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The Biden administration is preparing an executive order that seeks to prevent foreign adversaries from accessing troves of highly sensitive personal data about Americans and people connected to the US government, Bloomberg News reported, citing documents. From the report: The administration plans to soon unveil the new executive order, which will direct the US Attorney General and Department of Homeland Security to issue new restrictions on transactions involving data that, if obtained, could threaten national security, according to three people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named as the details are still private. The draft order focuses on ways that foreign adversaries are gaining access to Americans' "highly sensitive" personal data -- from genetic information to location -- through legal means. That includes obtaining information through intermediaries, such as data brokers, third-party vendor agreements, employment agreements or investment agreements, according to a draft of the proposed order. In addition, organizations owned, controlled or operated by "countries of concern" are often obligated to hand such data over to the government when asked.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission ruled in a final order and opinion Monday that TurboTax, the popular tax filing software, engaged in deceptive advertising and banned the company from advertising its services for free unless it is free for all customers. CNN adds: By running ads for "free" tax services that many customers were not qualified for, the tax filing software violated the FTC Act and deceived consumers, the agency said. The FTC had first sued Intuit, TurboTax's owner, for its deceptive advertising in 2022. The FTC staff alleged most tax filers couldn't use the company's "free" services -- "such as those who get a 1099 form for work in the gig economy, or those who earn farm income." TurboTax advertising their products as free misled those customers, according to the FTC. The FTC Administrative Law Judge D. Michael Chappell announced the initial decision in September, which the commission upheld Monday. Intuit had appealed to the FTC as part of the process. In a statement Monday, Intuit said it has appealed "this deeply flawed decision" to federal circuit court outside of the FTC. "Absolutely no one should be surprised that FTC Commissioners -- employees of the FTC -- ruled in favor of the FTC as they have done in every appeal for the last two decades. This decision is the result of a biased and broken system where the Commission serves as accuser, judge, jury, and then appellate judge all in the same case," an an Intuit spokesperson said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gummy vitamin supplements have surged in popularity, with sales projected to double to $14 billion by 2027. However, experts warn that the candy-like taste and texture increase risks of overdosing, especially among children, as calls to Poison Control for melatonin overdoses have jumped 530% in a decade. Formulating vitamins into gummies also leads to faster nutrient degradation from heat, light and moisture than pills. Testing shows gummy vitamins often contain far more or less of ingredients than labels state. While some sweetness makes supplements appealing, gummies mimic candy too closely at the expense of safety and reliability. The Atlantic: A recent analysis of melatonin and CBD gummies yielded similar results: Some contained as much as 347 percent the amount of those substances stated on the label. Because the FDA generally does not regulate supplements as drugs, such wild variability is accepted in a way that it isn't for actual pharmaceuticals. (In 2020, the FDA granted the first-ever Investigational New Drug Application for a gummy medication, though no such product appears to have come to market.) "If you have something that you need a specific amount of every time you take it, gummies are not the way to go," says Pieter Cohen, a doctor at Cambridge Health Alliance, in Somerville, Massachusetts, and the lead author of the melatonin-CBD research. Taking too much of a supplement is generally not as dangerous as taking too much of a prescription drug, but, as Breuner noted, many supplements taken in sufficient excess can still be toxic. When I asked Cooperman what advice he had for people trying to navigate all of this, his answer was simple: "Don't buy a gummy." Perhaps the rise of gummy supplements was inevitable. The supplement industry has become so big in part because it can promote its products as, say, boosting the immune system or supporting healthy bones, without subjecting them to the strict regulatory demands imposed on pharmaceuticals. Supplements blur the line between food and drug, and gummy supplements -- designed and marketed on the premise that healthy stuff can and should taste as good as candy -- only intensify that blurring. Cohen, for one, thinks the distinction is worth preserving. Calcium supplements should not go down as easy as Haribos. That may be a bitter pill to swallow, but not everything can taste like candy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is adding new AI features to Chrome, including tools to organize browser tabs, customize themes, and assist users with writing online content such as reviews and forum posts. The writing helper is similar to an AI-powered feature already offered in Google's experimental search experience, SGE, which helps users draft emails in various tones and lengths. With the built-in Chrome writing tool, Google said users could potentially compose business reviews, RSVP messages, rental inquiries, and posts for online forums. TechCrunch adds: The still-experimental feature will be accessible in next month's Chrome release by right-clicking on a text box or field on the web and then choosing "help me write." To get started, you'll first write a few words and then Google's AI will jump in to help.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Beijing has quietly pulled the proposed curbs on the video game industry from the official website, weeks after the draft guidelines wiped tens of billions of dollars off the market value of local titans. From a report: The link to the draft rules was no longer accessible as of this morning, Haitong Securities reported earlier on Tuesday. Shares of Tencent and NetEase jumped on the news. "This could possibly indicate that there will be further changes in the new measures," wrote Haitong analysts in the note. The move follows Beijing also removing a key official -- the head of the publication bureau of Communist Party's Propaganda Department -- over the handling of the release of the draft rules, which caught investors and gaming giants by surprise.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FT Alphaville: Making fun of corporate brands embarrassing themselves online is like shooting fish in a barrel. It's not hard, but washing off the resulting splatter of blood, scales, innards and half-digested crab is, so no one wins. Honestly though, what the hell Franklin? Really? OK maybe Alphaville should tread carefully here, given some readers see our ~cough~ somewhat different approach to news and commentary as at odds with mainFT's brand. But like Meb Faber we prefer our trillion-dollar asset management groups to be boring. Stick to solid, sober and purportedly smart investing. Don't tweet that 60/40 retirement portfolios should include "assets" where it gleefully says "speculation is a feature, not a bug." Especially when said asset manager was famously named after Benjamin Franklin, because according to founder Rupert Johnson he "epitomised the ideas of frugality and prudence when it came to saving and investing." We get that Franklin needs to revamp itself. Despite a spate of aggressive M&A swelling its assets to $1.4tn, its share price has sagged over the past decade, giving it a current market cap of $13.6bn. That's less than AppLovin, Domino's Pizza and the world's biggest producer of frozen potato chips. It's only barely enough for inclusion into the S&P 500. Beyond the obvious and well-documented challenges of being a very traditional active asset manager in a world that mostly loves alternatives and passive funds, Franklin also has a rep for being a bit old-fashioned. Promoting crypto therefore probably seems like an obvious, fellow-kids way to seem more cool and edgy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Steam's newest hit survival game, Palworld, has been accused of plagiarising designs from Pokemon, as social media users negatively highlight its creator's historical association with generative AI tools. VideoGamesChronicle: Palworld by Japanese studio Pocketpair released into early access on PC and Xbox on Friday, and immediately became a breakout success, with its creator claiming 2 million sales in 24 hours. The huge launch exposure inevitably reignited discourse that has followed Palworld since its announcement, around its character designs' apparent similarities to Pokemon. Although the gameplay of Palworld is closer to survival games like Ark and Rust than Game Freak's series, many social media users have noted the obvious influences its character designs have taken from the Nintendo series. Following Palworld's release on Friday, some X users collated perceived similarities between Palworld's 'Pals' and Pokemon. "It's not even subtle about its rip offs, how much else has it stolen?" wrote one user. Another added: "I want to like Palworld, but I don't know if I can support running existing Pokemon through a fusor and passing them off as 'new' IP." The situation is further muddled in the eyes of some by Pocketpair's historical relationship with generative AI tools. Artist Zaytri noted on X that one of its previous titles was 'AI: Art Imposter,' a game which literally utilises an AI image generator as its core mechanic. The user also highlighted multiple historical X posts by Pocketpair's CEO Takuro Mizobe, in which he appeared to praise the potential of AI image generators for content creation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix has acquired the exclusive rights to Raw as well as other programming from World Wrestling Entertainment, marking the streaming service's first big move into live events. From a report: Raw will air on Netflix in the US, Canada, Latin America and other international markets beginning in January 2025, after the expiration of the WWE's domestic deal with Comcast. The company will also become the exclusive home outside the US for all WWE shows and specials, including Smackdown and NXT, as well as pay-per-view live events like Wrestlemania, SummerSlam and Royal Rumble. The pay-per-view events will be included at no additional cost for Netflix customers. After attracting more than 200 million customers by offering films and TV shows on-demand, Netflix has now committed to offering three hours of live wrestling a week starting next year. The company hopes the deal will bring in millions of loyal WWE viewers and provide a boost for its fledgling advertising-supported plan. Netflix has been dabbling in live events for the last year, airing a live comedy special, as well as a golf match, but this is the first long-term rights deal. The WWE is the latest major live event to shift from cable TV to streaming. Ultimate Fighting Championship, which like WWE is owned by TKO Group Holdings, offers many of its matches on ESPN+, while the National Football League sold Amazon the rights to Thursday Night Football. A playoff game on Comcast's Peacock just delivered the largest streaming audience for any professional sports event in the US. The deal 10-year deal is valued at more than $5 billion, CNBC reported.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: For a country that prides itself on being free, America does seem to have an awful lot of spying going on, as the new Street Surveillance Hub from the Electronic Frontier Foundation shows. The Hub contains detailed breakdowns of the type of surveillance systems used, from bodycams to biometrics, predictive policing software to gunshot detection microphones and drone-equipped law enforcement. It also has a full news feed so that concerned citizens can keep up with the latest US surveillance news; they can also contribute to the Atlas of Surveillance on the site. The Atlas, started in 2019, allows anyone to check what law enforcement is being used in their local area -- be it license plate readers, drones, or gunshot detection microphones. It can also let you know if local law enforcement is collaborating with third parties like home security vendor Ring to get extra information. EFF policy analyst Matthew Guariglia told The Register that once people look into what's being deployed using their tax dollars, a lot of red flags are raised. Over the last few years America's thin blue line have not only been harvesting huge amounts of data themselves, but also buying it in from commercial operators. The result is a perfect storm on privacy -- with police, homeowners, and our personal technology proving to be a goldmine of intrusive information that's often misused.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AT&T, Google and Vodafone are investing a total of $206.5 million in AST SpaceMobile, a satellite manufacturer that plans to be the first space-based network to connect standard mobile phones at broadband speeds. Fierce Wireless reports: AST SpaceMobile claims it invented the space-based direct-to-device market, with a patented design facilitating broadband connectivity directly to standard, unmodified cellular devices. In a press release, AST SpaceMobile said the investment from the likes of AT&T, Google and Vodafone underscores confidence in the company's technology and leadership position in the emerging space-based cellular D2D market. There's the potential to offer connectivity to 5.5 billion cellular devices when they're out of coverage. Bolstering the case for AST SpaceMobile, Vodafone and AT&T placed purchase orders -- for an undisclosed amount -- for network equipment to support their planned commercial services. In addition, Google and AST SpaceMobile agreed to collaborate on product development, testing and implementation plans for SpaceMobile network connectivity on Android and related devices. AST SpaceMobile boasts agreements and understandings with more than 40 mobile network operators globally. However, it's far from alone in the D2D space. Apple/Globalstar, T-Mobile/SpaceX, Bullitt and Lynk Global are among the others.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA announced Friday that it finally got a canister of asteroid dust open, four months after it parachuted down through the Earth's atmosphere into the Utah desert. The Guardian reports: The space administration announced Friday that it had successfully removed two stuck fasteners that had prevented some of the samples collected in 2020 from the 4.6bn-year-old asteroid Bennu, which is classified as a "potentially hazardous" because it has one in 1,750 chance of crashing into Earth by 2300. Most of the rock samples collected by Nasa's Osiris-Rex mission were retrieved soon after the canister landed in September, but additional material remaining inside a sampler head that proved difficult to access. After months of wrestling with the last two of 35 fasteners, scientists in Houston managed to get them dislodged. "It's open! It's open!" Nasa's planetary science division posted on Twitter/X. The division also posted a photograph of dust and small rocks inside the canister. According to the Los Angeles Times, the team designed custom tools made from a specific grade of surgical, non-magnetic stainless steel to pry it open -- all without the samples being contaminated by Earthly air. Nasa said it will now analyze the nine-ounce sample.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: Doctors are now being encouraged to consider more blood testing for PFAS, also known as "forever chemicals," according to guidance released (PDF) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The federal agency is recommending providers have a discussion with their patients regarding consumer and environmental exposures to large levels of the chemicals, and if blood testing may be of benefit. "This information is intended for individuals and communities around the country, who are concerned about exposure to PFAS to have productive conversations with their medical providers" Dr. Aaron Bernstein, Director of CDC's National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), told ABC News. "Over 90% of people in this country have been exposed to PFAS and many, many communities around the country there have been very high exposures. And we've learned more and more in recent years about how exposures to PFAS may increase risk for many disease" he added. The new guidance advises providers to consider an individual's exposure history; the results of PFAS testing from a patient's water supply, food sources, or other exposures; and whether those results can inform regarding ways to reduce future exposures. Most Americans are exposed to PFAS through drinking water, according to Bernstein, who also notes that many municipal water agencies are already testing for PFAS, and those test results are typically publicly available. [...] While blood tests for PFAS may help guide exposure reduction or provide psychological relief to patients, such tests do not help identify the source of exposure, nor can they be directly linked to a health condition. There are also currently no approved medical treatments available to reduce PFAS in the body, according to the CDC. "A PFAS level is one piece of data that needs to be taken in a broader context. We need to understand the individual's health history, their family history, what other exposures they may have that might increase the risk of diseases that can also be associated with PFAS," Bernstein said. "What is clear is that this is an evolving landscape [...] we are at a point in time that both the science around PFAS, the accessibility of testing, and what is being tested for is changing. We are committed at CDC to stay on top of it and update this information as needed."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kevin Purdy reports via Ars Technica: Sometimes, a great song can come from great pain. The Game Boy Advance (GBA), its software having crashed nearly two hours ago, will, for example, play a tune based on the game inside it. And if you listen closely enough -- using specialty hardware and code -- you can tell exactly what game it was singing about. And then theoretically play that same game. This was discovered recently by TheZZAZZGlitch, whose job is to "sadistically glitch and hack the crap out of Pokemon games. It's "hardly a ready-to-use solution," the modder notes, as it requires a lot of tuning specific to different source formats. So while there are certainly easier ways to get GBA data from a cartridge, none make you feel quite so much like an audio datamancer. After crashing a GBA and recording it over four hours, the modder saw some telltale waveforms in a sound file at about the 1-hour, 50-minute mark. Later in the sound-out, you can hear the actual instrument sounds and audio samples the game contains, played in sequence. Otherwise, it's 8-bit data at 13,100 Hz, and at times, it sounds absolutely deranged. "2 days of bugfixing later," the modder had a Python script ready that could read the audio from a clean recording of the GBA's crash dump. Did it work? Not without more troubleshooting. One issue with audio-casting ROM data is that there are large sections of 0-byte data in the ROM, which are hard to parse as mute sounds. After running another script that realigned sections based on their location in the original ROM, the modder's ROM was 99.76 percent accurate but "still didn't boot tho." TheZZAZZGlitch later disclaimed that, yes, this is technically using known ROM data to surface unknown data, or "cheating," but there are assumptions and guesses one could make if you were truly doing this blind. The next fix was to refine the sound recording. By recording three times and merging them with a "majority vote" algorithm, their accuracy notched up to 99.979 percent. That output ROM booted -- but with glitched text and a title screen crash. After seven different recordings are meshed and filtered for blank spaces, they achieve 100 percent parity. You can watch the video describing this feat here. Used source code is also available under the file name "gbacrashsound_dumper.zip."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thomas Claburn reports via The Register: A security researcher in Germany has been fined $3,300 for finding and reporting an e-commerce database vulnerability that was exposing almost 700,000 customer records. Back in June 2021, according to our pals at Heise, an contractor identified elsewhere as Hendrik H. was troubleshooting software for a customer of IT services firm Modern Solution GmbH. He discovered that the Modern Solution code made an MySQL connection to a MariaDB database server operated by the vendor. It turned out the password to access that remote server was stored in plain text in the program file MSConnect.exe, and opening it in a simple text editor would reveal the unencrypted hardcoded credential. With that easy-to-find password in hand, anyone could log into the remote server and access data belonging to not just that one customer of Modern Solution, but data belonging to all of the vendor's clients stored on that database server. That info is said to have included personal details of those customers' own customers. And we're told that Modern Solution's program files were available for free from the web, so truly anyone could inspect the executables in a text editor for plain-text hardcoded database passwords. The contractor's findings were discussed in a June 23, 2021 report by Mark Steier, who writes about e-commerce. That same day Modern Solution issued a statement [PDF] -- translated from German -- summarizing the incident [...]. The statement indicates that sensitive data about Modern Solution customers was exposed: last names, first names, email addresses, telephone numbers, bank details, passwords, and conversation and call histories. But it claims that only a limited amount of data -- names and addresses -- about shoppers who made purchases from these retail clients was exposed. Steier contends that's incorrect and alleged that Modern Solution downplayed the seriousness of the exposed data, which he said included extensive customer data from the online stores operated by Modern Solution's clients. In September 2021 police in Germany seized the IT consultant's computers following a complaint from Modern Solution that claimed he could only have obtained the password through insider knowledge a" he worked previously for a related firm -- and the biz claimed he was a competitor. Hendrik H. was charged with unlawful data access under Section 202a of Germany's Criminal Code, based on the rule that examining data protected by a password can be classified as a crime under the Euro nation's cybersecurity law. In June, 2023, a Julich District Court in western Germany sided with the IT consultant because the Modern Solution software was insufficiently protected. But the Aachen regional court directed the district court to hear the complaint. Now, the district court has reversed its initial decision. On January 17, a Julich District Court fined Hendrik H. and directed him to pay court costs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony has scrapped plans for a $10 billion merger of its Indian unit with Zee Entertainment, "ending a deal that could have created one of the South Asian nation's biggest TV broadcasters," reports Reuters. From the report: The collapse of the deal in content-hungry India creates more uncertainty for TV broadcaster Zee in particular as competition heats up, with Disney, also seeking to merge its Indian businesses with the media assets of billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance. Zee told Indian stock exchanges Sony was seeking $90 million in termination fees for alleged breaches of their merger agreement and emergency interim relief by "invoking arbitration." Zee said it denies all claims made by Sony and would take appropriate legal action. Sony said in a statement certain "closing conditions" to the merger were not satisfied despite "good faith discussions" with Zee, and the companies had been unable to agree upon an extension by their Jan. 21 deadline. "After more than two years of negotiations, we are extremely disappointed ... We remain committed to growing our presence in this vibrant and fast-growing market," it added. While neither Sony nor Zee elaborated on Monday on which conditions had been unfulfilled, a stalemate over who will lead the combined company had put the merger in danger. Zee had proposed that CEO Punit Goenka take the helm, but Sony balked after he became the subject of an investigation by India's market regulator. Zee said on Monday Goenka had been "agreeable to step down in the interest of the merger." A source with direct knowledge however said Sony was not keen to proceed unless Goenka backed out before the closure of the merger, rather than after the deal had been sealed as he had proposed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechRadar: Thanks to new Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) research, which was part-funded by Lamborghini, we could soon see the end of difficult-to-source and often problematic rare metal materials featuring in the batteries of future electric vehicles. The MIT study's aim was to replace cobalt and nickel, typically used as a cathode in today's lithium-ion battery technology, with organic materials that could be produced at a much lower cost. This would also reduce the impact on the planet and conduct electricity at similar rates as cobalt batteries. [...] The research, which has been running for six years, has culminated in a novel organic material that could be a direct replacement for cobalt and nickel. According to details recently released by MIT, this material consists of many layers of TAQ (bis-tetraaminobenzoquinone), an organic small molecule that contains three fused hexagonal rings. It's a complicated subject for those not donning lab coats for a living, but these TAQ layers can extend outward in every direction, forming a structure similar to graphite. Within the molecules are chemical groups called quinones, which are the electron reservoirs, and amines, which help the material to form strong hydrogen bonds, which ensure they don't dissolve into the battery electrolyte (something that has previously blighted organic cathode compounds), thus extending the lifetime of the battery. It comes as no surprise that Lamborghini has licensed the patent on this technology, seeing as it funded the research and has a certain Lanzador high performance electric vehicle in the pipeline. Researchers say that tests of the material revealed that its conductivity and storage capacity were comparable to that of traditional cobalt-containing batteries. Also, batteries with a TAQ cathode can be charged and discharged faster than existing batteries, which could speed up the charging rate for electric vehicles. This speedy rate of charge and discharge could help give something like Lamborghini's Lanzador a performance edge, while super-fast charging capabilities will negate the need for lengthy charging stops -- something the Italian marque's discerning clientele will likely be opposed to. However, Lamborghini is also part of the wider Volkswagen Group and seeing that the primary materials needed to manufacture this type of cathode are already commercially available and produced in large quantities as commodity chemicals, we may see the battery tech filter down to more affordable EVs in the future.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act, Meta is rolling out changes to give users in Europe the ability to unlink their Facebook, Messenger and Instagram accounts. Neowin reports: One key choice users will have is how information is shared between Facebook and Instagram. Instagram and Facebook users will be able to choose whether or not they want information shared between the apps. Those who currently have connected Instagram and Facebook accounts can opt to keep sharing data between the apps or separate their accounts. Furthermore, Messenger is getting a standalone option. Users can continue using Messenger with their Facebook account or create a new account completely independent of Facebook. This new Messenger account will still offer core features like messaging, chat, and voice/video calls, but without Facebook. For Facebook Marketplace, the options will be a personalized marketplace experience that taps into Facebook profiles or an anonymized experience where buyers and sellers only communicate via email instead of Messenger. For gamers, Meta offers a similar choice to Facebook Gaming. Users can keep their Facebook info linked for access to features like multiplayer, in-game purchases, and personalized recommendations. Alternatively, they can opt for a Facebook-free gaming experience. Finally, an option introduced in November 2023 remains relevant -- European users can choose to pay a subscription to Facebook and Instagram ad-free. It ensures that their information is not used for targeted advertising.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to analyst Min-Chi Kuo, Apple may have sold somewhere between 160,000 to 180,000 Vision Pro headsets during the past weekend. "This already far exceeds Kuo's earlier production figures of 60,000 to 80,000 units targeting the initial release on February 2, which is no wonder that the Vision Pro was sold out immediately after pre-orders opened," notes Engadget. From the report: While this sounds like positive news, Kuo pointed out that with shipping times remaining unchanged within the first 48 hours, this might indicate a quick drop in demand after the heavy users and hardcore fans were done pre-ordering. In contrast, iPhone orders would usually "see a steady increase in shipping times 24 to 48 hours after pre-orders open." But of course, the Vision Pro isn't meant for the average consumer in its current state, especially given the lack of some mainstream apps like YouTube, Spotify or Netflix. Not to mention the eye-watering $3,499 base price either, though Apple may later release a cheaper model in the ballpark of $1,500 to $2,500, according to an earlier report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Kuo added that even with the device being sold out based on the upper initial production figure of 80,000 units, that only accounts for about 0.007 percent of Apple's 1.2 billion active users, which makes the Vision Pro "a very niche product" in the eyes of Cupertino. That is to say, the tech giant will need to somehow drum up and sustain demand for the headset before its global launch, which is rumored to take place some time before this year's WWDC -- likely in June. Meanwhile, Apple is also busy setting up demo areas at its US flagship stores, in the hopes of making a few more sales with their 25-minute sessions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last Thursday, HP CEO Enrique Lores addressed the company's controversial practice of bricking printers when users load them with third-party ink. Speaking to CNBC Television, he said, "We have seen that you can embed viruses in the cartridges. Through the cartridge, [the virus can] go to the printer, [and then] from the printer, go to the network." That frightening scenario could help explain why HP, which was hit this month with another lawsuit over its Dynamic Security system, insists on deploying it to printers. Dynamic Security stops HP printers from functioning if an ink cartridge without an HP chip or HP electronic circuitry is installed. HP has issued firmware updates that block printers with such ink cartridges from printing, leading to the above lawsuit (PDF), which is seeking class-action certification. The suit alleges that HP printer customers were not made aware that printer firmware updates issued in late 2022 and early 2023 could result in printer features not working. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages and an injunction preventing HP from issuing printer updates that block ink cartridges without an HP chip. [...] Unsurprisingly, Lores' claim comes from HP-backed research. The company's bug bounty program tasked researchers from Bugcrowd with determining if it's possible to use an ink cartridge as a cyberthreat. HP argued that ink cartridge microcontroller chips, which are used to communicate with the printer, could be an entryway for attacks. [...] It's clear that HP's tactics are meant to coax HP printer owners into committing to HP ink, which helps the company drive recurring revenue and makes up for money lost when the printers are sold. Lores confirmed in his interview that HP loses money when it sells a printer and makes money through supplies. But HP's ambitions don't end there. It envisions a world where all of its printer customers also subscribe to an HP program offering ink and other printer-related services. "Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription. This is really what we have been driving," Lores said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's lab for pioneering technology is laying off dozens of employees as it turns to outside investors to help fund its ventures. From a report: The division, known as X, has in recent months ramped up discussions on funding with venture capitalists and other investors, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named as it is private. The lab is adopting a new structure that'll enable its projects to more easily spin out of X as independent startups with support from Alphabet and outside backers, according to one of the people and an email to staff obtained by Bloomberg. X seeks bold approaches to major challenges like climate change and connectivity, but its efforts have yielded few durable businesses thus far.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan has become the fifth country in the world to soft-land a spacecraft on the Moon, using precision technology that allowed it to touch down closer to its target landing site than any mission has before. However the spacecraft might have survived on the lunar surface for just a few hours due to power failure. Nature: Telemetry showed that the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, touched down in its target area near Shioli crater, south of the lunar equator early Saturday morning, four months after lifting off from the Tanegashima Space Centre, off the south coast of Japan. [...] According to [Hitoshi] Kuninaka (VP of Kanegawa-based Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), SLIM has very likely achieved its primary goal -- to land on the Moon with an unprecedented accuracy of 100 metres, which is a big leap from previous ranges of a few to dozens of kilometres. SLIM carried vision-based navigation technology, which was intended to image the surface as it flew over the Moon, and locate itself quickly by matching the images with onboard maps. It remains unclear if the car-sized, 200-kilogram spacecraft actually touched down in the planned, two-step manner with its five legs. Unlike previous Moon landers, which used four legs to simultaneously reach a relatively flat area, SLIM was designed to hit a 15-degree slope outside Shioli crater first with one leg at the back, and then tip forward to stabilize on the four front legs. Observers suggest that SLIM might have rolled during its touch-down, preventing its solar cells from facing the Sun. Kuninaka said not enough data were available to establish the probe's posture or orientation. However, if some sunlight is able to reach the solar cells there is a chance that SLIM could come back to life.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI can't replace the majority of jobs right now in cost-effective ways, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found in a study that sought to address fears about AI replacing humans in a swath of industries. From a report: In one of the first in-depth probes of the viability of AI displacing labor, researchers modeled the cost attractiveness of automating various tasks in the US, concentrating on jobs where computer vision was employed -- for instance, teachers and property appraisers. They found only 23% of workers, measured in terms of dollar wages, could be effectively supplanted. In other cases, because AI-assisted visual recognition is expensive to install and operate, humans did the job more economically. [...] The cost-benefit ratio of computer vision is most favorable in segments like retail, transportation and warehousing, all areas where Walmart and Amazon are prominent. It's also feasible in the health-care context, MIT's paper said. A more aggressive AI rollout, especially via AI-as-a-service subscription offerings, could scale up other uses and make them more viable, the authors said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Loughborough University will use holographic tech to beam in guest lecturers from around the globe, allowing students to interact with top international experts without leaving campus. The university, the first in Europe to explore this, plans lectures from MIT scientists and tests where management students tackle tricky situations under the guidance of industry leaders. Students have welcomed the lifelike holograms as more engaging than Zoom, The Guardian reports. Following a pilot scheme in 2024, the technology will likely become part of the formal curriculum in 2025. The box-based units are sold by California's Proto, whose clients include BT and IBM for corporate meetings. Proto's founder says the technology could even revive some of history's greatest thinkers to lecture students.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Exxon Mobil has filed a complaint in a Texas court seeking to block a climate proposal by activist investors from a shareholder vote in May. This marks Exxon's first legal action against such a proposal. Exxon argues the proposal, which urges adoption of emissions targets for Exxon's products, does not serve shareholder interests. The activist investors counter that Exxon is the only major oil company lacking these targets. TechCrunch: The problem Exxon faces is that the "basic rules of society," specifically "those embedded in ethical custom," are changing, and the company now finds itself on the wrong side of them. Two-thirds of Americans say we should prioritize alternative energy over fossil fuels, and 69% say the U.S. should move toward net-zero emissions by 2050, according to the Pew Research Center. Internationally, most people want their governments to do something about climate change. Exxon would normally take its grievances to the SEC, filing a request with the regulator to omit the proposal from this year's proxy statement. But under the Biden administration, the SEC has been siding more frequently with shareholders. After all, who's the boss?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Entrepreneur Daniel Gross speculates about the wide-ranging economic, technological, geopolitical, and societal implications if advanced AI systems become extremely capable at many different tasks. He poses open-ended questions across areas like markets, real estate, energy, nations, inflation, and geopolitics regarding what the impacts could be, what trends may emerge, what historical parallels could exist, and what investments or trades might make sense in such a hypothetical future scenario. From the post: Nations: Who wins and loses? $250b of India's GDP exports are essentially GPT-4 tokens... what happens now?Are there any relevant analogies from history we can compare to?What is the euclidean distance of reskilling in prior revolutions, and how does AGI compare? The typist became an EA, can the software engineer become a machinist?Electrification and assembly lines lead to high unemployment and the New Deal, including the Works Progress Administration, a federal project that employed 8.5m Americans with a tremendous budget... does that repeat?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The world's first routine vaccine programme against malaria has started in Cameroon, in a move projected to save thousands of children's lives across Africa. From a report: The symbolic first jab was given to a baby girl named Daniella at a health facility near Yaounde on Monday. Every year 600,000 people die of malaria in Africa, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Children under five make up at least 80% of those deaths. Cameroon is offering the RTS,S vaccine free of charge to all infants up to the age of six months old. Patients require a total of four doses. Health officials say these will be given at the same time as other routine childhood vaccines to make it easier for parents. It comes after successful pilot campaigns in Kenya, Ghana and Malawi - where the vaccine caused a 13% drop in malaria deaths in children of eligible age, says Unicef. The jab is known to be effective in at least 36% of cases, according to US researchers, meaning it could save over one in three lives. While the rollout is undoubtedly a relief and a life-saver, its relatively low efficacy rate means that it is not a "silver bullet," argues Willis Akhwale at End Malaria Council Kenya.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jamie Bartlett, a technology columnist, argues that social media platforms constantly pressure users to share opinions on events they may not fully understand, contributing to an atmosphere of performative outrage and conformity rather than thoughtful discussion. However, he also acknowledges the counterpoint that silence in the face of injustice can enable harm. From the column: One of the trickier aspects of digital life is the constant pressure to opine. To have a strong opinion on a subject, and to share it with the world. It's literally baked into the design of the most popular platforms. [...] If I am honest, I know very little about most bad things going on in the world. Certainly not enough that sharing my view will inform or educate or enlighten. Yet whenever I see a news report, an urgent need rises up: what shall I say about this? I have a feeling about it -- which must be shared! (And ideally in emotionally charged language, since that will receive more interactions). What's wrong with calling out the bad stuff going on? Nothing per se. And certainly not on an individual level. The problem is when people feel a soft and gentle pressure to denounce, to praise, to comment on things they don't feel they fully understand. Things they don't feel comfortable speaking about. Things that are contentious and difficult to discuss on heartless, unforgiving platforms where the wrong phrase or tone might land you in hot water. What social media has done is to make silence an active -- rather than the default -- choice. To speak publicly is now so easy that not doing it kind-of-implies you don't know or don't care about what's going on in the world. Who wants to look ignorant or indifferent? And besides, who doesn't want to appear kind or wise, or morally upstanding in front of others? But the result is an undirected anger from all sides: frenetic, purposeless, habitual and above all moralising. There's nothing wrong with occasionally saying what you think and sometimes it's very important.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tens of thousands of people have fallen victim to predatory loan apps, which extort users using sensitive information from their phones. Google has changed its policy to prevent the loan apps from being listed on the Play store, but enforcement is unreliable. Rest of World: According to Mexico City's Citizen Council for Safety and Justice, a consumer watchdog group, 135 reports to local authorities have been filed against JoyCredito for fraud and extortion. But despite the government attention, the app is still available to download from the Google Play store. For years, apps like JoyCredito have been exploiting borrowers from Mexico to India. They lend small amounts of money with few requirements and very high interest rates to financially vulnerable people -- and then extort them when the loan is due. After years of mounting pressure from watchdog groups, Google explicitly banned the apps from the Play store in October. But stories like those of Macias Gonzalez show how widespread the apps still are -- and how ineffective Google has been at enforcing its own policy. Rest of World presented Google with 15 instances of exploitative loan apps based in Mexico that explicitly violate the terms of the Play store. All of them were still available in the store as of press time. Of the 15 apps, 12 explicitly asked for access to either the camera roll or contacts in the Google Play store's terms of services. Two others specified full access only in external documents. One other gave no data access information. Rest of World also found 10 apps in Peru that have been flagged as exploitative by SBS, a national body that oversees banking, insurance, and private pension. All the apps are still available for download on the Google Play store.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Terraform Labs, the company behind the stablecoin TerraUSD, which collapsed and roiled cryptocurrency markets in 2022, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States, according to court papers filed on Sunday. From a report: Singapore-based Terraform Labs, in a filing with the bankruptcy court in Delaware, listed assets and liabilities in the range of $100-$500 million. Terraform Labs said it would meet all financial obligations to employees and vendors during the Chapter 11 case without requiring additional financing. It also plans to continue Web3 offerings expansion. "The filing will allow TFL to execute on its business plan while navigating ongoing legal proceedings, including representative litigation pending in Singapore and U.S. litigation involving the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)," Terraform Labs said in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: OpenAI has banned the developer of a bot that mimicked Democratic White House hopeful Rep. Dean Phillips, the first known instance where the maker of ChatGPT has restricted the use of AI in political campaigns. OpenAI suspended the account of the start-up Delphi, which had been contracted to build Dean.Bot, which could talk to voters in real-time via a website. "Anyone who builds with our tools must follow our usage policies," a spokesperson for OpenAI said in a statement shared with Axios on Sunday. "We recently removed a developer account that was knowingly violating our API usage policies which disallow political campaigning, or impersonating an individual without consent." OpenAI apparently is not a fan of Richard Stallman's 'freedom 0' tenet, which argues software users should have the freedom to run programs as they wish, in order to do what they wish (Stallman is careful to note this freedom doesn't make one exempt from laws). The suspension and subsequent bot removal occurred ahead of Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, where Phillips continues his long-shot presidential bid against President Biden.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is recommending that airlines check a second type of Boeing jet that uses the same kind of door plug as the one that blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this month. From a report: The FAA said late Sunday that it advises operators of Boeing's 737-900ER aircraft to inspect the planes' midexit door plugs. The recommendation comes weeks after the midair accident involving a 737 MAX 9 jet. The 900ER jet isn't part of Boeing's newer MAX family of aircraft, but its door-plug design is identical to the MAX 9's, the FAA said in a release. The FAA cited "an added layer of safety" in recommending the inspections and called for visual checks of four places where door plugs are secured to airplanes. It said some operators had already checked 900ER door plugs and "noted findings with bolts." In a statement, Boeing said, "We fully support the FAA and our customers in this action." The agency grounded 171 MAX 9 airplanes after the Alaska Airlines midair accident and emergency landing on Jan. 5. The grounding remains in place pending a review and approval of inspection and maintenance processes. Boeing has delivered 505 of its 900ER aircraft globally to airlines including Alaska Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Indonesia's Lion Air, according to company data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's the 50th anniversary of Devo, the geek-friendly, dystopia-themed band that combined synthesizers with showmanship, first founded in 1973. As a new documentary about the group celebrates its Sundance world premiere, the Los Angeles Times explores how the band made innovative use of the technology of its time:With their yellow radiation suits, red "energy dome" hats and manic energy, part playful and part angry, the band Devo combined the futuristic glamour of new wave with atomic-age anxieties and post-'60s disillusionment.... Uniquely, the band developed a fully formed, intricate internal philosophy and mythology built around the idea that humans were "de-evolving" by becoming dumber and less sophisticated. The mascot of the band, known as "Booji Boy," was an infantile urchin in a rubber mask... Was there an idea to document the band right from the very start? It's incredible that there's footage of the very first show in 1973. GERALD CASALE: We were that delusional, yes. And we were trying to document ourselves when nobody was interested in doing that. And when it was quite expensive and clumsy to do it. You're dealing with Sony U-matic reel-to-reel recorders and big heavy cameras and a scarcity of equipment and very little interest. I mean, my God, if a Devo of now existed like we did, then clearly, there'd be a million cellphone videos. MARK MOTHERSBAUGH: [...] Bob was the first of us to direct a video, back when he was in high school. Bob and me, our dad, starting when we were like babies, like 1 year old, he'd bring out an 8-millimeter camera that didn't have sound, and so he shot hundreds and hundreds of these films through the years, just family stuff. So we always kind of liked that. And Jerry was doing films at Kent State with Chuck Statler before Chuck said, "Hey, let's do a film with a couple of the songs in it." So we were always audio-visual. We were always thinking in both worlds... [DOCUMENTARY DIRECTOR] CHRIS SMITH: One of my favorite details in looking through the old footage is, there's an early show that was recorded in black-and-white, and they have such limited materials to work with, yet they do this thing where the light goes on and off on both sides of the stage. And to me it was so emblematic of where they were going because they were making something that you hadn't seen before that was super creative and visually distinctive and interesting out of something we all had to work with... You could see in that footage, the inventiveness that wasn't a result of means - it was something that was just created out of what they had to work with at that time. MARK MOTHERSBAUGH: [...] Sonically, a lot of what we did was just related to the fact that Bob Mothersbaugh bought a four-track TEAC. So we had this machine that could record four little skinny channels on a quarter-inch tape. It was an amateur home-tape machine, but it made us think about our parts, because we thought, well, OK, you're only going to get to do the bass on one track, and the guitar on one track and the drums on one track and the synth. You're not going to do all these overdubs. We had to think about it, what was an essential part. So we'd work on the song till you could play it just in one pass. Everything essential. I think it really made the early stuff sound really strong because of that. You really get a sense of that on their 1978 song "Mongoloid." But the 2023 documentary's director doesn't see his film as an ending bookmark for the band. "They're still touring. They're all still actively creatively pursuing many different things, as I hope that you would expect after seeing the film." And speaking specifically about the documentary. Mark Mothersbaugh says Booji Boy "describes it as a halfway point to the year of 2073, where we'll celebrate the 100-year anniversary." Booji Boy also says the next 50 years will be more about action. "And it'll be about positive mutation. Mutate, don't stagnate."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Seattle Times reports:Concerns have grown in recent weeks about data privacy and the ongoing impacts of a recent Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center cyberattack that leaked personal information of about 1 million patients last November. Since the breach, which hit the South Lake Union cancer research center's clinical network and has led to a host of email threats from hackers and lawsuits against Fred Hutch, menacing messages from perpetrators have escalated. Some patients have started to receive "swatting" threats, in addition to spam emails warning people that unless they pay a fee, their names, Social Security and phone numbers, medical history, lab results and insurance history will be sold to data brokers and on black markets. Steve Bernd, a spokesperson for FBI Seattle, said last week there's been no indication of any criminal swatting events... Other patients have been inundated with spam emails since the breach... According to The New York Times, large data breaches like this are becoming more common. In the first 10 months of 2023, more than 88 million individuals had their medical data exposed, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Meanwhile, the number of reported ransomware incidents, when a specific malware blocks a victim's personal data until a ransom is paid, has decreased in recent years - from 516 in 2021 to 423 in 2023, according to Bernd of FBI Seattle. In Washington, the number dropped from 84 to 54 in the past three years, according to FBI data. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center believes their breach was perpetrated outside the U.S. by exploiting the "Citrix Bleed" vulnerability (which federal cybersecurity officials warn can allow the bypassing of passwords and mutifactor authentication measures). The article adds that in late November, the Department of Health and Human Services' Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center "urged hospitals and other organizations that used Citrix to take immediate action to patch network systems in order to protect against potentially significant ransomware threats."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Bell Labs, the historic headwaters of so many inventions that now define our digital age, is closing in Murray Hill," writes journalism professor Jeff Jarvis (in an op-ed for New Jersey's Star-Ledger newspaper). "The Labs should be preserved as a historic site and more."I propose that Bell Labs be opened to the public as a museum and school of the internet. The internet would not be possible without the technologies forged at Bell Labs: the transistor, the laser, information theory, Unix, communications satellites, fiber optics, advances in chip design, cellular phones, compression, microphones, talkies, the first digital art, and artificial intelligence - not to mention, of course, many advances in networks and the telephone, including the precursor to the device we all carry and communicate with today: the Picturephone, displayed as a futuristic fantasy at the 1964 World's Fair. There is no museum of the internet. Silicon Valley has its Computer History Museum. New York has museums for television and the moving image. Massachusetts boasts a charming Museum of Printing. Search Google for a museum of the internet and you'll find amusing digital artifacts, but nowhere to immerse oneself in and study this immensely impactful institution in society. Where better to house a museum devoted to the internet than New Jersey, home not only of Bell Labs but also at one time the headquarters of the communications empire, AT&T, our Ma Bell...? The old Bell Labs could be more than a museum, preserving and explaining the advances that led to the internet. It could be a school... Imagine if Bell Labs were a place where scholars and students in many disciplines - technologies, yes, but also anthropology, sociology, psychology, history, ethics, economics, community studies, design - could gather to teach and learn, discuss and research. The text of Jarvis's piece is behind subscription walls, but has apparently been re-published on X by innovation theorist John Nosta. In one of the most interesting passages, Jarvis remembers visiting Bell Labs in 1995. "The halls were haunted with genius: lab after lab with benches and blackboards and history within. We must not lose that history."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One man living in Virginia oversaw "the laundering of some $7 million in fraudulently obtained gift cards" from Walmart in an international operation which over five years scammed hundreds of victims into sending the numbers over the phone, reports a new ProPublica investigation. (Citing court evidence that emerged after his arrested in 2021).Earlier that year, he complained to an associate that more and more people were competing to resell cards in China, eating into his profits. So many scammers were flocking to Walmart that he and his team regularly encountered them at self-checkout counters.... "We ran into quite a few at the store, and we even started chatting." It was apparently so common that federal prosecutors started calling it "The Walmart scheme." And while the store is supposed to watch for customers who appear to be acting on a scammer's instructions, "Too often, Walmart has failed."America's largest retailer has long been a facilitator of fraud on a mass scale, a ProPublica investigation has found. For roughly a decade, Walmart has resisted tougher enforcement while breaking promises to regulators and skimping on employee training, according to more than 50 interviews, internal documents supplied by former industry executives, court filings and other public records...More than $1 billion in fraud losses were routed through the company's financial systems between 2013 and 2022, according to filings by the Federal Trade Commission and court cases analyzed by ProPublica. That has helped fuel a boom in financial chicanery. Americans, many of them elderly, were swindled out of $27 billion between 2013 and 2022, according to the FTC... Walmart has a financial incentive to avoid cracking down. It makes money each time a Walmart gift card is used and earns a fee when another brand of card is bought. And it receives one commission when a person sends a money transfer and a second when the recipient picks it up. The company's financial services business generates hundreds of millions in annual profits. (Its filings do not provide specific figures for gift cards and money transfers.) "They were concerned about the bucks. That's all," Nick Alicea, a former fraud team leader for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service who investigated Walmart for years, told ProPublica. Walmart's deficiencies have repeatedly attracted government scrutiny. In 2017, the attorneys general of New York and Pennsylvania investigated Walmart over concerns that it was "reaping the benefits" of gift card fraud. The investigation concluded a year later with Walmart promising to restrict or eliminate the use of its gift cards to purchase other gift cards... Instead, the company let the practice continue until 2022 - even after it knew that millions of dollars were being laundered through its stores. The FTC sued Walmart in 2022, alleging it "turned a blind eye" as criminals took advantage of its money transfer service. Walmart, the FTC claimed, pocketed millions in fees while "letting fraudsters fleece its customers." Summarizing the FTC's evidence, a federal judge in the case wrote that "Walmart knew that its services were used by fraudsters" and that the company was repeatedly warned about certain stores where "twenty-five, fifty, or even seventy-five percent of money transfer activity was fraudulent." Separately, a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania is hearing evidence of possible criminal conduct in Walmart's money transfer business, according to corporate filings that did not detail the allegations. While the FTC says Americans were swindled out of $27 billion between 2013 and 2022, Walmart responded to ProPublica's investigation by pointing out it's refunded $4 million to gift-card fraud victims, and also blocked more than $700 million in suspicious money transfers. "We have a robust anti-fraud program and other controls to help stop scammers and other criminals who may use the financial services we offer to harm our customers."The company's legal filings in the FTC case struck a different tone. Walmart is seeking to dismiss the suit, partly on the grounds that it has "no responsibility to protect against the criminal conduct of third parties." Though fraud is "deeply unfortunate," Walmart argues, such schemes are "reasonably avoidable by consumers." Other interesting quotes from the article:"Walmart outlets at one point accounted for the top 20 locations for fraud nationally among chains that partnered with MoneyGram, according to internal documents.""In a single week in March 2017, consumers claiming they'd been duped into a money transfer filed 610 complaints about Walmart, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. CVS ranked second, with 47.""Site inspections routinely found that Walmart staff lacked anti-fraud training and that employees failed to ask screening questions..."Walmart resisted MoneyGram's attempts to fight fraud [according to the former fraud team leader for the postal inspector's office in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who investigated MoneyGram and Walmart].Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The pandemic may have proved to employeers that remote and flexible-work arrangements were viable - and changed the way we work forever. Axios writes:Just 6 out of 158 U.S. CEOs said they'll prioritize bringing workers back to the office full-time in 2024, according to a new survey released by the Conference Board. Executives are increasingly resigned to a world where employees don't come in every day, as hybrid work arrangements - mixing work from home and in-office - become the norm for knowledge workers. "Maintain hybrid work," was cited as a priority by 27% of the U.S. CEOs who responded to the survey, conducted in October and November. A separate survey of chief financial officers by Deloitte, conducted in November, found that 65% of CFOs expect their company to offer a hybrid arrangement this year. "Remote work appears likely to be the most persistent economic legacy of the pandemic," write Goldman Sachs economists in a recent note. About 20%-25% of workers in the U.S. work from home at least part of the week, according to data Goldman cites. That's below a peak of 47% during the pandemic but well above its prior average of around 3%. "The battle is over," said Diana Scott, human capital center leader at The Conference Board. "There are so many other issues CEOs are facing." Headlines about CEOs determined to get butts in seats get attention, but they are the exception, says Brian Elliott, the cofounder of Future Forum, a future of work think tank. "There are a lot more CEOs that are actually quietly becoming more flexible...." Though the labor market has softened, employers still do care about keeping employees satisfied - and they don't want to fight with them. "It's not worth the fight," says Elliott.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The pandemic may have proved to employeers that remote and flexible-work arrangements were viable - and changed the way we work forever. Axios writes:Just 6 out of 158 U.S. CEOs said they'll prioritize bringing workers back to the office full-time in 2024, according to a new survey released by the Conference Board. Executives are increasingly resigned to a world where employees don't come in every day, as hybrid work arrangements - mixing work from home and in-office - become the norm for knowledge workers. "Maintain hybrid work," was cited as a priority by 27% of the U.S. CEOs who responded to the survey, conducted in October and November. A separate survey of chief financial officers by Deloitte, conducted in November, found that 65% of CFOs expect their company to offer a hybrid arrangement this year. "Remote work appears likely to be the most persistent economic legacy of the pandemic," write Goldman Sachs economists in a recent note. About 20%-25% of workers in the U.S. work from home at least part of the week, according to data Goldman cites. That's below a peak of 47% during the pandemic but well above its prior average of around 3%. "The battle is over," said Diana Scott, human capital center leader at The Conference Board. "There are so many other issues CEOs are facing." Headlines about CEOs determined to get butts in seats get attention, but they are the exception, says Brian Elliott, the cofounder of Future Forum, a future of work think tank. "There are a lot more CEOs that are actually quietly becoming more flexible...." Though the labor market has softened, employers still do care about keeping employees satisfied - and they don't want to fight with them. "It's not worth the fight," says Elliott.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Wall Street Journal reports:Moves by Broadcom to shore up its $69 billion VMware acquisition, completed in November, include a streamlining of product bundles and new billing models - efforts in line with the chip giant's past acquisitions, but not necessarily welcomed by all of VMware's customers... Broadcom has also recently laid off at least hundreds of VMware workers, disclosures from the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification show.... VMware has approximately 330,000 customers, according to the company. Chief information officers say they are closely monitoring what comes next. "Any CIO that's not taking stock of what they have and mentally considering alternatives and monitoring what else is out there is probably not doing their job," said Jay Ferro, executive vice president and chief information, technology and product officer at clinical research data-management company Clario. All these changes, plus past remarks by Broadcom that its go-to-market strategy is to focus completely on the needs and priorities of its top 600 customers, has left some CIOs rethinking the relationship. Price increases and degrading levels of support are among their biggest concerns. "I'm not one of their top, probably 600 customers, so they've been very clear to me where I fit in that pecking order," said Todd Florence, CIO of trucking company Estes Express Lines. Florence said he's started looking into alternatives. "It certainly doesn't make you feel good, like you're going to get lots of support going forward...." Goya Foods CIO Suvajit Basu said he is thinking about how to reduce the food company's reliance on VMware as the sole and longtime dominant provider of virtualization for the data center. "They're going to increase their prices or change their licensing so the customer pays more," he said. "And I think this is starting to hit us right now...." Forrester estimates that in 2024, 20% of VMware customers will begin the process of exiting VMware in favor of alternatives. On the other hand, a group VP at market researcher IDC tells the Journal that on the upside, now VMware and Broadcom will have to engage more actively with customers on the value of new produces included in their bundles...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader quonset writes: After decades of study and testing, a potential vaccine for cancer may be on the horizon. Dr. Thomas Wagner, founder of Orbis Health Solutions, is using the body's own immune system to fight the disease, with each shot personalized to the patient, according to ABC News. From the article:Typically, cancer cells evade a person's immune system because it is recognized as that person's cells. Wagner developed a tumor lysate particle only (TLPO) vaccine that uses a person's tumor cells to identify particular parts that are then presented back in the body using the vaccine in a way that can stimulate their immune system to gain the ability to detect these cancer cells like an infection, allowing the immune system to fight the cancer itself. "People used to ask me the question, 'When will there be a cure for cancer?' And I've been doing this for 60 years and I could never answer that question," Wagner said. "Until recently, until the last three or four or five years." Wagner believes this type of cancer treatment could be a key to finding the long-awaited cure for cancer, all cancers, if paired with early detection. Wagner's TLPO cancer vaccine has been tested in hundreds of patients with advanced forms of melanoma in Phase 2 clinical trials. The most recent data presented at an academic conference showed nearly 95% of people given only the vaccine were still alive three years after starting treatment and 64% were still disease-free. Among the most advanced forms of melanoma, disease-free survival after three years for people with stage III disease was 60% in the vaccine-only group, compared to about 39% in the placebo group. Disease-free survival for those with stage IV disease was about 68% in the vaccine-only group, and zero in the placebo group. The most common side effects were redness or pain at the injection site, fever and fatigue after the injection - similar to other vaccines that stimulate an immune response. Based on this data and other studies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has greenlit Wagner's vaccine to start a Phase 3 clinical trial. It will be a three-year endeavor with a goal to enroll 500 people and is planned to launch sometime this year, Riley Polk, president of Orbis Health Solutions, told WLOS, an ABC News affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina. Polk's own father was told there were no treatment options left for his lung cancer, according to the article. That was more than 10 years ago, and "His father opted to try Wagner's cancer vaccine and lived 10 more years before dying from something unrelated to cancer." Polk gives ABC News this quote. "You can tell me a lot of things, but you can't tell me [the vaccine] doesn't work."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Some of the most convenient fast-charging stations - mostly those located off major highways - have become gridlocked, especially on busy weekends," complains the opinion editor for California's Tribune newspaper in San Luis, Obispo.Drivers are reporting waits of half an hour or more - sometimes much more. One driver who posted on Reddit waited three hours to charge in Kettleman City on Thanksgiving weekend, turning a five-and-a-half-hour trip into a 10-and-a-half-hour ordeal... Look, it's one thing to spend 30 or 40 minutes charging a battery, which is a given when you take an EV on a road trip. But having to wait in a long line just to get to an open charging bay? What's happening now is "potentially a nightmare for drivers as more EVs hit the road," described GreenBiz transportation writer Vartan Badalian [after a March visit to New York State]... Badalian, the transportation writer, has an idea on how to deal with gridlock. "As you approach a full charging location, your EV (of any make) connects to the charging location and enters itself into a virtual queue, with entry to the queue dependent upon close geographical proximity. Drivers then park in an available normal parking spot, and only when prompted, proceed to plug in and charge. If a driver attempted to charge before their turn, the chargers would simply not communicate with the vehicle..." If only that would work. Unfortunately, plug-in chargers have a tough enough time fulfilling their basic task of delivering electricity. Herea(TM)s how bad it is: A survey of non-Tesla chargers conducted in the Bay Area in 2022 found that 27% of chargers were not working. This would be a good time to point out that Tesla superchargers have a much better performance record than other types of chargers, and that Tesla is opening "select" supercharger stations to other types of vehicles. Also, efforts are being made to increase the reliability of public chargers; the U.S. Department of Transportation just awarded $149 million in grants for the repair and replacement of broken chargers. The biggest share, $64 million, is going to California. In other words, hope is on the horizon. For now, though, we seem to be relying on a haphazard honor system. How hard would it be to use some orange cones to designate a "waiting lane"? That way drivers pulling in could get an immediate read on how long they might have to wait... Also, limit drivers to an 80% charge, and require them to drive away within, say, five minutes after the charger has stopped. That might be hard to enforce, but peer pressure can be a powerful incentive. The point is, somebody has to step up and make charging stations more driver-friendly, and the obvious choice is whoever is in charge of the chargers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Good news..." NASA posted Saturday night on X. "We've reestablished contact with the Mars Helicopter..." After a two-day communications blackout, NASA had instructed its Perseverance Mars rover "to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity's signal" - and apparently they did the trick. "The team is reviewing the new data to better understand the unexpected comms dropout" during the helicopter's record-breaking 72nd flight. Slashdot reader Thelasko shared this report from NPR:Communications broke down on Thursday, when the little autonomous rotorcraft was sent on a "quick pop-up vertical flight," to test its systems after an unplanned early landing during its previous flight, the agency said in a status update on Friday night. The Perseverance rover, which relays data between the helicopter and Earth during the flights, showed that Ingenuity climbed to its assigned maximum altitude of 40 feet, NASA said. During its planned descent, the helicopter and rover stopped communicating with each other... Even before it came back online, RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) pointed out that the Mars copter has done this before. "Batteries dieing, resulting in a communications re-set, If I remember correctly." Space.com also noted additional alternatives:"Perseverance is currently out of line-of-sight with Ingenuity, but the team could consider driving closer for a visual inspection," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages both robots' missions, said via X on Friday. Ingenuity has stayed aloft for more than 128 minutes and covered a total of 11 miles (17.7 kilometers) during its 72 Mars flights, according to the mission's flight log.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"It's ridiculous just how virulent some of these bacteria get over time," says Dwayne Roach, assistant professor of bacteriophages, infectious disease and immunology at San Diego State University. But now CNN says doctors are fighting multi-drug-resistant superbugs with "nature's oldest predators - tiny tripod-looking viruses called phages designed to find, attack and gobble up bacteria."The microscopic creatures have saved the lives of patients dying from superbug infections and are being used in clinical trials as a potential solution to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance... In labs around the country, phage scientists are taking research and discovery to the next level... [Yale scientists] are busy mapping which phages and antibiotics are most symbiotic in the fight against a pathogen. Roach's San Diego State lab is investigating the body's immune response to phages while developing new phage purification techniques to prepare samples for intravenous use in patients. Currently, clinical trials are underway to test the effectiveness of phages against intractable urinary tract infections, chronic constipation, joint infections, diabetic foot ulcers, tonsillitis and the persistent, reoccurring infections that occur in patients with cystic fibrosis. The chronic infections common in cystic fibrosis are typically due to various strains of drug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa - the same pathogen responsible for Horton's ear infection and the artificial tears outbreak. A number of labs are developing libraries of phages, stockpiled with strains found in nature that are known to be effective against a particular pathogen. In Texas, a new facility is taking that a step further - speeding up evolution by creating phages in the lab. "Rather than just sourcing new phages from the environment, we have a bioreactor that in real time creates billions upon billions of phages," said Anthony Maresso, associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "Most of those phages won't be active against the drug-resistant bacteria, but at some point there will be a rare variant that has been trained, so to speak, to attack the resistant bacteria, and we'll add that to our arsenal," Maresso said. "It's a next-generation approach on phage libraries." Maresso's lab published a study last year on the treatment of 12 patients with phages customized to each patient's unique bacterial profile. It was a qualified success: The antibiotic-resistant bacteria in five patients were eradicated, while several more patients showed improvements. "There's a lot of approaches right now that are happening in parallel," Roach said. "Do we engineer phages? Do we make a phage cocktail, and then how big is the cocktail? Is it two phages or 12 phages? Should phages be inhaled, applied topically or injected intravenously? There's a lot of work underway on exactly how to best do this...." Genetically engineering phages would allow scientists to target each person's unique mix of antibiotic-resistant pathogens instead of searching sewage, bogs, ponds, the bilge of boats and other prime breeding grounds for bacteria to find just the right phage for the job. Along with phage libraries, genetic engineering is also a key to churning out phages in mass, to distribute on a wider scale. In Russia and the country of Georgia, where phage therapy has been used for decades, patients can buy phage cocktails off the shelf in pharmacies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A familiar shadow looms in a fresh image of the heart of the nearby galaxy M87," reports Science magazine. "It confirms that the galaxy harbors a gravitational sinkhole so powerful that light cannot escape, one generated by a black hole 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun."But compared with a previous image from the network of radio dishes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), the new one reveals a subtle shift in the bright ring surrounding the shadow, which could provide clues to how gases churn around the black hole. "We can see that shift now," says team member Sera Markoff of the University of Amsterdam. "We can start to use that." The new detail has also whetted astronomers' desire for a proposed expansion of the EHT, which would deliver even sharper images of distant black holes. The new picture, published this week in Astronomy & Astrophysics, comes from data collected 1 year after the observing campaign that led to the first-ever picture of a black hole, revealed in 2019 and named as Science's Breakthrough of the Year. The dark center of the image is the same size as in the original image, confirming that the image depicts physical reality and is not an artifact. "It tells us it wasn't a fluke," says Martin Hardcastle, an astrophysicist at the University of Hertfordshire who was not involved in the study. The black hole's mass would not have grown appreciably in 1 year, so the comparison also supports the idea that a black hole's size is determined by its mass alone. In the new image, however, the brightest part of a ring surrounding the black hole has shifted counterclockwise by about 30 degrees. That could be because of random churning in the disk of material that swirls around the black hole's equator. It could also be associated with fluctuations in one of the jets launched from the black hole's poles - a sign that the jet isn't aligned with the black hole's spin axis, but precesses around it like a wobbling top. That would be "kind of exciting," Markoff says. "The only way to know is to keep taking pictures...." [T]he team wants to add more telescopes to the network, which would further sharpen its images and enable it to see black holes in more distant galaxies. Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"After a year in which both actors and writers hit the picket lines, another Hollywood strike may be on the horizon," reports CNN:The American Federation of Musicians (AFM), a union representing musicians across the entertainment industry, will begin negotiations Monday on a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The union said it is seeking a deal to better reflect the current state of streaming media. The AFM is also seeking AI protection, increased wages, health care improvements, improved working conditions and residual payments for streaming content.According to the AFM, musicians who record on soundtracks make 75% less on streaming content due to less residual income. "The entertainment industry has fundamentally shifted," the union said in a news release. But musicians "are not being compensated accordingly for streaming media." AFM's president and chief negotiator Tino Gagliardi told CNN the union "is going to be prepared to do whatever it needs to get what we have to have, in order to make the lives of musicians better..." The AFM says it has roughly 70,000 members in the United States and Canada. Members include instrumental musicians working in orchestras, bands, clubs and theater who create music for film, television, commercials and other mediums.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week the Conversation ran an article titled "Mac at 40: User experience was the innovation that launched a technology revolution". But meanwhile, an anonymous reader shared this report from the Register:Two weeks before Apple launched the Macintosh, Sir Clive Sinclair launched his unprecedentedly powerful yet affordable Motorola-powered SOHO computer - starting a line of hardware and software that, remarkably, is still going. The QL remains a much-misunderstood computer. For its time, it was just as radical as the closely related machine that launched days later. Although it wasn't a smash hit, it wasn't the failure it's often deemed. A multinational licensed Sinclair's hardware, and several big-name companies sold versions of it around the world. The QL also inspired a dozen software-compatible successors, at least one of which is still manufactured today ... and not one but two versions of its unique operating system are still around as open source. Sinclair Research launched the QL on January 12, 1984, nearly two weeks before Apple Computer launched its new Macintosh computer on the 24th. Both machines had Motorola 68000-family processors, a mere 128 kB of memory, and just a pair of serial ports for I/O. Both launched with powerful bundled applications. Both had brutally cut-down specifications to make them price competitive, and both were big technological gambles on unproven technology, previously only available in vastly more expensive computers. Sinclair's bet was that multitasking would be the key differentiator. It was the first affordable personal computer to offer this. Today it's clear that Sinclair backed the wrong horse, but four decades ago, its mistake was understandable. Before the Macintosh, it was not at all clear that GUIs were the future... When the QL turned 30, The Reg published a detailed history, but a decade on, we thought it would be more interesting to look at the legacy of this pioneering machine - the many models of QL-compatible machines that appeared after Sinclair Research moved on to other things, and the descendants of its remarkable OS and their continued existence in the 21st century.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Would you pay $15 a month so Android doesn't track you and send all of that data back to Google?" asks Stuff South Africa:A new Swiss-based privacy company thinks $15 is a fair fee for that peace of mind. "A person's data is the original digital currency," argues Apostrophy, which has created its own operating system, called Apostrophy OS. It's based on Android - don't panic - but the version that has already been stripped of Google's intrusiveness by another privacy project called GrapheneOS, which used to be known as CopperheadOS. Launched in 2014, it which was briefly known as the Android Hardening project, before being rebranded as GrapheneOS in 2019. Apostrophy OS is "focused on empowering our users, not leveraging them," it says and is "purposely Swiss-based, so we can be champions of data sovereignty". What it does, they say, is separate the apps from the underlying architecture of the operating system and therefore prevent apps from accessing miscellaneous personal data, especially the all-important location data so beloved of surveillance capitalism... Apostrophy OS has its own app store, but also cleverly allows users to access the Google Play Store. If you think that is defeating the point, Apostrophy argues that those apps can't get to the vitals of your digital life. Apostrophy OS has "partitioned segments prioritising application integrity and personal data privacy". The service is free for one year with the purchase of the new MC02 phone from Swiss manufacturer Punkt, according to PC Magazine. "The phone costs $749 and is available for preorder now. It will ship at the end of January."Additional features include a built-in VPN called Digital Nomad based on the open-source Wireguard framework to secure your activity against outside snooping, which includes "exit addresses" in the US, Germany, and Japan with the base subscription.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Time:An AI customer service chatbot for international delivery service DPD used profanity, told a joke, wrote poetry about how useless it was, and criticized the company as the "worst delivery firm in the world" after prompting by a frustrated customer. Ashley Beauchamp, a London-based pianist and conductor, according to his website, posted screenshots of the chat conversation to X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, the same day he said in a comment that the exchange occurred. At the time of publication, his post had gone viral with 1.3 million views, and over 20 thousand likes... The recent online conversation epitomizing this debate started mid-frustration as Beauchamp wrote "this is completely useless!" and asked to speak to a human, according to a recording of a scroll through the messages. When the chatbot said it couldn't connect him, Beauchamp decided to play around with the bot and asked it to tell a joke. "What do you call a fish with no eyes? Fsh!" the bot responded. Beauchamp then asked the chatbot to write a poem about a useless chatbot, swear at him and criticize the company--all of which it did. The bot called DPD the "worst delivery firm in the world" and soliloquized in its poem that "There was once a chatbot called DPD, Who was useless at providing help." "No closer to finding my parcel, but had an entertaining 10 minutes with this chatbot ," Beauchamp posted on X. (Beauchamp also quipped that "The future is here and it's terrible at poetry.") A spokesperson for DPD told the BBC, "We have operated an AI element within the chat successfully for a number of years," but that on the day of the chat, "An error occurred after a system update... The AI element was immediately disabled and is currently being updated."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2003, Hans Reiser answered questions from Slashdot's readers... Today Wikipedia describes Hans Reiser as "a computer programmer, entrepreneur, and convicted murderer... Prior to his incarceration, Reiser created the ReiserFS computer file system, which may be used by the Linux kernel but which is now scheduled for removal in 2025, as well as its attempted successor, Reiser4." This week alanw (Slashdot reader #1,822), spotted a development on the Linux kernel mailing list. "Hans Reiser (imprisoned for the murder of his wife) has written a letter, asking it to be published to Slashdot." Reiser writes: I was asked by a kind Fredrick Brennan for my comments that I might offer on the discussion of removing ReiserFS V3 from the kernel. I don't post directly because I am in prison for killing my wife Nina in 2006. I am very sorry for my crime - a proper apology would be off topic for this forum, but available to any who ask. A detailed apology for how I interacted with the Linux kernel community, and some history of V3 and V4, are included, along with descriptions of what the technical issues were. I have been attending prison workshops, and working hard on improving my social skills to aid my becoming less of a danger to society. The man I am now would do things very differently from how I did things then. Click here for the rest of Reiser's introduction, along with a link to the full text of the letter... The letter is dated November 26, 2023, and ends with an address where Reiser can be mailed. Ars Technica has a good summary of Reiser's lengthy letter from prison - along with an explanation for how it came to be.With the ReiserFS recently considered obsolete and slated for removal from the Linux kernel entirely, Fredrick R. Brennan, font designer and (now regretful) founder of 8chan, wrote to the filesystem's creator, Hans Reiser, asking if he wanted to reply to the discussion on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML). Reiser, 59, serving a potential life sentence in a California prison for the 2006 murder of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser, wrote back with more than 6,500 words, which Brennan then forwarded to the LKML. It's not often you see somebody apologize for killing their wife, explain their coding decisions around balanced trees versus extensible hashing, and suggest that elementary schools offer the same kinds of emotional intelligence curriculum that they've worked through in prison, in a software mailing list. It's quite a document... It covers, broadly, why Reiser believes his system failed to gain mindshare among Linux users, beyond the most obvious reason. This leads Reiser to detail the technical possibilities, his interpersonal and leadership failings and development, some lingering regrets about dealings with SUSE and Oracle and the Linux community at large, and other topics, including modern Russian geopolitics... Reiser asks that a number of people who worked on ReiserFS be included in "one last release" of the README, and to "delete anything in there I might have said about why they were not credited." He says prison has changed him in conflict resolution and with his "tendency to see people in extremes...." Reiser writes that he understood the difficulty ahead in getting the Linux world to "shift paradigms" but lacked the understanding of how to "make friends and allies of people" who might initially have felt excluded. This is followed by a heady discussion of "balanced trees instead of extensible hashing," Oracle's history with implementing balanced trees, getting synchronicity just right, I/O schedulers, block size, seeks and rotational delays on magnetic hard drives, and tails. It leads up to a crucial decision in ReiserFS' development, the hard non-compatible shift from V3 to Reiser 4. Format changes, Reiser writes, are "unwanted by many for good reasons." But "I just had to fix all these flaws, fix them and make a filesystem that was done right. It's hard to explain why I had to do it, but I just couldn't rest as long as the design was wrong and I knew it was wrong," he writes. SUSE didn't want a format change, but Reiser, with hindsight, sees his pushback as "utterly inarticulate and unsociable." The push for Reiser 4 in the Linux kernel was similar, "only worse...." He encourages people to "allow those who worked so hard to build a beautiful filesystem for the users to escape the effects of my reputation." Under a "Conclusion" sub-heading, Reiser is fairly succinct in summarizing a rather wide-ranging letter, minus the minutiae about filesystem architecture. I wish I had learned the things I have been learning in prison about talking through problems, and believing I can talk through problems and doing it, before I had married or joined the LKML. I hope that day when they teach these things in Elementary School comes. I thank Richard Stallman for his inspiration, software, and great sacrifices, It has been an honor to be of even passing value to the users of Linux. I wish all of you well. It both is and is not a response to Brennan's initial prompt, asking how he felt about ReiserFS being slated for exclusion from the Linux kernel. There is, at the moment, no reply to the thread started by Brennan.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a country experiencing extreme cold - and where almost 1 in 4 cars are electric - a roadside assistance company says it's still gas-powered cars that are experiencing the vast majority of problems starting. Electrek argues that while extreme cold may affect chargers, "it mainly gets attention because it's a new technology and it fails for different reasons than gasoline vehicles in the cold."Viking, a road assistance company (think AAA), says that it responded to 34,000 assistance requests in the first 9 days of the year. Viking says that only 13% of the cases were coming from electric vehicles (via TV2 - translated from Norwegian) ["13 percent of the cases with starting difficulties are electric cars, while the remaining 87 percent are fossil cars..."] To be fair, this data doesn't adjust for the age of the vehicles. Older gas-powered cars fail at a higher rate than the new ones and electric vehicles are obviously much more recent on average. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The discovery of a second ultra-large structure in the remote universe has further challenged some of the basic assumptions about cosmology," writes SciTechDaily:The Big Ring on the Sky is 9.2 billion light-years from Earth. It has a diameter of about 1.3 billion light-years, and a circumference of about four billion light-years. If we could step outside and see it directly, the diameter of the Big Ring would need about 15 full Moons to cover it. It is the second ultra-large structure discovered by University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) PhD student Alexia Lopez who, two years ago, also discovered the Giant Arc on the Sky. Remarkably, the Big Ring and the Giant Arc, which is 3.3 billion light-years across, are in the same cosmological neighborhood - they are seen at the same distance, at the same cosmic time, and are only 12 degrees apart on the sky. Alexia said: "Neither of these two ultra-large structures is easy to explain in our current understanding of the universe. And their ultra-large sizes, distinctive shapes, and cosmological proximity must surely be telling us something important - but what exactly? "One possibility is that the Big Ring could be related to Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAOs). BAOs arise from oscillations in the early universe and today should appear, statistically at least, as spherical shells in the arrangement of galaxies. However, detailed analysis of the Big Ring revealed it is not really compatible with the BAO explanation: the Big Ring is too large and is not spherical." Other explanations might be needed, explanations that depart from what is generally considered to be the standard understanding in cosmology... And if the Big Ring and the Giant Arc together form a still larger structure then the challenge to the Cosmological Principle becomes even more compelling... Alexia said, "From current cosmological theories we didn't think structures on this scale were possible. " Possible explanations include a Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, or the effect of cosmic strings passing through... Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.