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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Road to VR: NVIDIA, one of the tech sector's power players, is pushing the Universal Scene Description protocol as the foundation of interoperable content and experiences in the metaverse. In a recent post the company explains why it believes the protocol, originally invented by Pixar, fits the needs of the coming metaverse. Though the word metaverse is presently being used as a catchall for pretty much any multi-user application these days, the truth is that the vast majority of such platforms are islands unto themselves that have no connectivity to virtual spaces, people, or objects on other platforms. The 'real' metaverse, most seem to agree, must have at least some elements of interoperability, allowing users to seamlessly move from one virtual space to the next, much like we do today on the web. To that end, Nvidia is pushing Universal Scene Description (USD) as the "HTML of the metaverse," the company described in a recent post. Much like HTML forms a description of a webpage -- which can be hosted anywhere on the internet -- and is retrieved and rendered locally by a web browser, USD is a protocol for describing complex virtual scenes which can be retrieved and rendered to varying degrees depending upon local hardware capabilities. With a 'USD browser' of sorts, Nvidia is suggesting that USD could be the common method by which virtual spaces are defined in a way that's easy for anyone to decipher and render. "[USD] includes features necessary for scaling to large data sets like lazy loading and efficient retrieval of time-sampled data," [writes Nvidia's Rev Lebaredian and Michael Kass]. "It is tremendously extensible, allowing users to customize data schemas, input and output formats, and methods for finding assets. In short, USD covers the very broad range of requirements that Pixar found necessary to make its feature films." Indeed, CGI pioneer Pixar created USD to make collaboration on complex 3D animation projects easier. The company open-sourced the protocol back in 2015. USD is more than just a file format for 3D geometry. Not only can USD describe a complex scene with various objects, textures, and lighting, it can also include references to assets hosted elsewhere, property inheritance, and layering functionality which allows non-destructive editing of a single scene with efficient asset re-use. While Nvidia thinks USD is the right starting point for an interoperable platform, the company also acknowledges that "USD will need to evolve to meet the needs of the metaverse." On that front the company laid out a fairly extensive roadmap of features that it's working on for USD to successfully serve as the foundation of the metaverse. The newly formed Metaverse Standards Forum, of which Nvidia and thousands of other companies are members, has also pointed to USD as a promising foundation for interoperable virtual spaces and experiences.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Provinces in China are being forced to reduce power consumption as forest fires, droughts, and heatwaves ravage the country. The Guardian reports: here were still some streetlights on the Bund, one of the main roads in central Shanghai. But the decorative lights which light up the city skyline -- blue, pink, and red -- were turned off for two days to cope with the peaking power demand. The power restriction imposed by the city authorities, was the first in Shanghai, the financial hub of China. But across the rest of the country similar restrictions have been put in place, as cities, notably in the south-western region, grapple with ongoing power shortages caused by devastating droughts this summer. In Sichuan, a top-level energy emergency alert was issued to address the province's power shortages, a first in the province's history: the alert means that residents will be given priority for power supplies. Sichaun is known for its abundant hydro energy, which provides 80% of its power, and is a vital link in China's extensive West-to-East Electricity Transfer Project. But the area has been hit by record-breaking high temperatures, unseen in 60 years. With water in the region's rivers dropping to historical lows, hydropower plants are only producing half the energy they were generating this time last year. Sichuan had already imposed rolling blackouts across factories, and international companies have had to halt production, while the coal-fired plants are all at full stretch. But even so, cities around Sichuan are struggling to meet surging power demands from residential communities, with people's daily lives being heavily affected. In Dazhou, residents in one community complain that power supplies have been cut for 6-7 hours each day for nearly a week, leaving many flocking to a nearby bridge in the evening to beat the sweltering summer heat, according to Jiupai News. Private business owners are also hit hard as power supplies are rationed among communities and shopping malls. Business activities and supply chains are being hit in various ways. "The price of commodities such as silicon metal has risen due to the power restrictions, and there are growing concerns about a shortage of automobile parts in Shanghai for companies including the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation and Tesla," reports The Guardian.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A critical system aboard the probe was sending garbled data about its status. Engineers have fixed the issue but are still seeking the root cause. NASA reports: Engineers have repaired an issue affecting data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft. Earlier this year, the probe's attitude articulation and control system (AACS), which keeps Voyager 1's antenna pointed at Earth, began sending garbled information about its health and activities to mission controllers, despite operating normally. The rest of the probe also appeared healthy as it continued to gather and return science data. The team has since located the source of the garbled information: The AACS had started sending the telemetry data through an onboard computer known to have stopped working years ago, and the computer corrupted the information. Suzanne Dodd, Voyager's project manager, said that when they suspected this was the issue, they opted to try a low-risk solution: commanding the AACS to resume sending the data to the right computer. Engineers don't yet know why the AACS started routing telemetry data to the incorrect computer, but it likely received a faulty command generated by another onboard computer. If that's the case, it would indicate there is an issue somewhere else on the spacecraft. The team will continue to search for that underlying issue, but they don't think it is a threat to the long-term health of Voyager 1.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Germany's three-month experiment with 9-euro tickets for a month's unlimited travel on regional train networks, trams and buses saved about 1.8 million tons of CO2 emissions, it has been claimed. Since its introduction on June 1 to cut fuel consumption and relieve a cost of living crisis, about 52 million tickets have been sold, a fifth of these to people who did not ordinarily use public transport. The scheme is due to end on Wednesday. The Association of German Transport Companies (VDV), which carried out the research, said the number of people who switched from cars to public transport as a result of the 9-euro ticket was behind the saving in emissions. "The popularity of the 9-euro tickets had been unabated and the positive effect on it in tackling climate change is verifiable," the VDV said. It said the emissions saved were equivalent to the powering of 350,000 homes, and a similar drop would be seen over the period of a year if Germany introduced a speed limit on its motorways. A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 tons of carbon a year. The scheme is also believed to have helped keep inflation, currently at about 8%, slightly lower than it otherwise would have been. Additionally, the scheme "cut through swathes of complication ranging from myriad transport zones to ticket categories that differ greatly from region to region," reports The Guardian. "Just over 37% of people who bought the ticket used it to get to work, 50% used it for everyday journeys such as to go shopping or visit the doctor, 40% used it to visit people, and 33% used it for day trips." "The government and regional administrations are under huge pressure to continue the ticket in some form. The expectation is that any replacement would be priced at least six times higher, but surveys show enthusiasm for such a scheme is high."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix has found an executive to lead its plan for an ad-supported tier: Snap's chief business officer and top ad exec, Jeremi Gorman. The Verge reports: Gorman on Tuesday told colleagues at Snap that she was leaving to join Netflix along with Peter Naylor, Snap's vice president of ad sales for the Americas, according to two people familiar with the matter. Russ Caditz-Peck, a Snap spokesperson, confirmed the departures. Both Gorman and Naylor are leaving Snap amid a restructuring of its ads team and layoffs hitting the social media firm this week. Snap plans to cut roughly 20 percent of its workforce starting Wednesday, The Verge earlier reported. Kumiko Hidaka, a Netflix spokesperson, confirmed that Gorman will be the company's President of Worldwide Advertising and that she'll report to COO Greg Peters. Naylor will lead Netflix's ad sales organization and report to Gorman. AdAge first reported on the hires. "Jeremi's deep experience in running ad businesses and Peter's background in leading ad sales teams together will be key as we expand membership options for consumers through a new ad-supported offering," Peters said in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some of the most acclaimed films in animation history are finally available to rent online. GKIDS, the animation specialist distributer, has released the catalog of acclaimed Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli starting Tuesday. From a report: 22 films from the studio -- including Oscar winner "Spirited Away" and nominees such as "Howl's Moving Castle" and "When Marnie Was There" -- will be made available to rent on all major digital platforms, including Apple TV, Amazon VOD, Vudu, Google Play and Microsoft. The films will be be priced at $4.99 per title, and all will be available in HD, with most being offered in the original Japanese language as well as English dubs. The news marks the first time that Ghibli's films have been made available via digital rental. The catalogue has been one of the pillars of GKIDS' business since the distributer acquired the North American film distribution rights to the studio's films in 2011, followed by the home media rights in 2017 -- previously, the majority of Studio Ghibli films were distributed via the Walt Disney Company. Since 2017, GKIDS has partnered with Fathom Events to host a series of limited run screenings of the studio's films throughout the year. The catalog was made available for digital purchase in 2019, and GKIDS has an exclusive deal to stream the films in the United States on HBO Max, where they have been included since 2020.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting September 16, Portal 2 will be the last Xbox 360 game made available for free to Xbox Live subscribers via the Games for Gold program. Ars Technica reports: Microsoft told subscribers in July that its monthly Games with Gold offerings "will no longer include Xbox 360 titles" starting on October 1 because "we have reached the limit of our ability to bring Xbox 360 games to the catalogue." The Games with Gold program will continue to offer free monthly Xbox One games, though, as it has since 2015. [...] Interestingly, September's Games with Gold offerings also include Thrillville, an original Xbox title that was made compatible with more modern Xbox hardware in November 2021. This is just the 19th original Xbox game offered via the Games with Gold program, and it's the first since Conker: Live and Reloaded was added in July 2021.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Google in November will prohibit Android VPN apps in its Play store from interfering with or blocking advertising, a change that may pose problems for some privacy applications. The updated Google Play policy, announced last month, will take effect on November 1. It states that only apps using the Android VPNService base class, and that function primarily as VPNs, can open a secure device-level tunnel to a remote service. Such VPNs, however, cannot "manipulate ads that can impact apps monetization." The rules appear to be intended to deter data-grabbing VPN services, such as Facebook's discontinued Onavo, and to prevent ad fraud. The T&Cs spell out that developers must declare the use of VPNservice in their apps' Google Play listing, must encrypt data from the device to the VPN endpoint, and must comply with Developer Program Policies, particularly those related to ad fraud, permissions, and malware. Blokada, a Sweden-based maker of an ad-blocking VPN app, worries this rule will hinder at least the previous iteration of its software, v5, and other privacy-oriented software. "Google claims to be cracking down on apps that are using the VPN service to track user data or rerouting user traffic to earn money through ads," Reda Labdaoui, marketing and sales manager at Blokada, wrote last week in a a forum post. "However, these policy changes also apply to apps that use the service to filter traffic locally on the device." Labdaoui suggests Blokada v6, which launched in June, should not be affected because it does filtering in the cloud without violating Google's device policies. But other apps may not be so fortunate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Derivatives-focused decentralized finance (DeFi) platform OptiFi accidentally closed its mainnet platform in a programming blunder, locking away $661,000 in USDC. CoinDesk reports: The Solana blockchain-powered protocol made the error when it tried to update its program code. Instead of a standard update, OptiFi accidentally used the "solana program close" command, resulting in the permanent closure of the platform on the mainnet, according to a blog post. The funds are irretrievable, although OptiFi said that it will return all users' deposits and settle positions manually on Friday. The estimated process time will be two weeks. [...] In a tweet, OptiFi said that 95% of total value locked is from one of its team members, meaning that customer asset may equate to only $33,000.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SmartDry, a small sensor that could be mounted inside a dryer to tell you when your clothes were dry, is losing access to the servers necessary for it to continue working. "In other words, SmartDry will become a tiny brick inside your dryer unless you're willing to procure a little ESP32 development board, load some code onto it, plug it in near your dryer, and set up your own alerts in your Home Assistant server," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The problem is that SmartDry alerted you to dry clothing by connecting to your home's Wi-Fi; the device sent a message to parent company Connected Life's servers and then relayed that message to your smartphone. But Connected Life Labs is closing, discontinuing SmartDry, and shutting down its servers on September 30. After that, "cloud services will cease operations and the product apps will no longer be supported." Smart home devices bricked by cloud closures aren't new, but SmartDry was a particularly useful, low-key device made by a firm that didn't seem to be expanding too fast. Connected Life was originally a three-person team prototyping units in New Jersey, and the device remained made in the US. A co-founder told Reviewed in late 2021 that a version for the washing machine was being tested and was expected to see release in summer 2022.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Tuesday at the age of 91. Reuters reports: "Mikhail Gorbachev passed away tonight after a serious and protracted disease," Interfax news agency cited Russia's Central Clinical Hospital as saying in a statement. Gorbachev will be buried in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999, said Tass news agency, citing the foundation that the former Soviet leader set up once he left office. Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War Two and bring about the reunification of Germany. [...] When pro-democracy protests swept across the Soviet bloc nations of communist Eastern Europe in 1989, he refrained from using force -- unlike previous Kremlin leaders who had sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. But the protests fueled aspirations for autonomy in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated over the next two years in chaotic fashion. Gorbachev struggled in vain to prevent that collapse. "The era of Gorbachev is the era of perestroika, the era of hope, the era of our entry into a missile-free world ... but there was one miscalculation: we did not know our country well," said Vladimir Shevchenko, who headed Gorbachev's protocol office when he was Soviet leader. "Our union fell apart, that was a tragedy and his tragedy," RIA news agency cited him as saying.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: More people in the U.S. are now smoking marijuana than cigarettes, according to a Gallup poll. Cigarette use has been trending downward during the past decades, with only 11% of Americans saying they smoke them in a poll conducted July 5 to 26, compared to 45% in the mid-1950s. Sixteen percent of Americans say they smoke marijuana, with 48% saying they have tried it at some point in their lives. In 1969, only 4% of Americans said they smoked marijuana. Attitudes around both substances have also shifted dramatically. In 2019, 83% of Americans said they thought cigarettes were "very harmful" to smokers, while 14% said they are "somewhat harmful." Nine out of 10 adults said in 2013 that smoking causes cancer, while 91% of smokers surveyed in 2015 said they wish they never started. Meanwhile, 53% of people said in a July poll they think marijuana has positive effects on those who use it. "Still, alcohol is the most popular substance, and has remained consistent for a while," notes NPR. "Sixty-seven percent of Americans in the most recent poll said they are drinkers, compared to 63% in 1939. About a third totally abstain from alcohol." Worth pointing out: This poll is especially notable considering marijuana is still a federally illegal drug in the United States. As of April 2021, only seventeen states and the District of Columbia have legalized small amounts of marijuana for adult recreational use. Overall, 43% of U.S. adults live in a jurisdiction that has legalized the recreational use of the drug at the local level.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Snap is planning to lay off approximately 20 percent of its more than 6,400 employees, The Verge reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From a report: The layoffs, which Snap has been planning for the past several weeks, will begin on Wednesday and hit some departments harder than others, the people said. For example, the team working on ways for developers to build mini apps and games inside Snapchat will be severely impacted. Zenly, the social mapping app Snap bought in 2017 and has since run separately, will also see deep cuts. Another team that will see layoffs is Snap's hardware division, which is responsible for Spectacles and the Pixy camera drone that was recently canceled after being on sale for just a few months.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike Masnick, reporting for TechDirt: Intel recently announced that it was handing 5,000 patents off to IPValue, which (as it does in these kinds of deals) spun up a shell corporation called Tahoe Research Limited to go see who it can shake down over these patents. Usually, the way these deals work is that the company, Intel, gets some relatively modest amount of cash upfront, but also a piece of anything the troll can squeeze out of others. Considering these are basically zero value patents for Intel, the temptation must be great to at least get something out of them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just over two years after its launch, Facebook is shutting down the Facebook Gaming app on October 28, 2022. Now, when you open the app, you'll see a banner stating that the app will no longer be available on iOS and Android after that date. The app also won't be available on the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. From a report: "Despite this news, our mission to connect players, fans and creators with the games they love hasn't changed, and you'll still be able to find your games, streamers and groups when you visit Gaming in the Facebook app," the notice reads. "We want to extend our heartfelt thanks to all of you for everything that you've done to build a thriving community for gamers and fans since this app first launched." If you've been using the app, you can download your search data before the app is discontinued. The app launched in April 2020 toward the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for users to watch their favorite streamers, play instant games and take part in gaming groups. Facebook experienced some hurdles trying to launch the app, as Apple rejected the app numerous times, citing its rules that prohibit apps with the main purpose of distributing casual games. Apple's rules forced Facebook to remove actual gameplay functionality from the app.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has introduced a new vulnerability rewards program to pay researchers who find security flaws in its open-source software or in the building blocks that its software is built on. It'll pay anywhere from $101 to $31,337 for information about bugs in projects like Angular, GoLang, and Fuchsia or for vulnerabilities in the third-party dependencies that are included in those projects' codebases. From a report: While it's important for Google to fix bugs in its own projects (and in the software that it uses to keep track of changes to its code, which the program also covers), perhaps the most interesting part is the bit about third-party dependencies. Programmers often use code from open-source projects so they don't continuously have to reinvent the same wheel. But since developers often directly import that code, as well as any updates to it, that introduces the possibility of supply chain attacks. That's when hackers don't target the code directly controlled by Google itself but go after these third-party dependencies instead. As SolarWinds showed, this type of attack isn't limited to open-source projects. But in the past few years, we've seen several stories where big companies have had their security put at risk thanks to dependencies. There are ways to mitigate this sort of attack vector -- Google itself has begun vetting and distributing a subset of popular open-source programs, but it's almost impossible to check over all the code a project uses. Incentivizing the community to check through dependencies and first-party code helps Google cast a wider net.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ArsTechnica reports: In mid-August, the Federal Communications Commission succeeded in its long-held plan to reallocate a portion of the spectrum from car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communication (known as V2X) to Wi-Fi instead. However, the FCC didn't reassign that entire region of bandwidth -- 30 MHz remains set aside for "intelligent transportation systems." And the FCC should grant automakers a waiver to allow them to start deploying cellular-based V2X (C-V2X) safety systems, said the National Transportation Safety Board in a letter it sent the FCC on Monday. The saga of V2X is a long-running one. The FCC originally saved the spectrum around 5.9 GHz for use with V2X in 1999, but despite keen interest from some automakers and industry groups like the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America), the technology still has not been deployed. Seeing that failure, the FCC decided in 2020 to reallocate some of the bandwidth to Wi-Fi, leaving the frequencies between 5.895 and 5.925 GHz for V2X. ITS America and AASHTO sued the FCC to prevent this, but the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the FCC in August, allowing the commission to go through with its plan. This has dismayed the NTSB, which has written to the FCC as part of the commission's public comment period as it considers a waiver requested by automakers to deploy C-V2X technology. Conceptually, C-V2X works the same as the older V2X -- direct vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-infrastructure communication but using cellular radio protocols instead of the dedicated short-range radio communication protocol. The FCC should grant this waiver, said the NTSB, which notes in its letter that it has recommended that the nation adopt wireless-based collision-avoidance technology since 1995. Connected vehicle technology would reduce the ever-escalating carnage on US roads, said the NTSB, and the agency also urged the FCC to make sure that Wi-Fi devices don't encroach on the remaining 30 MHz of intelligent transportation system frequencies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A massive Chinese database storing millions of faces and vehicle license plates was left exposed on the internet for months before it quietly disappeared in August. From a report: While its contents might seem unremarkable for China, where facial recognition is routine and state surveillance is ubiquitous, the sheer size of the exposed database is staggering. At its peak the database held over 800 million records, representing one of the biggest known data security lapses of the year by scale, second to a massive data leak of 1 billion records from a Shanghai police database in June. In both cases, the data was likely exposed inadvertently and as a result of human error. The exposed data belongs to a tech company called Xinai Electronics based in Hangzhou on China's east coast. The company builds systems for controlling access for people and vehicles to workplaces, schools, construction sites, and parking garages across China. Its website touts its use of facial recognition for a range of purposes beyond building access, including personnel management, like payroll, monitoring employee attendance and performance, while its cloud-based vehicle license plate recognition system allows drivers to pay for parking in unattended garages that are managed by staff remotely. It's through a vast network of cameras that Xinai has amassed millions of face prints and license plates, which its website claims the data is "securely stored" on its servers. But it wasn't. Security researcher Anurag Sen found the company's exposed database on an Alibaba-hosted server in China and asked for TechCrunch's help in reporting the security lapse to Xinai. Sen said the database contained an alarming amount of information that was rapidly growing by the day, and included hundreds of millions of records and full web addresses of image files hosted on several domains owned by Xinai.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: As the mechanical keyboard hobby exploded during the early days of the pandemic, a lot of companies raced to launch new products. Drop, however, which maybe did more than anybody to popularize custom mechanical keyboards by making them and lots of accessories available to a larger audience, mostly added third-party keyboards to its lineup during this time. Now, however, it is launching the Sense75, its first brand-new in-house keyboard in two years. As the name implies, this is a 75% keyboard, meaning you get the full set of function and arrow keys, as well as three buttons on the right side (by default, these are delete, page up and page down) and, as has become standard these days, a knob. They're are RGB LEDs, of course, including underside diffusers that will create what Drop calls a "visually appealing halo' and, of course, hot-swap sockets so you can easily change out your switches." The keyboard will support customization through QMK and VIA to adapt it to your typing needs. The pre-built version will set you back $349 for the black edition and $399 for the white one, while the barebones version will cost $249 in black and $299 in white.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Among the Inflation Reduction Act's little-noticed yet potentially game-changing provisions: a big incentive for "smart glass," which can make buildings significantly more energy efficient. From a report: Buildings account for 27% of annual global carbon dioxide emissions, by one estimate. While eco-friendly buildings aren't as sexy or exciting as electric cars, anything that makes them greener is a big win for hitting climate goals. The IRA, which President Biden signed into law earlier this month, includes a 30% smart glass tax credit. While it didn't get much mainstream attention, that credit stands to increase adoption by reducing the effective cost of retrofitting old buildings or using smart glass in new construction. Smart glass, also called "dynamic glass" or "electrochromic glass," differs from regular glass in that its tint level can be adjusted on demand -- think Transitions glasses, but for buildings. Smart glass contains thin layers of metal oxide. When small amounts of electricity are applied to those layers, ions move between them, changing the glass' tint level. When the summer sun is hitting the side of a building, the tint level can be increased, allowing visible light to pass but blocking some solar radiation -- thereby reducing incoming heat. Conversely, the tint can be decreased in colder seasons, allowing more natural heat to pass through.Smart glass can help reduce a building's heating or cooling energy needs by about 20%, per a U.S. Department of Energy estimate. Plus, if lots of buildings in a single city adopt smart glass, it can reduce the peak load on the local electric grid during times of heavy use.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google hasn't yet approved Truth Social's Android app for distribution via its Play Store because of insufficient content moderation, a Google spokesperson tells Axios. From the report: Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes last week claimed the decision about when the app would be available on Android "is up to Google," but Google insists that the ball is in Truth Social's court. What Nunes is saying: "I don't know what's taking them so long." What Google is saying: âoeOn Aug. 19, we notified Truth Social of several violations of standard policies in their current app submission and reiterated that having effective systems for moderating user-generated content is a condition of our terms of service for any app to go live on Google Play." "Last week Truth Social wrote back acknowledging our feedback and saying that they are working on addressing these issues." A source says that Google's concerns relate to content such as physical threats and incitements to violence.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The French government has collected nearly $10 million in additional taxes after using machine learning to spot undeclared swimming pools in aerial photos. In France, housing taxes are calculated based on a property's rental value, so homeowners who don't declare swimming pools are potentially avoiding hundreds of euros in additional payments. From a report: The project to spot the undeclared pools began last October, with IT firm Capgemini working with Google to analyze publicly available aerial photos taken by France's National Institute of Geographic and Forest Information. Software was developed to identify pools, with this information then cross-referenced with national tax and property registries. The project is somewhat limited in scope, and has so far analyzed photos covering only nine of France's 96 metropolitan departments. But even in these areas, officials discovered 20,356 undeclared pools, according to an announcement this week from France's tax office, the General Directorate of Public Finance (DGFiP), first reported by Le Parisien.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Social media and game platforms often use recommendation algorithms, find-a-friend tools, smartphone notices and other enticements to keep people glued online. But the same techniques may pose risks to scores of children who have flocked to online services that were not specifically designed for them. Now California lawmakers have passed the first statute in the nation requiring apps and sites to install guardrails for users under 18. From a report: The new rules would compel many online services to curb the risks that certain popular features -- like allowing strangers to message one another -- may pose to child users. The bill, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, could herald a shift in the way lawmakers regulate the tech industry. Rather than wade into heated political battles over online content, the legislation takes a practical, product-safety approach. It aims to hold online services to the same kinds of basic safety standards as the automobile industry -- essentially requiring apps and sites to install the digital equivalent of seatbelts and airbags for younger users. "The digital ecosystem is not safe by default for children," said Buffy Wicks, a Democrat in the State Assembly who co-sponsored the bill with a Republican colleague, Jordan Cunningham. "We think the Kids' Code, as we call it, would make tech safer for children by essentially requiring these companies to better protect them."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: Federal Reserve Vice-chair Lael Brainard gave a timeline for the launch of FedNow, the platform it has been working on to enable nearly instant payment settlement within the U.S. FedNow should launch in 2023 between May and July. This is the most specific the Fed has been yet about when the service will go live. "The payment system is a critical part of America's infrastructure that touches everyone," Brainard said in a speech she gave today via webcast to the FedNow early adopters workshop in Rosemont, Illinois. "We have been working hard to deliver on time, but ultimately the number of American businesses and households that are able to access instant payments will depend on financial services providers making the necessary investments to upgrade our payments infrastructure," Brainard said. FedNow is a platform the Fed will provide for banks to build on top of and create payment features in existing or new products. Products enabled by FedNow will have nearly instant settlement around the clock. Ever needed a cashiers check after all the bank branches had closed? FedNow could be an answer for that kind of situation. Depending on how its partners implement FedNow, it could be used consumer-to-business, business-to-business or consumer-to-consumer. [...] Consumers probably don't realize that every time they swipe a debit card, it costs the merchant an average of $0.23, according to Merchant Maverick. Those costs stack up and ultimately get passed on in sticker prices. The FedNow platform, meanwhile, will cost a fifth of that to make a transaction. "FedNow is not a blockchain-based product and it's not a central bank digital currency (CBDC). It still very much relies on third parties, to operate, for example," notes Axios. "But -- if it catches on -- it would make money as we know it more competitive with cryptocurrencies, by lowering the cost to transact and providing low risk settlement around the clock."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tesla has unveiled a new virtual power plant using Powerwalls home battery pack, and this time, it's on an island, Miyako-jima, in Japan. Electrek reports: A virtual power plant (VPP) consists of distributed energy storage systems, like Tesla Powerwalls, used in concert to provide grid services and avoid the use of polluting and expensive peaker power plants. Tesla launched one in California earlier this year, and it had its first emergency event earlier this month with great results. Now the company is trying to deploy a virtual power plant in Texas, and of course, it also had one in operation for years in Australia that is still expanding. But now we have learned that Tesla also quietly built a new virtual power plant in Japan, and it has now decided to unveil it. The project is called "Miyakojima VPP" because it is located on the island of Miyako-jima, the most populous island in the Okinawa Prefecture. Tesla announced that it started to install Powerwalls in partnership with the local electric utility in 2021, and it now has over 300 Powerwalls on the island as part of the VPP. [...] Tesla explains that VPP is helping the island take better advantage of its renewable energy, but it is also proving more grid resilience, especially in the case of a natural disaster. The Miyakojima VPP is still growing, and Tesla expects that it will include 400 Powerwalls by the end of this year and 600 Powerwalls by the end of 2023. In 2024, Tesla expects to start installing Powerwalls for similar projects throughout the Okinawa Prefecture. "[W]hen power supply and demand are tight on Miyako Island, electricity generated by photovoltaic power generation is stored in Powerwall before the tight time period and discharged from Powerwall to the home during the tight time period," said Tesla in a statement translated to Japanese. "It contributes not only to the households where the is installed, but also to the stabilization of Miyako Island's grid power supply, and stabilizes the power supply on the island. In addition, in the event of a power outage due to a typhoon, etc., power will be supplied from the Powerwall to the installed home, making it possible to prevent power outages in the home."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A tribe member who has been called the "loneliest man in the world" has died, officials say. The man, whose name was not known, had lived in total isolation for the past 26 years. The BBC reports: He was known as Man of the Hole because he dug deep holes, some of which he used to trap animals while others appear to be hiding spaces. His body was found on August 23 in a hammock outside his straw hut. There were no signs of violence. He is thought to have died of natural causes at an estimated age of 60. The man was the last of an indigenous group living in the Tanaru indigenous area in the state of Rondonia, which borders Bolivia. The majority of his tribe are believed to have been killed as early as the 1970s by ranchers wanting to expand their land. In 1995, six of the remaining members of his tribe were killed in an attack by illegal miners, making him the sole survivor. Brazil's Indigenous Affairs Agency (Funai) only became aware of his survival in 1996, and had been monitoring the area ever since for his own safety. It was during a routine patrols that Funai agent Altair Jose Algayer found the man's body covered in macaw feathers in a hammock outside one of his straw huts. Indigenous expert Marcelo dos Santos told local media that he thought the man had placed the feathers on himself, knowing that he was about to die. "As he had avoided any contact with outsiders, it is not known what language the man spoke or which ethnic group he may have belonged to," adds the report. "A post-mortem will be carried out to try to determine whether he had contracted a disease."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Zombie ice from the massive Greenland ice sheet will eventually raise global sea level by at least 10 inches (27 centimeters) on its own, according to a study released Monday. Zombie or doomed ice is ice that is still attached to thicker areas of ice, but is no longer getting fed by those larger glaciers. That's because the parent glaciers are getting less replenishing snow. Meanwhile the doomed ice is melting from climate change, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. "It's dead ice. It's just going to melt and disappear from the ice sheet," Colgan said in an interview. "This ice has been consigned to the ocean, regardless of what climate (emissions) scenario we take now." Study lead author Jason Box, a glaciologist at the Greenland survey, said it is "more like one foot in the grave." The unavoidable ten inches in the study is more than twice as much sea level rise as scientists had previously expected from the melting of Greenland's ice sheet. The study in the journal Nature Climate Change said it could reach as much as 30 inches (78 centimeters). By contrast, last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report projected a range of 2 to 5 inches (6 to 13 centimeters) for likely sea level rise from Greenland ice melt by the year 2100. What scientists did for the study was look at the ice in balance. In perfect equilibrium, snowfall in the mountains in Greenland flows down and recharges and thickens the sides of glaciers, balancing out what's melting on the edges. But in the last few decades there's less replenishment and more melting, creating imbalance. Study authors looked at the ratio of what's being added to what's being lost and calculated that 3.3% of Greenland's total ice volume will melt no matter what happens with the world cutting carbon pollution, Colgan said. One of the study authors said that more than 120 trillion tons (110 trillion metric tons) of ice is already doomed to melt from the warming ice sheet's inability to replenish its edges. When that ice melts into water, if it were concentrated only over the United States, it would be 37 feet (11 meters) deep.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AMD unveiled its 5nm Ryzen 7000 lineup today, outlining the details of four new models that span from the 16-core $699 Ryzen 9 7950X flagship, which AMD claims is the fastest CPU in the world, to the six-core $299 Ryzen 5 7600X, the lowest bar of entry to the first family of Zen 4 processors. Tom's Hardware reports: Ryzen 7000 marks the first 5nm x86 chips for desktop PCs, but AMD's newest chips don't come with higher core counts than the previous-gen models. However, frequencies stretch up to 5.7 GHz - an impressive 800 MHz improvement over the prior generation -- paired with an up to 13% improvement in IPC from the new Zen 4 microarchitecture. That results in a 29% improvement in single-threaded performance over the prior-gen chips. That higher performance also extends out to threaded workloads, with AMD claiming up to 45% more performance in some threaded workloads. AMD says these new chips power huge generational gains over the prior-gen Ryzen 5000 models, with 29% faster gaming and 44% more performance in productivity apps. Going head-to-head with Intel's chips, AMD claims the high-end 7950X is 11% faster overall in gaming than Intel's fastest chip, the 12900K, and that even the low-end Ryzen 5 7600X beats the 12900K by 5% in gaming. It's noteworthy that those claims come with a few caveats [...]. The Ryzen 7000 processors come to market on September 27, and they'll be joined by new DDR5 memory products that support new EXPO overclocking profiles. AMD's partners will also offer a robust lineup of motherboards - the chips will snap into new Socket AM5 motherboards that AMD says it will support until 2025+. These motherboards support DDR5 memory and the PCIe 5.0 interface, bringing the Ryzen family up to the latest connectivity standards. The X670 Extreme and standard X670 chipsets arrive first in September, while the more value-oriented B650 options will come to market in October. That includes the newly announced B650E chipset that brings full PCIe 5.0 connectivity to budget motherboards, while the B650 chipset slots in as a lower-tier option. The Ryzen 7000 lineup also brings integrated RDNA 2 graphics to all of the processors in the stack, a first for the Ryzen family.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Twitter has launched a test version of Twitter Spaces today that includes podcasts, "letting you listen to full shows through curated playlists based on your interests," reports The Verge. From the report: The redesigned Spaces tab opens with Stations, topic-based playlists combining podcast episodes pulled from RSS with Twitter's social audio events and recordings. It functions like a Pandora station but for spoken word and is pretty different from the a la carte listening podcast consumers are used to on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Live and upcoming spaces are still in the tab, further down the page. The test will roll out to a random group of users across the world, initially only in English. The more users listen, the more tailored the audio Stations will become. But Twitter isn't starting from square one -- the company is relying on what it already knows about its users' interests to curate the playlists. It'll draw from the interests of people they follow, as well. "What we're really trying to capture here is as if it's like another user recommending you something," Twitter senior product manager Evan Jones, who focuses on audio, told Hot Pod. Podcast discovery is notoriously difficult, limited either to top 100 charts, hand-picked selections on apps, or -- more often than not -- word of mouth. No platform has managed to crack it, yet. It's easy to imagine the promotional possibilities around being able to share and listen to podcasts in the same app, but it's not quite there yet. The test does not yet have a clipping capability, and listening can only happen in the Spaces tab, not on the timeline. That being said, Spaces has a clipping feature that could be applied to podcasts at some point.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What was once a red-hot market fueled by FOMO during the crypto bull market of 2021 is now just a trickle, with trading volume on the most popular NFT marketplace, OpenSea, down 99% in just under four months. Fortune reports: On May 1, OpenSea processed a record $2.7 billion in NFT transactions, but on Sunday the marketplace recorded just $9.34 million worth, according to data compiled by DappRadar. The company recorded 24,020 users on Sunday, about a third fewer than when it hit its record transaction number in May. [...] As trading volumes and crypto prices have fallen during a downturn that's been dubbed "crypto winter," the floor prices for the most popular NFT collections, which indicate the lowest price that an NFT in the collection is selling for, have also plummeted. The floor price of the most popular NFT collection, Bored Ape Yacht Club, fell 53% to 72.4 Ether (about $110,000) as of Monday, from a high of 153.7 Ether on April 30, according to CoinGecko. Another popular NFT collection, CryptoPunks, is down 19% from its July peak. Yes, but: the report notes that "only 16% of U.S. adults had invested in crypto, nearly the same number who said they had invested last September." Further reading: NFT Marketplace OpenSea Lays Off 20% of Its StaffRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: North American lithium-ion battery production is set to soar over the next decade. The Biden administration and Congress have both put policies in place to incentivize domestic manufacturing over imports, and startups, battery companies, and automakers are responding. Honda and LG Energy Solutions are the most recent to make moves; on Monday morning, the companies announced that they are forming a $4.4 billion joint venture to build a US battery factory. "Our joint venture with Honda, which has significant brand reputation, is yet another milestone in our mid- to long-term strategy of promoting electrification in the fast-growing North American market," said Youngsoo Kwon, CEO of LG Energy Solution. "Since our ultimate goal is to earn our valued customers' trust and respect, we aspire to position ourselves as a leading battery innovator, working with Honda in achieving its core initiatives for electrification, as well as providing sustainable energy solutions to discerning end consumers." 2025 is when Honda and LG are targeting mass production at this newest joint venture. It's too soon for them to have finalized a site for this factory, but the companies say they plan to begin construction early next year. The battery factory will make pouch cells, with an annual capacity of 40 GWh. "Honda is working toward our target to realize carbon neutrality for all products and corporate activities the company is involved in by 2050," said Toshihiro Mibe, president and CEO of Honda Motor Company. "Aligned with our longstanding commitment to build products close to the customer, Honda is committed to the local procurement of EV batteries which is a critical component of EVs. This initiative in the US with LGES, the leading global battery manufacturer, will be part of such a Honda approach."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"In a speech today that is likely making some EV proponents' heads spin and implode, Musk made the argument that we need more oil and gas as we transition to alternative energy solutions," writes Slashdot reader theshowmecanuck. "He said this at the ONS Energy Conference being held in Norway this week." Bloomberg reports: The world needs more oil and gas now to deal with an energy shortage while pushing to transition to renewable supplies, Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said. "At this time, we actually need more oil and gas, not less," Musk said Monday during an energy conference in Norway, adding that he's not someone to "demonize" the fossil fuels. At the same time, "we must have a clear path to a sustainable energy future." Musk said the transition to a sustainable economy should be "as fast as possible," adding that ocean wind has "massive untapped potential" and that he's also a proponent of nuclear energy. "If you have a well-designed nuclear plant, you should not shut it down -- especially right now," Musk said. The EV maker's aim "has always been to accelerate sustainability," Musk said. "That's still our primary goal by far." "Realistically, I think we need to use oil and gas in the short term, because otherwise civilization will crumble," Musk added. "One of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced is the transition to sustainable energy and to a sustainable economy. That will take some decades to complete." Further reading: Germany To Keep Last Three Nuclear-Power Plants Running In Policy U-TurnRead more of this story at Slashdot.

"2022 is a wild, wonderful world where if you've dreamt it, you can have it," writes Slashdot reader segaboy81. "Such is the case with this new mod that allows you to pair Xbox controllers (among others) with your GameCube." Neowin reports: Laser Bear Industries, who offers other key mods for the Nintendo GameCube, is currently taking pre-orders for the GameCube Blue Retro Internal Adapter, a controller input board replacement that brings Bluetooth capability to the Nintendo GameCube. These new Bluetooth capabilities offer a wide range of compatibility with different Bluetooth input devices. Currently, the firmware is compatible with all Bluetooth Xbox One controllers. Unsurprisingly, it does not support the early Wi-Fi direct Xbox One controllers from 2013 and 2014. In addition to Xbox controllers, it supports a host of other contemporary input devices, including PlayStation and Nintendo controllers, and modern Bluetooth keyboards. So, if you're desperate to join the undead community of Phantasy Star Online players over your Nintendo Broadband Adapter and want to use your cheap Bluetooth mechanical keyboard with Gateron switches, you will be able to soon. The GameCube Blue Retro Internal Adapter (a mouthful, really) also adds a few interesting creature comforts, such as remote power down and remote reset.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Germany has ordered overnight shutdowns for non-essential digital signage, to save its reserves of natural gas for more important purposes. Like many European nations, Germany relies on natural gas imported from Russia. And thanks to Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, that gas is currently in short supply. The European Union has therefore implemented an energy saving plan. One of Germany's tactics is requiring digital signage in shop windows and other non-essential locations to be turned off between 10:00PM and 6:00AM. Germany will also stop external lighting of some public buildings and implement many other power-saving measures. The plan [PDF] requiring the switch-off was published on August 12, with a deadline of September 1. But as German outlet Invidis reports, the regulation was unhelpfully vague. For starters an updated ordinance [PDF] appears to have made the simple mistake of substituting 06:00 and 16:00 -- meaning digital signage could only run from 4PM to 10PM. Invidis also pointed out that digital signage at bus stops and train stations can do double duty displaying ads and timetable information. Exceptions for such dual-purpose signs have been arranged. Those errors and ambiguities have reportedly left those who run digital signs unsure of what they needed to do and worried they might miss the deadline. Further complicating matters is a requirement to turn off the screens altogether rather than leaving the displays blank. Digital signage is seldom switched off, and retail staff will have to learn how to do that. Many digital signs also include a computer -- some are Android machines, others use compute sticks, the Intel NUC and even the Raspberry Pi. Admins will therefore need to cope with extra reboots. And then there's the matter of content updates, which are often scheduled overnight. All of which adds up to a stressful moment for admins of digital signage, and not much time to get things right.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Responding to a three-year-old complaint, Microsoft today said that it would fix its unfair licensing terms in the EU. From a report: "We recognize the importance of a competitive environment in the European cloud provider market, in which smaller competitors can thrive," a new post to the Microsoft Corporate Blogs notes. "It is therefore critical for us to remain mindful of our responsibilities as a major technology company." In 2019, several Microsoft customers in the EU complained that the software giant was making it prohibitively expensive to run Windows and Office workloads on non-Azure cloud platforms like AWS and Google Cloud, triggering inquiries from EU antitrust regulators. Microsoft immediately responded that the complaints were "valid," but it did nothing to address them in any material way. In May 2022, Microsoft finally came up with a response, announcing that it would make it less expensive for customers to run Microsoft software like Windows, Windows Server, Office, and SQL Server on non-Microsoft cloud platforms in the EU. But it wasn't until today that the software giant announced the details and timing of this plan. Now, Microsoft says that it will implement "major revisions and upgrades to its outsourcing and hosting terms" that go into effect on October 1, 2022. It will be easier and more cost-effective for customers to use Microsoft software on competing cloud platforms, it says, and for its partners to build hosted desktop and server solutions that meet their customers' needs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Partha Ranganathan came to realize about seven years ago that Moore's law was dead. No longer could the Google engineering VP expect chip performance to double roughly every 18 months without major cost increases, and that was a problem considering he helped Google construct its infrastructure spending budget each year. Faced with the prospect of getting a chip twice as fast every four years, Ranganathan knew they needed to mix things up. Ranganathan and other Google engineers looked at the overall picture and realized transcoding (for YouTube) was consuming a large fraction of compute cycles in its data centers. The off-the-shelf chips Google was using to run YouTube weren't all that good at specialized tasks like transcoding. YouTube's infrastructure uses transcoding to compress video down to the smallest possible size for your device, while presenting it at the best possible quality. What they needed was an application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC -- a chip designed to do a very specific task as effectively and efficiently as possible. Bitcoin miners, for example, use ASIC hardware and are designed for that sole purpose. "The thing that we really want to be able to do is take all of the videos that get uploaded to YouTube and transcode them into every format possible and get the best possible experience," said Scott Silver, VP of engineering at YouTube. It didn't take long to sell upper management on the idea of ASICs. After a 10-minute meeting with YouTube chief Susan Wojcicki, the company's first video chip project was approved. Google started deploying its Argos Video Coding Units (VCUs) in 2018, but didn't publicly announce the project until 2021. At the time, Google said the Argos VCUs delivered a performance boost of anywhere between 20 to 33 times compared to traditional server hardware running well-tuned transcoding software. Google has since flipped the switch on thousands of second-gen Argos chips in servers around the world, and at least two follow-ups are already in the pipeline.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The effort to prevent electricity blackouts this winter is expected to delay the closure of part of a coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire, with the plant's German owner nearing agreement with the UK authorities. From a report: In the third in a series of deals to have more coal power on standby if needed, National Grid's electricity system operator (NGESO) is working towards finalising an agreement with Uniper to keep all of the operations at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar site open through the winter. In May, the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, wrote to NGESO asking executives to work with Uniper and fellow owners of coal-power stations Drax and EDF to slow their closure plans after Russia's invasion of Ukraine shook the energy markets. Uniper had been due to decommission one of its 500-megawatt units at the Nottinghamshire plant at the end of September, two years before closing the remaining three units at the site. Under the deal, NGESO is expected to pay the company a fee to delay the decommissioning so all three units can be called on if needed. Uniper will also be compensated for costs incurred, including coal purchases, with any additional charges eventually being fed through to consumers' energy bills.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Following a preview in April, Microsoft this morning announced the general availability of virtual machines (VMs) on Azure featuring the Ampere Altra, a processor based on the Arm architecture. From a report: The first Azure VMs powered by Arm chips, Microsoft says that they're accessible in 10 Azure regions today and can be included in Kubernetes clusters managed using Azure Kubernetes Service beginning on September 1. The Azure Arm-based VMs have up to 64 virtual CPU cores, 8 GB of memory per core and 40 Gbps of networking bandwidth as well as SSD local and attachable storage. Microsoft describes them as "engineered to efficiently run scale-out, cloud-native workloads," including open source databases, Java and .NET applications and gaming, web, app and media servers. Preview releases of Windows 11 Pro and Enterprise and Linux OS distributions including Canonical Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux, CentOS and Debian are available on the VMs day one, with support for Alma Linux and Rocky Linux to arrive in the future. Microsoft notes that Java apps in particular can run with few additional code changes, thanks to the company's contributions to the OpenJDK project.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As part of Sony's push into mobile gaming, the company has formed a PlayStation Studios Mobile Division that will operate separately from console game development. According to a press release, the new team will create mobile games with "new and existing PlayStation IP." From a report: Sony's move to form a mobile gaming division aligns with the company's overall goal of extending its IP to PC and mobile games, as well as TV series and movies. Earlier this year, Sony announced that it wants half of its games to be on PC and mobile by 2025, with Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan stating that it could result in a "significant growth in the number of people who play our games." The company's also looking to expand into live service games -- games like Fortnite, Rocket League, or Destiny 2 that are continually updated to keep players interested -- with its $3.6 billion acquisition of Bungie. To help fill out its new mobile division, Sony has also acquired Savage Game Studios, whose co-founders previously worked at Zynga, Insomniac, and Wargaming. It doesn't look like the studio launched any games just yet, but it received $4.4 million in funding for a mobile shooter game last year. The press release expands on this a bit, noting that the studio is currently working on "an unannounced new AAA live service action game," but doesn't offer any additional details on what to expect. Hermen Hulst, the head of PlayStation Studios, said the company's "proud" of its "upcoming releases on PC," which should give gamers without a Playstation console a chance to experience games like Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection and Marvel's Spider-Man. "Our mobile gaming efforts will be similarly additive, providing more ways for more people to engage with our content," he said, "and striving to reach new audiences unfamiliar with PlayStation and our games."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sued Kochava, a large location data provider, for allegedly selling data that the FTC says can track people at reproductive health clinics and places of worship, according to an announcement from the agency. From a report: The news is a dramatic move from the FTC in a post-Roe United States, and signals that the agency will take steps against what it identifies as privacy violations around reproductive health and location data. "Defendant's violations are in connection with acquiring consumers' precise geolocation data and selling the data in a format that allows entities to track the consumers' movements to and from sensitive locations, including, among others, locations associated with medical care, reproductive health, religious worship, mental health temporary shelters, such as shelters for the homeless, domestic violence survivors, or other at risk populations, and addiction recovery," the lawsuit reads.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fans think 2022 has been one of the best years for blockbusters this century. Critics think it's been one of the worst. From a report: When Sony released its film adaptation of the video game "Uncharted" in February, critics were quick to tear it apart. The Wall Street Journal called it "bloodless, heartless, joyless, sexless and, with one exception, charmless." New York Magazine deemed it "curiously empty." MovieFreak.com dismissed it as "a bona fide disaster." And yet, audiences ate it up. The movie, which stars Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, opened to $44.2 million at the domestic box office and went on to gross $401.8 million worldwide. It is one of the 10 highest-grossing movies of the year. "Uncharted" also initiated one of the biggest disputes between critics and fans in modern movie history. Audiences have given higher scores than critics to all 10 of the year's biggest movies. The average audience rating for "Jurassic World Dominion" on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb is a 67. The average critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic is 34. That is a difference of 33 points. "Jurassic World Dominion" is one of three movies (along with "Uncharted" and "The Gray Man") where audiences and critics disagree by more than 30 points. It may seem as though critics typically pan the year's biggest hits. But that is not the case. While audiences do tend to give blockbusters a higher score than critics, the average gap in their ratings is usually around 5 points. There has been at least one year where critics gave the biggest movies higher ratings than audiences. And there have been many years where the difference is negligible. In 2022? It is not so much a gap as a chasm. Audiences have given the top 10 movies an average score more than 19 points higher than critics, by far the biggest difference this century. The only two of the year's 10 biggest movies where audiences and critics are even close are "Top Gun: Maverick" and "The Batman."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Districts in Texas, California and New York are creating full-time remote learning this fall for the first time. From a report: Fourth-graders at the iLearn Virtual School in Dallas began class Thursday morning with an icebreaker. Their teacher Sumala Paidi asked them, "What superpower would you choose for yourself, if you could pick any?" The dozen children in the class responded with wishes for super speed or the ability to fly. One girl chose invisibility, so she could "take a cake, and eat it all myself." It could be a scene from a school classroom anywhere in the U.S. Except these students, unlike nearly every student learning at this juncture of the pandemic, were piping in via Zoom, and Ms. Paidi was teaching them from a remote office, with a camera and laptop. School districts in Texas, New York and California are creating permanent, full-time virtual schools for the first time ever this year, in a nationwide movement that has gained steam since the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 prompted schools to back and forth between in-person and remote learning. A 2021 survey of 291 U.S. school districts by Rand found a surge in the number that offered virtual schools for students after the height of the pandemic. Roughly 26% of the 291 districts were offering remote lessons as a full-time option last year, compared with 3% before the pandemic, according to the Santa Monica, Calif., research organization. Superintendents say virtual schools are a niche product meant to enroll a minority of students for whom remote classes make more sense than going to school. Less than 6% of students chose virtual classes among the districts that had them in 2021, according to Rand. The virtual option might be appropriate for about 4% of students in Dallas, according to a study commissioned by officials there last year. The city's iLearn Academy, which opened Aug. 15 with the start of classes, enrolls about 120 students in grades three through eight. The iLearn Virtual School is a fit for students who might experience social anxiety or whose families might be moving, said principal Monica Morris. Classes of roughly 20 students meet via Zoom at 8:30 a.m. and participate in live and prerecorded lessons until 2:30 p.m. each school day, Ms. Morris said, in a schedule that mirrors that of a typical in-person school.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dell says it has ceased all Russian operations after closing its offices in mid-August, the latest in a growing list of Western firms to exit Russia. From a report: The U.S. computer firm, a vital supplier of servers in Russia, has joined others in curtailing operations since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24. Dell suspended sales in Ukraine and Russia in February, saying it would monitor the situation to determine next steps. "In mid-August, we closed our offices and ceased all Russian operations," Dell spokesperson Mike Siemienas told Reuters. "Back in February, we made the decision to not sell, service or support products in Russia, Belarus and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, in addition to the already embargoed Crimea."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA delayed the debut launch of its new massive rocket due to an issue with one of its engines, dealing a temporary blow to the space agency's plan to return to the lunar surface. From a report: With Vice President Kamala Harris in attendance at Florida's Kennedy Space Center and a global audience watching online, the uncrewed Artemis I mission was called off at 8:34 a.m., one minute after its originally scheduled liftoff time. The launch missed its window after controllers were unable to resolve a temperature problem with one of the rocket's four main engines. The rocket and space capsule are in "a safe and stable configuration," NASA said Monday in a statement, adding that engineers were continuing to gather data. The earliest available opportunity to try again is on Sept. 2, NASA said in a webcast while announcing the scrubbed launch. No decision has been made on rescheduling. Official confirmation of the delay came after the space agency spent the early morning hours investigating issues including a potential crack in material in the main body of the rocket as well as the temperature issue, officials said earlier Monday. Those came after engineers examined and resolved a suspected leak affecting the hydrogen tanking process.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In an effort to combat the devastating drought conditions hitting California, the Golden State will become the first in the nation to install solar panel canopies over canals. From a report: The $20 million pilot project funded by the state has been dubbed "Project Nexus." It will consist of an estimated 8,500 feet of solar panels installed over three sections of Turlock Irrigation District (TID) canals in Central California. It is expected to break ground in the fall, and be completed by 2023. The project was first announced back in February. According to TID, the project aims to use water and energy management hand-in-hand. The project is designed to increase renewable power generation, while reducing water evaporation and vegetative growth in canals. TID states that the project will also serve as a "proof of concept" to further study "solar over canal design." The agency cites a 2021 University of California, Merced study, which showed that covering all of the approximately 4,000 miles of public water delivery system infrastructure in the state with solar panels could save an estimated 63 billion gallons of water annually, as well as result in significant energy and cost savings.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trademark filings suggest that Apple may be staking claim to potential names for its highly anticipated mixed-reality headset, part of the tech giant's push into its first new product category in years. From a report: Applications were filed in the US, EU, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica and Uruguay for the names "Reality One," "Reality Pro" and "Reality Processor." Though Apple itself didn't make the filings, they follow a pattern that the iPhone maker has used in the past -- including relying on law firms that the company has previously enlisted to lock down brands. Apple's headset is expected to combine virtual and augmented reality technology and vault the company into closer competition with Meta Platforms, the leading provider of VR gear. It's been seven years since the company last went after a new hardware category with the Apple Watch.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A two-hour launch window just opened for the very first launch of NASA's "Space Launch System" to propel an uncrewed capsule into orbit around the moon. Coverage is streaming now on NASA's website, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, and in 4K on NASA's UHD channel, according to a recent announcement:A live broadcast of the launch also will include celebrity appearances by Jack Black, Chris Evans, and Keke Palmer, as well as a special performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" by Josh Groban and Herbie Hancock. It also will feature a performance of "America the Beautiful" by The Philadelphia Orchestra and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. It's all to celebrate the launch of a massive rocket that will blast an uncrewed capsule named Orion into orbit around the moon to "pave the way for a [later] crewed flight test and future human lunar exploration," according to NASA. The mission — designated Artemis I — will "demonstrate the performance of the SLS rocket and test Orion's capabilities over the course of about six weeks as it travels about 40,000 miles beyond the Moon and back to Earth." Vox notes it's "the farthest a vehicle designed for human astronauts has ever traveled into space.... Orion will travel past the moon, and then thousands of miles beyond it, before turning around and heading back to Earth — a 1.3 million-mile journey (2.1 million kilometers) that will last 42 days." And then a human crew will make a similar flight in 2024, followed by a lunar landing sometime in 2025. So what's in the capsule? Three life-sized mannequins (built with 38 slices of plastic to simulate human tissue), along with 5,600 other sensors and an additional 34 radiation detectors.A version of Amazon's Alexa voice assistant, which has been downloaded onto an iPad, is hitching a ride, too. NASA is testing Callisto, a virtual AI that Amazon, Cisco, and Lockheed Martin designed to communicate with astronauts. While the tech might sound a little like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the engineers say the system is meant to provide assistance and companionship. "Callisto is a standalone payload onboard the Orion spacecraft, and it does not have any control over flight control or other mission-critical systems," says Justin Nikolaus, a lead Alexa experience designer at Amazon. Other aspects of Artemis I's payload are more sentimental. A plush doll version of the Shaun the Sheep character from the Wallace and Gromit franchise will travel on Orion. So will a Snoopy doll outfitted in an astronaut costume, along with a pen nib that Charles M. Schultz used to draw the Peanuts series, wrapped in a comic strip. Momentos from the Apollo 11 mission, which landed the first humans on the lunar surface in the 1960s, are also going, including a tiny sample of moon dust and a piece of an engine. There's been a lot of anticipation. "A series of lightning strikes hit lightning towers near the launch pad five times on Saturday," NBC News reported, but "NASA says none of them caused any damage to the rocket." And just hours ago, shortly before midnight, NASA began fueling the rocket — pumping 730,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen into its 212-foot core rocket stage, the largest ever made by NASA — and then pumping even more fuel into its "interim cryogenic propulsion stage." Sunday night NBC News had this report on the mission. "NASA says there's an 80% chance of 'go' based on the weather [forecasted for Monday morning]. But if it doesn't go then, the weather starts to deteriorate, and the launch may be in trouble." It's been more than a half century since the last humans walked on the moon in 1972. Just before re-entering the module, NASA astronaut Eugene "Gene" Cernan broadcast these words to earth from the moon: "we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind." And recently NASA's Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development added these words to their profile on Twitter. "We go to the Moon for scientific discovery and to prepare for our first steps on Mars."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader Beeftopia writes:All living cells power themselves by coaxing protons from one side of a membrane to the other. A place where this occurs naturally outside of cells are alkaline hydrothermal vents on the deep seafloor, inside highly porous rock formations that are almost like mineralized sponges. "Carbon and energy metabolism are driven by proton gradients, exactly what the vents provided for free," wrote biochemist Nick Lane. In Lane's view, metabolism came first, and genetic information emerged naturally from it rather than the other way around. Quanta magazine asks Lane the big question: How did these first proto-cells become independent from the proton gradients they got for free in the hydrothermal vents? LANE: We've shown that theoretically, if you introduce random sequences of RNA and assume that the nucleotides in there can polymerize, you get little chains of nucleotides. Let's say seven or eight random letters long, with no information encoded in there whatsoever.... [H]ydrophobic amino acids are more likely to interact with hydrophobic bases. So you have a random sequence of RNA that generates a nonrandom peptide. And that nonrandom peptide could by chance have some function in a growing proto-cell. It could make the cell grow better or grow worse; it could help the RNA replicate itself; it could bind to cofactors. Then you have selection for that peptide and the RNA sequence that gave rise to it. Although it's a very rudimentary system, this means we've just entered the world of genes, information and natural selection. Quanta summarizes Lane's next idea: that these vent environments "favored the beginnings of what we call the Krebs cycle, the metabolic process that derives energy from carbohydrates, fats and proteins." Lane himself has said that metabolism "conjures genes into existence." But if genes are conjured into existence by metabolism, then what else might be true? Lane ultimately concludes that cancer may be a metabolic disease rather than a "genomic" one: LANE: About 10 years ago, the cancer community was amazed by the discovery that in some cancers, mutations can lead to parts of the Krebs cycle running backward. It came as quite a shock because the Krebs cycle is usually taught as only spinning forward to generate energy. But it turns out that while a cancer cell does need energy, what it really needs even more is carbon-based building blocks for growth. So the whole field of oncology began to see this reversal of the Krebs cycle as a kind of metabolic rewiring that helps cancer cells grow.... [C]ancers aren't caused simply by some genetically deterministic mutation that forces cells to go on growing without stopping. Metabolism is important too, for providing a permissive environment for growth. Growth comes before genes in this sense. Or, as Slashdot reader Beeftopia puts it, "In Lane's view, metabolism came first, and genetic information emerged naturally from it rather than the other way around. Lane believes that the implications of this reversal touch almost every big mystery in biology, including the nature of cancer and aging."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a story from the Linux/Open Source news site It's FOSS:While Firefox is still the default web browser in Debian, you can find the Chromium browser in the repositories. Chromium is the open source project upon which Google has built its Chrome web browser. It is also preferred by many Linux users as it provides almost the same features as Google Chrome. Earlier, Chromium used Google as the default search engine in Debian. However, Debian is going to use DuckDuckGo as the default search engine for Chromium. It all started when bug report #956012 was filed in April 2020, stating to use DuckDuckGo as the default search engine for the Chromium package. You can see the decision was not taken in any hurry, as the maintainers took more than two years to close the bug report. The reason for the change goes as stated in the official package update announcement. Change default search engine to DuckDuckGo for privacy reasons. Set a different search engine under Settings -> Search Engine (closes: #956012).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post shares a little-acknowledged downside to electric cars: recharging takes "upward of 15 to 30 minutes." But scientists are already working on improvements:In a report released this week, government researchers said they have found a way to charge electric car batteries up to 90 percent in just 10 minutes. The method is likely five years away from making its way into the market, scientists said, but would mark a fundamental shift. "The goal is to get very, very close to [times] you would see at the gas pump," said Eric Dufek, a lead author of the study and scientist at the Idaho National Laboratory, a research center run by the Department of Energy.... At issue is the delicate balance of trying to charge an electric vehicle battery quicker, but not doing it so fast that a rapid charge does long-term damage to the battery or plays a role in causing them to explode. Charging electric batteries fast can cause damage, reducing the battery's life span and performance, scientists said. "You've had batteries when you first got it, they were great, but after a couple years or a few hundred charge cycles, they don't perform as well," said Eric D. Wachsman, director of the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute, an energy research organization at the University of Maryland. To try to solve this, Dufek and his team used machine learning to figure out how batteries age when charging fast. Their algorithm was trained to analyze 20,000 to 30,000 data points which indicated how well the battery was charging and whether it was aging or degrading.... Wachsman said the new research is helpful for the field. "Not too fast, not too slow," he said of Dufek's charging approach. "It's just right in that Goldilocks [zone]." But the bigger benefit, he said, would be if this method spurs car companies to make electric vehicles with smaller batteries, since they'd now have batteries that could be charged quicker and allow consumers to feel less worried about stopping periodically to get a quick recharge. "Smaller batteries are cheaper cars," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.