the rules!' But I will say, sometimes it's like, I guess I'm doing this to be cool. It wasn't so much smoking for pot's sake."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Italy's brand new anti-piracy law has just received full approval from telecoms regulator AGCOM. In a statement issued Thursday, AGCOM noted its position "at the forefront of the European scene in combating online piracy." The new law comes into force on August 8 and authorizes nationwide ISP blocking of live events and enables the state to issue fines of up to 5,000 euros to users of pirate streams . In a statement published Thursday, AGCOM welcomed the amendments to Online Copyright Enforcement regulation 680/13/CONS, which concern measures to counter the illegal distribution of live sports streams, as laid out in Resolution 189/23/CONS. The new provisions grant AGCOM the power to issue "dynamic injunctions" against online service providers of all kinds, a privilege usually reserved for judges in Europe's highest courts. The aim is to streamline blocking measures against unlicensed IPTV services, with the goal of rendering them inaccessible across all of Italy. "With such measures, it will be possible to disable access to pirated content in the first 30 minutes of the event broadcast by blocking DNS resolution of domain names and blocking the routing of network traffic to IP addresses uniquely intended for illicit activities," AGCOM says. "With this amendment, in perfect synchrony with the changes introduced by Parliament, AGCOM is once again at the forefront of the European scene in combating online piracy activity," says AGCOM Commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A routine sequence of commands has triggered a 2-degree change in Voyager 2's antenna orientation, preventing the iconic spacecraft from receiving commands or transmitting data back to Earth, NASA announced earlier today. Mission controllers transmitted the commands to Voyager 2 on July 21. Gizmodo reports: Voyager 2, one of two twin probes launched in the 1970s to explore planets in the outer solar system, is located some 12.4 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from Earth and is continually moving deeper into interstellar space. The glitch has disrupted the probe's ability to communicate with ground antennas operated by the Deep Space Network (DSN), and it's unable to receive commands from the mission team on Earth, NASA explained. The communications pause is expected to be just that -- a pause. Voyager 2 is "programmed to reset its orientation multiple times each year to keep its antenna pointing at Earth," the space agency says. This procedure should -- fingers crossed -- re-establish the lost connection and allow routine communications to resume. The next reset is scheduled for October 15, which is 79 days from now. Undoubtedly, this will be 79 agonizing days for NASA and the Voyager team. Despite the current communication hiatus, the mission team remains confident that Voyager 2 will stay on its planned trajectory. Voyager 1, situated nearly 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away from Earth, "continues to operate normally," NASA added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Meta's new Twitter competitor, Threads, is looking for ways to keep users interested after more than half of the people who signed up for the text-based platform stopped actively using the app, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told employees in a company town hall yesterday. Threads launched on July 5 and signed up over 100 million users in less than five days, buoyed by user frustration with Elon Musk-owned Twitter. "Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We're not there yet," Zuckerberg told employees yesterday, according to Reuters, which listened to audio of the event. Third-party data suggests that Threads may have lost many more than half of its active users. Daily active users for Threads on Android dropped from 49 million on July 7 to 23.6 million on July 14, and then to 12.6 million on July 23, web analytics company SimilarWeb reported. "We don't yet have daily numbers for iOS, but we suspect the boom-and-bust pattern is similar," SimilarWeb wrote. "Threads took off like a rocket, with its close linkage to Instagram as the booster. However, the developers of Threads will need to fill in missing features and add some new and unique ones if they want to make checking the app a daily habit for users." Although losing over half of the initial users in a short period might sound discouraging, the Reuters article said Zuckerberg told employees that user retention was better than Meta executives expected. "Zuckerberg said he considered the drop-off 'normal' and expected retention to grow as the company adds more features to the app, including a desktop version and search functionality," Reuters wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science: Water is a near-universal solvent, able to dissolve substances ranging from limestone to the sugar in your coffee. That chemical superpower originates, oddly enough, in water's electrical properties. It can oppose and almost entirely cancel electric fields -- including attractions among dissolved ions that might otherwise pull them together. Curiously, dissolving salt in water weakens that electrical response. Now, a team of physicists has figured out exactly why this happens, using state-of-the-art computer simulations bolstered by artificial intelligence (AI). 'This is a fundamental property of water and one can finally do a calculation in which this can be entirely predicted from first principles,' says Roberto Car, a physicist at Princeton University who was not involved in the work. The AI-aided approach should allow physicists to probe in other settings, he says, such as batteries and fuel cells. [...] The results show that most of the salinity effect comes from the disruption of the clustering and correlations produced by hydrogen bonding, the team reports in a paper in press at Physical Review Letters. The researchers can pull out even more detail, explaining exactly how disruptions propagating through the network of water molecules make the dielectric constant vary with the salt concentration in a complex, nonlinear way. "They can distinguish all the different contributions and identify which effect is dominant over the other," Car says. Yuki Nagata, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, says, "This is more or less conclusive." More important than this specific result may be the AI-based method, Nagata adds. It could be used for more practical problems, such as analyzing the interactions of water with membranes or surfaces. Zhang says she's doing just that, analyzing the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen along the surface of a titanium dioxide catalyst, one potential way to generate hydrogen for fuel.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Katie Malone writes via Engadget: "Tor" evokes an image of the dark web; a place to hire hitmen or buy drugs that, at this point, is overrun by feds trying to catch you in the act. The reality, however, is a lot more boring than that -- but it's also more secure. The Onion Router, now called Tor, is a privacy-focused web browser run by a nonprofit group. You can download it for free and use it to shop online or browse social media, just like you would on Chrome or Firefox or Safari, but with additional access to unlisted websites ending in .onion. This is what people think of as the "dark web," because the sites aren't indexed by search engines. But those sites aren't an inherently criminal endeavor. "This is not a hacker tool," said Pavel Zoneff, director of strategic communications at The Tor Project. "It is a browser just as easy to use as any other browser that people are used to." That's right, despite common misconceptions, Tor can be used for any internet browsing you usually do. The key difference with Tor is that the network hides your IP address and other system information for full anonymity. This may sound familiar, because it's how a lot of people approach VPNs, but the difference is in the details. VPNs are just encrypted tunnels hiding your traffic from one hop to another. The company behind a VPN can still access your information, sell it or pass it along to law enforcement. With Tor, there's no link between you and your traffic, according to Jed Crandall, an associate professor at Arizona State University. Tor is built in the "higher layers" of the network and routes your traffic through separate tunnels, instead of a single encrypted tunnel. While the first tunnel may know some personal information and the last one may know the sites you visited, there is virtually nothing connecting those data points because your IP address and other identifying information are bounced from server to server into obscurity. Accessing unindexed websites adds extra perks, like secure communication. While a platform like WhatsApp offers encrypted conversations, there could be traces that the conversation happened left on the device if it's ever investigated, according to Crandall. Tor's communication tunnels are secure and much harder to trace that the conversation ever happened. Other use cases may include keeping the identities of sensitive populations like undocumented immigrants anonymous, trying to unionize a workplace without the company shutting it down, victims of domestic violence looking for resources without their abuser finding out or, as Crandall said, wanting to make embarrassing Google searches without related targeted ads following you around forever.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The world's largest community of 3D-printed homes, located in Texas, has unveiled its first completed house. CNN reports: With walls "printed" using a concrete-based material, the single-story structure is the first of 100 such homes set to welcome residents starting September. The community is part of a wider development in Georgetown, Texas called Wolf Ranch. It's located about 30 miles north of Austin, the state capital, and is a collaboration between Texas construction firm ICON, homebuilding company Lennar and Danish architecture practice Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). On Saturday prospective buyers toured around the finished model home at the project's grand opening, and some of the units have already sold, ICON spokesperson Cara Caulkins told CNN via email. Images of the newly completed building shared by the company show brightly lit interiors and curved gray walls. The walls are made from a concrete mix called Lavacrete, which is piped into place using 46-foot-wide robotic printers. After the walls are printed, the doors, windows and roofs -- all of which are equipped with solar panels -- are installed. ICON says more than a third of the homes' walls have now been printed, and the properties currently on offer are being sold at $475,000 to $599,000. The 3D-printed homes range in size from 1,500 to 2,100 square feet and have three to four bedrooms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.S. government services contracting giant Maximus has confirmed that hackers exploiting a vulnerability in MOVEit Transfer accessed the protected health information of as many as 11 million individuals. Virginia-based Maximus contracts with federal, state and local governments to manage and administer government-sponsored programs, such as Medicaid, Medicare, healthcare reform and welfare-to-work. In an 8-K filing on Wednesday, Maximus confirmed that the personal information of a "significant number" of individuals was accessed by hackers exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in MOVEit Transfer, which the organization uses to "share data with government customers pertaining to individuals who participate in various government programs." While Maximus hasn't yet been able to confirm the exact number of individuals impacted -- something the company expects to take "several more weeks" -- the organization said it believes hackers accessed the personal data, including Social Security numbers and protected health information, of "at least" 8 to 11 million individuals. If the latter, this would make the breach the largest breach of healthcare data this year -- and the most significant data breach reported as a result of the MOVEit mass-hacks. Maximus has not confirmed which specific types of health data were accessed and has not responded to TechCrunch's questions. In its 8-K filing, the company said it began notifying impacted customers and federal and state regulators, adding that it expects the security incident to cost approximately $15 million to investigate and remediate. Clop, the Russia-linked data extortion group responsible for the MOVEit mass-hacks, claims to have stolen 169 gigabytes of data from Maximus, which it has not yet published. The report notes that "more than 500 organizations have so far been impacted by the MOVEit mass-hacks, exposing the personal information of more than 34.5 million people."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the second consecutive quarter, Samsung reported a 95% decline in year-over-year profits. "It appears Samsung brought in a profit of 0.67 trillion ($523.5 million) Korean won (KRW), which is a drop in the bucket to the 14.12 trillion KRW ($11.06 billion) it made last year," reports Android Authority. From the report: Samsung attributes this loss in profit to the decline in smartphone shipments due to "high interest rates and inflation." As a report from Counterpoint Research suggests, the US smartphone market fell by 24% year-on-year in Q2 2023. Samsung, in particular, saw a 37% yearly decline in shipments, giving it 23% of the total US market. Something else that doesn't seem to bode well is the fact that Samsung believes the boost that came from the launch of the Galaxy S23 series has faded. However, it's not all doom and gloom. The manufacturer highlights the launch of the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5. It also believes that the smartphone market will make a return: "For the second half of 2023, the overall smartphone market is expected to return to year-on-year growth, especially in the premium market."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI has released ChatGPT for Android, months after launching the free iOS app for iPhones and iPads. You can download it in the Google Play Store. The Verge reports: According to a company tweet, it's available first in the US, India, Bangladesh, and Brazil, with other countries set to follow later, mimicking the staged rollout we saw for the iOS version. On July 27th, OpenAI announced additional availability, saying the Android ChatGPT app is now available in Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, the UK, and South Korea.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The Electronic Frontier Foundation will award Alexandra Elbakyan, founder of the 'pirate' library Sci-Hub, for her efforts to provide access to scientific knowledge. According to EFF, Elbakyan's site is a vital resource for millions of students and researchers. Some medical professionals have even argued that the site helped to save lives. [...] "When I was working on my research project, I found out that all research papers I needed for work were paywalled. I was a student in Kazakhstan at the time and our university was not subscribed to anything," Alexandra told TorrentFreak years ago. Today, Sci-Hub continues to tear down academic paywalls but that comes at a cost. Sci-Hub has been sued several times and owes millions in damages to major publishers. In addition, Elbakyan also drew the attention of the FBI. Instead of throwing in the towel, Sci-Hub's founder continues to defend her ideals. They're a thorn in the side of major publishers, but on the other side of the debate, Elbakyan reaps praise. This week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that Sci-Hub's founder will receive an award for her accomplishments in advancing access to scientific knowledge. EFF's awards are presented to people who have taken a leading role in the fight for freedom and innovation online. The previous winners include Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, Linux creator Linus Torvalds, and whistleblower Chelsea Manning. According to EFF, Elbakyan deserves the award as her life's work enables millions of people to access scientific knowledge that would otherwise exist beyond their financial reach. EFF also highlights that Elbakyan's work helps to challenge the current academic publishing system, where researchers are used as unpaid workhorses. "Sci-Hub is used by millions of students, researchers, medical professionals, journalists, inventors, and curious people all over the world, many of whom provide feedback saying they are grateful for this access to knowledge," said the EFF. "Some medical professionals have said Sci-Hub helps save human lives; some students have said they wouldn't be able to complete their education without Sci-Hub's help."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A team of scientists has extended the lives of old mice by connecting their blood vessels to young mice. The infusions of youthful blood led the older animals to live 6 to 9 percent longer, the study found, roughly equivalent to six extra years for an average human. From a report: While the study does not point to an anti-aging treatment for people, it does hint that the blood of young mice contains compounds that promote longevity, the researchers said. "I would guess it's a useful cocktail," said James White, a cell biologist at the Duke University School of Medicine and an author of the new study. Joining animals together, known as parabiosis, has a long history in science. In the 19th century, French scientists connected the blood vessels of two rats. To prove that the rats shared a circulatory system, they injected belladonna, a compound from the deadly nightshade plant, into one of the animals. The pupils of both rats dilated. In the 1950s, Clive McCay of Cornell University and his colleagues used parabiosis to explore aging. They joined young and old rats, stitching together their flanks so that the capillaries in their skin merged. Later, Dr. McCay and his colleagues examined the cartilage in the old rats and concluded it looked younger. In the early 2000s, parabiosis went through a renaissance. Researchers used 21st century techniques to study what happened when animals of different ages shared the same bloodstream. They found the muscles and brains of old mice were rejuvenated, while younger mice showed signs of accelerated aging.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple will soon start cracking down on apps that collect data on users' devices in order to track them (aka "fingerprinting"), according to an article on its developer site. Engadget writes: Starting with the release of iOS 17, tvOS 17, watchOS 10 and macOS Sonoma, developers will be required to explain why they're using so-called required reason APIs. Apps failing to provide a valid reason will be rejected started in spring of 2024. "Some APIs... have the potential of being misused to access device signals to try to identify the device or user, also known as fingerprinting. Regardless of whether a user gives your app permission to track, fingerprinting is not allowed," Apple wrote. "To prevent the misuse of certain APIs that can be used to collect data about users' devices through fingerprinting, you'll need to declare the reasons for using these APIs in your app's privacy manifest." The new rules could increase the rate of app rejections, some developers told 9to5Mac. For instance, an API called UserDefaults falls into the "required reason" category, but since it stores user preferences, it's used by a lot of apps.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An effort by United States lawmakers to prevent government agencies from domestically tracking citizens without a search warrant is facing opposition internally from one of its largest intelligence services. From a report: Republican and Democratic aides familiar with ongoing defense-spending negotiations in Congress say officials at the National Security Agency (NSA) have approached lawmakers charged with its oversight about opposing an amendment that would prevent it from paying companies for location data instead of obtaining a warrant in court. Introduced by US representatives Warren Davidson and Sara Jacobs, the amendment would prohibit US military agencies from "purchasing data that would otherwise require a warrant, court order, or subpoena" to obtain. The ban would cover more than half of the US intelligence community, including the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the newly formed National Space Intelligence Center, among others. The House approved the amendment in a floor vote over a week ago during its annual consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act, a "must-pass" bill outlining how the Pentagon will spend next year's $886 billion budget. Negotiations over which policies will be included in the Senate's version of the bill are ongoing. In a separate but related push last week, members of the House Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to advance legislation that would extend similar restrictions against the purchase of Americans' data across all sectors of government, including state and local law enforcement. Known as the "Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act," the bill will soon be reintroduced in the Senate as well by one of its original 2021 authors, Ron Wyden, the senator's office confirmed. "Americans of all political stripes know their Constitutional rights shouldn't disappear in the digital age," Wyden says, adding that there is a "deep well of support" for enshrining protections against commercial data grabs by the government "into black-letter law."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maine moved a step closer to becoming the East Coast's first floating offshore wind location after lawmakers approved a bill paving the way for deep-water development. From a report: The bill, approved Wednesday, includes pathways for utility companies to purchase wind power and for developers to build port infrastructure using local workers, a detail that prompted Governor Janet Mills' veto last month. She is expected to sign the bill in the coming days. The state has a goal to install 3 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2040, bringing Maine closer to its goal of powering its grid with 100% renewable energy by that year. The bill would help Maine contribute to the Biden administration's target of deploying 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind by 2035.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sequoia Capital pared back the size of two major venture funds, including its cryptocurrency fund, as part of a dramatic downsizing the storied venture firm is undertaking amid a broad startup downturn. From a report: Sequoia cut the size of its cryptocurrency fund to $200 million from $585 million, according to people familiar with the matter. It also slashed the size of its so-called ecosystem fund, which invests in other venture funds, to $450 million from $900 million, the people said. Sequoia told fund investors in March it made the decision to reduce the funds to better reflect the changed market. The cryptocurrency fund, for example, will focus more on backing young startups after an industry crash wiped out opportunities to back larger companies. By paring back the fund sizes, Sequoia is lowering the amount of committed capital required from investors, known as limited partners, who are already seeing lower returns from venture funds and are bracing for further markdowns. The changes show the difficult cuts venture firms are making during one of the roughest years in recent memory for the startup industry. They are trying to undo the breakneck expansion and liberal spending that characterized a historic startup boom, which no longer makes sense as deal-making slows and funds struggle to raise more cash.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. agency dedicated to pushing the boundaries of space exploration is finally exploring the barest edges of the modern livestreaming era. From a report: NASA has announced it's launching a beta for on-demand streaming content through NASA+. Oh, and if you couldn't already guess, that "+" in the logo is shaped like a little twinkling star. The agency didn't put an exact date on launch, but said it should be coming "later this year." To start, the new ad-free streaming service will be available on NASA's beta site and on an upgraded NASA app. The new web page is supposed to front load the topical space news of the day such as information about the Artemis program. The agency promises to promote content from across its different web services and add new features to its science-focused site. Whenever it comes, NASA promised this new streaming service won't require a paid subscription, and it should be available on both iOS and Android.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Joe Biden is planning to sign an executive order to limit critical US technology investments in China by mid-August, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the internal deliberations. From the report: The order focuses on semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. It won't affect any existing investments and will only prohibit certain transactions. Other deals will have to be disclosed to the government. The timing for the order, slated for the second week of August, has slipped many times before, and there is no guarantee it won't be delayed again. But internal discussions have already shifted from the substance of the measures to rolling out the order and accompanying rule, said the people familiar who spoke on condition of anonymity. The restrictions won't take effect until next year, and their scope will be laid out in a rulemaking process, involving a comment period so stakeholders can weigh in on the final version.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists have revived tiny animals called nematodes from a slumber that lasted 46,000 years, reports a new study. From a report: The microscopic animals were successfully woken from a state of suspended animation after researchers found them in the permafrost, or frozen soil, that flanks Siberia's northern Kolyma River. A radiocarbon analysis revealed that they hail from a prehistoric era when Neanderthals and dire wolves still roamed the world, and that they belong to a functionally extinct species called Panagrolaimus kolymaensis that was previously unknown to science. The astonishing discovery is "important for the understanding of evolutionary processes because generation times could be stretched from days to millennia, and long-term survival of individuals of species can lead to the refoundation of otherwise extinct lineages," according to a study published on Thursday in the journal PLoS Genetics. "Their evolution was literally suspended for 40k years," wrote Philipp Schiffer, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cologne and a co-author of the study, in an email to Motherboard. "We are now comparing them to species from the same genus, which my team samples around the world," he continued, noting that he is currently conducting fieldwork in the Australian Outback. "Studying their genomes we hope to understand a lot about how these populations became different in the last 40k years."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's a big reason airports and resorts are booked up this summer: Americans are taking off work and vacationing more than they have in over a decade. In some cases, their employers are forcing them to. From a report: The pandemic, along with jitters about a potential recession, dampened U.S. workers' eagerness to take paid time off in recent years. Now, many vacation-bound employees say they're over such worries. More working adults took vacation days in the first half of 2023 than they did in prepandemic years, according to data from the Labor Department. Company vacation calendars show more workers are checking out, and for longer stretches, this summer. The number of employees logging vacation days climbed 11% in June compared with the same month in 2022 and 20% compared with June 2021, according to human-resources technology firm Gusto, which tracks time-off requests from workers at more than 300,000 small and midsize businesses. The amount of time they took off also rose, by 5% from last year to an average 32 hours. [...] Many executives say they are also getting away for longer breaks, even if they don't fully unplug from work. In a July survey by executive search firm Korn Ferry, 53% of the nearly 300 professionals polled said they planned to take a longer summer vacation this year than in years past. While a quarter said they never connect with work while on vacation, half said they do so once or several times a day.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A coalition of a half-dozen open-source AI stakeholders -- Hugging Face, GitHub, EleutherAI, Creative Commons, LAION and Open Future -- are calling on EU policymakers to protect open source innovation as they finalize the EU AI Act, which will be the world's first comprehensive AI law. From a report: In a policy paper released this week, "Supporting Open Source and Open Science in the EU AI Act," the open-source AI leaders offered recommendations aoefor how to ensure the AI Act works for open source" -- with the "aim to ensure that open AI development practices are not confronted with obligations that are structurally impractical to comply with or that would be otherwise counterproductive." According to the paper, "overbroad obligations" that favor closed and proprietary AI development -- like models from top AI companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google -- "threaten to disadvantage the open AI ecosystem." The paper was released as the European Commission, Council and Parliament debate the final EU AI Act in what is known as the "trilogue," which began after the European Parliament passed its version of the bill on June 14. The goal is to finish and pass the AI Act by the end of 2023 before the next European Parliament elections.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cyber attackers targeted a digital platform used by Kenya's government to deliver services, the country's technology minister said, highlighting the vulnerabilities of the system. From a report: The attack on the e-Citizen platform in recent days caused system outages that left users unable to access a broad range of government services, ranging from passport applications to electricity payments. Some private companies were also affected. It was "an unsuccessful attempt to overload the system through extraordinary requests, with the intention of clogging it," said Eliud Owalo, cabinet secretary for information technology, in a statement on Thursday. He said technical teams had blocked the source of the requests, adding that privacy and the security of data had not been compromised.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Worldcoin (WLD), the eyeball-scanning crypto project launched by OpenAI's Sam Altman, is being investigated by French data protection regulator CNI for "questionable" practises, the regulator told CoinDesk. From a report: "The legality of this [data] collection seems questionable, as do the conditions for preservation of biometric data," a CNIL spokesperson said in a written statement, referring to Worldcoin's practise of scanning retinas to ensure that no single person can claim crypto rewards twice. "CNIL has initiated investigations," supporting the work of Bavarian privacy regulators who have primary responsibility under EU law, the spokesperson added. Worldcoin went live on Monday and its cheerleaders say it could spread crypto wider than bitcoin (BTC), but it has drawn the ire of privacy watchdogs in the U.K., where the Information Commissioner's Office has warned that people must freely give consent to the processing of their personal data, and be able to withdraw it without detriment.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is changing the Play Store ranking algorithms to increase the visibility of apps that better support large screens. Google detailed the changes in a blog post: "Apps and games that adhere to our large screen app quality guidelines will now be ranked higher in search and Apps and Games Home. This helps users find apps that resize well, aren't letterboxed, and support both portrait and landscape orientations. Editors' Choice and other curated collections and articles will also consider these criteria going forward, creating new featuring opportunities for optimized apps." Ars Technica reports: The large-screen app guidelines have various tiers, but they recommend keyboard, mouse, and stylus support, a two-pane tablet layout, drag-and-drop support, and foldable display awareness. The post also reiterates some improvements that Google has already rolled out, like showing tablet screenshots to tablet users and downranking apps that crash a lot. The big news is that the search results will switch to a two-pane layout on big screens. The search result list will live on the left-hand side, and tapping on each result will load a details page on the right. Previously, the results page was a stretched-out phone interface, with results on the left and nothing on the right. It would be nice if the top charts got this two-pane design, too, but that hasn't changed yet. Google says these changes are "just the beginning of our journey in creating a tailored Play Store experience for large screens." So hopefully, Google's developers will follow Google's developer guidelines soon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation on Thursday to bar automakers from eliminating AM broadcast radio in new vehicles and require companies like Ticketmaster to put total ticket prices including fees in marketing materials. The AM radio bill and the ticket-pricing bill both had strong bipartisan support and both have companion measures in the House of Representatives. The AM radio bill would direct the Transportation Department to issue regulations mandating AM radio in new vehicles without additional charge. Senators said this year that at least seven automakers have removed AM broadcast radio from their electric vehicles, including Tesla, BMW, and Volkswagen. Ford reversed course in May under pressure from Congress. Lawmakers say losing AM radio undermines a federal system for delivering key public safety information to the public. The National Association of Broadcasters said the bill "will ensure that the tens of millions of AM radio listeners across the country retain access to local news, diverse community programming and emergency information." The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing major automakers, opposed the measure: "This is simply a bill to prop up and give preference to a particular technology that's now competing with other communications options and adapting to changing listenership." The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee also approved two bills aimed at tightening privacy protections for children online.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel reported second-quarter earnings on Thursday, including a return to profitability after two straight quarters of losses, and a stronger-than-expected forecast. CNBC reports: For the third quarter, Intel expects earnings of $0.20 per share, adjusted, on revenue of $13.4 billion at the midpoint, versus analyst expectations of 16 cents per share on $13.23 billion in sales. Intel posted net income of $1.5 billion, or earnings of $0.35 per share, versus a net loss of $454 million, or a loss of 11 cents per share, in the same quarter last year. Intel CFO David Zinsner said in a statement that part of the reason that Intel's report was stronger than expected was because of the progress it has made towards slashing $3 billion in costs this year. Earlier this year, Intel slashed its dividend and announced plans to save $10 billion per year by 2025, including through layoffs. Revenue fell to $12.9 billion from $15.3 billion a year ago, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of declining sales for the company. Here's how Intel's business units performed:- Intel's Client Computing group, which includes the company's laptop and desktop processor shipments, fell 12% annually to $6.8 billion.The overall PC market has been slumping for over a year.- Intel's server chip division, which is reported as Data Center and AI, declined 15% to $4.0 billion in sales.- Intel's Network and Edge division, which sells networking products for telecommunications, declined 28% to $1.4 billion.- Mobileye, a publicly-traded Intel subsidiary focusing on self-driving cars, saw sales down 1% on an annual basis to $454 million.- It reported $232 million in revenue for its foundry business, Intel Foundry Services, that makes chips for other companies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boeing's CST-100 Starliner program, developed for NASA since 2014, has incurred total losses exceeding $1 billion, with an additional $257 million loss announced in the second quarter of 2023. Gizmodo reports: Boeing's total losses now amount to a staggering $1.14 billion for the Starliner program. The impact of these setbacks is evident in the company's Defense, Space, and Security division, which reported a significant loss of $527 million during the second quarter, with the Starliner project accounting for a substantial portion of this downturn, according to Ars Technica. Adding insult to injury, there's still no indication as to when Starliner will perform its first flight with a crew on board. Boeing, currently operating under a fixed-price contract with NASA, is obligated to absorb any additional costs. The company signed a $4.2 billion contract in 2014 as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, encompassing six operational Starliner missions. NASA also holds a parallel contract with SpaceX. Since 2020, SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule has completed six crewed flights for NASA, with a seventh mission planned for this coming August and an eighth tentatively planned for February 2024. Boeing has yet to fly Starliner with a crew on board, though it did perform a reasonably successful uncrewed mission in May 2022. In its latest financial earnings statement, Boeing said the Starliner program "recorded a $257 million loss primarily due to the impacts of the previously announced launch delay." The company initially aimed for a Crew Flight Test (CFT) launch on July 1, with NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore destined for the International Space Station (ISS). However, Boeing announced an indefinite delay to the launch on June 1 due to the discovery of two major safety issues. The first problem has to do with the load capacity of Starliner's three parachutes, designed to ensure a safe landing for the crew vehicle. The fabric sections of the parachutes have a failure load limit lower than anticipated, implying that if one parachute fails, the remaining two would be incapable of adequately decelerating the spacecraft for its landing in New Mexico. The second issue involves hundreds of feet of protective tape used to insulate the wiring harnesses inside the Starliner vehicle, which were found to be flammable. Mark Nappi, Boeing Starliner program manager and vice president, explained during the June briefing that it's too late to remove the flammable tape without inflicting further damage to the vehicle. Instead, Boeing and NASA are considering solutions involving additional wrapping over the existing tape in high-risk areas to mitigate fire hazards. On Wednesday, Boeing President and CEO David Calhoun said: "On Starliner, we are in lockstep with our customer. We prioritize safety and we're taking whatever time is required. We're confident in that team and committed to getting it right."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: Alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) is a serious, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction that arises after people eat red meat or consume products with alpha-gal, a type of sugar found in most mammals, the CDC says. The syndrome is typically caused by a bite from the lone star tick, which transfers alpha-gal into the victim's body which in turn triggers an immune system response. The CDC says the number of AGS cases are underdiagnosed in the U.S. and -- despite the spread of the condition -- many clinicians aren't even aware it exists, let alone how to diagnose it. Between 2010 and 2022, there were more than 110,000 cases of AGS identified, according to the CDC. The agency estimates the actual number of cases may be as high as 450,000 but notes the syndrome is underdiagnosed due to factors including that diagnosis requires a test, some providers are not familiar with AGS and some people with symptoms don't get tested. AGS symptoms can include hives or itchy rash, nausea or vomiting, heartburn or indigestion, diarrhea, shortness of breath, and severe stomach pain. Symptoms can range from mild to severe and typically occur two to six hours after consuming products with alpha-gal. [...] From 2010 to 2018, more than 34,000 suspected cases were identified. However, over the 2017-2022 study period, some 357,000 tests were submitted, resulting in just over 90,000 positive results. The number of new cases increased by about 15,000 each year during the five-year study period, with most cases occurring in the Southern, Midwestern, and Mid-Atlantic U.S., the CDC found. "Alpha-gal syndrome is an important emerging public health problem, with potentially severe health impacts that can last a lifetime for some patients," Dr. Ann Carpenter, and epidemiologist and lead author of one of the CDC studies, said in a statement. "It's critical for clinicians to be aware of AGS so they can properly evaluate, diagnose, and manage their patients and also educate them on tick-bite prevention to protect patients from developing this allergic condition," she added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to new research published Thursday, conservatives on Facebook during the 2020 presidential election were more isolated and saw more misinformation than the platform's liberal users -- though Facebook widely affected users' political content in different ways. Slashdot reader RUs1729 shared one of the four peer-reviewed studies, appearing in the journals Science and Nature. Forbes reports: The study, led by two researchers from the University of Texas and New York University, had hundreds of thousands of participants and analyzed mass amounts of Facebook user data. One of the study's papers, which used aggregated data for 208 million U.S. Facebook users, found that most misinformation on Facebook existed within conservative echo chambers, which did not have an equivalent on the liberal side of the platform. The paper found that news outlets on the right post a higher fraction of news stories rated false by Meta's third-party fact-checking program, meaning conservative audiences are more exposed to unreliable news. In a separate paper that assigned users to Facebook and Instagram feeds chronologically instead of algorithm-based feeds, which are the platforms' default feed types, researchers found users on chronological feeds were less engaged and saw more political content compared to those viewing algorithm-based feeds, along with more content from untrustworthy sources and more content from ideologically moderate friends and sources with mixed audiences. However, the feed analysis noted replacing algorithmic feeds with chronological ones did not create any detectable changes in political attitudes, knowledge or offline behavior. Another paper assigned nearly 9,000 U.S.-based Facebook users feeds with no reshares, later concluding that the removal of reshared content "substantially" lessened the amount of political news, and content from all untrustworthy sources decreased overall. The two lead researchers and 15 other academics, who had control rights for the study's papers, declined compensation from Meta to ensure an ethical study was completed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has implemented new rules requiring publicly traded companies to disclose any cyberattacks considered material incidents within four business days of discovery. BleepingComputer reports: According to the Wall Street watchdog, material incidents are those that a public company's shareholders would consider important "in making an investment decision." The SEC also adopted new regulations mandating foreign private issuers to provide equivalent disclosures following cybersecurity breaches. Listed companies must now include details about the cyberattack (including the incident's nature, scope, and timing) in periodic report filings, specifically on 8-K forms. These new cybersecurity incident reporting rules are set to take effect in December or 30 days after being published in the Federal Register. However, smaller companies will be granted an additional 180 days before they are required to provide Form 8-K disclosures. In some instances, the disclosure timeline may also be postponed if the U.S. Attorney General determines that an immediate disclosure would pose a significant risk to national security or public safety. "Whether a company loses a factory in a fire -- or millions of files in a cybersecurity incident -- it may be material to investors. Currently, many public companies provide cybersecurity disclosure to investors," said SEC Chair Gary Gensler today. "I think companies and investors alike, however, would benefit if this disclosure were made in a more consistent, comparable, and decision-useful way. Through helping to ensure that companies disclose material cybersecurity information, today's rules will benefit investors, companies, and the markets connecting them."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Following a rash of deadly fires, consumer advocates and fire departments, particularly in New York City, want the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to confiscate lithium-ion electric bikes that don't comply with regulations at the border. The ultimate goal is for unsafe e-bikes and poorly manufactured batteries to be taken off the streets and out of homes. The Associated Press reports: "We've been sounding the alarm for months," New York City Mayor Eric Adams said a day after an exploding battery ignited the Chinatown e-bike shop fire last month. "We need real action, not only on the state level, but on the federal level." With some 65,000 e-bikes zipping through its streets -- more than any other place in the U.S. -- New York City is the epicenter of battery-related fires. There have been 100 such blazes so far this year, resulting in 13 deaths, already more than double the six fatalities last year. Nationally, there were more than 200 battery-related fires reported to the commission -- an obvious undercount -- from 39 states over the past two years, including 19 deaths blamed on so-called micromobility devices that include battery-powered scooters, bicycles and hoverboards. New York's two U.S. Senators, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, introduced legislation last month that would set mandatory safety standards for e-bikes and the batteries that power them. Because mandatory standards don't exist, Schumer said, poorly made batteries have flooded the U.S., increasing the risk of fires. Earlier this year, New York City urgently enacted a sweeping package of local laws intended to crack down on defective batteries, including a ban on the sale or rental of e-bikes and batteries that aren't certified as meeting safety standards by an independent product testing lab. The new rules also outlaw tampering with batteries or selling refurbished batteries made with lithium-ion cells scavenged from used units. [...] Tighter regulations, safety standards and compliance testing drastically reduced the risk of fires in such devices, according to Robert Slone, the senior vice president and chief scientist for UL Solutions. The same can happen with e-bike batteries, he said, if they are made to comply with established safety standards. "We just need to make them safe, and there is a way to make them safe through testing and certification," Slone said, "given the history that we've seen in terms of fires and injuries and unfortunately, deaths as well -- not just in New York, but across the country and around the world."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Congress is closer than ever to passing a pair of bills to childproof the internet after lawmakers voted to send them to the floor Thursday. The bills -- the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and COPPA 2.0 -- were approved by the Senate Commerce Committee Thursday by a unanimous voice vote. Both pieces of legislation aim to address an ongoing mental health crisis amongst young people that some lawmakers blame social media for intensifying. But critics of the bills have long argued that they have the potential to cause more harm than good, like forcing social media platforms to collect more user information to properly enforce Congress' rules. KOSA is supposed to establish a new legal standard for the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general, allowing them to police companies that fail to prevent kids from seeing harmful content on their platforms. The authors of the bills, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), have said the bill keeps kids from seeing content that glamorizes eating disorders, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, and gambling. It would also ban kids 13 and under from using social media and require companies to acquire parental consent before allowing children under 17 to use their platforms. At Thursday's markup, Blackburn proposed an amendment to remedy some of the concerns raised by digital rights groups, mainly language requiring platforms to verify the age of their users. Lawmakers approved those changes along with the bill, but the groups fear that platforms would still need to collect more data on all users to live up to the bill's other rules. [...] The other bill lawmakers approved, COPPA 2.0, raises the age of protection under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act from 13 to 16 years of age, along with similar age-gating restrictions. It also bans platforms from targeting ads to kids. "When it comes to determining the best way to help kids and teens use the internet, parents and guardians should be making those decisions, not the government," Carl Szabo, NetChoice vice president and general counsel, said. "Rather than violating free speech rights and handing parenting over to bureaucrats, we should empower law enforcement with the resources necessary to do its job to arrest and convict bad actors committing online crimes against children."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's increasing use of "serialization," which pairs hardware components with the logic board using proprietary software locks, is making simple repairs on devices like iPads and iPhones harder and more expensive. In a recent Forbes article, a repair expert claims the Apple Pencil won't work properly on the iPad Pro if the display is replaced with a non-genuine Apple part, or even a screen from another iPad. From the report: This has now been extended to the displays of fifth and sixth generations of the iPad Pro 12.9-inch and third and fourth generation 11-inch tablets, repair expert Ricky Panesar, founder of iCorrect.co.uk, told me. While repairing a customer's device, Panesar found that the Apple Pencil wasn't delivering straight lines when the iPad display was replaced with a screen from another Apple iPad. "We found with the newer versions of the iPad that when you put a new screen on, even if it's taken from another iPad, the pencil strokes don't work perfectly." Panesar explained to me. "They have a memory chip that sits on the screen that's programmed to only allow the Pencil functionality to work if the screen is connected to the original logic board." He continued. In practice, Panesar found that lines drawn on the replaced display (Panesar says he doesn't use aftermarket parts for repairs) with the Apple Pencil aren't completely straight. He demoed this in the video [here]. Panesar isn't the only person to discover this, a Reddit post from May complained about the same issue. The poster claimed to have bought a sixth generation iPad Mini from a reseller, which is having the same squiggly line problem. Commenters pointed out that the issue is likely related to serialization and linked to Panesar's video.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shares a report from CNBC: Meta reported second-quarter earnings on Wednesday and said that its Reality Labs unit, which develops virtual reality and augmented reality technologies needed to power the metaverse, logged a $3.7 billion operating loss. Last year, Meta's Reality Labs unit lost a total of $13.7 billion while bringing in $2.16 billion in revenue, which is driven in part by the company's sales of Quest-branded VR headsets. Reality Labs lost $3.99 billion during the first quarter. That puts its total losses at about $21.3 billion since the beginning of last year. Meta said in its earnings report that it expects operating losses in its Reality Labs unit "to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and investments to further scale our ecosystem." Despite Reality Labs' operating loss, Meta reported revenue of $32 billion for its quarter ending in June, an 11% increase compared to the same period last year. "The company reported profits of $7.79 billion for the quarter, a 16% increase compared to last year, also beating analysts' estimates," adds CNN.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When Google announced that trackers would be able to tie in to its 3 billion-device Bluetooth tracking network at its Google I/O 2023 conference, it also said that it would make it easier for people to avoid being tracked by trackers they don't know about, like Apple AirTags. Now Android users will soon get these "Unknown Tracker Alerts." Based on the joint specification developed by Google and Apple, and incorporating feedback from tracker-makers like Tile and Chipolo, the alerts currently work only with AirTags, but Google says it will work with tag manufacturers to expand its coverage. For now, if an AirTag you don't own "is separated from its owner and determined to be traveling with you," a notification will tell you this and that "the owner of the tracker can see its location." Tapping the notification brings up a map tracing back to where it was first seen traveling with you. Google notes that this location data "is always encrypted and never shared with Google." Further into the prompts, you can make the tracker play a sound, "without the owner of the tracker knowing," Google says. If you bring the tracker to the back of your phone (presumably within NFC range), some trackers may provide their serial number and information about their owner, "like the last four digits of their phone number." Google indicates it will also link to information about how to physically disable a tracker. Finally, Google is offering a manual scan feature, if you're suspicious that your Android phone isn't catching a tracker or want to see what's nearby. The alerts are rolling out through a Google Play services update to devices on Android 6.0 and above over the coming weeks. Google is working to finish the joint tracking specification "by the end of this year." The company added: "At this time, we've made the decision to hold the rollout of the Find My Device network until Apple has implemented protections for iOS."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LinkedIn appears to be developing a new AI tool that can help ease the effectively robotic task of looking for and applying to jobs. From a report: According to a new leak, the Microsoft-owned company seems to have a new "LinkedIn Coach" assistant in testing that could support you through the application processes, teach you new skills, and help you network on your LinkedIn network. The news comes from app researcher Nima Owji, who uncovers features from various developers that haven't been deployed yet. In an email, LinkedIn spokesperson Amanda Purvis tells The Verge the company is "always exploring" new ways to improve user experience on the platform. Purvis adds that the company "will have more to share soon."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Four years from now, if all goes well, a nuclear-powered rocket engine will launch into space for the first time. The rocket itself will be conventional, but the payload boosted into orbit will be a different matter. From a report: NASA announced Wednesday that it is partnering with the US Department of Defense to launch a nuclear-powered rocket engine into space as early as 2027. The US space agency will invest about $300 million in the project to develop a next-generation propulsion system for in-space transportation. "NASA is looking to go to Mars with this system," said Anthony Calomino, an engineer at NASA who is leading the agency's space nuclear propulsion technology program. "And this test is really going to give us that foundation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hackers are infecting players of an old Call of Duty game with a worm that spreads automatically in online lobbies, according to two analyses of the malware. From a report: On June 26, a user on a Steam forum alerted other players of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that hackers "attack using hacked lobbies," and suggested running an antivirus. The malware mentioned in the thread appears to be on the malware online repository VirusTotal. Another player claimed to have analyzed the malware and wrote in the same forum thread that the malware appears to be a worm, based on a series of text strings inside the malware. A game industry insider, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not allowed to speak to the press, confirmed that the malware contains those strings, indicating a worm.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The era of global warming has ended and "the era of global boiling has arrived," the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, has said after scientists confirmed July was on track to be the world's hottest month on record. From a report: "Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning," Guterres said. "It is still possible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C [above pre-industrial levels], and avoid the very worst of climate change. But only with dramatic, immediate climate action." Guterres's comments came after scientists confirmed on Thursday that the past three weeks have been the hottest since records began and July is on track to be the hottest month ever recorded. Global temperatures this month have shattered records, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the EU's Copernicus Earth observation programme, stoked by the burning of fossil fuels and spurring violent weather. The steady rise in global average temperatures, driven by pollution that traps sunlight and acts like a greenhouse around the Earth, has made weather extremes worse. "Humanity is in the hot seat," Guterres told a press conference on Thursday. "For vast parts of North America, Asia, Africa and Europe, it is a cruel summer. For the entire planet, it is a disaster. And for scientists, it is unequivocal -- humans are to blame. All this is entirely consistent with predictions and repeated warnings. The only surprise is the speed of the change. Climate change is here, it is terrifying, and it is just the beginning. The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived."Read more of this story at Slashdot.