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Around five million people globally have had their data stolen and sold on the bot market till date, of which 600,000 are from India, making it the worst affected country, according to one of the world's largest VPN serice providers NordVPN. From the report: Bot markets are used by hackers to sell stolen data from victims' devices with bot malware. The study by NordVPN, of Lithuania's Nord Security, said the stolen data included user logins, cookies, digital fingerprints, screenshots and other information, with the average price for the digital identity of a person pegged at 490 Indian rupees($5.95). NordVPN tracked data for the past four years, ever since bot markets were launched in 2018.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The CBC is reporting that a class action lawsuit against Epic Games over Fortnite being addictive to children will go ahead," writes Slashdot reader lowvisioncomputing. From the report: The suit was first brought to the courts in 2019 by three Quebec parents who claimed that Fortnite was designed to addict its users, many of them children, to the game. According to the original filing, the plaintiffs say their children exhibited troubling behaviors, including not sleeping, not eating, not showering and no longer socializing with their peers. According to the filing, one of the children was diagnosed with an addiction by an on-call doctor at a Quebec clinic, or CLSC, in the Lower St. Lawrence region. It also notes that the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized addictive gaming disorder as a disease in 2018. Jean-Philippe Caron, one of the CaLex Legal lawyers working on the suit, said the case isn't unlike a 2015 Quebec Superior Court ruling that found tobacco companies didn't warn their customers about the dangers of smoking. "[The game] has design patterns that make sure to always encourage player engagement. You have to understand that children's prefrontal cortices are still developing so that could be part of the explanation for why this game is particularly harmful," he said. The class action will also discuss in-game purchases, namely cosmetic items -- known as skins -- and the game's Battle Pass system, which offers expanded rewards as players level up. The children allegedly spent excessive amounts of money on V-Bucks -- an in-game currency users buy with real money -- which can be exchanged for skins or used to unlock the Battle Pass. One of the children reportedly spent over $6,000 on skins, while another spent $600 on V-Bucks -- items Superior Court Judge Sylvain Lussier described as "without any tangible value." That may run afoul of Article 1406 of Quebec's civil code, where "serious disproportion between the prestations of the parties" -- meaning, the obligation to provide something in turn -- "creates a presumption of exploitation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A three-year-old NASA satellite lost touch with ground controllers two weeks ago and is now wandering through low Earth orbit without supervision. Sadly, the space agency fears the worst. Gizmodo reports: NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission has not communicated with ground stations since November 25 due to some sort of glitch the space agency is yet to identify, NASA wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. The spacecraft is equipped with an onboard command loss timer that's designed to reset ICON in the event that contact is lost for eight days, but the reset seemingly did not work as the team was still unable to communicate with the spacecraft on December 5 after the power cycle was complete. Although silent, the ICON spacecraft is still intact. NASA used the Department of Defense's Space Surveillance Network to confirm that ICON is still out there in one piece, according to the space agency. But communication is obviously key for orbiting spacecraft, as it allows the mission team to send commands to satellites and also receive data through downlinked signals. "The ICON mission team is working to troubleshoot the issue and has narrowed the cause of the communication loss to problems within the avionics or radio-frequency communications subsystems," NASA wrote in the blog post. "The team is currently unable to determine the health of the spacecraft, and the lack of a downlink signal could be indicative of a system failure." Oof, that doesn't sound good.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Japanese billionaire picked his crewmates for the first-ever artist-centered mission. Space.com reports: Yusaku Maezawa, who made his fortune as an online fashion retailer, announced the eight people who would be flying with him on the dearMoon mission, which aims to use a SpaceX Starship to fly around the moon as soon as next year. "I hope each and every one will recognize the responsibility that comes with leaving the Earth, travelling to the moon and back," Maezawa says in the video in Japanese, with a translation provided in-video. Riding along with Maezawa will be:- Steve Aoki, D.J., producer and electronic dance music artist with several Billboard-charting studio albums;- Tim Dodd, YouTube creator of the "Everyday Astronaut" channel (Dodd has interviewed SpaceX founder Elon Musk multiple times on camera);- Yemi A.D., artist and choreographer known for his work with JAD Dance Company and with Ye (formerly Kanye West);- Karim Iliya, photographer whose publications include National Geographic Magazine;- Rhiannon Adam, a photographer who has been supported by the BBC/Royal Geographical Society and won multiple awards, according to their website;- Brendan Hall, filmmaker on projects such as the two-hour documentary "Blood Sugar Rising" about diabetes in the United States, according to the Internet Movie Database;- Dev Joshi, an "Indian television actor known for portraying the role of Baal Veer in Sony Sab's Baal Veer and Baalveer Returns," according to the Internet Movie Database;- T.O.P., a South Korean rapper known as the lead for the boy band Big Bang;- Two backup members: dancer Miyu, and snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington. Each member of the dearMoon crew was briefly quoted in a video from the dearMoon YouTube channel, and the announcement was confirmed on Dodd's and Maezawa's Twitter feeds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Electric vehicle drivers in Marshfield, Wisconsin, and Owosso, Michigan, are the first to benefit from General Motors' Dealer Community Charging Program. These deployments of new level 2 (AC) chargers are the first in a planned rollout of 40,000 new plug-in points, which GM says will nearly double the number of public charging stations in the US and Canada. GM announced the program in October 2021 and since then has had almost 1,000 of its Chevrolet dealerships sign on to the initiative, which is designed to increase charger access in underserved, rural, and urban locations. GM will supply dealerships with up to 10 19.2 kW chargers to be installed around the communities they serve, and the chargers are available to any EV driver, not just those who drive electric models from GM. Wheeler's Chevrolet in Wisconsin was the first dealership to sign on to the initiative and has installed chargers in two parks, a library, and a sports complex, among other locations in Marshfield. "We're excited to be the first dealership in the nation to have these chargers," said Mary Jo Wheeler-Schueller, owner of Wheelers Chevrolet GMC. "This will help put Marshfield on the map in terms of EV leadership. This is a great stop for commuters to check out our community and see all that Marshfield has to offer." Young Cadillac Chevrolet in Michigan followed and installed its first charger at a health care center in Owosso. GM says that the next installations should take place in Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, and Washington in the coming months. Separately, GM has another program that, together with EVgo, is in the midst of installing 5,250 DC fast chargers by 2025, including 2,000 fast chargers at Pilot and Flying J travel centers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CoinDesk's Daniel Kuhn writes in an opinion piece: Despite the focus on FTX following its catastrophic collapse, it's remarkable how little we know about how the crypto exchange and its in-house trading firm Alameda Research actually operated. New CEO John Jay Ray III has called Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto trading empire the "greatest failure of corporate controls" he's seen. Wednesday, Coffeezilla, a YouTuber with a rising star who has made a career of shining a light on sketchy projects in and out of crypto, pressed Bankman-Fried for information related to how different customer accounts were treated at the exchange. It turns out, there wasn't much differentiation -- at the very least during the final days the exchange was in business, Bankman-Fried admitted. "At the time, we wanted to treat customers equally," SBF said during a Twitter Spaces event. "That effectively meant that there was, you know, if you want to put it this way, like fungibility created" between the exchange's spot and derivatives business lines. For Coffeezilla, this looks like a smoking gun that fraud was committed. At the very least, this is a contradiction of what Bankman-Fried had said just minutes before when first asked about the exchange's terms of service (ToS). "I do think we're treating them differently," Bankman-Fried said, referring to customer assets used for "margin versus staking versus spot versus futures collateral." All of those services come with different levels of risk, different promises made to customers and different responsibilities for the exchange. According to FTX's ToS, everyday users just looking to buy or store their cryptocurrencies on the centralized exchange could trust they were doing just that, buying and storing cryptographically unique digital assets. But now, thanks to skillful questioning by Coffeezilla, we know there were instead "omnibus" wallets and that spot and derivatives traders were essentially assuming the same level of risk. We can also assume this was a longstanding practice at FTX. Bankman-Fried noted that during the "run on the exchange" (pardon the language), when people were attempting to get their assets off before withdrawals were shut down, FTX allowed "generalized withdrawals" from these omnibus wallets. But he also deflected, saying what, you wanted us to code up an entirely new process during a liquidity crisis? Before now, Bankman-Fried had been asked multiple times about the exchange's ToS and often managed to derail the conversation. He would often point to other sections of the document that stated clients using margin (taking out debt from FTX) could have their funds used by the exchange. Or he would bring up a vestigial wire process in place before FTX had banking relationships. Apparently, according to SBF, customers had sent money to Alameda to fund accounts on FTX and somewhere along the lines this capital ended up in a rarely seen subaccount. This also had the benefit of inflating Alameda's books, another dark corner of the empire. Further reading: FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Is Said To Face Market Manipulation InquiryRead more of this story at Slashdot.

DeepMind's new artificial intelligence system called AlphaCode was able to "achieve approximately human-level performance" in a programming competition. The findings have been published in the journal Science. Slashdot reader sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: AlphaCode's creators focused on solving those difficult problems. Like the Codex researchers, they started by feeding a large language model many gigabytes of code from GitHub, just to familiarize it with coding syntax and conventions. Then, they trained it to translate problem descriptions into code, using thousands of problems collected from programming competitions. For example, a problem might ask for a program to determine the number of binary strings (sequences of zeroes and ones) of length n that don't have any consecutive zeroes. When presented with a fresh problem, AlphaCode generates candidate code solutions (in Python or C++) and filters out the bad ones. But whereas researchers had previously used models like Codex to generate tens or hundreds of candidates, DeepMind had AlphaCode generate up to more than 1 million. To filter them, AlphaCode first keeps only the 1% of programs that pass test cases that accompany problems. To further narrow the field, it clusters the keepers based on the similarity of their outputs to made-up inputs. Then, it submits programs from each cluster, one by one, starting with the largest cluster, until it alights on a successful one or reaches 10 submissions (about the maximum that humans submit in the competitions). Submitting from different clusters allows it to test a wide range of programming tactics. That's the most innovative step in AlphaCode's process, says Kevin Ellis, a computer scientist at Cornell University who works AI coding. After training, AlphaCode solved about 34% of assigned problems, DeepMind reports this week in Science. (On similar benchmarks, Codex achieved single-digit-percentage success.) To further test its prowess, DeepMind entered AlphaCode into online coding competitions. In contests with at least 5000 participants, the system outperformed 45.7% of programmers. The researchers also compared its programs with those in its training database and found it did not duplicate large sections of code or logic. It generated something new -- a creativity that surprised Ellis. The study notes the long-term risk of software that recursively improves itself. Some experts say such self-improvement could lead to a superintelligent AI that takes over the world. Although that scenario may seem remote, researchers still want the field of AI coding to institute guardrails, built-in checks and balances.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Former Theranos chief operating officer and president Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison Wednesday for fraud, after the unraveling of the blood-testing juggernaut prompted criminal charges in California federal court against both Balwani and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who on Nov. 18 was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison. During the sentencing hearing, attorneys for Balwani attempted to pin the blame on Holmes, telling U.S. District Court Judge Edward J. Davila that "decisions were made by Elizabeth Holmes." Davila had set a sentencing range of 11 years plus 3 months to 14 years, but prosecutors today sought a 15-year sentence given his "significant" oversight role at Theranos' lab business. The final guideline sentence was 155 months, plus three years of probation. Davila set a Mar. 15, 2023, surrender date. [...] Balwani's sentencing in federal court marks the end of the Theranos saga, which enthralled the public and prompted documentary films and novel treatments.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google, Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon will share in the Pentagon's $9 billion contract to build its cloud computing network, a year after accusations of politicization over the previously announced contract and a protracted legal battle resulted in the military starting over in its award process. The Associated Press reports: The Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability is envisioned to provide access to unclassified, secret and top-secret data to military personnel all over the globe. It is anticipated to serve as a backbone for the Pentagon's modern war operations, which will rely heavily on unmanned aircraft and space communications satellites, but will still need a way to quickly get the intelligence from those platforms to troops on the ground. The contract will be awarded in parts, with a total estimated completion date of June 2028, the Pentagon said in a statement. Last July, the Pentagon announced it was cancelling its previous cloud computing award, then named JEDI. At the time, the Pentagon said that due to delays in proceeding with the contract, technology had changed to the extent that the old contract, which was awarded to Microsoft, no longer met DOD's needs. It did not mention the legal challenges behind those delays, which had come from Amazon, the losing bidder. Amazon had questioned whether former President Donald Trump's administration had steered the contract toward Microsoft due to Trump's adversarial relationship with Amazon's chief executive officer at the time, Jeff Bezos. A report by the Pentagon's inspector general did not find evidence of improper influence, but it said it could not determine the extent of administration interactions with Pentagon decision-makers because the White House would not allow unfettered access to witnesses. "It's the most important cloud deal to come out of the Beltway," said analyst Daniel Ives, who monitors the cloud industry for Wedbush Securities. "It's about the Pentagon as a reference customer. It says significant accolades about what they think about that vendor, and that's the best reference customer you could have in that world."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A year after Britain hosted a major climate summit, the British government on Wednesday approved its first new coal mine in 30 years, stoking anger among environmental campaigners. The Washington Post reports: The new mine, approved on Wednesday by Michael Gove, Britain's levelling-up secretary, will take two years to build and will produce an estimated 2.8 tonnes of coking coal a year, which is used in the production of steel. Coal is the planet's most polluting fossil fuel, and the greenlighting (PDF) of a new mine -- a decision that has been delayed for years -- is controversial in Britain and beyond, attracting unfavorable attention from people such as Greta Thunberg and U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry. The British government has stressed that the coal taken from the mine will be used for the production of steel, rather than coal used to generate electricity, which Britain has largely weaned itself off of. [...] The new mine, which will cost an estimated 165 million pounds ($201 million), will see the majority of its coal exported to mainland Europe. The project is expected to create about 500 direct and 1,500 indirect jobs for the region of Cumbria and for Whitehaven, an ex-industrial town in the north of England that will welcome an influx of economic activity. "This coal will be used for the production of steel and would otherwise need to be imported. It will not be used for power generation," the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said in a statement. "The mine seeks to be net zero in its operations and is expected to contribute to local employment and the wider economy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: The world is choking in plastic trash, and the UN wants to do something to fix it. A weeklong meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Plastic Pollution in Punta del Este, Uruguay, ended last Friday (Dec. 2). It was a first, formal step towards a legally binding international treaty to deal with the global plastics problem. Such a pact would be the most consequential environmental treaty in years, on par with 2015's Paris Agreement on climate change. The INC will spend the next two years negotiating how binding the regulations will be. While most of the 1,800 attendees in Uruguay ostensibly support ending plastic pollution as a baseline, competing motives have factions pulling in different directions. Hardline countries and campaigners are pushing for outright bans on "problem plastics" and certain chemicals, as well as internationally set regulations and strict production monitoring. Plastics industry coalitions -- which include the world's largest plastic producers, like Nestle and Unilever -- are calling for a focus on recycling and global targets defined by national priorities. Details of the treaty will have to be negotiated over the next couple of years. The High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, made up of 45 countries, is calling to restrict the single-use plastics found in packaging and consumer goods. They make up half of the plastic waste produced today, so a restriction would hugely reduce pollution, as well as force a transformation for consumers -- and the companies producing their goods -- in the way they drink bottled water, order takeout, or buy cleaning products and cosmetics. An international standard for monitoring production would also try to ensure that plastics are chemically safe, genuinely recyclable, and durable enough to be reusable. Of the roughly 10,000 chemicals used in producing plastics, more than 2,400 have been found to be harmful, causing a range of health problems from asthma to infertility. Recycling is not currently viable for most plastics, but better production monitoring could shift that. Further reading: Is Plastic Recycling a Myth?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Fifty years ago today, astronauts aboard Apollo 17, NASA's last crewed mission to the Moon, took an iconic photograph of our planet. The image became known as the Blue Marble -- the first fully illuminated picture of Earth, in color, taken by a person. Now, scientists have re-created that image during a test run of a cutting-edge digital climate model. The model can simulate climatic phenomena, such as storms and ocean eddies, at 1-kilometer resolution, as much as 100 times sharper than typical global simulations. To re-create the swirling winds of the Blue Marble -- including a cyclone over the Indian Ocean -- the researchers fed weather records from 1972 into the supercomputer-powered software. The resulting world captured distinctive features of the region, such as upwelling waters off the coast of Namibia and long, reedlike cloud coverage. Experts say the stunt highlights the growing sophistication of high-resolution climate models. Those are expected to form the core of the European Union's Destination Earth project, which aims to create a 'digital twin' of Earth to better forecast extreme weather and guide preparation plans.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Atari is reviving Akka Arrh, a 1982 arcade game canceled because test audiences found it too difficult. Engadget reports: For the wave shooter's remake, the publisher is teaming up with developer Jeff Minter, whose psychedelic, synthwave style seems an ideal fit for what Atari describes as "a fever dream in the best way possible." The remake will be released on PC, PS5 and PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and Atari VCS in early 2023. The original Akka Arrh cabinet used a trackball to target enemies, as the player controls the Sentinel fixed in the center of the screen to fend off waves of incoming attackers. Surrounding the Sentinel is an octagonal field, which you need to keep clear; if enemies slip in, you can zoom in to fend them off before panning back out to fend off the rest of the wave. Given the simplicity of most games in the early 1980s, it's unsurprising this relative complexity led to poor test-group screenings. Since Atari pulled the plug on the arcade version before its release, only three Akka Arrh cabinets are known to exist. But the Minter collaboration isn't the game's first public availability. After an arcade ROM leaked online in 2019, Atari released the original this fall as part of its Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration collection. [...] Atari says the remake has two modes, 50 levels and saves, so you don't have to start from the beginning when enemies inevitably overrun your Sentinel. Additionally, the company says it offers accessibility settings to tone down the trippy visuals for people sensitive to intense light, color and animations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have joined the Open Invention Network (OIN) -- the world's largest patent non-aggression consortium. ZDNet reports: OIN has long protected Linux and Linux-related software from patent aggression by rival companies. With the recent increase in patent troll attacks, the OIN is also defending companies from these assaults. This is a natural move for Amazon. Besides relying on Linux and open-source software both for its retail and cloud businesses, Amazon has a strict policy against patent infringement, and users who engage in this behavior can have their listings removed or accounts deleted. Nevertheless, like all large companies, Amazon has also been sued for patent violations. Joining the OIN simply makes good business sense. Nithya Ruff, the Amazon Open Source Program Office director, added: "Linux and open source are essential to many of our customers and a key driver of innovation across Amazon. We are proud to support a broad range of open-source projects, foundations, and partners, and we are committed to the long-term success and sustainability of open source as a whole. By joining OIN, we are continuing to strengthen open source communities and helping to ensure technologies like Linux remain thriving and accessible to everyone."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Major privacy complaints targeting the legality of Meta's core advertising business model in Europe have finally been settled via a dispute resolution mechanism baked into the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The complaints, which date back to May 2018, take aim at the tech giant's so-called forced consent to continue tracking and targeting users by processing their personal data to build profiles for behavioral advertising, so the outcome could have major ramifications for how Meta operates if regulators order the company to amend its practices. The GDPR also allows for large fines for major violations -- up to 4% of global annual turnover. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB), a steering body for the GDPR, confirmed today it has stepped in to three binding decisions in the three complaints against Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The trio of complaints were filed by European privacy campaign group noyb as soon as the GDPR entered into application across the EU. So it's taken some 4.5 years just to get to this point. [...] What exactly has been decided? The EDPB is not disclosing that yet. The protocol it's following means it passes its binding decisions back to the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), Meta's lead privacy regulator in the EU, which must then apply them in the final decisions it will issue. The DPC now has one month to issue final decisions and confirm any financial penalties. So we should get the full gory details by early next year. The Wall Street Journal may offer a glimpse of what's to come: It's reporting that Meta's ad model will face restrictions in the EU -- citing "people familiar with the situation." It also reports the company will face "significant" fines for breaching the GDPR. "The board's rulings Monday, which haven't yet been disclosed publicly, don't directly order Meta to change practices but rather call for Ireland's Data Protection Commission to issue public orders that reflect its decisions, along with significant fines," the WSJ wrote, citing unnamed sources. [...] The company was recently spotted in a filing setting aside 3 billion euros for data protection fines in 2022 and 2023 -- a large chunk of which has yet to land. "In line with Art. 65 (5) GDPR, we cannot comment on the content of the decisions until after the Irish DPC has notified the controller of its final decisions," said a spokesperson for the EDPB. "As indicated in our press release, the EDPB looked into whether or not the processing of personal data for the performance of a contract is a suitable legal basis for behavioral advertising, but at this point in time we cannot confirm what the EDPB's decision in this matter was." The DPC also declined to comment on the newspaper's report -- but deputy commissioner Graham Doyle confirmed to TechCrunch that it will announce binding decisions on these complaints in early January. A Meta spokesperson issued the following statement to TechCrunch: "This is not the final decision and it is too early to speculate. GDPR allows for a range of legal bases under which data can be processed, beyond consent or performance of a contract. Under the GDPR there is no hierarchy between these legal bases, and none should be considered better than any other. We've engaged fully with the DPC on their inquiries and will continue to engage with them as they finalize their decision."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nigeria has drastically reduced the amount of cash individuals and businesses can withdraw as it attempts to push its "cash-less Nigeria" policy and increase the use of the eNaira -- Nigeria's central bank digital currency (CBDC). CoinTelegraph reports: The Central Bank of Nigeria issued (PDF) the directive to financial businesses in a Dec. 6 circular, noting that individuals and businesses would now be limited to withdrawing $45 (20,000 Nigerian nairas) per day and $225 (100,000 nairas) per week from ATMs. Individuals and businesses will also be limited to withdrawing $225 (100,000 nairas) and $1,125 (500,000 nairas), respectively, at banks per week, with individuals hit with a 5% fee and businesses with a 10% fee for amounts above those limits. The maximum cash withdrawal via point-of-sale terminals is also capped at $45 (20,000 nairas) per day. Announcing the changes, the director of banking supervision Haruna Mustafa noted: "Customers should be encouraged to use alternative channels (Internet banking, mobile banking apps, USSD, cards/POS, eNaira, etc.) to conduct their banking transactions." The limits are cumulative limits for each withdrawal, so an individual withdrawing $45 from an ATM who then tries to withdraw cash from a bank on the same day would be hit with the 5% service fee. The previous limits on daily cash withdrawals prior to the announcement were $338 (150,000 nairas) for individuals and $1,128 (500,000 nairas) for businesses.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A growing number of GOP-led states are barring state employees and contractors from using TikTok on government-issued devices as the FBI warns of possible threats to national security posed by the Chinese-owned social media platform. Texas became the latest to do so on Wednesday, joining South Dakota, South Carolina and Maryland, all of which banned the app on government devices in the past week. Wisconsin Republicans are urging their Democratic governor to do the same. Axios reports: "[U]nder China's 2017 National Intelligence Law, all businesses are required to assist China in intelligence work including data sharing, and TikTok's algorithm has already censored topics politically sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a letter to state officials Wednesday. "There may be no greater threat to our personal safety and our national security than the cyber vulnerabilities that support our daily lives," Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, whose directive also banned certain Russia-based platforms, said in a statement. "Protecting our State's critical cyber infrastructure from foreign and domestic threats is key to ensuring the health, safety, and well-being of our citizens and businesses," South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster wrote in a letter requesting that the state's Department of Administration block access to the app. "South Dakota will have no part in the intelligence gathering operations of nations who hate us," South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said in a press release.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For the brave people running Linux on Apple Silicon, their patience has paid off. GPU drivers that provide desktop hardware acceleration are now available in Asahi Linux, unleashing more of the M-series chips' power. It has taken roughly two years to reach this alpha-stage OpenGL driver, but the foundational groundwork should result in faster progress ahead, writes project leads Alyssa Rosenzweig and Asahi Lina. In the meantime, the drivers are "good enough to run a smooth desktop experience and some games." The drivers offer non-conformance-tested OpenGL 2.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0 support for all M-series Apple devices. That's enough for desktop environments and older games running at 60 frames per second at 4K. But the next target is Vulkan support. OpenGL work is being done "with Vulkan in mind," Lina writes, but some OpenGL support was needed to get desktops working first. There's a lot more you can read about the interplay between OpenGL, Vulkan, and Zink in Asahi's blog post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WankerWeasel writes: Apple today introduced three advanced security features focused on protecting against threats to user data in the cloud, representing the next step in its ongoing effort to provide users with even stronger ways to protect their data. With iMessage Contact Key Verification, users can verify they are communicating only with whom they intend. With Security Keys for Apple ID, users have the choice to require a physical security key to sign in to their Apple ID account. And with Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, which uses end-to-end encryption to provide Apple's highest level of cloud data security, users have the choice to further protect important iCloud data, including iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes, and more.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple plans to expand its Communication Safety features, which aim to disrupt the sharing of child sexual abuse material at the source. From a report: In August 2021, Apple announced a plan to scan photos that users stored in iCloud for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The tool was meant to be privacy-preserving and allow the company to flag potentially problematic and abusive content without revealing anything else. But the initiative was controversial, and it soon drew widespread criticism from privacy and security researchers and digital rights groups who were concerned that the surveillance capability itself could be abused to undermine the privacy and security of iCloud users around the world. At the beginning of September 2021, Apple said it would pause the rollout of the feature to "collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features." In other words, a launch was still coming. Now the company says that in response to the feedback and guidance it received, the CSAM-detection tool for iCloud photos is dead. Instead, Apple told WIRED this week, it is focusing its anti-CSAM efforts and investments on its "Communication Safety" features, which the company initially announced in August 2021 and launched last December. Parents and caregivers can opt into the protections through family iCloud accounts. The features work in Siri, Apple's Spotlight search, and Safari Search to warn if someone is looking at or searching for child sexual abuse materials and provide resources on the spot to report the content and seek help. Additionally, the core of the protection is Communication Safety for Messages, which caregivers can set up to provide a warning and resources to children if they receive or attempt to send photos that contain nudity. The goal is to stop child exploitation before it happens or becomes entrenched and reduce the creation of new CSAM.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco supervisors have walked back their approval of a controversial policy that would have allowed police to kill suspects with robots in extreme cases. Instead of granting final authorization to the policy Tuesday in its second of two required votes, the Board of Supervisors reversed course and voted 8-3 to explicitly prohibit police from using remote-controlled robots with lethal force. It was a rare step: The board's second votes on local laws are typically formalities that don't change anything. But the board's initial 8-3 approval of the deadly robot policy last week sparked a wave of public outcry from community members and progressive supervisors who threatened to go to the ballot if their colleagues did not change their minds on Tuesday. After approving a new version of the police policy that bans officers from using robots to kill dangerous suspects such as mass shooters and suicide bombers, supervisors separately sent the original deadly robot provision of the policy back for further review. The board's Rules Committee may now choose to refine that provision -- placing tighter limits on when police can use bomb-bearing robots with deadly force -- or abandon it entirely, leaving in place the prohibition passed Tuesday. Supervisors are expected to take a final vote on the new version of the policy that bans deadly robots -- for now, at least -- next week.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nobody is immune to being scammed online -- not even the people running the scams. From a report: Cybercriminals using hacking forums to buy software exploits and stolen login details keep falling for cons and are getting ripped off thousands of dollars at a time, a new analysis has revealed. And what's more, when the criminals complain that they are being scammed, they're also leaving a trail of breadcrumbs of their own personal information that could reveal their real-world identities to police and investigators. Hackers and cybercriminals often gather on specific forums and marketplaces to do business with each other. They can advertise upcoming work they need help with, sell databases of people's stolen passwords and credit card information, or tout new security vulnerabilities that can be used to break into people's devices or systems. However, these deals often don't go to plan. The new research, published today by cybersecurity firm Sophos, examines these failed transactions and the complaints people have made about them. "Scammers scamming scammers on criminal forums and marketplaces is much bigger than we originally thought it was," says Matt Wixey, a researcher with Sophos X-Ops who studied the marketplaces. Wixey examined three of the most prominent cybercrime forums: the Russian-language forums Exploit and XSS, plus the English-language BreachForums, which replaced RaidForums when it was seized by US law enforcement in April. While the sites operate in slightly different ways, they all have "arbitration" rooms where people who think they've been scammed or wronged by other criminals can complain. For instance, if someone purchases malware and it doesn't work, they may moan to the site's administrators. The complaints sometimes lead to people getting their money back, but more often act as a warning for other users, Wixey says. In the past 12 months -- the period the research covers -- criminals on the forums have lost more than $2.5 million to other scammers, the analysis says. Some people complain about losing as little as $2, while the median scams on each of the sites ranges from $200 to $600, according to the research, which is being presented at the BlackHat Europe security conference.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canada's biggest pension fund, CPP Investments, has ended its nearly year-long effort of studying investment opportunities in the volatile crypto market, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The reasons behind CPPI's abandonment of crypto research were not immediately clear. CPPI declined to comment but said it has made no direct investments in crypto. It referred to previous comments on cryptocurrency by its CEO, John Graham, in which he sounded a note of caution. CPPI's Alpha Generation Lab, which examines emerging investment trends, had formed a three-member team in early 2021 to research crypto currencies and blockchain-related businesses, with a view to taking potential exposure, the people added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Washington DC's attorney general is suing Amazon, seeking civil penalties for allegedly misleading consumers who thought they were tipping delivery drivers but had the money diverted to cover the couriers' base pay. From a report: The case, filed in Washington DC Superior Court, cites a 2021 settlement between the company and the Federal Trade Commission, in which the agency found that Amazon withheld tips meant for its gig-economy drivers for more than two years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is launching a new communities feature for Microsoft Teams today, designed for consumers to use the best parts of Teams free of charge to create and organize groups. From a report: The new community feature will allow groups to use the calendar, meeting, and chat features of Teams. Features like group chat, calling, and file / photo sharing are all supported, and groups will also be able to use a shared calendar (which includes Google Calendar integration) to organize community events. This new community integration is really aimed at groups like sports clubs or even virtual community groups for small businesses and simple groups like a carpool for co-workers to organize transportation. Facebook, Reddit, Discord, WhatsApp, Twitter, and many other services already provide a variety of ways to organize groups online, so Microsoft is entering a crowded market, but it believes Teams has something different to offer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boeing's final 747 rolled out of the company's cavernous factory north of Seattle Tuesday night as airlines' push for more fuel-efficient planes ends the more than half-century production run of the jumbo jet. From a report: The 1,574th -- and last -- 747 will later be flown by a Boeing test pilot, painted and handed over to cargo and charter carrier Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings early next year. "It's a very surreal time, obviously," said Kim Smith, vice president and general manager of Boeing's 747 and 767s programs out of the assembly plant here. "For the first time in well over 50 years we will not have a 747 in this facility."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft says it has reached a 10-year agreement with Nintendo to make Call of Duty available on Nintendo consoles if the Activision Blizzard acquisition closes. From a report: The deal is similar in length to what Microsoft has offered Sony, and the Xbox maker has also committed to continue to offer new versions of Call of Duty on Steam at the same time they launch on Xbox. The deal is clearly designed to put pressure on Sony to accept a similar offer, just days after Microsoft president Brad Smith said "Sony has emerged as the loudest objector" to Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion acquisition and that "it's as excited about this deal as Blockbuster was about the rise of Netflix." Microsoft confirmed earlier this week that it had offered Sony a 10-year contract to make each new Call of Duty release available on PlayStation the same day as it launches on Xbox.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The federal government plans to invest $1.5 billion to help spur a standards-based alternative for the gear at the heart of modern cellular networks. From a report: Experts say -- and the government agrees -- that there are economic and national security risks in having such equipment made only by a handful of companies overseas, with the most affordable products coming from China's Huawei. The most likely effort to benefit from the new funding is known as ORAN (Open Radio Access Network), which uses standard computing gear to replace what has been proprietary hardware from companies like Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei. The federal government is kicking off the program with a public comment period, which will run through Jan. 23. Funding for the effort was provided by the Chips and Science Act. The U.S. has largely banned use of Huawei's devices over security concerns amid deepening U.S.-China tensions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ivan Mehta, writing for TechCrunch: After putting unique usernames on the auction on the TON blockchain, Telegram is now putting anonymous numbers up for bidding. These numbers could be used to sign up for Telegram without needing any SIM card. Just like the username auction, you can buy these virtual numbers on Fragment, which is a site specially created for Telegram-related auctions. To buy a number, you will have to link your TON wallet (Tonkeeper) to the website. You can buy a random number for as low as 9 toncoins, which is equivalent to roughly $16.50 at the time of writing. Some of the premium virtual numbers -- such as +888-8-888 -- are selling for 31,500 toncoins (~$58,200). Notably, you can only use this number to sign up for Telegram. You can't use it to receive SMS or calls or use it to register for another service.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Two studies published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications found a link between several types of bacteria in the gut and depressive symptoms. The first study, titled "Gut microbiome-wide association study of depressive symptoms," reports: Here we investigate the relation of fecal microbiome diversity and composition with depressive symptoms in 1,054 participants from the Rotterdam Study cohort and validate these findings in the Amsterdam HELIUS cohort in 1,539 subjects. We identify association of thirteen microbial taxa, including genera Eggerthella, Subdoligranulum, Coprococcus, Sellimonas, Lachnoclostridium, Hungatella, Ruminococcaceae (UCG002, UCG003 and UCG005), LachnospiraceaeUCG001, Eubacterium ventriosum and Ruminococcusgauvreauiigroup, and family Ruminococcaceae with depressive symptoms. These bacteria are known to be involved in the synthesis of glutamate, butyrate, serotonin and gamma amino butyric acid (GABA), which are key neurotransmitters for depression. Our study suggests that the gut microbiome composition may play a key role in depression. The second study, titled "The gut microbiota and depressive symptoms across ethnic groups," reports: Both the microbiome and depressive symptom levels vary substantially across ethnic groups. Thus, any intervention for depression targeting the microbiome requires understanding of microbiome-depression associations across ethnicities. Analyzing data from the HELIUS cohort, we characterize the gut microbiota and its associations with depressive symptoms in 6 ethnic groups (Dutch, South-Asian Surinamese, African Surinamese, Ghanaian, Turkish, Moroccan; N=3211), living in the same urban area. Diversity of the gut microbiota, both within (a-diversity) and between individuals (B-diversity), predicts depressive symptom levels, taking into account demographic, behavioural, and medical differences. These associations do not differ between ethnic groups. Further, B-diversity explains 29%-18% of the ethnic differences in depressive symptoms. Bacterial genera associated with depressive symptoms belong to mulitple families, prominently including the families Christensenellaceae, Lachnospiraceae, and Ruminococcaceae. In summary, the results show that the gut microbiota are linked to depressive symptom levels and that this association generalizes across ethnic groups. Moreover, the results suggest that ethnic differences in the gut microbiota may partly explain parallel disparities in depression. The Wall Street Journal shared (paywalled) the findings.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elena Shao reports via the New York Times: Worldwide, growth in renewable power capacity is set to double by 2027, adding as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the past two decades, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday. Renewables are posed to overtake coal as the largest source of electricity generation by early 2025, the report found, a pattern driven in large part by the global energy crisis linked to the war in Ukraine. "This is a clear example of how the current energy crisis can be a historic turning point toward a cleaner and more secure energy system," said Fatih Birol, the I.E.A. executive director, in a news release. The expansion of renewable power in the next five years will happen much faster than what the agency forecast just a year ago in its last annual report, said Heymi Bahar, a senior analyst at the I.E.A. and one of the lead authors of the report. The report revised last year's forecast of renewable growth upward by 30 percent after the introduction of new policies by some of the world's largest emitters, like the European Union, the United States and China. While there has been a wartime resurgence in fossil fuel consumption as European countries have scrambled to replace gas from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in February, the effects are likely to be short-lived, the agency said. [...] Instead, over the next five years, the global energy crisis is expected to accelerate renewable energy growth as countries embrace low-emissions technology in response to soaring fossil fuel prices, including wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear power plants, hydrogen fuels, electric vehicles and electric heat pumps. Heating and cooling buildings with renewable power is one of the sectors that needs to see larger improvement, the report said. The United States passed the Inflation Reduction Act this year, a landmark climate and tax law that, among many investments to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, made an "unforeseen" expansion in long-term tax credits for solar and wind projects extending through 2032, Mr. Bahar said. Previously, these tax credits had been revised a few years at a time. Extending the credits until 2032 provides better certainty for investors, which is important in the energy industry, Mr. Bahar said. China alone is forecast to install almost half of the new global renewable power capacity over the next five years, based on targets set in the country's new five-year plan. Even still, the country is accelerating coal mining and production at coal-burning power plants.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Kevin Purdy: Available tomorrow on Steam and itch.io, the new version of Dwarf Fortress updates the legendary (and legendarily arcane) colony-building roguelike with new pixel-art graphics, music, some (default) keyboard shortcuts, and a beginners' tutorial. The commercial release aims to do two things: make the game somewhat more accessible and provide Tarn and Zach Adams, the brothers who maintained the game as a free download for 20 years, some financial security. I know it has succeeded at its first job, and I suspect it will hit the second mark, too. I approached the game as a head-first review expedition into likely frustrating territory. Now I find myself distracted from writing about it because I keep thinking about my goblin defense and whether the fisherdwarf might be better assigned to gem crafting. "For me, the commercial release of Dwarf Fortress succeeded at transforming the game from a grim, time-killing in-joke for diehards into a viable, if not graceful, challenge," writes Purdy. "I will start again, I will keep the badgers and floods at bay, and next time, I might have the privilege of failing to a magma monster, an outbreak of disease, or even a miscarriage of dwarf justice." Further reading: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress (Slashdot, 2011)Dwarf Fortress Gets Biggest Update In Years (Slashdot, 2014)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

frdmfghtr shares a report from NBC News: The Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that it is extending the deadline to require Real ID-compliant identification for air travelers, pushing the start date from May 3, 2023, to May 7, 2025. The deadline for the new IDs has already been extended previously. While time extensions in the past were caused by a lack of full state compliance with the requirements for issuing the more secure driver's licenses, the deadline was previously pushed from October 2021 to this coming May, officials said at the time, because the pandemic had made it harder for people to get into state motor vehicle departments to obtain the new identifications. "For those who aren't aware, this requirement came about after the 9/11 attacks way back in 2001, supposedly required to make the IDs harder to counterfeit," adds Slashdot reader frdmfghtr in a comment. "If the requirement has been pushed out repeatedly to almost 20 years after the original deadline, then it could not have been that necessary." In 2005, the U.S. Senate passed the Real ID act 100-0. It was included in the $82 billion Iraq Supplemental Spending Bill. In an article from 2006, Ars Technica detailed some of the financial and technological challenges associated with implementing the act.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple on Tuesday announced Apple Music Sing, a karaoke experience that will be built right into the Apple Music app. The Verge reports: With Apple Music Sing, you'll be able to follow along with Apple Music's real-time lyrics and adjust the volume of the vocals so that you can better hear your singing voice. There are a few features designed to make it easier to sing with others, too. Background vocals can appear independently of main vocals, according to Apple, and there will be a duet view as well if you want to sing along with a friend. Apple will have more than 50 "dedicated companion playlists" featuring karaoke-ready songs that you can pick from. Apple Music Sing is launching "later this month" for Apple Music subscribers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The release candidate for Winamp version 5.9.1 builds on the groundwork laid by August's 5.9 update to fix some bugs and add new features to the reanimated music player. "Most of these are straightforward updates or improvements to existing features, but because it's 2022, one of the only new features is support for music NFTs," reports Ars Technica. From the report: "Winamp's latest version lets music fans link their Metamask wallet via Brave, Chrome, or Firefox to Winamp. It then connects their favorite music NFTs to their tried-and-true player," the company said in a press release provided to Ars. "Winamp supports audio and video files distributed under both the ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards, and is launching this new feature for Ethereum and Polygon/Matic protocols." To directly display websites needed to download these NFT playlists, according to the release notes, would require an updated rendering engine for Winamp's in-app browser, which is currently based on Internet Explorer 10. There's still plenty here for legacy Winamp fans to like, and it's nice to see that all the modernization work done in the 5.9 update is paying off in the form of faster updates. Among many other fixes, the new release includes a "memory footprint reduction," a bandwidth increase for streamed music, an update to OpenSSL 3.0.5, and a few other updates for the underlying codecs and other software that Winamp uses to do its thing. As for the NFT support, Winamp developer Eddy Richman (who goes by the handle "DJ Egg" on the Winamp forums) wrote that people who don't want it can remove it, either during the install process or after Winamp is installed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Insider: Deserted downtowns have been haunting US cities since the beginning of the pandemic. Before the pandemic, 95% of offices were occupied. Today that number is closer to 47%. Employees' not returning to downtown offices has had a domino effect: Less foot traffic, less public-transit use, and more shuttered businesses have caused many downtowns to feel more like ghost towns. Even 2 1/2 years later, most city downtowns aren't back to where they were prepandemic. [...] The increased cancellations of office leases have cratered the office real-estate market. A study led by Arpit Gupta, a professor of finance at New York University's Stern School of Business, characterized the value wipeout as an "apocalypse." It estimated that $453 billion in real-estate value would be lost across US cities, with a 17-percentage-point decline in lease revenue from January 2020 to May 2022. The shock to real-estate valuations has been sharp: One building in San Francisco's Mission District that sold for $397 million in 2019 is on the market for about $155 million, a 60% decline. Other key indicators that economists use to measure the economic vitality of downtowns include office vacancy rates, public-transportation ridership, and local business spending. Across the country, public-transportation ridership remains stuck at about 70% of prepandemic levels. If only 56% of employees of financial firms in New York are in the office on a given day, the health of a city's urban core is negatively affected. The second-order effects of remote work and a real-estate apocalypse are still playing out, but it isn't looking good. Declines in real-estate valuations lead to lower property taxes, which affects the revenue collected to foot the bill of city budgets. Declines in foot traffic have deteriorated business corridors; a recent survey by the National League of Cities suggested cities expect at least a 2.5% decline in sales-tax receipts and a 4% decline in revenue for fiscal 2022. "The solution to the office-housing conundrum seems obvious: Turn commercial spaces like offices into housing. Empty offices can become apartments to ease housing pressure while also bringing more people back to downtown areas," reports Insider. "But after two years, few buildings have been converted." According to the report, it's being hampered by hard-to-justify construction costs and local housing rules. "Overall, combating the death of downtowns requires a reworking of how we think about cities and the value they provide," the report says. "The urban author Jane Jacobs proclaimed in her famous 1958 article for Fortune magazine, 'Downtown Is for People,' that "'there is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.'" "The economic health of cities is intrinsically linked to how space is used or unused, and right now downtowns are undergoing a massive shift. Despite the sluggish movement, it's in cities' best interest to figure out how to quickly convert office-centric downtowns into something more suitable for everyone."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating several unnamed crypto firms over deceptive or misleading crypto advertising, according to a Bloomberg report. Decrypt reports: "We are investigating several firms for possible misconduct concerning digital assets," the FTC spokeswoman Juliana Gruenwald Henderson said in a statement. Henderson declined to share further information about which firms are the subject of the probe or what had prompted the Commission to launch investigations. According to the FTC's website, "when consumers see or hear an advertisement, whether it's on the Internet, radio or television, or anywhere else, federal law says that ad must be truthful, not misleading, and, when appropriate, backed by scientific evidence." Additionally, the agency enforces laws that require truth in advertising, including rules that individuals disclose when they have been paid for endorsements or reviews. "While we can't comment on current events in the crypto markets or the details of any ongoing investigations, we are investigating several firms for possible misconduct concerning digital assets" an FTC spokesperson told Decrypt.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon Luna is one of the better cloud gaming options if you play a lot of Ubisoft titles, and it's getting a big upgrade this week. You can now sync purchases on Luna to PC and play without a subscription. 9to5Google reports: Since its launch, Amazon Luna has worked solely on a subscription model. Players can access games through "channels," each of which includes a rotating selection of games. One of those channels is Ubisoft+, which has a selection of Ubisoft games for $17.99/month that can share that subscription cost with other platforms such as PC. But the one downside of Luna is that you always need one of those subscriptions -- that is, until now. Available starting today, Amazon Luna will allow players to stream Ubisoft games they've purchased on PC without any channel subscriptions needed. You just need accounts from Amazon and from Ubisoft and to purchase compatible games. The only subscription required is Amazon Prime. By syncing Ubisoft Connect with Luna, players can stream their purchases instantly with no downloads and on more devices, such as Chromebooks and smartphones. But unlike other cloud platforms that have allowed purchases, such as Stadia, these games can also be downloaded and played on PC. Amazon notes that once your accounts are linked, future purchases from the Ubisoft Store will automatically appear in Luna.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple is loosening its requirements around how developers have to price their apps as legal and regulatory pressure over its tight control of the App Store intensifies. The company announced today it's expanding its App Store pricing system to offer developers access to 700 additional price points, bringing the new total number of price points available to 900. It will also allow U.S. developers to set prices for apps, in-app purchases or subscriptions as low as $0.29 or as high as $10,000, and in rounded endings (like $1.00) instead of just $0.99. Similar new policies to reduce restrictions around price points will roll out in global markets, alongside new tools aimed at helping developers better manage pricing outside their local market. The changes will initially become available starting today, Dec. 6, 2022, for auto-renewable subscriptions. They'll become available to paid apps and in-app purchases in Spring 2023. U.S. consumers may have noticed some App Store prices already ended in other digits besides just $0.99. But that's because auto-renewing subscriptions had access to a slightly wider range of price points than other consumables -- including the ability to set their prices as low as $0.49. But these same rules did not apply to non-subscription app pricing, which added to consumer and developer confusion. The new system is looking to simplify the pricing so it's more consistent across the board. For U.S. apps in the lowest tiers, price points can increase in $0.10 increments up to $10.00 going forward. These price steps become less granular when you move into higher price points. For example, between $10 and $50, they then can increase by $0.50 increments. Between $50 and $200, the price steps would be $1.00, and so on. In addition to the updated pricing policies, Apple is also now rolling out tools to help developers better manage currency and taxes across storefronts. Starting today, developers will be able to set their subscription prices in their local currency as the basis for automatically generating pricing across the other 174 storefronts and 44 currencies, or they can choose to manually set prices in each market. When pricing is set automatically, pricing outside a developer's home market will update as foreign exchange and tax rates change. This functionality will expand to all other apps beyond subscription apps in Spring 2023. Also coming in 2023, developers with paid apps and in-app purchases will be able to choose to set local territory pricing, which isn't impacted by automatic price adjustments based on the changes in taxes and foreign exchange rates. And all developers will also be able to define the availability of in-app purchases by storefront.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Telegram Premium has amassed over 1 million subscribers, less than six months after the popular instant messaging app launched the paid offering and began a serious effort to monetize the business. From a report: Pavel Durov shared the update on his Telegram channel Tuesday, calling the milestone "one of the most successful examples of a social media subscription plan ever launched." The subscription, however, still "represents just a fraction of Telegram's overall revenue," he shared in the same update, optimistically hoping that one day Premium will rake in just as much money as ads.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some Amazon users will now earn $2 dollar per month for agreeing to share their traffic data with the retail giant. From a report: Under the company's new invite-only Ad Verification program, Amazon is tracking what ads participants saw, where they saw them, and the time of day they were viewed. This includes Amazon's own ads and third-party ads on the platform. Through the program, Amazon hopes to offer more personalized-ad experiences to customers that reflect what they have previously purchased, according to Amazon. "Your participation will help brands offer better products and make ads from Amazon more relevant,"Amazon wrote in its Shopper Panel FAQ. The $2 reward only applies to Amazon users invited to participate in the program, though customers who didn't get invited can get added to a waitlist and potentially join later, an Amazon spokesperson told Insider. The spokesperson declined to tell Insider how the company decided who to invite.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The next wave of Moore's Law will rely on a developing concept called system technology co-optimization, Ann B. Kelleher, general manager of technology development at Intel told IEEE Spectrum in an interview ahead of her plenary talk at the 2022 IEEE Electron Device Meeting. From a report: "Moore's Law is about increasing the integration of functions," says Kelleher. "As we look forward into the next 10 to 20 years, there's a pipeline full of innovation" that will continue the cadence of improved products every two years. That path includes the usual continued improvements in semiconductor processes and design, but system technology co-optimization (STCO) will make the biggest difference. Kelleher calls it an "outside-in" manner of development. It starts with the workload a product needs to support and its software, then works down to system architecture, then what type of silicon must be within a package, and finally down to the semiconductor manufacturing process. "With system technology co-optimization, it means all the pieces are optimized together so that you're getting your best answer for the end product," she says. STCO is an option now in large part because advanced packaging, such as 3D integration, is allowing the high-bandwidth connection of chiplets -- small, functional chips -- inside a single package. This means that what would once be functions on a single chip can be disaggregated onto dedicated chiplets, which can each then be made using the most optimal semiconductor process technology. For example, Kelleher points out in her plenary that high-performance computing demands a large amount of cache memory per processor core, but chipmaker's ability to shrink SRAM is not proceeding at the same pace as the scaling down of logic. So it makes sense to build SRAM caches and compute cores as separate chiplets using different process technology and then stitch them together using 3D integration. A key example of STCO in action, says Kelleher, is the Ponte Vecchio processor at the heart of the Aurora supercomputer. It's composed of 47 active chiplets (as well as 8 blanks for thermal conduction). These are stitched together using both advanced horizontal connections (2.5 packaging tech) and 3D stacking. "It brings together silicon from different fabs and enables them to come together so that the system is able to perform against the workload that it's designed for," she says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has scaled back ambitious self-driving plans for its future electric vehicle and postponed the car's target launch date by about a year to 2026, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: The car project, dubbed Titan inside the company, has been in limbo for the past several months as Apple executives grappled with the reality that its vision for a fully autonomous vehicle -- without a steering wheel or pedals -- isn't feasible with current technology. In a significant shift for the project, the company is now planning a less-ambitious design that will include a steering wheel and pedals and only support full autonomous capabilities on highways, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. [...] Apple had expected each car to sell for more than $120,000, but the company is now aiming to offer the vehicle to consumers for less than $100,000, according to the people.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's search results on desktop will load in a continuous scroll instead of dividing into pages, the company has announced. From a report: The move follows a similar change made on mobile in October last year, but isn't quite an "infinite" scroll. Instead, Google will load six pages of results into a single scroll before offering users a "See more" button to show more results. Google says the change is rolling out first for English searches in the US, but judging by the rollout of the feature on mobile it seems safe to expect to see additional markets and languages added over time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Competitive Excel clearly is not the NFL, but it does have the beginnings of a fan base. From a report: This was just the second year of the World Championship, but it's already streaming on ESPN3. This year's edition has 30,000 views on YouTube. Supporters of Michael Jarman, the No. 3 seed in this year's competition, call themselves the "Jarmy Army." A few months ago, an all-star game of sorts aired on ESPN2, and this month, ESPNU will televise the collegiate championship. The tournament begins with a 128-player field and proceeds March Madness -- style, in one-on-one, single-elimination contests. The format lends itself to frequent upsets: This year, the No. 2 seed was eliminated in the third round. In each match, players work as fast as possible -- they're generally given about 30 minutes -- to answer a series of progressively more difficult questions testing both their puzzle-solving skills and their fluency with Excel. The questions all revolve around the same scenario. In the quarterfinal, for example, the questions all had to do with a fictional country transitioning from dictatorship to democracy. The first and easiest question asked players to calculate how many votes were cast for the purple party. The championship case, which was far more difficult, centered on a 100x100 chessboard. This year's total prize money was $10,000. Naturally, a large proportion of Excel competitors work in Excel-heavy jobs; the field included plenty of finance bros, data analysts, mathematicians, actuaries, and engineers. All but one of the eight finalists had over the course of their lives spent thousands of hours working in Excel (the other is a Google Sheets guy), and half of them had spent more than 10,000. The tournament is not particularly diverse. Of the eight finalists, Deaton was the only woman. In the field of 128, she told me, she counted no more than a dozen, which didn't surprise her, given how heavily male the relevant occupations skew.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

France has been given the green light to ban short haul domestic flights. The European Commission has approved the move which will abolish flights between cities that are linked by a train journey of less than 2.5 hours. From a report: The decision was announced on Friday. The changes are part of the country's 2021 Climate Law and were first proposed by France's Citizens' Convention on Climate -- a citizens' assembly tasked with finding ways to reduce the country's carbon emissions. France is also cracking down on the use of private jets for short journeys in a bid to make transport greener and fairer for the population. Transport minister Clement Beaune said the country could no longer tolerate the super rich using private planes while the public are making cutbacks to deal with the energy crisis and climate change.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: KmsdBot, a cryptomining botnet that could also be used for denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks, broke into systems through weak secure shell credentials. It could remotely control a system, it was hard to reverse-engineer, didn't stay persistent, and could target multiple architectures. KmsdBot was a complex malware with no easy fix. That was the case until researchers at Akamai Security Research witnessed a novel solution: forgetting to put a space between an IP address and a port in a command. And it came from whoever was controlling the botnet. With no error-checking built in, sending KmsdBot a malformed command -- like its controllers did one day while Akamai was watching -- created a panic crash with an "index out of range" error. Because there's no persistence, the bot stays down, and malicious agents would need to reinfect a machine and rebuild the bot's functions. It is, as Akamai notes, "a nice story" and "a strong example of the fickle nature of technology." KmsdBot is an intriguing modern malware. It's written in Golang, partly because Golang is difficult to reverse-engineer. When Akamai's honeypot caught the malware, it defaulted to targeting a company that created private Grand Theft Auto Online servers. It has a cryptomining ability, though it was latent while the DDOS activity was running. At times, it wanted to attack other security companies or luxury car brands.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ConsenSys, the company behind the MetaMask crypto wallet, said Tuesday it will release a series of updates to the platform in response to user backlash regarding its data-collection practices. From a report: In a statement, the company explained how and why it was sharing MetaMask user internet-protocol information with Infura, the ConsenSys-made RPC (remote procedure call) service for reading and writing data to the Ethereum blockchain. A change in wording to the ConsenSys user agreement last month revealed that MetaMask, by default, shared users' transaction data with Infura alongside their IP addresses. The revelation sparked outrage in a vocal corner of the crypto community, with some users worrying aloud that their transaction data wasn't as private as they assumed. In its statement, ConsenSys clarified that it would only "collect wallet and IP address information in connection with 'write' requests, also known as transactions, when MetaMask users broadcast transactions through Infura's RPC endpoints." "We do not store wallet account address information when a MetaMask user makes a 'read' request through Infura, for example in order to check their account balances within MetaMask," the company said. According to MetaMask co-founder Dan Finlay, the platform began collecting and sharing IP-linked transaction data with Infura in 2018 to prevent network overload and to monitor pending transactions. Finlay said MetaMask cannot stop logging IP addresses entirely; if a user interacts with an RPC service like Infura, their IP address will always be visible. ConsenSys, however, will stop logging user IP information directly alongside their transaction data, thereby making it more difficult for the firm to trace transaction activity back to specific users. ConsenSys said it will also make updates to the MetaMask interface.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft recently considered building a "super app" that could combine shopping, messaging, web search, news feeds and other services in a one-stop smartphone app, in what would be an ambitious move by the software giant to expand further into consumer services, The Information reported Tuesday, citing people with direct knowledge of the discussions. From the report: Microsoft executives wanted the app to boost the company's multibillion-dollar advertising business and Bing search, as well as draw more users to Teams messaging and other mobile services. Unlike Apple and Google, Microsoft doesn't operate a mobile app store for smartphone users. By creating an all-in-one app that people don't need to leave to access its other offerings, Microsoft hoped to emulate a mobile strategy that has worked for Tencent. The Chinese firm's WeChat app, which combines messaging with shopping, online games, news and a variety of services including grocery ordering, is a source of inspiration for top Microsoft executives, the people said. While it isn't clear whether Microsoft will ultimately launch such an app, the people with knowledge of the discussions said CEO Satya Nadella has laid the groundwork by pushing the Bing search engine to work better with other Microsoft mobile products. For instance, he has directed Bing to integrate with Microsoft's Teams messaging and Outlook email apps, making it easier for customers to share search results in messages.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has reached a final deal with EU antitrust regulators over concerns its use of data undermined rivals, in a move that will close two of the most high-profile probes in Brussels. From a report: The US ecommerce group has committed to increasing the visibility of rival products by giving them equal treatment on Amazon's "buy box," which generates the majority of purchases on the site. It will also create an alternative featured offer for those buyers where speed of delivery is less important. The European Commission plans to announce the deal on December 20, according to four people with direct knowledge of the timing. However they warned the date could still change at the last minute. The commitments, which are set to remain in force for five years, have been "market tested" with rivals and agreed with EU officials, these people said. "There's very little to discuss," a person with knowledge of the process said. The move represents a win for the EU as it will serve as a blueprint for the tech group's compliance with the new Digital Markets Act, a piece of legislation aimed at curbing the power of Big Tech. It also means Amazon will avoid formal charges of breaking EU law and a large fine of up to 10 per cent of global revenues.Read more of this story at Slashdot.