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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: In March, two veteran Facebook engineers found themselves grilled about the company's sprawling data collection operations in a hearing for the ongoing lawsuit over the mishandling of private user information stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The hearing, a transcript of which was recently unsealed (PDF), was aimed at resolving one crucial issue: What information, precisely, does Facebook store about us, and where is it? The engineers' response will come as little relief to those concerned with the company's stewardship of billions of digitized lives: They don't know. The admissions occurred during a hearing with special master Daniel Garrie, a court-appointed subject-matter expert tasked with resolving a disclosure impasse. Garrie was attempting to get the company to provide an exhaustive, definitive accounting of where personal data might be stored in some 55 Facebook subsystems. Both veteran Facebook engineers, with according to LinkedIn two decades of experience between them, struggled to even venture what may be stored in Facebook's subsystems. "I'm just trying to understand at the most basic level from this list what we're looking at," Garrie asked. "I don't believe there's a single person that exists who could answer that question," replied Eugene Zarashaw, a Facebook engineering director. "It would take a significant team effort to even be able to answer that question." When asked about how Facebook might track down every bit of data associated with a given user account, Zarashaw was stumped again: "It would take multiple teams on the ad side to track down exactly the -- where the data flows. I would be surprised if there's even a single person that can answer that narrow question conclusively." [...] Facebook's stonewalling has been revealing on its own, providing variations on the same theme: It has amassed so much data on so many billions of people and organized it so confusingly that full transparency is impossible on a technical level. In the March 2022 hearing, Zarashaw and Steven Elia, a software engineering manager, described Facebook as a data-processing apparatus so complex that it defies understanding from within. The hearing amounted to two high-ranking engineers at one of the most powerful and resource-flush engineering outfits in history describing their product as an unknowable machine. The special master at times seemed in disbelief, as when he questioned the engineers over whether any documentation existed for a particular Facebook subsystem. "Someone must have a diagram that says this is where this data is stored," he said, according to the transcript. Zarashaw responded: "We have a somewhat strange engineering culture compared to most where we don't generate a lot of artifacts during the engineering process. Effectively the code is its own design document often." He quickly added, "For what it's worth, this is terrifying to me when I first joined as well."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today, Apple announced a handful of new products at their iPhone launch event in Cupertino. Along with four new iPhones, Apple unveiled the brand-new Series 8 Apple Watch and refreshed SE. It also unveiled a completely new, rugged Apple Watch Ultra. The Verge reports: The Apple Watch Ultra is the star of the show because it isn't something we've seen before. It's got a big honking 49mm rectangular display, which... truly is in a class of its own. Not only is it the biggest Apple Watch screen, but it's also the brightest at 2,000 nits. As for how that wrist slab feels, it was actually lighter on my wrist than I'd expected, probably because its case is made of titanium. But make no mistake -- it is a BIG watch. Another thing that's immediately apparent is the design tweaks Apple's made for the extreme fitness crowd. There's the new orange action button, a button guard, and a redesigned crown. The rim around the display is also raised to protect the sapphire crystal display -- which is something we saw on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro as well. Plus, that display is truly flat. Next up is the Apple Watch Series 8. At a glance, there's really not too much to differentiate it from the Series 7, though I can definitely tell the screen appears bigger. Inside, there's a new temperature sensor, though it's not something I was able to really check out here in Cupertino. The sensor is meant to help retrospectively detect ovulation. It's also got an updated chip -- the S8 -- which keeps things snappy when you're swiping through menus. The Series 8 also has a new gyroscope and accelerometer to help call emergency services if it detects you've been in a car crash. The new SE is also a fairly incremental update. It, too, gets an upgrade to the S8 chip, whereas the original SE was a bit of a Frankenstein watch. It had the processor of the Series 5 mixed in with some sensors used in the Series 6 minus the EKG sensor. The new SE has the same motion sensors as the Series 8 for crash detection and is 20 percent faster than before. The screen is also 30 percent larger than the Series 3, and the sensor array color matches the front. It's mostly still missing the always-on display and the new temperature sensor. All three models are available for preorder today. The Series 8 and SE will ship on September 16, with the Ultra shipping on the 23rd.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On the eve of Google's acquisition of YouTube in 2006, the video site's cofounder Chad Hurley discovered that a Google ad manager had snooped on YouTube's revenue figures. Hurley was so irked by the invasion of YouTube's business that he threatened to walk away from the deal, a new book about YouTube's founding reveals. Google's CEO at the time, Eric Schmidt, was able to calm Hurley down enough to close the $1.65 billion deal -- a deal that became a pivot point in the development of the modern internet. The previously unreported episode comes from the book "Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination" by the Bloomberg reporter Mark Bergen.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has promised to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for three years beyond the current agreement between Activision and Sony, says PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan. In a statement provided to GamesIndustry.biz, Ryan says the offer was "inadequate on many levels." From a report: The disagreement between the two companies follows Microsoft's offer to buy Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard in a deal worth nearly $69 billion. [...] Last week, Xbox revealed that it had "provided a signed agreement to Sony to guarantee Call of Duty on PlayStation, with feature and content parity, for at least several more years" beyond Sony's existing contract with Activision. Xbox chief said this offer "goes well beyond typical gaming industry agreements." The current deal between Sony and Activision Blizzard around Call of Duty is believed to cover the next three releases, including this year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. However, Sony says the offer fails to consider the impact on PlayStation gamers. "I hadn't intended to comment on what I understood to be a private business discussion, but I feel the need to set the record straight because Phil Spencer brought this into the public forum," Ryan stated. "Microsoft has only offered for Call of Duty to remain on PlayStation for three years after the current agreement between Activision and Sony ends. After almost 20 years of Call of Duty on PlayStation, their proposal was inadequate on many levels and failed to take account of the impact on our gamers. We want to guarantee PlayStation gamers continue to have the highest quality Call of Duty experience, and Microsoftâ(TM)s proposal undermines this principle."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Network hardware-maker QNAP is urging customers to update their network-attached storage devices immediately to protect them from a new wave of ongoing ransomware attacks that can destroy terabytes of data in a single stroke. From a report: Singapore-based QNAP said recently that it has identified a new campaign from a ransomware group known as DeadBolt. The attacks take aim at QNAP NAS devices that use a proprietary feature known as Photo Station. The advisory instructs customers to update their firmware, suggesting there is a vulnerability that's under exploit, but the company makes no explicit mention of a CVE designation that security professionals use to track such security flaws.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Celsius Network, the bankrupt cryptocurrency lender, may have hidden its financial trouble from its investors and "engaged in the improper manipulation of the price" of the platform's tokens to boost the company's balance sheet and financials, according to a new court filing. From a report: The Vermont Department of Financial Regulation submitted the filing on Wednesday in support of the United States Trustee's motion to appoint an independent examiner. The trustee handling Celsius's bankruptcy case previously said that it is seeking an examiner to help get additional information and clear up "confusion and anxiety." The latest filing shows that, based on a preliminary analysis of financial records, Celsius posted "massive losses" in the first seven months of 2021 and experienced "two material adverse events" in June and July of that year. And that the company had kept its losses from investors, despite state and federal securities laws requirements to disclose its financial statements. Moreover, the filing also alleged that Celsius may have manipulated the price of its CEL token. The move may have "artificially" inflated the company's CEL holdings on its balance sheet. The company "never earned enough revenue to support the yields being paid to investors," the filing said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has officially announced the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. In the first big display redesign since Apple introduced the iPhone X in 2017, both handsets have a new pill-shaped cutout that replaces the notch and can adjust dynamically. Both devices also have a faster A16 Bionic chip and an always-on display. From a report: Apple CEO Tim Cook calls the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max the "most innovative pro lineup yet." The iPhone 14 Pro will start at $999, and the iPhone 14 Pro Max starts at $1,099. Both will be available for preorder on September 9th and available in stores on September 16th. The first notable design change with the iPhone 14 Pro models is the display. While Apple will offer the usual 6.1- and 6.7-inch options, the notch is being replaced by a pill-shaped cutout that will house the Face ID components and a second circular cutout for the front-facing camera. Apple has moved the proximity sensor behind the display, and notifications will now pop out of the notch in an animation. Apple calls this system the Dynamic Island. Notifications and alerts will adapt and move around the pill-shaped notch, and Apple is really leaning into how it animates and uses the system for new notifications. Apple demonstrated a variety of ways the Dynamic Island will animate and work in practice, including live activity widgets coming to life and animations and controls for music. When you swipe to go home, background tasks like music playback will move to the island.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has announced the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus, preserving much of the iPhone 13's design -- including a notch for the phone's selfie camera and Face ID sensors. From a report: Either way, the 14 looks an awful lot like the 13 at first glance, with the same flat display and rails. The US models of the iPhone 14 also do away with the physical SIM tray, going all-in on eSIM. The standard iPhone 14 model starts at $799, and the 14 Plus starts at $899. The iPhone 14 will also support the much-rumored emergency messaging via communication satellites when you're out of range of a cell signal, called Emergency SOS. The phone's antennas can connect to satellite frequencies. Apple says it can take less than 15 seconds to send a message with a clear view of the sky, and the interface guides users to point their phone in the right direction, as well as walking through steps to connect with emergency service providers. It's also possible to use the Find My app to share location without sending a message. It's free for two years with iPhone 14 models. The iPhone 14 sticks with a 6.1-inch screen, while the 14 Plus offers a big 6.7-inch screen. The 14 Plus model claims to offer the best battery life of any iPhone. Both models continue to offer last year's A15 Bionic chipset -- a major shift for Apple, which has typically introduced a new processor to be used by its entire iPhone portfolio every year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The rise of fintech services and digital banking could spur financial risks and potentially a crisis over the long term, Michael Hsu, Acting Comptroller of the Currency, a major U.S. bank regulator, warned on Wednesday. From a report: "I believe fintechs and big techs are having a large impact and warrant much more of our attention," Hsu told a New York conference, noting the encroachment of fintech companies into the traditional financial sector, including via partnerships with banks, was creating more complexity and "de-integration" across the banking sector. "My strong sense is that this process, left to its own devices, is likely to accelerate and expand until there is a severe problem, or even a crisis," Hsu said. Banks and tech firms, in an effort to provide a seamless customer experience, are teaming up in ways that make it more difficult for regulators to distinguish between where the bank stops and where the tech firm starts, said Hsu. And with fintech valuations falling as financing costs rise, bank partnerships with fintechs are increasing, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A cybercriminal group containing former members of the notorious Conti ransomware gang is targeting the Ukrainian government and European NGOs in the region, Google says. From a report: The details come from a new blog post from the Threat Analysis Group (TAG), a team within Google dedicated to tracking state-sponsored cyber activity. With the war in Ukraine having lasted more than half a year, cyber activity including hacktivism and electronic warfare has been a constant presence in the background. Now, TAG says that profit-seeking cybercriminals are becoming active in the area in greater numbers. From April through August 2022, TAG has been following "an increasing number of financially motivated threat actors targeting Ukraine whose activities seem closely aligned with Russian government-backed attackers," writes TAG's Pierre-Marc Bureau. One of these state-backed actors has already been designated by CERT -- Ukraine's national Computer Emergency Response Team -- as UAC-0098. But new analysis from TAG links it to Conti: a prolific global ransomware gang that shut down the Costa Rican government with a cyberattack in May.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Albania cut diplomatic ties with Iran and expelled the country's embassy staff over a major cyberattack nearly two months ago that was allegedly carried out by Tehran on Albanian government websites, the prime minister said Wednesday. From a report: The move by Albania, a NATO country, was the first known case of a country cutting diplomatic relations over a cyberattack. The White House vowed unspecified retaliation Wednesday against Iran for what it called "a troubling precedent for cyberspace." In a statement, the White House said it has had experts on the ground for weeks helping Albania and had concluded Iran was behind the "reckless and irresponsible" attack and subsequent hack-and-leak operation. The government's decision was formally delivered to the Iranian Embassy in Tirana, the capital, in an official note, Prime Minister Edi Rama said. All embassy staff, including diplomatic and security personnel, were ordered to leave Albania within 24 hours. On July 15, a cyberattack temporarily shut down numerous Albanian government digital services and websites. Rama said an investigation determined that the cyberattack wasn't carried out by individuals or independent groups, calling it "state aggression."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft and Adobe have been friendly bedfellows for decades. Microsoft's dominant PC operating system has been the gateway for Adobe to reach millions of business users with its design software. The companies' CEOs even attended the same high school in India, and both moved to the U.S. in the 1980s for graduate school in computer science. They share a common bond over the successful transition from desktop software to the cloud. But inside Microsoft, an emerging challenge to Adobe is catching fire and raising questions about the future of one of the tech industry's most intimate relationships. Figma, a San Francisco-based startup that celebrated its 10th anniversary in August, is being used by tens of thousands of employees inside Microsoft and, for many, is at the heart of their daily work. The number of users has steadily increased in recent years, though neither company will say how many of them are editors with paid accounts. The cloud-based design software came in the door in 2016, when Microsoft acquired mobile app development platform Xamarin and brought in a 350-person team that, months after the deal closed, would become Figma power users. The product has since become so central to how Microsoft's designers do their jobs that Jon Friedman, corporate vice president of design and research, said Figma is "like air and water for us." It's also used by engineers, marketers and data scientists across Microsoft. For Figma, getting traction inside big companies, particularly within Microsoft, has required going head-to-head with Adobe's competing XD program, and winning its fair share of deals. That doesn't mean the market has completely flipped, or that Adobe is being fully supplanted. "We're still heavy on Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and XD," Friedman said. Adobe and Microsoft have worked together for more than two decades. In addition to Adobe gaining ubiquity by distributing across Windows machines, the two companies have been syncing their products in desktop, cloud and mobile computing, with over 50 integrations listed on Microsoft's website. Penetrating that alliance has not always been smooth for Figma. In 2016, Microsoft acquired Sunrise, a startup with a popular calendar app. The Sunrise team relied on Figma and continued to use it after the deal closed. Sunrise co-founder Jeremy Le Van said his employees were among the lucky ones at Microsoft. He said some Microsoft staffers weren't able to use Figma because of the business relationship with Adobe and were stuck using products such as Photoshop and XD. Despite executive resistance in certain departments, some designers snuck out of the Adobe ecosystem to use Figma anyway, said Le Van, who stayed on as a design director at Microsoft until 2018.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joe Sullivan, Uber's former chief of security, faces criminal charges for his handling of a 2016 security breach. His trial this week has divided the security industry. From a report: Joe Sullivan was a rock star in the information security world. One of the first federal prosecutors to work on cybercrime cases in the late 1990s, he jumped into the corporate security world in 2002, eventually taking on high-profile roles as chief of security at Facebook and Uber. When the security community made its annual summer pilgrimage to Las Vegas for two conferences, Mr. Sullivan was an easily recognizable figure: tall with shaggy hair, wearing sneakers and a hoodie. "Everyone knew him; I was in awe, frankly," said Renee Guttmann, who was the chief information security officer for Coca-Cola and Campbell Soup. "He was an industry leader." So it came as a shock to many in the community when Mr. Sullivan was fired by Uber in 2017, accused of mishandling a security incident the year before. Despite the scandal, Mr. Sullivan got a new job as chief of security at Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure company. But the investigation into the incident at Uber continued, and in 2020, the same prosecutor's office where Mr. Sullivan had worked decades earlier charged him with two felonies, in what is believed to be the first time a company executive has faced potential criminal liability for an alleged data breach. Mr. Sullivan has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Mr. Sullivan stepped down from his job at Cloudflare in July, in preparation for his trial, which begins this week in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Other chief security officers are following the case closely, worried about what it means for them. [...] At the very least, security executives are worried about being on the hook for potential legal bills. Charles Blauner, a retired CISO and cybersecurity adviser, said security chiefs had taken a strong interest in directors and officers insurance, which covers the legal costs of executives who are sued as a result of their work with a company. "A lot of sitting chief information security officers are going to their bosses and asking if they have D.&O. insurance and, if not, can I have it?" Mr. Blauner said. "They are saying, 'If I'm going to be held liable for something our company does, I want legal coverage.'" After being charged, Mr. Sullivan sued Uber to force it to pay his legal fees in the criminal case, and they reached a private settlement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Google parent Alphabet, defended the internet-search giant against claims that it is anticompetitive, citing established rivals in the digital advertising market and upstart mobile app TikTok as examples of robust competition in technology. From a report: Pichai made the remarks late Tuesday at the Code Conference in Los Angeles. He said the company is "pro-competitive" and named companies including Apple and Microsoft as competitors in the advertising business and TikTok as a rival in the video space. He said that YouTube Shorts, Google's TikTok competitor, is off to a "great start." "Competition in tech is hyper-intense," Pichai said. The rise of TikTok "shows there is competition in the space" and "how vibrant this market is" compared to years past. The US Justice Department sued Google in 2020, alleging the company dominates the search market in violation of antitrust laws. The company is the most popular search engine and only has limited competition in that business from Microsoft Bing and Yahoo Search. The DOJ is also preparing to sue Google on claims it illegally dominates the digital advertising market, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg last month. "Do I wake up and worry about all the stuff that's coming down?" Pichai said Tuesday. "Absolutely." Still, he said, "my guidance to our teams is to be respectful and engage the way we have in Europe" and "engage constructively through the process."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: In a new study, published Monday in the journal npj Flexible Electronics, an international team of researchers revealed it has engineered a system to remotely control the legs of cockroaches from afar. The system, which is basically a cockroach backpack wired into the creature's nervous system, has a power output about 50 times higher than previous devices and is built with an ultrathin and flexible solar cell that doesn't hinder the roach's movement. Pressing a button sends a shock to the backpack that tricks the roach into moving a certain direction. Cockroach cyborgs are not a new idea. Back in 2012, researchers at North Carolina State University were experimenting with Madagascar hissing cockroaches and wireless backpacks, showing the critters could be remotely controlled to walk along a track. The way scientists do this is by attaching the backpack and connecting wires to a cockroach's "cerci," two appendages at the end of the abdomen that are basically sensory nerves. One on the left, one on the right. Previous studies have shown electrical impulses to either side can stimulate the roach into moving in that direction, giving researchers some control over locomotion. But to send and receive signals, you need to power the backpack. You might be able to use a battery but, eventually, a battery will run out of power and the cyborg cockroach will be free to disappear into the leaf litter. The team at Riken crafted the system to be solar-powered and rechargeable. They attached a battery and stimulation module to the cockroach's thorax (the upper segment of its body). That was the first step. The second step was to make sure the solar cell module would adhere to the cockroach's abdomen, the segmented lower section of its body. [T]he Riken team tested a number of thin electronic films, subjecting their roaches to a bunch of experiments and watching how the roaches moved depending on the thickness of the film. This helped them decide on a module about 17 times thinner than a human hair. It adhered to the abdomen without greatly limiting the degree of freedom the roaches had and also stuck around for about a month, greatly outlasting previous systems. "The current system only has a wireless locomotion control system, so it's not enough to prepare an application such as urban rescue," said Kenjiro Fukuda, an expert in flexible electronics at Japan's Riken. "By integrating other required devices such as sensors and cameras, we can use our cyborg insects for such purposes." Fukuda notes the design of the ultrathin solar cell could be applied to other insects, like beetles and cicadas.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Indian government is looking to tax winnings of online games as the sector grows in popularity. Quartz reports: Direct tax officials are scrutinizing the data for up to 58,000 crore rupees ($7.2 billion) won over the past three years on an online gaming platform, The Indian Express newspaper reported. Authorities have urged taxpayers to file taxes on such undeclared winnings for the past two assessment years, 2019-20 and 2020-21, the report said. "Some may have earned more and some less... They are usually in a ledger account and they merge win and loss, it (data) is humongous," Nitin Gupta, chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes, told The Indian Express. More than 20,000 taxpayers have filed updated returns for both 2020-21 and 2021-22 until Sept. 02, with undeclared tax payments valued at over Rs50 crore. In May, India's finance ministry proposed 28% GST on all earnings from online games, regardless of whether the game is based on skill or chance. The GST council will now review this during its meeting this month. [...] The proposed taxation of 28%, along with 30% income tax on winnings, takes the total tax rate on online gaming between 45-50%, industry experts said. This could spell "game over" for the fledgeling industry.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UnresolvedExternal shares a report from the BBC: A video showing a shelf cloud forming, ahead of a thunderstorm, has been captured in Dorset. The dramatic footage was filmed by Steve Coggins in Portland on Monday evening before a thunderstorm hit the south coast. BBC South weather presenter Alexis Green said: "It's shelf cloud -- a type of arcus cloud. They form on the leading edge of thunderstorms. Cool, sinking air from a storm cloud's downdraught spreads out across the land surface, with the leading edge called a gust front. This outflow cuts under warm air being drawn into the storm's updraft. As the lower and cooler air lifts the warm moist air, its water condenses, creating the shelf cloud."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Proposed EU rules could limit the type of research that produces cutting-edge AI tools like GPT-3, experts warn in a new study. The nonpartisan think tank Brookings this week published a piece decrying the bloc's regulation of open source AI, arguing it would create legal liability for general-purpose AI systems while simultaneously undermining their development. Under the EU's draft AI Act, open source developers would have to adhere to guidelines for risk management, data governance, technical documentation and transparency, as well as standards of accuracy and cybersecurity. If a company were to deploy an open source AI system that led to some disastrous outcome, the author asserts, it's not inconceivable the company could attempt to deflect responsibility by suing the open source developers on which they built their product. "This could further concentrate power over the future of AI in large technology companies and prevent research that is critical to the public's understanding of AI," Alex Engler, the analyst at Brookings who published the piece, wrote. "In the end, the [E.U.'s] attempt to regulate open-source could create a convoluted set of requirements that endangers open-source AI contributors, likely without improving use of general-purpose AI." In 2021, the European Commission -- the EU's politically independent executive arm -- released the text of the AI Act, which aims to promote "trustworthy AI" deployment in the EU as they solicit input from industry ahead of a vote this fall, EU. institutions are seeking to make amendments to the regulations that attempt to balance innovation with accountability. But according to some experts, the AI Act as written would impose onerous requirements on open efforts to develop AI systems. The legislation contains carve-outs for some categories of open source AI, like those exclusively used for research and with controls to prevent misuse. But as Engler notes, it'd be difficult -- if not impossible -- to prevent these projects from making their way into commercial systems, where they could be abused by malicious actors. "The road to regulation hell is paved with the EU's good intentions," said Oren Etzioni, founding CEO of the Allen Institute for AI. "Open source developers should not be subject to the same burden as those developing commercial software. It should always be the case that free software can be provided 'as is' -- consider the case of a single student developing an AI capability; they cannot afford to comply with EU regulations and may be forced not to distribute their software, thereby having a chilling effect on academic progress and on reproducibility of scientific results." Instead, Etzioni argues that EU regulators should focus on specific applications of AI. "There is too much uncertainty and rapid change in AI for the slow-moving regulatory process to be effective. Instead, AI applications such as autonomous vehicles, bots, or toys should be the subject of regulation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Beeftopia writes: Germany will keep two of its three reactors operational through the end of 2022, despite a pledge to shut them all down by December 31. A likely winter gas shortage prompted the change. "German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a statement on Monday the move did not mean Berlin was reneging on its long-standing promise to exit nuclear energy by the end of 2022," reports Reuters. Habeck went on to say, "It remains very improbable that we will have crisis situations and extreme scenarios" requiring further use of nuclear. "Germany is part of a European system hit by a decline in Russian gas deliveries, the French nuclear power squeeze and a drought that has curbed hydroelectric production and cooling water supplies to thermal power stations as well as hampering barge deliveries of coal," Reuters says. A problem with the planned use case for the reactors is that nuclear plants are not designed to be variable backup energy generators, but rather continuous first-line generators.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elizabeth Holmes -- the founder of blood testing startup Theranos and the poster child for misleading investors, media, and innocent people looking for medical care through a web of deceit -- wants a do-over. She is requesting a new trial, according to a document filed Tuesday in the Southern District Court of California. Gizmodo reports: The motion for a new trial, authored by Holmes' attorneys, hinges on "newly discovered evidence," specifically: the alleged testimony regrets of Adam Rosendorff. Rosendorff was a lab director at Theranos and later, testified as a key witness in the case against Holmes and her ex-boyfriend/partner in crime Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani. His original testimony lasted multiple days and emphasized the pressure that Theranos employees were under to demonstrate the faulty diagnostic technology worked, even when it didn't. "I felt that it was a question on my integrity as a physician not to remain there and to continue to bolster results I essentially didn't have faith in," Rosendorff said while on the witness stand in 2021, according to CNBC. "I came to understand that management was not sincere in diverting resources to solve issues." Now, Holmes and her lawyers are claiming that Rosendorff left a voicemail and then showed up at Holmes' residence on August 8 in a desperate bid to communicate that he "felt he had done something wrong, apparently in connection with Ms. Holmes' trial." The motion, supposedly paraphrasing Rosendorff, says that the former Theranos employee stated, "the government made things seem worse than they were." In the document, Holmes' legal team wrote, "Under any interpretation of his statements, the statements warrant a new trial under Rule 33. But, at a minimum, and to the extent the Court has any doubt about whether a new trial is required, the Court should order an evidentiary hearing and permit Ms. Holmes to subpoena Dr. Rosendorff to testify about his concerns." Holmes was found guilty in January on four of 11 charges defrauding the company's investors and patients. She was found not guilty on four counts. In July, Balwani was found guilty of 12 counts of conspiracy and fraud against certain investors and patients.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United States is likely to start recommending COVID-19 vaccines annually, health officials said on Tuesday, as new boosters designed to fight currently circulating variants of the coronavirus roll out. Reuters reports: By the end of this week, 90% of Americans will live within five miles (8 km) of sites carrying updated vaccines, U.S. health secretary Xavier Becerra said at a White House briefing. Officials said people could get the new boosters this fall or winter alongside their regular annual flu shots, and said it was likely this would become a yearly ritual. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said even with the seven-day average of COVID hospitalizations down 14% to 4,500 per day, annual shots could save thousands of lives. "Modeling projections show that an uptake of updated COVID-19 vaccine doses similar to an annual flu vaccine coverage early this fall could prevent as many as 100,000 hospitalizations and 9,000 deaths, and save billions of dollars in direct medical costs," she said. The redesigned boosters, green-lighted by U.S. health regulators last week, aim to tackle the BA.5 and BA.4 Omicron subvariants, which account for over 88% and 11% of circulating viruses, respectively, Walensky said. The so-called bivalent vaccines also still target the original version of the virus. Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said unless a dramatically different variant emerges, annual vaccines should offer enough protection for most people, but that some vulnerable groups might need more frequent vaccinations. "We likely are moving towards a path with a vaccination cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine, with annual, updated COVID-19 shots matched to the currently circulating strains for most of the population," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: One of the strictest internet privacy laws in the United States has withstood a legal challenge, as a group of telecommunication providers has dropped its bid to overturn the Maine standard. Maine created one of the toughest rules in the nation for internet service providers in 2020 when it began enforcing an "opt-in" web privacy standard. The law stops the service providers from using, disclosing, selling or providing access to customers' personal information without permission. Industry associations swiftly sued with a claim that the new law violated their First Amendment rights. A federal judge rejected that challenge, but legal wrangling continued. The groups, which include the country's biggest telecommunications providers, filed to dismiss the lawsuit on Sept. 2, said Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey. Frey said the state's privacy law held up despite the efforts of an "army of industry lawyers organized against us," and now other states can follow Maine's lead. "Maine's Legislature wisely sought to protect Maine residents by restricting the disclosure and use of their most private and personal information," Frey said. The Maine Legislature passed the bill, proposed by former Democratic state Sen. Shenna Bellows, who is now Maine's secretary of state, in 2019. Internet service providers then sued in February 2020, and attorneys for Maine have been in court defending the law since. The proposal stemmed from a Maine effort to bring back rules implemented during President Barack Obama's tenure that were repealed by Congress during President Donald Trump's term. Industry plaintiffs agreed to reimburse Maine for more than $55,000 in costs incurred defending the law, Frey said. Maine is also home to the strictest facial recognition law of its kind. It was passed last July and "prohibits government use of facial recognition except in specifically outlined situations, with the most broad exception being if police have probable cause that an unidentified person in an image committed a serious crime, or for proactive fraud prevention," reports Motherboard. "Crucially, the law plugs loopholes that police have used in the past to gain access to the technology, like informally asking other agencies or third parties to run backchannel searches for them. Logs of all facial recognition searches by the BMV must be created and are designated as public records."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has started sending out invites for its fall hardware event, which is set to take place on Thursday, October 6th, at 10AM ET. The Verge reports: The event will launch the upcoming Pixel 7 phones, as well as the Pixel Watch -- the company showed off both devices at its I/O event earlier this year, announcing they're coming in the fall. Since Google's last event, purported leaks have revealed even more about the devices, with both the Watch and phones seemingly making their way into people's hands. The Pixel 7 seems like it'll be a pretty straightforward continuation of the previous generation of phones, but there's a bit of pressure with the Watch as the "first smartwatch built by Google, inside and out," as its product page on Google's online store says. Google's competitors (namely Samsung and Apple) have been making wearables for years, so the company's entry has to be competent and at least somewhat competitive right out of the gate. So far, details about it are scant -- we don't even know what chip it'll use -- but we should get a clearer picture come October 6th.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leading foundry operators stand to benefit from a 25 percent investment tax credit (ITC) on domestic fab projects, according to a document published by the US Department of Commerce this week. The Register reports: The document [PDF] sheds new light on the department's plans for divvying up the more than $50 billion CHIPS Act fund approved this year by Congress to fund domestic chip production. The tax credits accompany $39 billion in grants, cooperative agreements, loans, and loan guarantees are available to companies working to advance US semiconductor and supply chain security interests. The Commerce Department appears to have mixed sentiments about the state of the US in the global semiconductor sphere. The document argues the US remains the world leader in chip design and native design and automation tools but also notes the US is responsible for only 10 percent of global chip capacity and just 3 percent of global packaging, assembling, and testing services, pointing to areas where America has fallen behind when it comes to domestic production. The department adds that recent advancements made by the People's Republic of China to accelerate their own domestic chip manufacturing capacity has only served to exacerbate the risk to US supply chains. With that said, the Commerce Department isn't being picky about which companies are eligible for funding. Any company, foreign or domestic, that takes steps to advance the commerce departments goals, with the exception of "entities of concern." Those goals in include accelerating leading-edge and legacy chip production in the US, research and development into next-generation semiconductor applications, and efforts to develop an adequate workforce to fuel this expansion. While foreign manufacturers aren't excluded from receiving funding, the Commerce Department emphasizes that those funds must go towards domestic infrastructure and can't be used abroad.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike Fahey, longtime senior reporter of Kotaku, has passed away at age 49 after years of health complications. In a post published today, current and former colleagues share their memories of "the heart and soul of Kotaku." Here's an excerpt, written by Kotaku's Editor-In-Chief, Patricia Hernandez: Most people know Mike's humor: the way he would slip into cartoon voices on a whim, how every conversation was like a poke to the ribs that tested your verve. The six-foot-six guy with a thunderous laugh was a magician, though, and his larger-than-life personality was classic misdirection. Behind every joke and every antic was a sensitive man who had lived many lives and seen a lot of shit. Yes, this was the guy that reviewed toys and snacks for a living. He was also the guy that could make you go "damn" in a blog about Fortnite or Animal Crossing. Mike Fahey wanted to tell you about the dozens of keyboards he owned, to show you that he'd pinpointed the specific symphony of sounds that he heard when he pressed his fingers down on each individual key, curious to see if you could hear it, too. I suspect this was the same drive that made him want to tell you what he dreamed about during a coma. It's no accident that Mike was one of the first writers on the internet to really capture what made MMOs tick. All we have is each other, and Mike knew better than anyone that we often use video games to find connection. Even when he was being absurd and reviewing, say, a frozen dinner, he still wanted to find ways to make people feel less alone. With Fahey, even moments of crushing despair were laced with a hopeful laugh. It's hard to write this, for a variety of reasons that may be obvious, but one of them is the heartbreak of knowing just how badly Mike wanted to come back and keep sharing his joy with everyone at Kotaku after eight months of being away. Between trips to the hospital, Mike kept telling me that he was sure he would come back soon -- that he needed to, because writing and playing games were one of the things that still brought him joy. But after years of fighting against health issues, some of which left him partially paralyzed in 2018, Mike Fahey has passed away at 49 years old, possibly due to organ failure according to his spouse. It's bewildering to write this, because by the time I started writing for Kotaku on the side while still in college in 2012, Mike had already been here for around six years. That was a decade ago. To say Mike is the heart and soul of Kotaku is an understatement. For many readers, Fahey is Kotaku. He built this thing that millions of people read every month, as a part of a network that forever redefined what it was like to surf and read the internet. We take the idea of "personalities" as a given on the internet now, but Mike Fahey provided a blueprint for being a human voice in a tech-driven space. The drive to put a person at the forefront of everything is still in many ways Kotaku's north star. Fahey may be gone, but his spirit will forever live on in anything that we do. I said this to Kotaku staffers this weekend, but it bears repeating again: I want to think that somewhere, there's still an Xbox game superglued to a ceiling that will never come down. You can contribute to the Fahey family's fundraising efforts here, and scroll down further to read memories from colleagues current and former. We'll miss you, Mike.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A high-profile push by Congress to rein in the nation's biggest internet companies is at risk of failing with time running out to pass major legislation ahead of midterm elections. Alphabet's Google, Apple, Amazon.com and Meta and their trade groups have poured almost $95 million into lobbying since 2021 as they seek to derail the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which has advanced further than any US legislative effort to address the market power of some of the world's richest companies. After a nearly two-year battle, the bill is now at a critical juncture as the Senate returns this week for a final stretch before the November midterms. Backers of the measure swear they have the necessary votes, yet it's unclear if they do, and the Senate will be busy with other must-pass spending legislation. Although clipping the wings of tech giants through antitrust reform had support from both Republicans and Democrats during this Congress, a likely GOP majority in the House next year is expected to focus on allegations that internet platforms squelch conservative viewpoints. That's why tech lobbyists have been trying to run out the clock. Leading Republicans like California's Kevin McCarthy, who is on track to become Speaker under a GOP majority, have publicly opposed the antitrust push. The legislation's sponsors can see the window narrowing. Antitrust advocates were expecting a vote before Congress adjourned for four weeks in August. But Schumer told donors in July that it didn't have enough votes to pass. The bill has 13 co-sponsors in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass and be sent to the House. Supporters like Yelp's head of public policy Luther Lowe, a longtime Google critic, argue that enough undecided lawmakers would vote for the measure if it came to the floor. A Schumer spokesperson said he's working with the bill's sponsors to find the necessary votes and he still plans to bring it to the floor. The bill was approved by both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on strong bipartisan votes. Several amendments have addressed concerns about privacy and security issues. What hasn't killed the bill "has made it stronger," said Yelp's Lowe. The measure seeks to restrict the companies from favoring their own products, so that competitors who depend on these platforms to reach consumers wouldn't be at a disadvantage. That could impact the design of Google Maps, the display of Apple Music on an iPhone or the prominence of Amazon Basics on the company's e-commerce site. "I don't see it going to the floor," said Michael Petricone, senior vice president of government affairs at the Consumer Technology Association, a trade group that counts Amazon, Google and Facebook among its members. "With an election coming up, I expect senators to come back and focus on issues that are popular with voters. Tech regulation is not one of those issues."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Beijing this week accused the United States of launching "tens of thousands" of cyberattacks on China and pilfering troves of sensitive data, including from a public research university. From a report: Washington has accused Beijing of cyberattacks against US businesses and government agencies, one of the issues over which ties between the two powers have nosedived in recent years. China has consistently denied the claims and in turn lashed out against alleged US cyber espionage, but has rarely made public disclosures of specific attacks. But a report released Monday by its National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) accused the US National Security Agency (NSA) of carrying out "tens of thousands of malicious attacks on network targets in China in recent years." It specifically accused the NSA's Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO) of infiltrating the Northwestern Polytechnical University in the city of Xi'an.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This fall, Apple will make some of its flagship iPhones outside China for the first time, a small but significant change for a company that has built one of the most sophisticated supply chains in the world with the help of the Chinese authorities. But the development of the iPhone 14, which is expected to be unveiled on Wednesday, shows how complicated it will be for Apple to truly untangle itself from China. From a report: More than ever, Apple's Chinese employees and suppliers contributed complex work and sophisticated components for the 15th year of its marquee device, including aspects of manufacturing design, speakers and batteries, according to four people familiar with the new operations and analysts. As a result, the iPhone has gone from being a product that is designed in California and made in China to one that is a creation of both countries. The critical work provided by China reflects the country's advancements over the past decade and a new level of involvement for Chinese engineers in the development of iPhones. After the country lured companies to its factories with legions of low-priced workers and unrivaled production capacity, its engineers and suppliers have moved up the supply chain to claim a bigger slice of the money that U.S. companies spend to create high-tech gadgets. The increased responsibilities that China has assumed for the iPhone could challenge Apple's efforts to decrease its dependency on the country, a goal that has taken on increased urgency amid rising geopolitical tensions over Taiwan and simmering concerns in Washington about China's ascent as a technology competitor.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Communications Commission has collected precise broadband availability information from Internet service providers for the first time and aims to release a first draft of a new broadband map in November, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote Friday. From a report: The FCC last week "completed the first filing window for submitting data on where broadband service is and is not available," a milestone in the years-long process of creating an accurate US broadband map, she wrote. "For the first time ever, we have collected extensive location-by-location data on precisely where broadband services are available, and now we are ready to get to work and start developing new and improved broadband maps." The resulting map should show whether fixed broadband service is available at each residence or business location. The FCC's inaccurate broadband maps have long made it difficult to distribute deployment grants where they're needed most. Current maps are based on the Form 477 data-collection program in which ISPs report whether they offer service in each census block, which essentially lets ISPs count an entire census block as served even if it can serve just one home in the area. The new, more accurate maps will be used to help distribute $42.45 billion from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program created by Congress in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To better understand how microbes affect our health, researchers combined 119 species of bacteria naturally found in the human body. From a report: Our bodies are home to hundreds or thousands of species of microbes -- nobody is sure quite how many. That's just one of many mysteries about the so-called human microbiome. Our inner ecosystem fends off pathogens, helps digest food and may even influence behavior. But scientists have yet to figure out exactly which microbes do what or how. Many studies suggest that many species have to work together to do each of the microbiome's jobs. To better understand how microbes affect our health, scientists have for the first time created a synthetic human microbiome, combining 119 species of bacteria naturally found in the human body. When the researchers gave the concoction to mice that did not have a microbiome of their own, the bacterial strains established themselves and remained stable -- even when the scientists introduced other microbes. The new synthetic microbiome can even withstand aggressive pathogens and cause mice to develop a healthy immune system, as a full microbiome does. The findings were published on Tuesday in the journal Cell. A better understanding of the microbiome could potentially lead to a powerful way to treat a host of diseases. Already, doctors can use the microbiome to treat life-threatening gut infections of the bacteria Clostridium difficile. They just have to transplant stool from a healthy donor, and the infection usually goes away.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is trying to clean up the messy state of crypto copyright. From a report: Last week, the company introduced what it dubs "Can't Be Evil" licenses: a series of agreements that let creators grant non-fungible token owners partial or near-complete rights to NFT art. It's fighting a problem many experts have called out -- one that's persistently undercut claims that NFTs let you "own" a work. The "Can't Be Evil" licenses (named after a common claim about blockchain businesses) are based on the Creative Commons (CC) copyright framework. But unlike Creative Commons, which provides blanket licenses to wide swathes of people, a16z's licenses lay out the relationship between an NFT buyer and the person who created the original art it's linked with. As explained in a blog post, the licenses are meant as a relatively simple but legally sound framework for setting the rights of NFT holders, open to modification by individual projects. It's something many NFT projects -- including some massive brands like Bored Ape Yacht Club -- fail to do consistently. There are already attempts at making a standardized NFT license, but so far, none have seen the kind of success Creative Commons has in the non-crypto world. And a16z, which has invested a huge amount in the crypto ecosystem, has a vested interest in solving the problem.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: This Saturday was dubbed "National Cinema Day," in which theaters around the US cut their ticket prices to $3 in an effort to keep bringing people back to the movie theater. And it worked! More than 8.1 million people went to the movies on Saturday, Variety found, compared to 1 million the day before and 1.7 million the day after. National Cinema Day brought the biggest crowds to theaters of any day in 2022, which leads to one inevitable conclusion: people will go to movies when movies only cost three bucks. Who knew! One thing not needed to get the butts back in the seats? New movies. August has been a month-long movie doldrums, the result of so many pandemic shutdowns and general supply chain issues. Tom Cruise always has the answer, though: the top grosser of the day was Top Gun: Maverick, which added about $6 million to its box office haul over the long weekend. (Cruise and co. have been keeping theaters afloat all summer, actually, bringing in $698 million overall since the movie's release in May.) Spider-Man: No Way Home, which came out last Christmas, took second place in the box office. The best-performing new movie this weekend -- Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul. -- came in at #14. But the real dark horse, the shark in the water nobody saw coming, was a little flick you might have heard of called Jaws. Playing in theaters around the country, the movie made about $2.6 million over the three-day weekend.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It is regarded as the "loneliest tree in the world" but the Sitka spruce on uninhabited Campbell Island has been keeping good company of late -- with a team of New Zealand researchers who believe it could help unlock climate change secrets. From a report: The nine-metre tall spruce holds the Guinness World Record title for the "remotest tree" on the planet. It is the sole tree on the shrubby, windswept island, 700 kilometres south of New Zealand in the Southern Ocean. It's the only tree for 222km around; its nearest neighbour grows on the Auckland Islands. Prior to the Campbell Island spruce, the Tree of Tenere in Niger was said to be the most isolated tree on the planet, until it was killed by a driver in 1973. It is believed the Sitka spruce was planted by Lord Ranfurly, New Zealand's then governor, in the early 1900s -- hence its nickname the Ranfurly tree. Studies have not been able to confirm its exact age, however, and Guinness World Records notes that although it is popularly referred to as the world's loneliest tree, "there is no universally recognised precise definition of what constitutes a 'tree.'" It is also classified as an invasive species and some scientists would be happy to see it go. But for radiocarbon science leader at GNS Science, Dr Jocelyn Turnbull, the tree could be a valuable tool to understand what is happening with the uptake of carbon dioxide in the Southern Ocean. "Of the CO2 that we produce from burning fossil fuels and put into the atmosphere, only about half stays there and the other half goes into the land and the ocean," Turnbull said. "It turns out the Southern Ocean -- one of those carbon sinks -- has taken up about 10% of all of the emissions that we have produced over the last 150 years."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Europe's energy crisis is threatening to slow experiments into the fundamental forces of nature. From a report: The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, is drafting plans to shut down some of its particle accelerators at periods of peak demand, said Serge Claudet, chair of the center's energy management panel. CERN is also considering how it could idle the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest accelerator, if necessary, Mr. Claudet said. "Our concern is really grid stability, because we do all we can to prevent a blackout in our region," Mr. Claudet said. The preparations show the far-reaching impact of Moscow's move to transform Europe's dependence on Russian energy supplies into a weapon of economic war. Emergency measures are now on the table after Russian energy giant Gazprom PJSC said Friday it would indefinitely stop natural gas deliveries through the Nord Stream gas pipeline, Russia's main artery for delivering the fuel to Europe, pushing the continent closer to gas rationing as winter approaches. Sweden and Finland on Friday said they would offer funding support to regional electricity producers, saying that Gazprom's move threatened the region's power market and its broader financial stability. The European Union is preparing plans to restructure the market to ease some of the pain.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has confirmed it was hit by a ransomware attack that is causing ongoing technical disruptions. From a report: LAUSD is the second largest school district in the U.S. after the New York City Department of Education. The LAUSD serves over 600,000 students spanning from kindergarten through 12th grade at over 1,000 schools, and employs more than 26,000 teachers. The district said on Monday that it was hit by a cyberattack over the weekend, which it later confirmed was ransomware. Although the attack caused "significant disruption" to LAUSD's infrastructure, the district said it will resume classes on Tuesday -- after observing Labor Day on Monday -- while it works to restore impacted services. LAUSD said that it does not expect technical issues to impact transportation, food or after-school programs, but noted that "business operations may be delayed or modified." It warned that ongoing disruptions include "access to email, computer systems, and applications," while a post from Northridge Academy High, a school in the district, confirmed that teachers and students might be unable to access Google Drive and Schoology, a K-12 learning management system, until further notice.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Proposed E.U. rules could limit the type of research that produces cutting-edge AI tools like GPT-3, experts warn in a new study. From a report: The nonpartisan think tank Brookings this week published a piece decrying the bloc's regulation of open source AI, arguing it would create legal liability for general-purpose AI systems while simultaneously undermining their development. Under the E.U.'s draft AI Act, open source developers would have to adhere to guidelines for risk management, data governance, technical documentation and transparency, as well as standards of accuracy and cybersecurity. If a company were to deploy an open source AI system that led to some disastrous outcome, the author asserts, it's not inconceivable the company could attempt to deflect responsibility by suing the open source developers on which they built their product. "This could further concentrate power over the future of AI in large technology companies and prevent research that is critical to the public's understanding of AI," Alex Engler, the analyst at Brookings who published the piece, wrote. "In the end, the [E.U.'s] attempt to regulate open-source could create a convoluted set of requirements that endangers open-source AI contributors, likely without improving use of general-purpose AI." In 2021, the European Commission -- the E.U.'s politically independent executive arm -- released the text of the AI Act, which aims to promote "trustworthy AI" deployment in the E.U. As they solicit input from industry ahead of a vote this fall, E.U. institutions are seeking to make amendments to the regulations that attempt to balance innovation with accountability. But according to some experts, the AI Act as written would impose onerous requirements on open efforts to develop AI systems. The legislation contains carve-outs for some categories of open source AI, like those exclusively used for research and with controls to prevent misuse. But as Engler notes, it'd be difficult -- if not impossible -- to prevent these projects from making their way into commercial systems, where they could be abused by malicious actors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has released Chrome 105.0.5195.102 for Windows, Mac, and Linux users to address a single high-severity security flaw, the sixth Chrome zero-day exploited in attacks patched this year. From a report: "Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2022-3075 exists in the wild," the company said in a security advisory published on Friday. This new version is rolling out in the Stable Desktop channel, with Google saying that it will reach the entire user base within a matter of days or weeks. It was available immediately when BleepingComputer checked for new updates by going into the Chrome menu > Help > About Google Chrome. The web browser will also auto-check for new updates and automatically install them after the next launch.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brazil's government on Tuesday ordered Apple to stop selling iPhones without a battery charger in the country, claiming that the company provides an incomplete product to consumers. From a report: The Justice Ministry fined Apple 12.275 million reais ($2.38 million) and ordered the cancellation of the sale of the iPhone 12 and newer models, in addition to suspending the sale of any iPhone model that does not come with a power charger. In the order, published in the country's official gazette, the ministry argued that the iPhone was lacking a essential component in a "deliberate discriminatory practice against consumers." The authorities rejected Apple's argument that the practice had the purpose of reducing carbon emissions saying that there is no evidence of environmental protection from selling the smartphone without a charger.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

High-profile universities and state-run research institutes in China have been relying on a U.S. computing chip to power their artificial intelligence (AI) technology but whose export to the country Washington has now restricted, a Reuters review showed. From the report: U.S. chip designer Nvidia last week said U.S. government officials have ordered it to stop exporting its A100 and H100 chips to China. Local peer Advanced Micro Devices also said new licence requirements now prevent export to China of its advanced AI chip MI250. The development signalled a major escalation of a U.S. campaign to stymie China's technological capability as tension bubbles over the fate of Taiwan, where chips for Nvidia and almost every other major chip firm are manufactured. China views Taiwan as a rogue province and has not ruled out force to bring the democratically governed island under its control. Responding to the restrictions, China branded them a futile attempt to impose a technology blockade on a rival. A Reuters review of more than a dozen publicly available government tenders over the past two years indicated that among some of China's most strategically important research institutes, there is high demand - and need - for Nvidia's signature A100 chips. Tsinghua University, China's highest-ranked higher education institution globally, spent over $400,000 last October on two Nvidia AI supercomputers, each powered by four A100 chips, one of the tenders showed. In the same month, the Institute of Computing Technology, part of top research group, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), spent around $250,000 on A100 chips. The school of artificial intelligence at a CAS university in July this year also spent about $200,000 on high-tech equipment including a server partly powered by A100 chips. In November, the cybersecurity college of Guangdong-based Jinan University spent over $93,000 on an Nvidia AI supercomputer, while its school of intelligent systems science and engineering spent almost $100,000 on eight A100 chips just last month. Less well-known institutes and universities supported by municipal and provincial governments, such as in Shandong, Henan and Chongqing, also bought A100 chips, the tenders showed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TikTok is denying reports that it was breached after a hacking group posted images of what they claim is a TikTok database that contains the platform's source code and user information. In response to these allegations, TikTok said its team "found no evidence of a security breach." From a report: According to Bleeping Computer, hackers shared the images of the alleged database to a hacking forum, saying they obtained the data on a server used by TikTok. It claims the server stores over 2 billion records and 790GB worth of user data, platform statistics, code, and more. "We have confirmed that the data samples in question are all publicly accessible and are not due to any compromise of TikTok systems, networks, or databases," TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said in a statement to The Verge. "We do not believe users need to take any proactive actions, and we remain committed to the safety and security of our global community."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hailstones of record size are falling left and right, and hailstorm damage is growing. But there is surprisingly little research to explain why. From a report: On Aug. 1, a team of scientists from Western University in London, Ontario, collected a giant hailstone while chasing a storm in Alberta, about 75 miles north of Calgary. The hailstone measured five inches across and weighed a little more than half a pound -- half the size and one-quarter the heft of Mr. Scott's. So it was not a world record, but a Canadian one. The Canadian hailstone added to the list of regional records set in the past couple of years, including Alabama's in 2018 (5.38 inches long, 0.612 pounds), Colorado's in 2019 (4.83 inches, 0.53 pounds) and Africa's in 2020 (around seven inches long, weight unknown). Australia set a national record in 2020, then set it again in 2021. Texas' record was set in 2021. In 2018, a storm in Argentina produced stones so big that a new class of hail was introduced: gargantuan. Larger than a honeydew melon. But the record-setting has come with increased hail damage. Although the frequency of reported "hail events" in the United States is at its lowest in a decade, according to a recent report by Verisk, a risk assessment firm, insurance claims on cars, houses and crops damaged by hail reached $16.5 billion in 2021 -- the highest ever. Hail can strip plants to the stem and effectively total small cars. Ten years after the record-setting storm in Vivian, the tin roofs of some buildings are still dented. On Wednesday, a hailstorm killed a toddler in the Catalonia region of Spain. "It's one of the few weather hazards that we don't necessarily build for," said Ian Giammanco, a meteorologist at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety. "And it's getting bigger and worse." Although the changing climate probably plays a role in these trends, weather experts say, a more complete explanation might have something to do with the self-stoking interplay of human behavior and scientific discovery. As neighborhoods sprawl into areas that experience heavy hail and greater hail damage, researchers have sought out large hailstones and documented their dimensions, stirring public interest and inviting further study. Julian Brimelow, the director of the Northern Hail Project, a new collaboration among Canadian organizations to study hail, whose team found the record hailstone in August, said, "It's a pretty exciting time to be doing hail research." The fixation with big hail goes back to at least the 1960s, when Soviet scientists claimed that they could significantly reduce the size of a storm's hailstones by dispersing chemicals into the atmosphere. The method, called cloud seeding, promised to save millions of dollars in crop damage a year. In the 1970s, the United States funded the National Hail Research Experiment to replicate the results of the Soviet experiments, this time by cloud seeding in hailstorms above Northern Colorado. Scientists then collected the largest hailstones they could find to see if it worked. It did not. And a decade of research demonstrated that the Soviet effort probably hadn't worked either. Both countries eventually gave up on the idea, and hailstone research stalled, although cloud seeding to increase rain and snowfall continued -- and continues to this day -- around the world.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A survey this year by Equity, the UK union for actors and other performing arts workers, found that 65 per cent of members thought AI posed a threat to employment opportunities in the sector, rising to 93 per cent of audio artists. This wasn't just an amorphous fear about the future: more than a third of members had seen job listings for work involving AI and almost a fifth had undertaken some of this work. From a report: A range of AI start-ups are developing tools for use in film and audio, from making actors look and sound younger to creating AI voices that can be used for marketing campaigns, consumer assistants or even audiobook narration. Audio is such a popular medium now that companies need lots of it, but human actors are expensive and nowhere near as flexible as an AI voice, which can be made to say anything at the push of a button. These companies typically hire actors to provide hours' worth of audio which can then be turned into a voice-for-hire. VocaliD, for example, offers a range of voices such as "Malik" ("warm, soothing, urban") "Terri" ("educated, optimistic, sophisticated") and "AI Very British Voice" ("trustworthy, warm, calm.") Sonantic, another AI company which was just acquired by Spotify, creates voices that can laugh, shout or cry. Its voices are often used by video game companies in the production process so they can play around with different scripts. They're not as good as humans, but they don't need to be. Industry experts say no one is going to use AI to narrate the audiobook of a bestselling novel, but there is still a market to be tapped in the vast number of lower-profile books that are published or self-published every year. Audiobook.ai, for example, says it can create an audiobook in 10 minutes with 146 voices to choose from in 43 languages.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cloudflare blocked Kiwi Farms on Saturday, days after hinting it will continue working with the controversial discussion forum despite weeks of pressure. From a report: The company has blocked Kiwi Farms content from being accessed through its infrastructure after an escalation in rhetoric and "specific, targeted threats" over the past 48 hours, Chief Executive Officer Matthew Prince said in a blog post. "This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare's role as an internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with," Prince said. While we believe "it would have been appropriate as an infrastructure provider for us to wait for legal process, in this case the imminent and emergency threat to human life which continues to escalate causes us to take this action." Previously, Cloudflare offered security services to Kiwi Farms. Visitors to Kiwi Farms sites that use any of its services will now see a Cloudflare block page and a link to Prince's post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Building in Britain is never easy, often difficult and sometimes impossible. The country has become a vetocracy, in which many people and agencies have the power to stymie any given development. The Town and Country Planning Act, passed in 1947, in effect nationalised the right to build. Decisions about whether to approve new projects are made by politicians who rely on the votes of nimbys ("Not in my back yard"), notes ("Not over there, either") and bananas ("Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything"). Green belts, which were designed to stop suburban sprawl, have achieved precisely that. These enormous no-build zones enjoy Pyongyangesque levels of support among voters, who picture them as rural idylls rather than the mish-mash of motorways, petrol stations, scrubland and golf courses that they are in reality. Strict environmental laws protect many creatures, especially cute ones like bats. Judges strike down government decisions if they are based on a botched process because Britain respects the rule of law. In isolation, each part of the planning system may seem unobjectionable. But the whole thing is a disaster. Britain's failure to build enough is most pronounced when it comes to housing. England has 434 homes per 1,000 people, whereas France has 590. Its most dynamic cities can barely expand outwards, and are frequently prevented from shooting skywards as well. But the problems extend well beyond housing. Britain has not built a reservoir since 1991 or finished a new nuclear-power station since 1995. hs2, a high-speed railway, is the first new line connecting large British cities since the 19th century. Even modest projects, such as widening the a66 road across northern England, take over a decade. The result is frustration and slower economic growth. A truly bold government could transform the planning system. A proper land-value tax would weaken the perverse incentives to keep city centres underdeveloped and encourage landlords to build or sell up. Scrapping or shrinking the green belt is a no-brainer. A rules-based system, with local authorities declaring loose zones of development and letting developers build within them, would be preferable to a discretionary system that leaves each decision in the hands of capricious politicians.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Poolin, one of the world's biggest crypto mining pools, is suspending bitcoin and ether withdrawals from its wallet service due to "liquidity problems." From a report: "As you may have known, Poolin Wallet is currently facing some liquidity problems due to recent increasing demands on withdrawals. But please be assured, all user assets are safe and the company's net worth is positive," the firm said in an announcement Monday. Poolin said that it would "make a snapshot of the remaining BTC and ETH balances on pool on September 6th to work out the balances." "The daily mined coins after September 6th will be normally paid out per day. Other coins are not affected. The details of payout schedule for remaining balances will be released when details are set," the post continued. The Beijing-based company is among the latest industry firms to suspend withdrawals due to liquidity problems amid this year's decline in crypto asset prices. Lenders Voyager Digital and Vauld both halted withdrawals in July. Voyager has since begun restoring some access to customers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Binance, the issuer of the world's third largest stablecoin, said on Monday it will convert customers' holdings in three rival stablecoins USDC, USDP and TUSD into its own stablecoin on September 29 to "enhance liquidity and capital-efficiency for users" in a move that has baffled many enthusiasts. USDC is the world's second largest stable coin, whereas BUSD is the third largest.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ireland's data privacy regulator has agreed to levy a record fine of 405 million euros ($402 million) against social network Instagram following an investigation into its handling of children's data, a spokesperson for the watchdog said. From a report: Instagram plans to appeal against the fine, a spokesperson for parent Meta Platforms said in an emailed statement. The investigation, which started in 2020, focused on child users between the ages of 13 and 17 who were allowed to operate business accounts, which facilitated the publication of the user's phone number and/or email address. "We adopted our final decision last Friday and it does contain a fine of 405 million euro," said the spokesperson for Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), the lead regulator of Instagram's parent company Meta Platforms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India has summoned executives of Wikipedia after a cricketer's page on the online encyclopedia was edited with links to a separatist movement. The country's IT ministry made the order on Monday to seek clarification from Wikipedia executives over the incident. From a report: A key IT minister publicly expressed his concern about the edits to the page of cricketer Arshdeep Singh, suggesting that some people from Pakistan were behind the act and were attempting to disrupt peace in the South Asian market. The Wikipedia page of Singh, who had several lapses in a game between India and Pakistan on Sunday, was edited to incorrectly say that he had been selected to play for Khalistan, a fictitious independent homeland sought by some separatists groups. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India's Junior IT Minister, said in a tweet that no intermediary, a service with over 5 million users, can permit deliberate misinformation campaign of this kind. Such acts "violates our govt's expectation of safe & trusted internet," he tweeted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just months after Samsung announced that it's bringing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to its TVs, now LG's doing the same. From a report:The company's new NFT marketplace, called LG Art Lab, lets you "buy, sell and enjoy high-quality digital artwork" from your TV. For now, only users in the US with an LG TV that runs webOS 5.0 or later can access the app, which is available to download from the TV's home screen. Through the portal, you can buy and sell digital works made available through LG's NFT drops. The first one of these drops is set to occur on September 22nd and features a set of metallic-looking NFTs from sculptor Barry X Ball. Since I just so happen to own a compatible LG TV, I downloaded and tried out the app for myself... and there's not much going on there yet. The app is pretty empty, and there aren't any NFTs that you can browse through and buy right now.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A simple digital card praising Islamist militants for an attack on a Taliban position in Afghanistan last month is the first known nonfungible token created and disseminated by a terrorist sympathizer, according to former senior U.S. intelligence officials. From a report: It is a sign that Islamic State and other terror groups may be preparing to use the emerging financial technology to sidestep Western efforts to eradicate their online fundraising and messaging, they said. The NFT, visible on at least one NFT trading website and titled "IS-NEWS #01," bears Islamic State's emblem. It was created by a supporter of the group, likely as an experiment to test a new outreach and funding strategy for ISIS, the former officials said. Regulators and national-security officials have expressed concern about the potential for terrorists to exploit new financial technologies and markets, including NFTs. "It was only a matter of time," said Yaya Fanusie, a former economic and counterterrorism analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. An NFT is a unit of data stored on a blockchain -- a database of transactions organized without the need for a central trusted authority. The technology first emerged as a means of tracking, valuing and trading digital assets, but developers say that it has much broader applications, such as digital concert tickets and branded collectibles like digital trading cards.Read more of this story at Slashdot.