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According to CNBC, Google is planning to license new sets of mapping data to companies building solar products, and is hoping to generate up to $100 million in its first year. From the report: The company plans to sell access to new APIs (application programming interfaces) with solar and energy information and air quality, according to materials viewed by CNBC. Among the new offerings will be a Solar API, which could be used by solar installers like SunRun and Tesla Energy and solar design companies like Aurora Solar, according to a list of example customers viewed by CNBC. Google also sees customer opportunities with real estate companies like Zillow, Redfin, hospitality companies like Marriott Bonvoy, and utilities like PG&E. Some of the data from the Solar API will come from a consumer-focused pilot called Project Sunroof, a solar savings calculator that originally launched in 2015. The program allows users to enter their address and to receive estimated solar costs such as electric bill savings and the size of the solar installation they'll need. It also offers 3D modeling of the roofs of buildings and nearby trees based on Google Maps data. Google plans to sell API access to individual building data, as well as aggregated data for all buildings in a particular city or county, one document states. The company says it has data for over 350 million buildings, according to documents, up significantly from the 60 million buildings it cited for Project Sunroof in 2017. One internal document estimates the company's solar APIs will generate revenue between $90 and $100 million in the first year after launch. There's also a potential to connect with Google Cloud products down the line, documents state. As part of the planned launch, the company is also planning to announce an Air Quality API that will let customers request air quality data, such as pollutants and health-based recommendations for specific locations. It'll also include digital heat maps of the data and hourly air quality information, as well as air quality history of up to 30 days.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Verge's Nilay Patel writes: Hey, remember when Foxconn bought a bunch of buildings around Wisconsin just before an election and said it was building "innovation centers" around the state in a transparent attempt to build support for the giant tax credits it was given to build an LCD factory that never arrived? Yeah, it's selling two of those buildings. The news was first reported by Wisconsin Public Radio, which got a quote from Foxconn saying that "selling its Green Bay property, known as the Watermark building, will add to the vibrancy of the city's downtown." Very good.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a report from Technews Taiwan, ASUS has shut down its Zenfone division responsible for making some of the best compact Android flagships on the market. The reason is due to "internal restructuring." Employees in the Zenfone division are being moved over to the ROG Phone team and other parts of the business. Android Authority reports: The report further asserts that the Zenfone 10 will be the last phone in the Zenfone series. Since the team no longer exists, there is unlikely to be a successor to this phone. The report follows other incidents around Zenfone. Earlier in the month, ASUS stopped allowing bootloader unlocks for Zenfone owners. The company maintained that they are not stopping the possibility of unlocking, just that the tool is currently unavailable. A few weeks ago, community members also spotted that ASUS had removed older Zenfone firmwares from its website. Community moderators responded that ASUS no longer provides previous firmware versions or downgrade packages to ensure users remain on up-to-date firmware. Both of these incidents do not directly point to the shutdown of the Zenfone division. But they add the value of hindsight to the report, and we can't help but wonder if the writing was on the wall all this time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Seeking to capitalize on ChatGPT's viral success, OpenAI today announced the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise, a business-focused edition of the company's AI-powered chatbot app. ChatGPT Enterprise, which OpenAI first teased in a blog post earlier this year, can perform the same tasks as ChatGPT, such as writing emails, drafting essays and debugging computer code. But the new offering also adds "enterprise-grade" privacy and data analysis capabilities on top of the vanilla ChatGPT, as well as enhanced performance and customization options. That puts ChatGPT Enterprise on par, feature-wise, with Bing Chat Enterprise, Microsoft's recently launched take on an enterprise-oriented chatbot service. ChatGPT Enterprise provides a new admin console with tools to manage how employees within an organization use ChatGPT, including integrations for single sign-on, domain verification and a dashboard with usage statistics. Shareable conversation templates allow employees to build internal workflows leveraging ChatGPT, while credits to OpenAI's API platform let companies create fully custom ChatGPT-powered solutions if they choose. ChatGPT Enterprise, in addition, comes with unlimited access to Advanced Data Analysis, the ChatGPT feature formerly known as Code Interpreter, which allows ChatGPT to analyze data, create charts, solve math problems and more, including from uploaded files. For example, given a prompt like "Tell me what's interesting about this data," ChatGPT's Advanced Data Analysis capability can look through the data -- financial, health or location information, for example -- to generate insights. Advanced Data Analysis was previously available only to subscribers to ChatGPT Plus, the $20-per-month premium tier of the consumer ChatGPT web and mobile apps. To be clear, ChatGPT Plus is sticking around -- OpenAI sees ChatGPT Enterprise as complementary to it, the company says. ChatGPT Enterprise is powered by GPT-4, OpenAI's flagship AI model, as is ChatGPT Plus. But ChatGPT Enterprise customers get priority access to GPT-4, delivering performance that's twice as fast as the standard GPT-4 and with an expanded 32,000-token (~25,000-word) context window. Context window refers to the text the model considers before generating additional text, while tokens represent raw text (e.g. the word "fantastic" would be split into the tokens "fan," "tas" and "tic"). Generally speaking, models with large context windows are less likely to "forget" the content of recent conversations. Crucially, OpenAI said that it "won't train models on business data sent to ChatGPT Enterprise or any usage data and that all conversations with ChatGPT Enterprise are encrypted in transit and at rest," notes TechCrunch. "OpenAI says that its future plans for ChatGPT Enterprise include a ChatGPT Business offering for smaller teams, allowing companies to connect apps to ChatGPT Enterprise, 'more powerful' and 'enterprise-grade' versions of Advanced Data Analysis and web browsing, and tools designed for data analysts, marketers and customer support." A blog post introducing ChatGPT Enterprise can be found here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hosting platform WordPress has announced a new century-long domain registration plan for users who want to ensure a lifelong digital legacy. From a report: Its new 100-year plan is designed to give users "the ultimate security and longevity for their digital presence" at a cost of $38,000 -- working out at $380 per year of the plan. While average domain registrations range from one year to a maximum of 10 years, WordPress's new plan allows users to secure their domain for 100 years. The plan comes with other features as well, such as multiple backups of content across geographically distributed data centres, unmetered bandwidth and "personalised" 24/7 support. The company also claims the plan comes with "enhanced ownership protocols" and "top-tier" managed hosting. In a statement, the company said the offering could be used by families who wish to preserve their digital assets such as stories, photos, sounds and videos or by founders who want to protect and document their company's history.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Amazon Linux 2023 was released on March 15, it was supposed to be offered as a virtual machine image that organizations could run on their own servers. From a report: "When Amazon Linux 2023 becomes generally available, it will be provided as a virtual machine image for on-premises use, enabling you to easily develop, test, and certify applications from a local development environment," the web titan's FAQs stated at the time. "This option is not available during the preview." But that commitment has since vanished from the FAQ: it's not there right now nor in this capture of the page on June 2. And it's not clear whether Amazon intends to enable on-premises usage of its Linux distribution. Those who use Linux in their businesses have been asking Amazon to clarify the situation for eighteen months, starting with a GitHub Issues feature request opened on March 15, 2022, and a similar inquiry posted a year later. In late June, Rotan Hanrahan, a technology consultant based in Dublin, Ireland, chided Amazon for failing to explain what's going on. "I see no evidence of any outreach to the community to explain this, nor any requests for technical assistance (assuming the issue is technical)," he wrote. "If the issue is bureaucratic in nature, we might never see the promised VM image. Some clarification from Amazon is overdue."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Foxconn's billionaire founder, Terry Gou, has announced he intends to enter Taiwan's 2024 presidential race as an independent." Touting his business and finance experience at the tech giant, Gou is pledging to boost the country's economy and fix its relations with China. "Give me four years and I promise that I will bring 50 years of peace to the Taiwan Strait and build the deepest foundation for the mutual trust across the strait ... Taiwan must not become Ukraine and I will not let Taiwan become the next Ukraine." The Guardian reports: Gou has hinted at running for several months after he was not chosen as the candidate for the main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT). He pledged support for the KMT's chosen candidate, Hou Yo-ih, but continued to hold public campaign-style events. Gou will need to collect 290,000 signatures by early November to qualify as an independent candidate. The entrance of Gou into the campaign adds further intrigue to what was already an unusual race. Lai Ching-te, the current vice-president and presidential nominee for the ruling DPP, is polling ahead of both the KMT's Hou, the current mayor of New Taipei City and a former police chief, and Ko Wen-je, the former mayor of Taipei City and nominee for the Taiwan People's party he founded. A poll last week found Lai's support was at 43%, compared with 27% for Ko, and just 14% for the KMT's Hou. More than 16% were undecided or refused to answer. In his speech Gou called for an anti-DPP coalition. Ko, Hou and Gou are all considered to be from the pan-blue side of Taiwanese politics which adheres more closely to a Chinese identity. However initial reaction from analysts was that Gou's entry into the race would probably split the blue vote further and instead benefit the DPP.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has made some of its certification exams open book affairs, allowing access to its learning portal while candidates sit tests. From a report: "On August 22, we will begin updating our exams so that you will be able to access Microsoft Learn as you complete your exam," wrote Liberty Munson, director of psychometrics at Microsoft's Worldwide Learning organization. Microsoft Learn is a portal that links to product documentation, tutorials, code fragments, and other technical material. Much of that content will be available during exams, although a technical Q&A service will remain hidden. The open book exams will be offered to candidates sitting exams for the role-based certifications Microsoft offers for job titles including Azure Administrator, Developer, Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer; Microsoft 365 Modern Desktop Administrator, and Enterprise Administrator. Exams at Associate, Expert, and Specialty levels of competency will all offer access to the Learn portal. The material will become available for all role-based and specialty exams, in all languages, by mid-September 2023. Looking up material on Learn won't stop the clock during an exam, and the experience of taking the test will remain unchanged -- other than allowing candidates to open a window in which to view the educational portal.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Walt Disney Pictures' VFX team filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on Monday. As Motherboard notes, the filing "marks the second time in history that workers in the visual effects industry have announced their intent to organize -- the first being Marvel VFX workers, who did so three weeks prior." From the report: The Walt Disney Pictures workers, who are behind the visual effects in movies like the live-action Aladdin and Pirates of the Caribbean, plan to join the VFX Union, a new branch of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which represents much of the entertainment industry behind the scenes. Their filing comes after over 80 percent of the 18 in-house VFX crewmembers at Walt Disney Pictures in Los Angeles signed cards demonstrating their desire to unionize, according to a press release by the union. "Today, courageous visual effects workers at Walt Disney Pictures overcame the fear and silence that have kept our community from having a voice on the job for decades," said Mark Patch, a IATSE VFX union organizer, in a statement. "With an overwhelming supermajority of these crews demanding an end to 'the way VFX has always been,' this is a clear sign that our campaign is not about one studio or corporation. It's about VFX workers across the industry using the tools at our disposal to uplift ourselves and forge a better path forward."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chess.com and Hans Niemann have reached a settlement in which Niemann has agreed to drop a $100 million lawsuit against Chess.com and Magnus Carlsen, and will be allowed to return to compete, the company announced Monday. From a report: This puts an end to the legal aspect of a cheating scandal that captivated the chess world for nearly a year. As part of the settlement, chess world champion Carlsen said "there is no determinative evidence that Niemann cheated in his game against me at the Sinquefield Cup. I am willing to play Niemann in future events, should we be paired together."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Helen Marie Plourde, an 86-year-old Minnesota resident, just spent over a month without home Internet and phone service because CenturyLink failed to fix a problem that began in July. From a report: CenturyLink didn't show up for scheduled appointments at her home in Saint Paul, Plourde told Ars in a phone interview on Thursday, August 24, one day after the latest missed service appointment. Another appointment was scheduled for August 28, but she was skeptical that it would actually happen. "I'll believe it when I see them," Plourde said. Plourde buys broadband through Velocity Telephone, which resells CenturyLink fiber service in her area and acts as an intermediary between customers and CenturyLink for repairs. Velocity told us that it set up CenturyLink appointments for Plourde on August 10, August 17, and August 23, but no CenturyLink technicians showed up to any of the appointments. We talked to Plourde after hearing from Amalia Deloney, whose parents live nearby. Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis, put Deloney in touch with us. "For the past month, [Plourde] has been going to my mom and dad's house to use the Internet two times a day because hers went out and CenturyLink can't be bothered fixing it. She's ready to write letters to elected officials and the Utilities Commission out of desperation," Deloney said. That didn't end up being necessary because CenturyLink sprang into action after Ars contacted the company's media relations team on Thursday night. A CenturyLink technician went to Plourde's home on Friday morning and fixed a line problem on a nearby street, restoring her Internet and VoIP phone service. Velocity, the CenturyLink reseller, also offers its own fiber service on infrastructure it owns in parts of Minnesota, but not where Plourde lives. Comcast is the other option at Plourde's house. She chose Velocity to support a local company.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In an enforcement action announced on Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Los Angelesa"based entertainment company Impact Theory with conducting an unregistered offering of securities via non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. From a report: As the SEC expands its definition of which types of crypto assets qualify as securities, the case breaks new ground by determining that NFTs fall under the agency's jurisdiction. "Absent a valid exemption, offerings of securities, in whatever form, must be registered," Antonia Apps, director of the SEC's New York Regional Office, said in a statement. The question of whether NFTs qualify as securities has remained open for several years. Before the SEC weighed in, a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York remained the highest-profile case to tackle the issue, with a group of NFT collectors suing Dapper Labs. The plaintiffs alleged that the crypto firm had earned hundreds of millions of dollars by selling unregistered securities. Although Dapper Labs motioned for the case to be dismissed last year, a judge ruled in February that it could move forward, concluding that it was "plausible" NFTs could qualify as securities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Polish Railway's radio system was hacked on Friday and Saturday, bringing 20 freight and passenger trains to an unprecedented standstill. The hack, believed to be carried out by Russia, took advantage of a critical flaw in the railway's radio security system, with the issue reportedly restored within hours. From a report: An investigation into the cyberattack is underway, and the Polish Press Agency (PAP) reported that the radio signals sent to stop the trains were interspersed with a recording of Russia's national anthem and a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Poland is an important transportation hub that brings much-needed weapons supplied by Western countries and other aid to Ukraine amid the Russian invasion, and Senior Security Official Stanislaw Zaryn told PAP: "For the moment, we are ruling nothing out." He continued: "We know that for some months there have been attempts to destabilize the Polish state. Such attempts have been undertaken by the Russian Federation in conjunction with Belarus." Train services were reportedly restored within hours and the Polish State Railways said in a statement that "there is no threat to rail passengers" and the cyberattack only caused "difficulties in the running of trains."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United States has enough geothermal energy to power the entire country. Some are trying to unlock it by using techniques from the fracking boom. From a report: Traditional geothermal plants, which have existed for decades, work by tapping natural hot water reservoirs underground to power turbines that can generate electricity 24 hours a day. Few sites have the right conditions for this, however, so geothermal only produces 0.4 percent of America's electricity currently. But hot, dry rocks lie below the surface everywhere on the planet. And by using advanced drilling techniques developed by the oil and gas industry, some experts think it's possible to tap that larger store of heat and create geothermal energy almost anywhere. The potential is enormous: The Energy Department estimates there's enough energy in those rocks to power the entire country five times over and has launched a major push to develop technologies to harvest that heat. Dozens of geothermal companies have emerged with ideas. Fervo is using fracking techniques -- similar to those used for oil and gas -- to crack open dry, hot rock and inject water into the fractures, creating artificial geothermal reservoirs. Eavor, a Canadian start-up, is building large underground radiators with drilling methods pioneered in Alberta's oil sands. Others dream of using plasma or energy waves to drill even deeper and tap "superhot" temperatures that could cleanly power thousands of coal-fired power plants by substituting steam for coal. Still, obstacles to geothermal expansion loom. Investors are wary of the cost and risks of novel geothermal projects. Some worry about water use or earthquakes from drilling. Permitting is difficult. And geothermal gets less federal support than other technologies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The number of titles on streaming services jumped 39% over the past two years to 2.35 million, according to a report released Monday by market researcher Nielsen. From a report: Add in traditional broadcast and cable channels and the number of individual viewing options climbed to 2.7 million. The figures reflect movies and shows available in the US, Canada, the UK, Mexico and Germany. Netflix and Disney+ are among 167 streaming providers, up from 118 two years ago. The average time it takes someone to find something to watch has risen to more than 10 minutes from a little over seven minutes in 2019, Nielsen said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An advertising watchdog has recommended that YouTube TV, Google's growing pay-TV streaming service, drops an ad claim that the service is "$600 less than cable." The recommendation from the National Advertising Division (NAD) stems from a complaint lodged by Charter Communications. From a report: NAD, which used an expedited process for single-issue advertising cases in making this decision, found that YouTube TV's pricing claim, which identifies "comparable standalone cable" as the basis of comparison, doesn't hold up. NAD noted that the price calculation underlying the challenged claim includes the cost of two set-top boxes per household for "standalone cable" services," but argued that such a comparison isn't a good fit because operators such as Charter offer pay-TV streaming options that may not require a set-top box. In Charter's case, its Spectrum TV app, billed as a platform that can "stream outside the cable box," is compatible with iOS and Android mobile devices along with several retail streaming devices and/or integrated connected TVs from companies such as Apple, Roku, Google and Samsung. "In the context of the 'cable' comparison, NAD found the claim reasonably conveys the cost of YouTube TV is compared to all cable services," the organization explained.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo opened talks with Chinese government officials on Monday, saying it is "profoundly important" for the world's two largest economies to have a stable economic relationship. From a report: Raimondo is looking to boost business ties as U.S. firms have reported increasing challenges with operating in China, while China has sharply criticized U.S. efforts to block its access to advanced semiconductors. Raimondo said the entire world expects the United States and China will have a stable economic relationship; the two countries share more than $700 billion in annual trade. "It's a complicated relationship. "It's a challenging relationship. We will of course disagree on certain issues," Raimondo said. "I think we can make progress if we are direct, open and practical."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slash_Account_Dot writes: Hackers are able to grab a target's IP address, potentially revealing their general physical location, by simply sending a link over the Skype mobile app. The target does not need to click the link or otherwise interact with the hacker beyond opening the message, according to a security researcher who demonstrated the issue and successfully discovered my IP address by using it. Yossi, the independent security researcher who uncovered the vulnerability, reported the issue to Microsoft earlier this month, according to Yossi and a cache of emails and bug reports he shared with 404 Media. In those emails Microsoft said the issue does not require immediate servicing, and gave no indication that it plans to fix the security hole. Only after 404 Media contacted Microsoft for comment did the company say it would patch the issue in an upcoming update.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To meet climate goals, some European countries are asking farmers to reduce livestock, relocate or shut down -- and an angry backlash has begun reshaping the political landscape before national elections in the fall. The New York Times: This summer, scores of farmers descended on the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, to protest against new E.U. rules aimed at restoring natural areas and cutting emissions that contribute to climate change. Farmers have protested in Belgium, Italy and Spain, too. The discontent has underscored a widening divide on a continent that is on the one hand committed to acting on climate change but on the other often deeply divided about how to do it and who should pay for it. [...] For many farmers, the feelings run deep. The prominent role of agriculture was enshrined in the European Union's founding documents as a way of ensuring food security for a continent still traumatized by the deprivations of World War II. But it was also a nod to national identities and a way to protect competing farming interests in what would become a common market. To that end, from its outset, the bloc established a fund that, to this day, provides farmers with billions of euros in subsidies every year. Increasingly, however, those subsidies and the bloc's founding ideals are running up against a new ambition: to adapt to a world where climate change threatens traditional ways of life. Scientists are adamant: To fulfill the bloc's goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 and to reverse biodiversity losses, Europe has to transform the way it produces its food.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The upcoming release of GNOME 45 - expected September 20th - will bring new features to the Nautilus file manager (now in public beta testing). An anonymous reader shared this report from 9to5Linux: Nautilus in GNOME 45 already received a search performance boost, support for dropping images directly from web pages, an improved Grid View that now indicates starred files too, the ability to display bytes size as a tooltip for folder properties, and a more adaptive design for the sidebar. It also got an improved file opening experience while sandboxed (think Flatpak, Snap, etc.), a more consistent date and time format, a more simplistic definition of the Keyboard Shortcuts window, the ability to refocus the search bar using the Ctrl+F keyboard shortcut, and a better archiving experience. But there's room for more new features as Nautilus now received new "Search Everywhere" buttons to expand the search scope and a modern full-height sidebar layout, along with refined sidebar sizing and folding threshold. This is what Nautilus looks like in GNOME 45. The article includes some screenshots, adding that Nautilus "also received some performance improvements to more quickly generate multiple thumbnails, provide users with flickerless transition into and from search, and avoid DBus-activating other apps when it starts."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York Times:It is powered into flight by a rocket engine. It can fly a distance equal to the width of China. It has a stealthy design and is capable of carrying missiles that can hit enemy targets far beyond its visual range. But what really distinguishes the Air Force's pilotless XQ-58A Valkyrie experimental aircraft is that it is run by artificial intelligence, putting it at the forefront of efforts by the U.S. military to harness the capacities of an emerging technology whose vast potential benefits are tempered by deep concerns about how much autonomy to grant to a lethal weapon. Essentially a next-generation drone, the Valkyrie is a prototype for what the Air Force hopes can become a potent supplement to its fleet of traditional fighter jets, giving human pilots a swarm of highly capable robot wingmen to deploy in battle. Its mission is to marry artificial intelligence and its sensors to identify and evaluate enemy threats and then, after getting human sign-off, to move in for the kill... The emergence of artificial intelligence is helping to spawn a new generation of Pentagon contractors who are seeking to undercut, or at least disrupt, the longstanding primacy of the handful of giant firms who supply the armed forces with planes, missiles, tanks and ships. The possibility of building fleets of smart but relatively inexpensive weapons that could be deployed in large numbers is allowing Pentagon officials to think in new ways about taking on enemy forces. It also is forcing them to confront questions about what role humans should play in conflicts waged with software that is written to kill... The article adds that the U.S. Air Force plans to build 1,000 to 2,000 AI drones for as little as $3 million apiece. "Some will focus on surveillance or resupply missions, others will fly in attack swarms and still others will serve as a 'loyal wingman' to a human pilot.... "A recently revised Pentagon policy on the use of artificial intelligence in weapons systems allows for the autonomous use of lethal force - but any particular plan to build or deploy such a weapon must first be reviewed and approved by a special military panel."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This month the official Rust blog announced:For the 6th year in a row, the Rust Project conducted a survey on the Rust programming language, with participation from project maintainers, contributors, and those generally interested in the future of Rust. This edition of the annual State of Rust Survey opened for submissions on December 5 and ran until December 22, 2022... [W]e had 9,433 total survey completions and an increased survey completion rate of 82% vs. 76% in 2021... - More people are using Rust than ever before! Over 90% of survey respondents identified as Rust users, and of those using Rust, 47% do so on a daily basis - an increase of 4% from the previous year. - 30% of Rust user respondents can write simple programs in Rust, 27% can write production-ready code, and 42% consider themselves productive using Rust. Of the former Rust users who completed the survey, 30% cited difficulty as the primary reason for giving up while nearly 47% cited factors outside of their control. - The growing maturation of Rust can be seen through the increased number of different organizations utilizing the language in 2022. In fact, 29.7% of respondents stated that they use Rust for the majority of their coding work at their workplace, which is a 51.8% increase compared to the previous year. - There are numerous reasons why we are seeing increased use of Rust in professional environments. Top reasons cited for the use of Rust include the perceived ability to write "bug-free software" (86%), Rust's performance characteristics (84%), and Rust's security and safety guarantees (69%). We were also pleased to find that 76% of respondents continue to use Rust simply because they found it fun and enjoyable. (Respondents could select more than one option here, so the numbers don't add up to 100%.) - Of those respondents that used Rust at work, 72% reported that it helped their team achieve its goals (a 4% increase from the previous year) and 75% have plans to continue using it on their teams in the future. - But like any language being applied in the workplace, Rust's learning curve is an important consideration; 39% of respondents using Rust in a professional capacity reported the process as "challenging" and 9% of respondents said that adopting Rust at work has "slowed down their team". However, 60% of productive users felt Rust was worth the cost of adoption overall... - Of those respondents who shared their main worries for the future of Rust, 26% have concerns that the developers and maintainers behind Rust are not properly supported - a decrease of more than 30% from the previous year's findings. One area of focus in the future may be to see how the Project in conjunction with the Rust Foundation can continue to push that number towards 0%. - While 38% have concerns about Rust "becoming too complex", only a small number of respondents were concerned about documentation, corporate oversight, or speed of evolution. 34% of respondents are not worried about the future of Rust at all. This year's survey reflects a 21% decrease in fears about Rust's usage in the industry since the last survey.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from 9to5Linux:Just a couple of days after celebrating its 32nd anniversary , Linus Torvalds announced today the final release of the Linux 6.5 kernel series as a major update that introduces several new features, updated and new drivers for better hardware support, and other changes. After seven weeks of RCs, Linux kernel 6.5 is here with new features like MIDI 2.0 support in ALSA, ACPI support for the RISC-V architecture, Landlock support for UML (User-Mode Linux), better support for AMD "Zen" systems, as well as user-space support for the ARMv8.8 memcpy/memset instructions. Also new in Linux 6.5 is Intel TPMI (Topology Aware Register and PM Capsule Interface) support for the power capping subsystem and a TPMI interface driver for Intel RAPL, and the "runnable boosting" feature in the EAS balancer to improve CPU utilization for specific workloads. This release also improves SMP scheduling's load balancer to recognize SMT cores with more than one busy sibling and allows lower-priority CPUs to pull tasks to avoid superfluous migrations, and improves EXT4 file system's journalling, block allocator subsystems, and performance for parallel DIO overwrites.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Physicists have observed neutrinos originating "from the sun, cosmic rays, supernovae and other cosmic objects, as well as particle accelerators and nuclear reactors," writes Phys.org. But one remaining goal was observing neutrinos inside "collider" particle accelerators (which direct two particle beams). It's now been accomplished using neutrino detectors located at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland by two distinct research collaborations: - FASER (Forward Search Experiment)- SND (Scattering and Neutrino Detector)@LHC Phys.org argues the two achievements "could open important new avenues for experimental particle physics research. "The results of their two studies were recently published in Physical Review Letters. "Neutrinos are produced very abundantly in proton colliders such as the LHC," Cristovao Vilela, part of the SND@LHC Collaboration, told Phys.org. "However, up to now, these neutrinos had never been directly observed. The very weak interaction of neutrinos with other particles makes their detection very challenging and because of this they are the least well studied particles in the Standard Model of particle physics...." "Particle colliders have existed for over 50 years, and have detected every known particle except for neutrinos," Jonathan Lee Feng, co-spokesperson of the FASER Collaboration, told Phys.org. "At the same time, every time neutrinos have been discovered from a new source, whether it is a nuclear reactor, the sun, the Earth, or supernovae, we have learned something extremely important about the universe. As part of our recent work, we set out to detect neutrinos produced at a particle collider for the first time... "Because these neutrinos have high fluxes and high energies, which makes them far more likely to interact, we were able to detect 153 of them with a very small, inexpensive detector that was built in a very short time," Feng explained. "Previously, particle physics was thought to be divided into two parts: high energy experiments, which were required to study heavy particles, like top quarks and Higgs bosons, and high intensity experiments, which were required to study neutrinos. This work has shown that high energy experiments can also study neutrinos, and so has brought together the high-energy and high-intensity frontiers." The neutrinos detected by Feng and the rest of the FASER collaboration have the highest energy ever recorded in a laboratory environment.... Cristovao Vilela, part of the SND@LHC Collaboration, said "The observation of collider neutrinos opens the door to novel measurements which will help us understand some of the more fundamental puzzles of the Standard Model of particle physics, such as why there are three generations of matter particles (fermions) that seem to be exact copies of each other in all aspects except for their mass. Furthermore, our detector is placed in a location which is a blind spot for the larger LHC experiments. Because of this, our measurements will also contribute to a better understanding of the structure of colliding protons."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reuters reports:Tests of seawater near Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant have not detected any radioactivity, the environment ministry said on Sunday, days after authorities began discharging into the sea treated water used to cool damaged reactors. Japan started releasing water from the wrecked Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, sparking protests in Japan and neighbouring countries, in particular China, which banned aquatic product imports from Japan. Japan and scientific organisations say the water is safe after being filtered to remove most radioactive elements except for tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Because tritium is difficult to separate from water, the Fukushima water is diluted until tritium levels fall below regulatory limits. The ministry's tests of samples from 11 points near the plant showed concentrations of tritium below the lower limit of detection - 7 to 8 becquerels of tritium per litre, the ministry said, adding that it "would have no adverse impact on human health and the environment". Monitoring would be carried out "with a high level of objectivity, transparency, and reliability" to prevent adverse impacts on Japan's reputation, Environment Minister Akihiro Nishimura said in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

llvm-mos adapts the popular LLVM compiler to target the MOS 6502 processor (the 1980s microprocessor used in early home computing devices like the Apple II and the Commodore 64). So developer Onno Kortman used it to cross-compile semu, a "minimalist RISC-V system emulator capable of running Linux the kernel and corresponding userland." And by the end of the day, Kortman has Linux running on a Commodore 64. Long-time Slashdot reader johnwbyrd shared the link to Kortman's repository. Some quotes: "But does it run Linux?" can now be finally and affirmatively answered for the Commodore C64...! It runs extremely slowly and it needs a RAM Expansion Unit (REU), as there is no chance to fit it all into just 64KiB. It even emulates virtual memory with an MMU.... The screenshots took VICE a couple hours in "warp mode" (activate it with Alt-W) to generate. So, as is, a real C64 should be able to boot Linux within a week or so. The compiled 6502 code is not really optimized yet, and it might be realistic to squeeze a factor 10x of performance out of this. Maybe even a simple form of JIT compilation? It should also be possible to implement starting a checkpointed VM (quickly precomputed on x86-64) to avoid the lengthy boot process... I also tested a minimal micropython port (I can clean it up and post it on github if there is interest), that one does not use the MMU and is almost barely remotely usable with lots of optimism at 100% speed. A key passage:I have not tested it on real hardware yet, that's the next challenge .. for you. So please send me a link to a timelapse video of an original unit with REU booting Linux :D Its GitHub repository has build and run instructions...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The creators of four programming languages will appear together onstage for a historic conversation on September 19th. - Adele Goldberg - Smalltalk- Guido Van Rossum - Python- Anders Hejlsberg - Turbo Pascal, C#, TypeScript- James Gosling - Java The announcement describes it as "a conversation about programming language design."The charity event brings together this unique group of computer science pioneers, unlike any event held before. These great minds come together for what will surely be a fantastic night of discussion as the panel delves into the past and future of programming language creation. It's a fundraiser for two groups. NumFOCUS is a nonprofit charity sponsoring nearly all the major tools in the Python data science stack (including jupyter, numpy, pandas, and matplotlib), and it's also the group behind PyData conferences on open source data tools. And the Last Mile Education Fund offers financial support for low-income underrepresented students. It's being billed as the "inaugural charity event" of PyData Seattle. This happened once before in 2019, when Puget Sound Programming Python arranged a four-way discussion with Python creator Guido van Rossum, Java creator James Gosling, Perl creator Larry Wall, and Anders Hejlsberg (Turbo Pascal, C#, TypeScript). They held a 90-minute discussion about "language design, the universe, and everything" as a benefit for CSforALL (a group promoting computer science classes at every grade level). During that discussion Gosling shared how Java "started out as kind of 'Do a better C', and it got out of control. The rest of the project really ended up just providing the context." And Anders Hejlsberg told the audience that TypeScript was inspired by massive "write-only" JavaScript code bases. In their discussion on variable typing and its use in IDEs, Gosling mocked what he called the "real men use vi" mentality, leading to a lively back and forth. Perl's Larry Wall later acknowledged the importance of types and the careful consideration that went into implementing them for Perl 6, but also shared his unique perspective as a long-time designer of programming languages. "I think IDEs make language developers lazy." At the end of the event, they all agreed that the most rewarding part of language design was the people - the excitement, the gratitude, and to see that community helping others in its community.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The creators of four programming languages will appear together onstage for a historic conversation on September 19th. - Adele Goldberg - Smalltalk- Guido Van Rossum - Python- Anders Hejlsberg - Turbo Pascal, C#, TypeScript- James Gosling - Java The announcement describes it as "a conversation about programming language design."The charity event brings together this unique group of computer science pioneers, unlike any event held before. These great minds come together for what will surely be a fantastic night of discussion as the panel delves into the past and future of programming language creation. It's a fundraiser for two groups. NumFOCUS is a nonprofit charity sponsoring nearly all the major tools in the Python data science stack (including jupyter, numpy, pandas, and matplotlib), and it's also the group behind PyData conferences on open source data tools. And the Last Mile Education Fund offers financial support for low-income underrepresented students. It's being billed as the "inaugural charity event" of PyData Seattle. This happened once before in 2019, when Puget Sound Programming Python arranged a four-way discussion with Python creator Guido van Rossum, Java creator James Gosling, Perl creator Larry Wall, and Anders Hejlsberg (Turbo Pascal, C#, TypeScript). They held a 90-minute discussion about "language design, the universe, and everything" as a benefit for CSforALL (a group promoting computer science classes at every grade level). During that discussion Gosling shared how Java "started out as kind of 'Do a better C', and it got out of control. The rest of the project really ended up just providing the context." And Anders Hejlsberg told the audience that TypeScript was inspired by massive "write-only" JavaScript code bases. In their discussion on variable typing and its use in IDEs, Gosling mocked what he called the "real men use vi" mentality, leading to a lively back and forth. Perl's Larry Wall later acknowledged the importance of types and the careful consideration that went into implementing them for Perl 6, but also shared his unique perspective as a long-time designer of programming languages. "I think IDEs make language developers lazy." At the end of the event, they all agreed that the most rewarding part of language design was the people - the excitement, the gratitude, and to see that community helping others in its community.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Amazon launches cloud service to help non-coders build apps," read the 2020 headline at CNBC - both mobile and web applications. But long-time Slashdot reader theodp has the rest of the story: Customers have told us that the need for custom applications far outstrips the capacity of developers to create them," Amazon Web Services explained as it jumped on the low-code and no-code bandwagon in 2020... But just three years later, Amazon posted a "Dear Valued Customer" letter announcing it's pulling the plug on Honeycode at the end of February: "To our valued customers: Thank you for participating in the Amazon Honeycode beta program... After careful consideration, we have made the decision to end the beta service, effective February 29, 2024. Starting today, we are no longer accepting new customer sign-ups to the Honeycode beta. However, as an existing customer, you will be able to use Honeycode and your Honeycode apps as normal (and add team members to your existing account) until February 29, 2024, when the service will be discontinued. After this date, you will no longer be able to use Honeycode or any of the apps you created in Honeycode." Amazon advises the "valued customers" it's leaving stranded to use Honeycode's "Export Data" option ("a handy way to get your info organized into a CSV file(s)", although "formulas will not export"). They also warn that "We will retain your data until April 29, 2024. If you do not take any action, your data will be deleted on April 30, 2024." Amazon adds that the spirit of Honeycode (RIP, 2020-2024) will live on in its other products: "We are incorporating lessons from the Amazon Honeycode beta into current services, and remain committed to supporting no/low code services including Amazon SageMaker Canvas (2021-?), AWS Amplify Studio (2021-?), and AWS AppFabric (2023-?).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader sciencehabit writes: One thing most cats seem to have in common is a deep love of tuna. That's an odd predilection for a creature that evolved in the desert, with nary a fish in sight. Now scientists think they've nailed down the biology behind this curious craving. In a series of experiments researchers showed for the first time that cats contain the necessary molecular machinery on their taste buds to detect umami--the savory, deep flavor of various meats, and one of the five basic tastes in addition to sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. In taste tests, the cats gravitated towards bowls of water laced with compounds present at high levels in umami foods. Indeed, umami appears to be the primary flavor that attracts cats--no surprise for an obligate carnivore. But the team found something more remarkable: The felines showed a particular preference for bowls containing histidine and inosine monophosphate - compounds found at particularly high levels in tuna. "It was one of the most preferred combinations," says one of the scientists. "It really seems to hit that umami sweet spot." The work doesn't just explain why cats have a particular hankering for tuna. It could help manufacturers develop more palatable meals for our finicky friends and even medications that they won't spit across the room. Exactly why cats evolved a taste for tuna--or any kind of fish--remains a mystery. It may have been a taste they developed over time. As far back as 1500 B.C.E., cats are depicted eating fish in the art of Ancient Egypt. And by the Middle Ages, felines in some Middle Eastern ports were consuming large quantities of fish - including tuna - likely because they were feasting on the scraps left by fishers. In both cases, cats that evolved a taste for fish - and perhaps tuna in particular - may have had an advantage over their comrades who stuck solely to rodents and birds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last year movie theaters offered $3 movie tickets for "National Cinema Day," attracting a surge of more than 8.1 million movie-goers (compared to just 1.7 million the day after). So they're doing it again... Today more than 3,000 movie theaters in the U.S. and Canada - with approximately 30,000 screens - are offering $4 tickets for every show (including IMAX and Dolby screenings) in a special one-day event. (The U.K. will also celebrate "National Cinema Day" - but in six days, on September 2nd.) Variety notes that last year's event brought the highest one-day attendance for all of 2022, and "All of that foot traffic in theaters usually means there will be more popcorn and concession stand sales." So the National Association of Theatre Owners's nonprofit, the Cinema Foundation - decided to do it again this year just two days after the first event had ended. CNBC reports:While last year's event was held in part because of a need to lure audiences back to theaters after two years away following pandemic shutdowns, Bryan Braunlich, executive director of the non-profit Cinema Foundation, says that the hope for this year's Cinema Day is just for audiences to enjoy being at the movies... Nationwide chains including AMC and Regal will be participating. For a full list of theaters taking part in National Cinema Day, click here... If this year's installment proves to once again be a success, Braunlich says the hope is to make National Cinema Day an annual event. "If this continues every year, which we hope it will, the long term goal is to eventize it," he says. "Make it less about the price and more like little Comic Cons in every city where you never know what celebrity is going to hop into your theater." This year's event includes a limited re-release of some classic films, including the original Jurassic Park.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For SpaceX's 11th crewed mission - its eighth flight for NASA - "A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying four astronauts will arrive at the International Space Station early Sunday," reports Space.com, "and you can watch it all live online in a free livestream."The Crew Dragon capsule Endurance is scheduled to reach the International Space Station at 8:39 a.m. EDT (1239 GMT), where it will dock itself to a space-facing port on the outpost's U.S.-built Harmony module. The docking will mark the end of a nearly 30-hour journey for the capsule's four-person crew, which launched in the wee hours of Saturday from NASA's Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida... "SpaceX, thanks for the ride, it was awesome," Crew-7 commander Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA said after the crew reached orbit. "Go Crew-7, awesome ride." SpaceX's Crew-7 mission for NASA is ferrying Moghbeli to the ISS with a truly international crew: pilot Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency; and mission specialists Konstantin Borisov of Russia's Roscosmos agency and Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The quartet is the first all-international crew, with members from four different agencies and countries, to fly on the same Dragon capsule... The Crew-7 astronauts are beginning a six-month expedition to the space station and will relieve the four astronauts of NASA's Crew-6 mission, who are due to return shortly after Moghbeli and her crew arrive. SpaceX has created a "follow Dragon" web page with graphics tracking the capsule's progress to the Space Station...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York:In 2017, Michael Moritz, a billionaire venture capitalist, sent a note to a potential investor about what he described as an unusual opportunity: a chance to invest in the creation of a new California city. The site was in a corner of the San Francisco Bay Area where land was cheap. Moritz and others had dreams of transforming tens of thousands of acres into a bustling metropolis that, according to the pitch, could generate thousands of jobs and be as walkable as Paris or the West Village in New York. He painted a kind of urban blank slate where everything from design to construction methods and new forms of governance could be rethought. And it would all be a short distance from San Francisco and Silicon Valley... Since then, a company called Flannery Associates has been buying large plots of land in a largely agricultural region 60 miles northeast of San Francisco. The company, which has little information public about its operations, has committed more than $800 million to secure thousands of acres of farmland, court documents show. One parcel after another, Flannery made offers to every landowner for miles, paying several times the market rate, whether the land had been listed for sale or not... Brian Brokaw, a representative for the investor group, said in a statement that the group was made up of "Californians who believe that Solano County's and California's best days are ahead." He said the group planned to start working with Solano County residents and elected officials, as well as with Travis Air Force Base, next week... The land that Flannery has been purchasing is not zoned for residential use, and even in his 2017 pitch, Moritz acknowledged that rezoning could "clearly be challenging" - a nod to California's notoriously difficult and litigious development process. To pull off the project, the company will almost certainly have to use the state's initiative system to get Solano County residents to vote on it. The hope is that voters will be enticed by promises of thousands of local jobs; increased tax revenue; and investments in infrastructure like parks, a performing arts center, shopping, dining and a trade school. Moritz's 2017 email had argued their project "should relieve some of the Silicon Valley pressures we all feel - rising home prices, homelessness, congestion etc." SFGate estimates the group now owns 52,000 acres - "an empire that is nearly double the size of the city of San Francisco" - and notes that some details emerged when the group filed a document to repond to a lawsuit. "It claims it told landowners that they could keep 'existing income streams from wind energy and natural gas storage,' could 'continue using these properties rent-free for decades,' and would receive 'significant grants from Flannery for charitable giving, to be used at the [landowners'] discretion to support local schools and other non-profits.'" "Tech billionaires reportedly backing mysterious Solano County land grab," reads the headline on SFGate's latest article:SFGATE reported earlier this week that a survey had circulated to Solano County residents asking for their opinions on the potential development of "a new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over ten thousand acres of new parks and open space."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kitty Oppenheimer: Can you explain quantum mechanics to me? J. Robert Oppenheimer: Well, this glass, this drink, this counter top, uhh.. our bodies, all of it. It's mostly empty space. Groupings of tiny energy waves bound together. Kitty Oppenheimer: By what? J. Robert Oppenheimer: Forces of attraction strong enough to convince us [that] matter is solid, to stop my body passing through yours. - IMDB quote from Oppenheimer Flash forward to 2023, where Mario Barbatti is a theoretical chemist and physicist researching light and molecule interactions. He's also a professor of chemistry at Aix Marseille University in France. Writing this week for Aeon, Barbatti argues that "there are no empty spaces within the atom. "The empty atom picture is likely the most repeated mistake in popular science."It is unclear who created this myth, but it is sure that Carl Sagan, in his classic TV series Cosmos (1980), was crucial in popularising it. After wondering how small the nuclei are compared with the atom, Sagan concluded that "[M]ost of the mass of an atom is in its nucleus; the electrons are by comparison just clouds of moving fluff. Atoms are mainly empty space. Matter is composed chiefly of nothing." I still remember how deeply these words spoke to me when I heard them as a kid in the early 1980s. Today, as a professional theoretical chemist, I know that Sagan's statements failed to recognise some fundamental features of atoms and molecules... Misconceptions feeding the idea of the empty atom can be dismantled by carefully interpreting quantum theory, which describes the physics of molecules, atoms and subatomic particles. According to quantum theory, the building blocks of matter - like electrons, nuclei and the molecules they form - can be portrayed either as waves or particles. Leave them to evolve by themselves without human interference, and they act like delocalised waves in the shape of continuous clouds. On the other hand, when we attempt to observe these systems, they appear to be localised particles, something like bullets in the classical realm. But accepting the quantum predictions that nuclei and electrons fill space as continuous clouds has a daring conceptual price: it implies that these particles do not vibrate, spin or orbit. They inhabit a motionless microcosmos where time only occasionally plays a role... A molecule is a static object without any internal motion. The quantum clouds of all nuclei and electrons remain absolutely still for a molecule with a well-defined energy. Time is irrelevant... Time, however, comes into play when a molecule collides with another one, triggering a chemical reaction. Then, a storm strikes. The quantum steadiness bursts when the sections of the electronic cloud pour from one molecule upon another. The clouds mix, reshape, merge, and split. The nuclear clouds rearrange to accommodate themselves within the new electronic configuration, sometimes even migrating between molecules. For a fraction of a picosecond (10-12 seconds or a billionth of a millisecond), the tempest rages and reshapes the molecular landscape until stillness is restored in the newly formed compounds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Hundreds of monster hunters equipped with drones and infrared cameras have gathered in the Scottish Highlands with a singular goal," reports the Washington Post: "to be the ones to finally find the Loch Ness monster."But it won't be easy. On Saturday, the rain was lashing and the skies were gray, hampering visibility in the search for the folkloric creature, affectionately known as Nessie. The mythical monster, which legend says lives in a freshwater lake in Scotland, has eluded capture, or any definitive proof of existence, since its first recorded sighting in the 6th century. But trying to find Nessie is an age-old tradition, and the volunteer hunters who showed up Saturday are dedicated - and better equipped than those who came before. The search for the monster, organized over two days by the local Loch Ness Center in Inverness, is the biggest in a half-century, and certainly the most high-tech. Some people drove hours to be here, while others flew in from overseas... The Loch Ness Center launched the event - which it called "The Quest" - in partnership with Loch Ness Exploration, a research group that studies the lake and other unexplained phenomena. It put out a call for volunteer hunters "fascinated by the legendary tales of Nessie" and with "a passion for unraveling mysteries and exploring the extraordinary." The center was later forced to close online registrations for volunteers "due to an overwhelming surge in demand," according to the website... Some hunters with drones are equipping them with infrared cameras to seek out heat spots in the lake - as well as sending them underwater. They've also come armed with a hydrophone to pick up acoustic signals 60 feet below the loch's surface - although nobody really knows what the monster would sound like. Other participants can join several surface-watch locations staged by organizers or cruise the 23-mile-long lake by boat. They have been asked to document everything they see - from surface movements to weather changes - and are getting lessons on how to capture potential sightings on their phones. The BBC notes that "Almost 300 have signed up to monitor a live stream from the search, which is taking place on Saturday and Sunday." NPR has some audio excerpts of past witnesses who said the've seen the monster - and some of the current crop of monster hunters. (While Wikipedia has its own detailed debunking of the famous Loch News monster "Surgeon's Photo".) But the Washington Post sums up the whole story with this two-word quote from a woman who'd traveled from France for a Loch Ness vacation. "I believe."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In July "Safe Street Rebels" launched the "Week of Cone" pranks (which went viral on TikTok and Twitter). TechCrunch called it "a bid to raise awareness and invite more pissed-off San Franciscans to submit public comments" to regulatory agencies. But NPR sees a larger context:Coning driverless cars fits in line with a long history of protests against the impact of the tech industry on San Francisco. Throughout the years, activists have blockaded Google's private commuter buses from picking up employees in the city. And when scooter companies flooded the sidewalks with electric scooters, people threw them into San Francisco Bay. "Then there was the burning of Lime scooters in front of a Google bus," says Manissa Maharawal, an assistant professor at American University who has studied these protests. She points out that when tech companies test their products in the city, residents don't have much say in those decisions: "There's been various iterations of this where it's like, 'Oh, yep, let's try that out in San Francisco again,' with very little input from anyone who lives here...." Waymo is already giving rides in Phoenix and is testing with human safety drivers in Los Angeles and Austin. And Cruise is offering rides in Phoenix and Austin and testing in Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville and Charlotte. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, members of Safe Street Rebel continue to go out at night and stalk the vehicles one cone at a time. They're apparently bicycling activists, judging by their web site, advocating "for car-free spaces, transit equity, and the end of car dominance." ("We regularly protest the city's thoughtless reopening of the Upper Great Highway to cars by slowing traffic to show just how unnecessary of a route this road is.") Their long-term goal is to expand the group "to the point where we can make a city for people to safely walk, bike and take public transit, not a city dominated by cars..."The last half-century has been a failed experiment with car dominance. They bankrupt our cities, ruin our environment, and force working people to sacrifice an unacceptable amount of their income to pay for basic transpiration. It is time to end car dependence and rethink our streets around public transit, walking and bikes. Their demands include unredacted data from self-driving car companies about safety incidents (and a better reporting system) - plus a mechanism for actually citing robotaxis for traffic violations. But they also raise concerns about surveillance, noting the possibility of "a city-wide, moving network observing and analyzing everything." Their web page says they also want to see studies on the pollution impact of self-driving cars - and whether or not AVs will increase car usage. They support the concerns of San Francisco's Taxi Workers Alliance about the possibility of lost jobs and increased traffic congestion. And they raise one more concern: Their cars are not wheelchair accessible and do not pull up to the curb. Profit-driven robotaxi companies see accessibility as an afterthought. Without enforcement, their promises for the future will likely never materialize. Paratransit and transit are accountable to the public, but Cruise and Waymo are only accountable to shareholders. But their list of concerns is followed by an exhaustive list of 266 robotaxi incidents documented with links to news articles and social media reports. ("The cars have run red lights, rear-ended a bus and blocked crosswalks and bike paths," writes NPR. "In one incident, dozens of confused cars congregated in a residential cul-de-sac, clogging the street. In another, a Waymo ran over and killed a dog.") NPR's article adds one final note. "Neither Cruise nor Waymo responded to questions about why the cars can be disabled by traffic cones." Thanks to Slashdot reader Tony Isaac for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times explores harrowing stories about recent airplane near-miss "close calls" on U.S. runways:The incidents - highlighted in preliminary F.A.A. safety reports but not publicly disclosed - were among a flurry of at least 46 close calls involving commercial airlines last month alone... While there have been no major U.S. plane crashes in more than a decade, potentially dangerous incidents are occurring far more frequently than almost anyone realizes - a sign of what many insiders describe as a safety net under mounting stress. So far this year, close calls involving commercial airlines have been happening, on average, multiple times a week, according to a Times analysis of internal F.A.A. records, as well as thousands of pages of federal safety reports and interviews with more than 50 current and former pilots, air traffic controllers and federal officials. The incidents often occur at or near airports and are the result of human error, the agency's internal records show... The close calls have involved all major U.S. airlines and have happened nationwide... In addition to the F.A.A. records, The Times analyzed a database maintained by NASA that contains confidential safety reports filed by pilots, air traffic controllers and others in aviation. The analysis identified a similar phenomenon: In the most recent 12-month period for which data was available, there were about 300 accounts of near collisions involving commercial airlines... One problem is that despite repeated recommendations from safety authorities, the vast majority of U.S. airports have not installed warning systems to help prevent collisions on runways. But the most acute challenge, The Times found, is that the nation's air traffic control facilities are chronically understaffed. While the lack of controllers is no secret - the Biden administration is seeking funding to hire and train more - the shortages are more severe and are leading to more dangerous situations than previously known. As of May, only three of the 313 air traffic facilities nationwide had enough controllers to meet targets set by the F.A.A. and the union representing controllers, The Times found. Many controllers are required to work six-day weeks and a schedule so fatiguing that multiple federal agencies have warned that it can impede controllers' abilities to do their jobs properly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times explores harrowing stories about recent airplane near-miss "close calls" on U.S. runways:The incidents - highlighted in preliminary F.A.A. safety reports but not publicly disclosed - were among a flurry of at least 46 close calls involving commercial airlines last month alone... While there have been no major U.S. plane crashes in more than a decade, potentially dangerous incidents are occurring far more frequently than almost anyone realizes - a sign of what many insiders describe as a safety net under mounting stress. So far this year, close calls involving commercial airlines have been happening, on average, multiple times a week, according to a Times analysis of internal F.A.A. records, as well as thousands of pages of federal safety reports and interviews with more than 50 current and former pilots, air traffic controllers and federal officials. The incidents often occur at or near airports and are the result of human error, the agency's internal records show... The close calls have involved all major U.S. airlines and have happened nationwide... In addition to the F.A.A. records, The Times analyzed a database maintained by NASA that contains confidential safety reports filed by pilots, air traffic controllers and others in aviation. The analysis identified a similar phenomenon: In the most recent 12-month period for which data was available, there were about 300 accounts of near collisions involving commercial airlines... One problem is that despite repeated recommendations from safety authorities, the vast majority of U.S. airports have not installed warning systems to help prevent collisions on runways. But the most acute challenge, The Times found, is that the nation's air traffic control facilities are chronically understaffed. While the lack of controllers is no secret - the Biden administration is seeking funding to hire and train more - the shortages are more severe and are leading to more dangerous situations than previously known. As of May, only three of the 313 air traffic facilities nationwide had enough controllers to meet targets set by the F.A.A. and the union representing controllers, The Times found. Many controllers are required to work six-day weeks and a schedule so fatiguing that multiple federal agencies have warned that it can impede controllers' abilities to do their jobs properly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader Bruce66423 shared this report from the Independent:South Yorkshire Police (SYP) has apologised after revealing more than three years' worth of officer body cam footage has been deleted from its computer systems. SYP said it had referred itself to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) after the footage, recorded between July 2020 and May 2023, was found to be missing. The force initially said the incident had been caused by a "significant and unexplained reduction" in stored data on its computer systems and later clarified that the data had been "deleted" and not hacked. Around 69 cases have been identified as potentially affected by the loss of data and the force said it was working closely with the victims and Crown Prosecution Service. The cases range from cannabis possession through to domestic abuse and sexual offences, SYP told The Independent... Urgent work, led by digital forensic experts, is underway to recover the footage, it added... It comes just weeks after a major data beach in Northern Ireland, where the force mistakenly published the personal details of officers in response to a freedom of information request. Norfolk and Suffolk police forces, in another freedom of information request incident, released the personal details of more than 1,000 people, including crime victims.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a new perspective on sunspots (those dark, cool areas where the sun's magnetic field is particularly strong, and which often launch solar flares). "NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has given us a sneak peek of an intriguing patch of the sun that's not yet visible from Earth," reports Space.com:Perseverance photographs the sun daily with its Mastcam-Z camera system to gauge the amount of dust in the Martian atmosphere. Such an effort captured a big sunspot moving across the solar disk late last week and over the weekend, as SpaceWeather.com reported. "Because Mars is orbiting over the far side of the sun, Perseverance can see approaching sunspots more than a week before we do," SpaceWeather.com wrote in a post highlighting the sunspot photos. "Consider this your one-week warning: A big sunspot is coming...." Solar flares and coronal mass ejections that hit Earth can affect satellite navigation and disrupt power grids, among other things, so tracking the movement of sunspots is more than just of academic interest.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: During the U.S. presidential campaign of 1928, a circular published by the Republican Party claimed that if Herbert Hoover won there would be "a chicken in every pot". Times change. When talk turned to education at Wednesday night's 2024 Republican U.S. Presidential Candidate Debate, candidate Asa Hutchinson promised there will be 'CS in every school' if he wins (YouTube). "Look at Arkansas," the former Arkansas Governor explained. "We have to compete with China. I built computer science education. We led the nation in Computer Science education, going from 1,100 students to 23,000 students taking it. This is how you compete with China. As President of the United States, I will make sure we go from 51% of our schools offering computer science to every school in rural areas and urban areas offering computer science for the benefit of our kids and we can compete with China in terms of technology." In his last year in office, Hutchinson served as Chair of the National Governors Association (NGA) and rallied the nation's Governors around tech CEOs' demands for more K-12 CS education to culminate his year-long CS evangelism initiative, which the NGA noted enjoyed the support of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Hutchinson's pitch to the Governors included a video challenging them with a question. "Will it be American students who learn to code," Hutchinson asked, "or will industry be required to go overseas to find the talent that we need here in the United States of America?" Later in the debate former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said entrepreneur/candidate Vivek Ramaswamy "sounds like ChatGPT."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:Most research shows that over-the-counter fish oil supplements don't offer cardiovascular benefits, but that hasn't stopped marketers from touting them for heart health, a new study shows. The sale of fish oil supplements is a multibillion-dollar industry, and many people take fish oil capsules daily, believing the omega-3 fatty acids they contain are good for their overall health, particularly for their heart. While it's true people who eat seafood regularly are less likely to die of heart disease, studies have not shown that taking fish oil as a supplement offers the same benefit. Even so, fish oil marketers continue to make health claims that imply a wide range of benefits, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Cardiology. The researchers analyzed labels from more than 2,000 fish oil supplements that made health claims. They found more than 80 percent used what is known as a "structure and function claim," which is a general description that describes the role of omega-3 fatty acids in the body - such as "promotes heart health" or "supports heart, mind and mood." Cardiovascular health claims, which accounted for 62 percent, were most common. Fish oil contains two omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA, found naturally in fatty fish such as salmon. Higher levels of these omega-3s have been associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, but the observational findings are based on omega-3 levels in the diet, not from supplement use, some experts say.Two recent large clinical trials showed that over-the-counter fish oil supplements do not improve cardiovascular outcomes. But the vagueness of the wording used by fish oil marketers could lead to misinformation about the role of the dietary supplement, said Ann Marie Navar, associate professor of cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who was senior author of the study. Navar says in the article "It is true that omega-3 fatty acids are present in the brain and are important for all sorts of brain functions. "What has not been consistently shown with high-quality trials is that taking more of it in the form of a fish oil supplement leads to improved performance or prevention of disease."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The green energy revolution still faces a huge obstacle: a lack of long-term, cost-efficient renewable storage," writes the Washington Post. But then they check in on a Finnish start-up running the world's first commercial-scale sand battery, which uses solar panels and wind turbines to heat sand-filled vats (up to 1,000 degrees) to back up district heating networks:The sand can hold onto the power for weeks or months at a time - a clear advantage over the lithium ion battery, the giant of today's battery market, which usually can hold energy for only a number of hours. Unlike fossil fuels, which can be easily transported and stored, solar and wind supplies fluctuate. Most of the renewable power that isn't used immediately is lost. The solution is storage innovation, many industry experts agree. In addition to their limited capacity, lithium ion batteries, which are used to power everything from mobile phones to laptops to electric vehicles, tend to fade with every recharge and are highly flammable, resulting in a growing number of deadly fires across the world. The extraction of cobalt, the lucrative raw material used in lithium ion batteries, also relies on child labor. U.N. agencies have estimated that 40,000 boys and girls work in the industry, with few safety measures and paltry compensation. These serious environmental and human rights challenges pose a problem for the electric vehicle industry, which requires a huge supply of critical minerals. So investors are now pouring money into even bigger battery ventures. More than $900 million has been invested in clean storage technologies since 2021, up from $360 million the year before, according to the Long Duration Energy Storage Council, an organization launched after that year's U.N. climate conference to oversee the world's decarbonization. The group predicts that by 2040, large-scale, renewable energy storage investments could reach $3 trillion. That includes efforts to turn natural materials into batteries. Once-obscure start-ups, experimenting with once-humble commodities, are suddenly receiving millions in government and private funding. There's the multi-megawatt CO2 battery in Sardinia, a rock-based storage system in Tuscany, and a Swiss company that's moving massive bricks along a 230-foot tall building to store and generate renewable energy. One Danish battery start-up, which stores energy from molten salt, is sketching out plans to deploy power plants in decommissioned coal mines across three continents... But in order to succeed, natural batteries will need to provide the same kind of steady power as fossil fuels, at scale. Whether that can be achieved remains to be seen, say energy experts. And the industry may be subject to the same pitfalls that loom over the renewables energy sector at large: Projects will need to be constructed from scratch, and they might only be adopted in developed countries that can afford such experimentation. Lovschall-Jensen, the CEO of a Danish molten salt-based storage start-up called Hyme, says the challenge will be maintaining the same standards to which the modern world has become accustomed: receiving power, on demand, with the flip of a switch. He believes that natural batteries, though still in their infancy, can serve that goal.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

72-year-old Bjarne Stroustrup invented C++ (first released in 1985). 38 years later, he gave a short interview for Honeypot.io (which calls itself "Europe's largest tech-focused job platform") offering his own advice for life:Don't overspecialize. Don't be too sure that you know the future. Be flexible, and remember that careers and jobs are a long-term thing. Too many young people think they can optimize something, and then they find they've spent a couple of years or more specializing in something that may not have been the right thing. And in the process they burn out, because they haven't spent enough time building up friendships and having a life outside computing. I meet a lot of sort of - I don't know what you call them, "junior geeks"? - that just think that the only thing that matters is the speciality of computing - programming or AI or graphics or something like that. And - well, it isn't... And if they do nothing else, well - if you don't communicate your ideas, you can just as well do Sudoku... You have to communicate. And a lot of sort of caricature nerds forget that. They think that if they can just write the best code, they'll change the world. But you have to be able to listen. You have to be able to communicate with your would-be users and learn from them. And you have to be able to communicate your ideas to them. So you can't just do code. You have to do something about culture and how to express ideas. I mean, I never regretted the time I spent on history and on math. Math sharpens your mind, history gives you some idea of your limitations and what's going on in the world. And so don't be too sure. Take time to have a balanced life. And be ready for the opportunity. I mean, a broad-based education, a broad-based skill set - which is what you build up when you educate, you're basically building a portfolio of skills - means that you can take advantage of an opportunity when it comes along. You can recognize it sometimes. We have lots of opportunities. But a lot of them, we either can't take advantage of, or we don't notice. It was my fairly broad education - I've done standard computer science, I've done compilers, I've done multiple languages... I think I knew two dozen at the time. And I have done machine architecture, I've done operating systems. And that skill set turned out to be useful. At the beginning of the video, Stroustrup jokes that it's hard to give advice - and that it's at least as difficult as it is to take advice. Earlier this year, Bjarne also told the same site the story of how he became a programmer by mistake - misreading a word when choosing what to study afer his high school exams. Stroustrup had thought he was signing up for an applied mathematics course, which instead turned to be a class in computer science...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tuesday Mark Zuckerberg shared a photo on Instagram with "actual footage of me building Threads for web." And now ZDNet reports that Zuckerberg's photo is available on his new Threads page on the web. "As of Thursday, Meta's new platform is fully accessible to all users from any computer and desktop browser, Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed in a new Threads post." "Use your Instagram account to log in: threads.net," explains the official Threads account. "Scroll to catch up on the conversation, or start a new thread of your own." Posts can include photos and videos, or you can reply and repost to other posts. "This is just the beginning. We're working on bringing everything you know and love from mobile over to web. More soon." Wired argues the move makes Threads "more broadly usable."Most users will still access it through mobile, if the way people currently access the internet is any indication. But the move to the web is the next step in Meta creating an application just sticky enough to kneecap X and draw attention away from Bluesky, Mastodon, Spoutible, Post, and any other newish social app. It's also a way to juice its users again. After that spectacular initial sign-up period in July, Threads usage dropped off precipitously. New data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower suggests that daily active users are down more than 60 percent from its first-week average, though it's now back on the upswing. Threads amassed 44 million daily active users during its launch peak, then saw usage drop to a low of 7 million DAUs in late July. As of mid-August, the app has seen increases of 11 million DAUs, Sensor Tower analysts say. However, time spent on the app per daily active user has also fallen, the firm says. Caling Threads "a work in progress," Wired notes it ""will supposedly be compatible with ActivityPub, an open social networking protocol, but that hasn't happened yet. The app also doesn't currently support direct messages, a popular feature on X. And Threads is not available in the European Union, due to the regulatory climate there." Their article also shares an idea from data journalist and engineer Surya Mattu: that both devices and social media apps like Threads should implement a transparency-guaranteeing "inspectability API" to always allow users to inspect their data and activity in real-time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A buzzy startup offering financial infrastructure to crypto companies has found itself bankrupt primarily because it can't gain access to a physical crypto wallet with $38.9 million in it. The company also did not write down recovery phrases, locking itself out of the wallet forever in something it has called "The Wallet Event" to a bankruptcy judge. Prime Trust pitches itself as a crypto fintech company designed to help other startups offer crypto retirement plans, know-your-customer interfaces, ensure liquidity, and a host of other services. It says it can help companies build crypto exchanges, payment platforms, and create stablecoins for its clients. The company has not had a good few months. In June, the state of Nevada filed to seize control of the company because it was near insolvency. It was then ordered to cease all operations by a federal judge because it allegedly used customers' money to cover withdrawal requests from other companies. The company filed for bankruptcy, and, according to a filing by its interim CEO, which you really should read in full, the company offers an "all-in-one solution for customers that remains unmatched in the marketplace." A large problem, among more run-of-the-mill crypto economy problems such as "lack of operational and spending oversight" and "regulatory issues," is the fact that it lost access to a physical wallet it was keeping a tens of millions of dollars in, and cannot get back into it. [...] For several years, the company then took customer deposits into this address, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. In December, 2021, "when a customer requested a significant withdrawal of ETH that the company could not fulfill [from other wallets,]" it went to withdraw it from this hardware wallet. "It was around this time that they discovered that the Company did not have the Wallet Access Devices and thus, could not access the cryptocurrency stored in the 98f Wallet." The company then, for several months, had to "use $76,367,247.90 in the aggregate to purchase ETH to fund customer withdrawals." The money stuck in the wallet is currently worth $38.9 million as of August 22, it claimed. It is worth mentioning that the company did not tell regulators or customers about this issue for months after it discovered the problem. The company has still not solved this issue: "The Company remains unable to access the 98f Wallet," it wrote. "The investigation continues." Prime Trust swears in its filing that this was an "aberrant" event and "extremely unlikely to occur again."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A European study reveals that around 90% of eco-friendly paper straws contain "forever chemicals" called PFAS, which do not easily break down and can accumulate in the body, potentially causing health issues. New Atlas reports: "Forever chemicals" is the colloquial name given to a class of more than 12,000 chemicals, more formally known as poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), that barely break down in the environment or in our bodies. Hence, the "forever" part. [...] The researchers tested 39 different brands of straws made from paper, glass, bamboo, stainless steel, and plastic, and analyzed them for 29 different PFAS compounds. The majority of brands tested (69%) contained PFAS, with 18 different PFAS detected in total. Paper straws were most likely to contain PFAS, with the chemicals detected in 90% of the brands tested, albeit in highly variable concentrations. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a compound linked to high cholesterol, a reduced immune response, thyroid disease and increased kidney and testicular cancer, was most frequently detected. PFOA has been banned globally since 2020. Also detected were trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) and trifluoromethanesulfonic acid (TFMS), ultra-short-chain PFAS that are highly water-soluble and so might leach out of straws into drinks. Bamboo straws fared only slightly better than paper ones, with PFAS found in 80% of brands tested. The chemicals were found in 75% of plastic straws and 40% of glass brands. PFAS were not detected in any of the steel straws tested. The PFAS concentrations were low and, the researchers say, pose a small risk to human health. However, the problem with PFAS is that they're bioaccumulative, meaning they can build up over time because they're absorbed but not excreted. The researchers say that while the study did not determine whether PFAS were added to the straws or were the result of contamination -- for example, from the soil in which the plant-based materials are grown -- the presence of the chemicals in almost every brand of paper straw means it's likely that, in some cases, PFAS were used as a water-repellent coating. The study also did not examine whether PFAS leached out of the straws into the liquid they were sitting in. To be safe, the researchers suggest people start using stainless steel straws, or ditch straws altogether. The study was published in the journal Food Additives and Contaminants.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX says it successfully test-fired the booster for its next Starship launch, although that liftoff may still be weeks away. SpaceNews reports: SpaceX fired the Raptor engines in the Super Heavy booster designated Booster 9 in a static-fire test at its Starbase test site in Boca Chica, Texas, at approximately 1:35 p.m. Eastern Aug. 25. SpaceX said it conducted a "full duration" firing, which appeared to last about five to six seconds. SpaceX later stated that all 33 engines successfully ignited, although two shut down prematurely. "Congratulations to the SpaceX team on this exciting milestone!" The company did not state if that performance was sufficient for it to proceed with a launch attempt, but it was better than an earlier test of the same booster Aug. 6. That test ended early, after the engines fired for less than three seconds, with four of the Raptors shutting down prematurely. If SpaceX is satisfied with the outcome of the test, it is likely one of the final technical milestones before it is ready for a second integrated Starship/Super Heavy launch. The first, April 20, failed four minutes after liftoff when several Raptor engines in the Super Heavy booster shut down and vehicle later lost control and tumbled.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: The Y chromosome is a never-ending source of fascination (particularly to men) because it bears genes that determine maleness and make sperm. It's also small and seriously weird; it carries few genes and is full of junk DNA that makes it horrendous to sequence. However, new "long-read" sequencing techniques have finally provided a reliable sequence from one end of the Y to the other. The paper describing this Herculean effort has been published in Nature. The findings provide a solid base to explore how genes for sex and sperm work, how the Y chromosome evolved, and whether -- as predicted -- it will disappear in a few million years. [...] Spoiler alert -- the Y turns out to be just as weird as we expected from decades of gene mapping and the previous sequencing. A few new genes have been discovered, but these are extra copies of genes that were already known to exist in multiple copies. The border of the pseudoautosomal region (which is shared with the X) has been pushed a bit further toward the tip of the Y chromosome. We now know the structure of the centromere (a region of the chromosome that pulls copies apart when the cell divides), and have a complete readout of the complex mixture of repetitive sequences in the fluorescent end of the Y. But perhaps the most important outcome is how useful the findings will be for scientists all over the world. Some groups will now examine the details of Y genes. They will look for sequences that might control how SRY and the sperm genes are expressed, and to see whether genes that have X partners have retained the same functions or evolved new ones. Others will closely examine the repeated sequences to determine where and how they originated, and why they were amplified. Many groups will also analyze the Y chromosomes of men from different corners of the world to detect signs of degeneration, or recent evolution of function. It's a new era for the poor old Y.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

echo123 shares a report from SciTechDaily: Researchers have discovered that graphene naturally allows proton transport, especially around its nanoscale wrinkles. This finding could revolutionize the hydrogen economy by offering sustainable alternatives to existing catalysts and membranes. [...] In a recent publication in the journal Nature, a joint effort between the University of Warwick, spearheaded by Prof. Patrick Unwin, and The University of Manchester, led by Dr. Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo and Prof. Andre Geim, presented their findings on this matter. Using ultra-high spatial resolution measurements, they conclusively demonstrated that perfect graphene crystals indeed allow proton transport. In a surprising twist, they also found that protons are strongly accelerated around nanoscale wrinkles and ripples present in the graphene crystal. This groundbreaking revelation carries immense significance for the hydrogen economy. The current mechanisms for generating and using hydrogen often rely on costly catalysts and membranes, some of which have notable environmental impacts. Replacing these with sustainable 2D crystals like graphene could play a pivotal role in advancing green hydrogen production, subsequently reducing carbon emissions and aiding the shift towards a Net Zero carbon environment. [...] The team is optimistic about how this discovery can pave the way for novel hydrogen technologies. Dr. Lozada-Hidalgo said, "Exploiting the catalytic activity of ripples and wrinkles in 2D crystals is a fundamentally new way to accelerate ion transport and chemical reactions. This could lead to the development of low-cost catalysts for hydrogen-related technologies."Read more of this story at Slashdot.