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Chinese search engine giant Baidu revealed its first quantum computer on Thursday and is ready to make it available to external users, joining the global race to apply the technology to practical uses. Reuters reports: The Baidu-developed quantum computer, dubbed "Qianshi," has a 10-quantum-bit (qubit) processor, Baidu said in a statement. The Beijing-based company has also developed a 36-qubit quantum chip, it said. Governments and companies around the world for years have touted the potential of quantum computing, a form of high-speed calculation at extraordinarily cold temperatures that will bring computers to unprecedented processing speeds. However, current real-world applications in the field are still very basic and limited to a small group of early clients.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It turns out, software testers are relying more on automation than ever before, driven by a desire to lower testing costs and improve software quality and user experience. VentureBeat shares the findings from a new report by Kobiton: Kobiton asked 150 testers in companies with at least 50 employees across a range of industries. [...] For context, there are two kinds of software testing: manual and automated. Manual is still common but it's not ideal for repetitive tests, leading many testers to choose automation, which can expedite development and app performance. To wit, 40% of testers responding to Kobiton's study said their primary motivation for using automation is improving user experience. "In a study we conducted two years ago, half the testers we asked said their automation programs were relatively new, and 76% said they were automating fewer than 50% of all tests," said Kevin Lee, CEO of Kobiton. "Nearly 100% of testers participating in this year's study are using automation, which speaks to how far the industry has come." Testing managers are prioritizing new hires with automation experience, too. Kobiton's study found that automation experience is one of the three skills managers are most interested in. And how is automation being used? A plurality (34%) of respondents to Kobiton's survey said they are using automation for an equal mix of regression and new feature testing. And it's made them more efficient. Almost half (47%) of survey respondents said it takes 3-5 days for manual testing before a release, whereas automated tests can have it done in 3-6 hours.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN Travel: The future of environmentally friendly travel might just be here -- and it's Germany that's leading the charge, with the first ever rail line to be entirely run on hydrogen-powered trains, starting from Wednesday. Fourteen hydrogen trains powered by fuel cell propulsion will exclusively run on the route in Bremervorde, Lower Saxony. The 93 million euro ($92.3 million) deal has been struck by state subsidiary Landesnahverkehrsgesellschaft Niedersachsen (LVNG), the owners of the railway, and Alstom, builders of the Coradia iLint trains. The Elbe-Weser Railways and Transport Company (EVB), which will operate the trains, and gas and engineering company Linde, are also part of the project. The trains, five of which which debut Wednesday, will gradually replace the 15 diesel trains that currently run on the route, with all 14 running exclusively by the end of the year. Just 1 kilo of hydrogen fuel can do the same as around 4.5 kilos of diesel. The trains are emissions-free and low-noise, with only steam and condensed water issuing from the exhaust. They have a range of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles), meaning they can run for an entire day on the network on a single tank of hydrogen. A hydrogen filling station has already been established on the route. The trains can go at a maximum of 140 kph, or 87mph, though regular speeds on the line are much less, between 80-120 kph.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last year, DuckDuckGo announced a free service designed to fend off email trackers and help people protect their privacy. The Email Protection beta was initially available through a waitlist. Now, it's now in open beta, meaning everyone can try it without having to wait for access. From a report: Email Protection is a forwarding service that removes trackers from messages. DuckDuckGo will tell you which trackers it scrubs as well. During the waitlist beta, DuckDuckGo says it found trackers in 85 percent of testers' emails. Anyone can now sign up for an @duck.com email address, which will work across desktop, iOS and Android. DuckDuckGo says you can create unlimited private email addresses, including a throwaway one for every website, if you prefer. You can also deactivate an address at any time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The kingdom of Google's third major operating system, Fuchsia, is growing a little wider today. ArsTechnica: 9to5Google reports Google completed the rollout of Fuchsia to the Google Nest Hub Max. Along with the original Nest Hub/Google Home Hub, that puts two of Google's three smart displays on the new OS, with the one holdout being the 2nd Gen Nest Hub. The Nest Hub Max is the first device running Fuchsia that Google is currently selling -- the Home Hub only got Fuchsia after it had been discontinued. The Google smart display user interface is written in Flutter, a Google programming language designed for portability, which runs on Android, iOS, Fuchsia, and the weird cast platform Nest Hubs typically use. So it's not right to describe the user interface as "similar" after the OS swap -- it's the exact same code because Flutter runs on nearly everything. You are getting a slightly newer code version, though, and it comes with a Bluetooth menu. If you dive into the settings and hit "about device," you'll see a "Fuchsia Version" field that will say something like "6.20211109.1.3166243." It's a bit weird to do an entire OS switch to the futuristic, secretive Fuchsia project and then have basically nothing to show (or say) for it in terms of obvious improvements in performance or security. You can dive into the minutia of the Fuchsia source code, but it continues to be a mystery in terms of what practical benefits it offers consumers. Google never talks about Fuchsia, so not much is known about what, exactly, Google is accomplishing here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thailand's oldest lender, SCBX, said on Thursday it was pulling out of a $500 million deal to buy crypto exchange Bitkub, saying the start-up needed time to fix regulatory issues. From a report: "Bitkub is currently in the process of resolving various issues as per the recommendations and orders of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Thailand, which are uncertain in terms of timeframe in resolving those issues," SCBX said in a statement. "As a result, the buyer and the seller have agreed to terminate the transaction," it said. SCBX said it had been conducting due diligence on the company and did not find any abnormal issues. The announcement comes after the Thai Securities and Exchange Commission last month ordered the crypto platform to review the listing process of KUB coin on its exchange.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: While mostly of benefit to server administrators with large fleets of hardware, Linux 6.1 aims to make it easier to help spot problematic CPUs/cores by reporting the likely socket and core when a segmentation fault occurs, which can help in spotting any trends if routinely finding the same CPU/core is causing problems. Queued up now in TIP's x86/cpu branch for the Linux 6.1 merge window in October is a patch to print the likely CPU at segmentation fault time. Printing the likely CPU core and socket when a seg fault occurs can be beneficial if routinely finding seg faults happening on the same CPU package or particular core.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A year ago, it was nearly impossible to buy a GeForce GPU for its intended retail price. Now, the company has the opposite problem. From a report: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during the company's Q2 2023 earnings call yesterday that the company is dealing with "excess inventory" of RTX 3000-series GPUs ahead of its next-gen RTX 4000 series release later this year. To deal with this, according to Huang, Nvidia will reduce the number of GPUs it sells to manufacturers of graphics cards and laptops so that those manufacturers can clear out their existing inventory. Huang also says Nvidia has "instituted programs to price position our current products to prepare for next-generation products." When translated from C-suite to English, this means the company will be cutting the prices of current-generation GPUs to make more room for next-generation ones. Those price cuts should theoretically be passed along to consumers somehow, though that will be up to Nvidia's partners. Nvidia announced earlier this month that it would be missing its quarterly projections by $1.4 billion, mainly due to decreased demand for its gaming GPUs. Huang said that "sell-through" of GPUs, or the number of cards being sold to users, had still "increased 70 percent since pre-COVID," though the company still expects year-over-year revenue from GPUs to decline next quarter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ukraine's largest nuclear power plant was cut off from the country's electricity grid, setting off a mass power outage in the adjacent area after fires damaged its last functioning transmission line, Ukraine's nuclear power company said Thursday. From a report: The incident renewed fears about safety at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), which is also the largest atomic energy plant in Europe and is located in an area now occupied by invading Russian forces. Fighting in the vicinity of the plant has led to acute worries of a potential catastrophe and to calls from many world leaders for U.N. nuclear experts to be allowed to visit the site. Russian and Ukrainian officials traded blame for shelling at the plant, which they said had resulted in the disconnection from the power grid -- the first time it has ever been cut off. Officials, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, have warned that such a disconnection itself could lead to an extremely dangerous situation by disrupting the plant's normal operation and potentially making it difficult to cool the reactors. "The actions of the invaders caused a complete disconnection of the ZNPP from the power grid -- for the first time in the history of the plant," Ukraine's nuclear energy company, Energoatom, said in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lockdown Mode disables a series of features that can be used to hack iPhone users. But the lack of these features also makes it easier to figure out who is using Lockdown Mode. From a report: Once Apple launches the new iPhone and iPad operating system early next month, users will be able to turn on a new privacy mode that the company calls "extreme." It's made for journalists, activists, politicians, human rights defenders, and anyone else who may be worried about getting targeted by sophisticated hackers, perhaps working for governments armed with spyware made by companies such as NSO Group. Apple calls it "Lockdown Mode" and it works by disabling some regular iPhone features that have been exploited to hack users in the past. But if users turn on Lockdown Mode, they will be easy to fingerprint and identify, according to a developer who created a proof of concept website that detects whether you have Lockdown Mode enabled or not. John Ozbay, the CEO of privacy focused company Cryptee, and a privacy activist, told Motherboard that any website or online ad can detect whether some regular features are missing, such as loading custom fonts, one of the features that Lockdown Mode disables. "Let's say you're in China, and you're using Lockdown Mode. Now, any website that you visit could effectively detect you are using Lockdown Mode, they have your IP address as well. So they will actually be able to identify that the user with this IP address is using Lockdown Mode," Ozbay said in a call. "It's a tradeoff between security and privacy. [Apple] chose security."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The way Google calculates the climate impact of your flights has changed, the BBC has discovered. From the report: Flights now appear to have much less impact on the environment than before. That's because the world's biggest search engine has taken a key driver of global warming out of its online carbon flight calculator. "Google has airbrushed a huge chunk of the aviation industry's climate impacts from its pages" says Dr Doug Parr, chief scientist of Greenpeace. With Google hosting nine out of every 10 online searches, this could have wide repercussions for people's travel decisions. The company said it made the change following consultations with its "industry partners." It affects the carbon calculator embedded in the company's "Google Flights" search tool. If you have ever tried to find a flight on Google, you will have come across Google Flights. It appears towards the top of search results and allows you to scour the web for flights and fares. It also offers to calculate the emissions generated by your journey. Google says this feature is designed "to help you make more sustainable travel choices." Yet in July, Google decided to exclude all the global warming impacts of flying except CO2. Some experts say Google's calculations now represent just over half of the real impact on the climate of flights.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. and China are nearing an agreement that would allow American accounting regulators to travel to Hong Kong to inspect the audit records of Chinese companies listed in New York, WSJ reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter, as the two countries move toward resolving a yearslong standoff. From the report: Securities regulators in Beijing are making arrangements for U.S.-listed Chinese companies and their accounting firms to transfer their audit working papers and other data from mainland China to Hong Kong, the people said. Regulators from the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board would then travel to the semiautonomous city to perform on-site inspections of the Chinese companies' auditors and their records, they added. The China Securities Regulatory Commission recently informed some accounting firms and companies about the plan, the people said, adding that U.S. accounting inspectors could arrive in Hong Kong as soon as next month. A final agreement can only be reached if the U.S. side determines that it has full access to the audit working papers, they said. The CSRC said, in response to a Wall Street Journal query, that it doesn't have any relevant information to disclose. The PCAOB declined to comment. Earlier this month, Erica Williams, chair of the PCAOB, told the Journal that U.S. accounting inspectors and investigators were prepared to travel to inspect Chinese companies' audit work papers when an agreement was in place. "We have teams ready, bags packed and ready to go -- if we have an agreement that's reached, so that we can actually test out that agreement and make sure that what we have in the agreement on paper is actually working in practice," Ms. Williams said, adding that she herself is prepared to go if need be.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google-owned navigation service Waze is shutting down its six-year-old carpooling service, citing shifting commuting patterns as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. From a report: Starting in September, the company will begin the process of winding down its carpooling service, which had been available in the US, Brazil, and Israel. Waze said it will explore other ways it can help serve the 150 million customers worldwide that use its navigation app. "While Waze was predominantly a commuting app pre-COVID, today the proportion of errands and travel drives have surpassed commutes," the company said in a statement provided to The Verge. "This means we have an opportunity to find even more impactful ways to bring together a global community to share real-time insights and help each other outsmart traffic -- this is what has always made Waze truly special." First launched in the Bay Area in 2016, Waze Carpool eventually expanded to all 50 states in the US as well as Brazil and Waze's country of origin, Israel. The service was different from carpooling services offered by Uber and Lyft insofar as it let nonprofessional drivers offer rides to people traveling on a similar route for a nominal fee. In 2018, the company launched its own standalone carpool app.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ByteDance, owner of the hit short video app TikTok, has quietly launched a new search engine that promises no advertisements in a cyberspace where Google has not been available for more than a decade. From a report: Without any announcement, ByteDance subsidiary Beijing Infinite Dimension Technology launched the Wukong search app this month, within days of Tencent Holdings shutting down on August 8 its Sogou search app. Sogou, which Tencent bought last year, still maintains its web-based search engine. Wukong, currently available on Apple's App Store in China and various Chinese Android app stores, brings ByteDance into closer competition with Baidu, China's dominant search engine. The new app promotes itself as providing "quality information and search without ads." The line could be interpreted as an indirect jab at Baidu, which has long faced criticism for its paid listings in search results. In 2016, 21-year-old college student Wei Zexi died of a rare cancer after he received experimental treatments recommended by Baidu.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony has raised the price of PlayStation 5 in most major markets, citing "challenging economic conditions" such as high global inflation rates and adverse currency trends, the latest in a series of challenges engulfing the current generation gaming console. From a report: The new price, which largely varies between $30 to $80, goes immediately into effect in Europe, the UK, China, Australia, Mexico and Canada, the company said in a blog post. The revised price will hit Japan on September 15, said the Japanese conglomerate. The U.S. is not impacted by the price hike, the company confirmed. "While this price increase is a necessity given the current global economic environment and its impact on SIE's business, our top priority continues to be improving the PS5 supply situation so that as many players as possible can experience everything that PS5 offers and what's still to come," Sony said in the post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has breached a European Union court ruling by sending unsolicited advertising emails directly to the inbox of Gmail users, Austrian advocacy group noyb.eu said on Wednesday in a complaint filed with France's data protection watchdog. The Alphabet unit, whose revenues mainly come from online advertising, should ask Gmail users for their prior consent before sending them any direct marketing emails, noyb.eu said, citing a 2021 decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJUE). While Google's ad emails may look like normal ones, they include the word "Ad" in green letters on the left-hand side, below the subject of the email, noyb.eu said in its complaint. Also, they do not include a date, the advocacy group added. "It's as if the postman was paid to remove the ads from your mailbox and put his own instead," said Romain Robert, program director at noyb.eu, with reference to Gmail's anti-spam filters that put most unsolicited emails in a separate folder. While any CNIL decision would be only applicable in France, it could compel Google to review its practices in the region.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A combination of psychedelics and therapy appears to help people with alcoholism cut down on the number of days per month they drink heavily, according to a new study. The Verge reports: Researchers used psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms, to treat patients over eight months and saw a dramatic improvement in participants' drinking habits. Using psychedelics as treatments for alcoholism was a popular idea in the 1960s and 1970s, and studies on LSD found that it reduced alcohol misuse. But the approach went quiet in the decades after, according to an editorial published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry alongside the new study. The new research marks a "rekindling of interest," the authors of the editorial wrote. The study included 93 people with alcohol dependence. In the 12 weeks leading up to the study, the participants drank alcohol an average of around 60 days. Of those 60 drinking days, about half were heavy drinking days -- defined as five or more drinks a day for a man and four or more drinks in a day for a woman. People in the trial were randomly assigned to either take a capsule of psilocybin or an antihistamine twice over the course of the 36-week-long study. They had four sessions with therapists before the first time they took the drug, four sessions between the two drug doses, and four sessions after the second drug dose. Everyone in the study started drinking less after the first four weeks of therapy -- the percentage of heavy drinking days dropped from around half of all drinking days to around a quarter. But that number kept falling for the people who took psilocybin. After the end of the full study, they drank heavily on around 10 percent of the days when they drank. People who took the antihistamine were still drinking heavily on around a quarter of drinking days. The effects lasted for months after the second dose of the psilocybin, study author Michael Bogenschutz, a psychiatrist and director of the NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine, stressed during a press briefing. "This suggests that psilocybin is treating the underlying disorder of alcohol addiction rather than merely treating symptoms," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan will restart more idled nuclear plants and look at developing next-generation reactors, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Wednesday, setting the stage for a major policy shift on nuclear energy a decade after the Fukushima disaster. Reuters reports: Japan has kept most of its nuclear plants idled in the decade since a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 triggered a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Quake-prone Japan also said it would build no new reactors, so a change in that policy would be a stark turnaround. Kishida told reporters he had instructed officials to come up with concrete measures by the year end, including on "gaining the understanding of the public" on sustainable energy and nuclear power. Government officials met on Wednesday to hammer out a plan for so-called "green transformation" aimed at retooling the world's third-largest economy to meet environmental goals. Nuclear energy, which was deeply opposed by the public after the Fukushima crisis, is now seen by some in government as a component for such green transformation. Public opinion has also shifted, as fuel prices have risen and an early and hot summer spurred calls for energy-saving.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: South Korea has once again shattered its own record for the world's lowest fertility rate as it faces the prospect of its population of 51 million people more than halving by the end of this century. Korean women were estimated, based on 2021 data, to have an average of just 0.81 children over their lifetimes, down from 0.84 a year earlier, the statistics office said Wednesday. The number of newborns declined last year to 260,600, which equates to about 0.5% of the population. The number of women of child-bearing age fell 2% to 11,620,000 last year, signaling the fertility rate is only likely to deteriorate further. A typical Korean woman gave birth to her first child at age 32.6, up from 30.2 a decade earlier, according to the stats office. Her partner on average would be 35.1, compared with 33 a decade earlier. By region, the capital Seoul showed the lowest fertility rate at 0.63, while Sejong, home to government headquarters, had the highest at 1.28, according to the stats office. The most populous province, Gyeonggi, recorded 0.85, closer to the average. In the decades following the 1950-53 Korean War, the population at least doubled and in an effort to curb the baby boom in the early years of economic development, the government encouraged couples to have only one child. That policy was scrapped around the turn of the century as births started to sharply fall, prompting the government to spend tens of billion of dollars each year to encourage more children, but with little success so far. "Korea is the world's fastest-aging nation among economies with per capita GDP of at least $30,000," notes Bloomberg, citing United Nations global population projections and World Bank data. "By 2100, its population will fall by 53% to 24 million, up from a 43% decline forecast in 2019." "The forecast is a sobering reminder of the demographic threat and associated economic challenges confronting Bank of Korea Governor Rhee Chang-yong and President Yoon Suk Yeol, who both took office earlier this year."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a new paper published in the journal Nature, researchers at MIT describe new aluminum-sulfur batteries that are made entirely from abundant and inexpensive materials and can be charged in less than a minute. "The new battery architecture, which uses aluminum and sulfur as its two electrode materials, with a molten salt electrolyte in between, is described today in the journal Nature, in a paper by MIT Professor Donald Sadoway, along with 15 others at MIT and in China, Canada, Kentucky, and Tennessee," reports MIT News. The caveat with this new kind of battery is that it requires a variety of molten salts that need to be "close to the boiling point of water." From the report: In their experiments, the team showed that the battery cells could endure hundreds of cycles at exceptionally high charging rates, with a projected cost per cell of about one-sixth that of comparable lithium-ion cells. They showed that the charging rate was highly dependent on the working temperature, with 110 degrees Celsius (230 degrees Fahrenheit) showing 25 times faster rates than 25 C (77 F). Surprisingly, the molten salt the team chose as an electrolyte simply because of its low melting point turned out to have a fortuitous advantage. One of the biggest problems in battery reliability is the formation of dendrites, which are narrow spikes of metal that build up on one electrode and eventually grow across to contact the other electrode, causing a short-circuit and hampering efficiency. But this particular salt, it happens, is very good at preventing that malfunction. The chloro-aluminate salt they chose "essentially retired these runaway dendrites, while also allowing for very rapid charging," Sadoway says. "We did experiments at very high charging rates, charging in less than a minute, and we never lost cells due to dendrite shorting." What's more, the battery requires no external heat source to maintain its operating temperature. The heat is naturally produced electrochemically by the charging and discharging of the battery. "As you charge, you generate heat, and that keeps the salt from freezing. And then, when you discharge, it also generates heat," Sadoway says. In a typical installation used for load-leveling at a solar generation facility, for example, "you'd store electricity when the sun is shining, and then you'd draw electricity after dark, and you'd do this every day. And that charge-idle-discharge-idle is enough to generate enough heat to keep the thing at temperature." This new battery formulation, he says, would be ideal for installations of about the size needed to power a single home or small to medium business, producing on the order of a few tens of kilowatt-hours of storage capacity. For larger installations, up to utility scale of tens to hundreds of megawatt hours, other technologies might be more effective, including the liquid metal batteries Sadoway and his students developed several years ago and which formed the basis for a spinoff company called Ambri, which hopes to deliver its first products within the next year. For that invention, Sadoway was recently awarded this year's European Inventor Award. The smaller scale of the aluminum-sulfur batteries would also make them practical for uses such as electric vehicle charging stations, Sadoway says. He points out that when electric vehicles become common enough on the roads that several cars want to charge up at once, as happens today with gasoline fuel pumps, "if you try to do that with batteries and you want rapid charging, the amperages are just so high that we don't have that amount of amperage in the line that feeds the facility." So having a battery system such as this to store power and then release it quickly when needed could eliminate the need for installing expensive new power lines to serve these chargers. "The first order of business for the company is to demonstrate that it works at scale," Sadoway says, and then subject it to a series of stress tests, including running through hundreds of charging cycles. If you're looking for a detailed breakdown of how this new battery works, we recommend you check out Ars Technica's article here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York State Senate just introduced a bill that aims to improve safety around massive trucks and SUVs. Autoblog reports: Manhattan State Senator Brad Hoylman introduced the bill, which includes language requiring the NY DMV to dictate specific rules for vehicles over 3,000 pounds. One new regulation would be that the drivers of such cars have "direct visibility of pedestrians, cyclists, and other vulnerable road users from the driver's position." It's not clear exactly what enforcing that legislation would entail. However, the meat of Hoylman's bill centers on advanced safety technology. A summary of the legislation states, "Studies have shown that Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) alone can reduce traffic fatalities by 20%. This, in addition to Advanced Emergency Braking (AEB), Emergency Lane Keeping Systems (ELKS), drowsiness and distraction recognition technology, and rear-view cameras, would help prevent crashes from occurring in the first place." If you've never heard of ISA, you're not alone. The term is pretty broad in what it encompasses, including speed limit recognition and alerts, speed assist, and speed limiting. The tech is common in Europe, where automakers like Ford offer it in several models. Ford's flavor of speed limiting allows drivers to set a maximum speed and automatically limit the vehicle to within five mph of the posted speed limit. It's optional, however, so drivers can turn it off when desired. If passed, the legislation would require automakers to include those advanced driver assistance systems as standard equipment in new vehicles from 2024 on.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Denuvo, the company best known for its heavily-criticized PC gaming DRM technology, has set its sights on a new scourge: Nintendo Switch piracy. Kotaku reports: The software maker announced during GamesCom 2022 on Wednesday that it will begin selling a new product called Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection to prevent Switch games from being pirated on PC. It doesn't appear to be partnering with Nintendo on the initiative, which instead seems aimed mostly at third-party publishers of multiplatform games. "As with all other Denuvo solutions, the technology integrates seamlessly into the build toolchain with no impact on the gaming experience. It then allows for the insertion of checks into the code, which blocks gameplay on emulators," the company wrote in a press release. In the past, however, Denuvo's "checks" have been accused of making some games run worse. "Even if a game is protected against piracy on its PC version, the released version on Switch can be emulated from day one and played on PC, therefore bypassing the strong protections offered on the PC version," Denuvo wrote. "The Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection will ensure that anyone wishing to play the game has to buy a legitimate copy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Hackers are breaking into unsuspecting victims' Cash App accounts, a massively popular payment app, and stealing hundreds of dollars, according to victims Motherboard spoke to. In one person's case, they said, Cash App has not reimbursed them for the stolen funds. "It's scary!" Liz Shelby, who said their son was a victim of the hacking, told Motherboard in an online chat. "My son saved up some cash for a small vacation with his grandma. We put it in his Cash App before he left. He called me on Aug. 9, and told me that his money was gone." Shelby said that after she looked at the account she found that someone else had logged into it and sent themselves the money. Shelby said she's been emailing Cash App support, without success. Marvis Herring, another target, told Motherboard that hackers attempted to steal $1,400, in the form of two installments of $700. In those cases, Herring believes his bank blocked the fraudulent transactions. Motherboard saw many other people reporting on social media that their Cash App accounts had been compromised in some way. "The main thing I thought was weird is that I went to change my account password and there really isn't a password for Cash App accounts," Herring added. When users sign up to Cash App, they can use either an email address or a phone number to open an account. After doing so, they receive a login code sent to either of those. On fraud websites, dark web marketplaces, and social media, multiple people appear to be selling login details associated with Cash App accounts. Some of these peoples' listings specify that the logs contain the email address and password for a linked email account. Some of the listings may be scams, but those on the dark web marketplaces come from fraudsters who have received positive feedback from alleged customers, according to the review system that is common on such sites. One listing for hacked Cash App accounts said the vendor has sold that specific item multiple times. Fraudsters also appear to be offering Cash App accounts for another purpose: laundering money. Motherboard found multiple listings on a dark web marketplace offering these newly created and verified accounts. Cash App requires users to verify their identity to use some features, and this can require them providing their Social Security Number with the platform. These already verified accounts will allow fraudsters to buy Bitcoin through the Cash App without having to verify their identity, the listing suggests. [...] On its website, Cash App encourages users to make sure their linked email address has two-factor authentication enabled. The app also has an extra feature called Security Lock which means that each transfer requires the user to enter a PIN. "Preventing fraud is critically important to Cash App. We continue to invest in and bolster fraud-fighting resources by both increasing staffing and adopting new technology. We are constantly improving systems and controls to help prevent, detect, and report bad activity on the platform," a Cash App spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement. "For those who believe they have fallen victim to an identity-theft or account take-over scams, we encourage them to reach out to Cash App Support where we will review the account in question. If deemed fraudulent, we will take the necessary action starting with account closure and disablement of all applicable products."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The rise and catastrophic fall of what was once Canada's most valuable company is set for the big screen. CBC.ca reports: Blackberry will tell the story of Waterloo, Ont.-based Research in Motion (RIM), creators of the titular device, which for a time was the world's most popular smartphone. The film stars Canadian actor Jay Baruchel as company co-founder Mike Lazaridis and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Glenn Howerton as co-CEO Jim Balsillie. The film was adapted from the 2015 book Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of BlackBerry, by Sean Silcoff and Jacquie McNish. Toronto's Matt Johnson directs and also appears in the film as RIM's other co-founder, Doug Fregin. The cast also includes Cary Elwes, Saul Rubinek and Michael Ironside. RIM was founded in 1984 by business partners Lazaridis and Fregin, who had previously worked together on a failed LED sign business. After a decade of dabbling in various other technology projects, they turned their attention to the two-way communications systems that would become the foundation for the BlackBerry device.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continuing the focus on delivering the world's fastest internet speeds that led Chattanooga's municipal utility to launch America's first comprehensively available Gig-speed internet service (2010) and the first 10-Gig internet service (2015), EPB has launched the nation's first community-wide 25 gigabits per second (25,000 Mbps) internet service. Chattanoogan reports: It is set to be available to all residential and commercial customers over a 100 percent fiber optic network with symmetrical upload and download speeds. Through a partnership with Hamilton County and the city of Chattanooga, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Convention Center is EPB's first 25 Gig customer, making it the first convention center worldwide to offer such blazingly fast speeds over a broadband network. With this technology, the Convention Center will be able to simultaneously provide high bandwidth connectivity to thousands of smart devices to draw business conferences, e-gaming competitions, live streaming events and more. Hamilton County and the city of Chattanooga have each dedicated $151,000 in infrastructure funding for a total of $302,000 to cover the cost of installing new networking equipment and Wi-Fi access points throughout the convention center as well as much of the cost of providing multi-gig connectivity for the next five years. Once the new equipment is installed, visitors will be able to benefit from high-speed connectivity throughout the facility.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: California is expected to put into effect on Thursday its sweeping plan to prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, a groundbreaking move that could have major effects on the effort to fight climate change and accelerate a global transition toward electric vehicles. The rule, issued by the California Air Resources Board, will require that 100 percent of all new cars sold in the state by 2035 be free of the fossil fuel emissions chiefly responsible for warming the planet, up from 12 percent today. It sets interim targets requiring that 35 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the state by 2026 produce zero emissions. That would climb to 68 percent by 2030. The restrictions are important because not only is California the largest auto market in the United States, but more than a dozen other states typically follow California's lead when setting their own auto emissions standards. California's action comes on top of an expansive new climate law that President Biden signed last week. The law will invest $370 billion in spending and tax credits on clean energy programs, the largest action ever taken by the federal government to combat climate change. Enactment of that law is projected to help the United States cut its emissions 40 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade. Still, it will not be enough to eliminate U.S. emissions by 2050, the target that climate scientists say all major economies must reach if the world is to avert the most catastrophic and deadly impacts of climate change. To help close the gap, White House officials have vowed to couple the bill with new regulations, including on automobile tailpipe emissions. They have also said that reducing emissions enough to stay in line with the science also will require aggressive state policies. Experts said the new California rule, in both its stringency and reach, could stand alongside the Washington law as one of the world's most important climate change policies, and could help take another significant bite out of the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide. The new rule is also expected to influence new policies in Washington and around the world to promote electric vehicles and cut auto pollution. "This is huge," said Margo Oge, an electric vehicles expert who headed the EPA's transportation emissions program under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. "California will now be the only government in the world that mandates zero-emission vehicles. It is unique."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Both government and criminal hacking groups are still targeting Hikvision cameras with a vulnerability from 2021, according to reports from several security researchers. From a report: Cybersecurity firm CYFIRMA released a report this week saying Russian cybercriminal forums are awash with hackers looking to collaborate on exploiting Hikvision cameras using the command injection vulnerability CVE-2021-36260. "Specifically in the Russian forums, we have observed leaked credentials of Hikvision camera products available for sale," the company's researchers said. "These can be leveraged by hackers to gain access to the devices and exploit further the path of attack to target an organization's environment." CYFIRMA reported they found that more than 80,000 Hikvision cameras are still vulnerable to the critical command injection flaw, which carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10. Of the more than 80,000 vulnerable cameras, more than 100 nations and 2,300 organizations are impacted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canalys' North American smartphone market share numbers are out, and the big mover for Q2 2022 is once again Google, which is seeing huge growth numbers thanks to the Pixel 6. Last quarter, Canalys had Google up 380 percent year over year, and this quarter, the company is up 230 percent! ArsTechnica adds: That sounds incredibly successful, but this is Google's tiny hardware division we're talking about, so it's all relative success. The company is now at 2 percent North American market share, having shipped 800,000 devices for Q2 2022. Along with last quarter, Google is now regularly hitting whole-digit market share numbers. That's good enough for fifth place, behind Apple (52 percent), Samsung (26 percent), Lenovo/Motorola (9 percent), and TCL (5 percent). Canalys also has a list of the best-selling models. The top five are all iPhones, of course, with the base model iPhone 13 taking the top spot, followed by the super-cheap iPhone SE. The iPhone 13 Mini, which is rumored to be selling so poorly that there won't be an iPhone 14 Mini, took the ninth spot. The first Android phone on the list, the flagship Galaxy S22 Ultra, clocks in at No. 6.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Silicon Valley startup Sanas has a lofty goal: to make call center workers sound white and American, no matter the country they're from. And that's just the beginning of their grand plan. The voice tech company's website features a photo of a smiling man, cropped so you only see a disembodied, toothy grin. Underneath the anonymous mouth, a demo invites you to "Hear the Magic" of Sanas. As you press play, you hear one side of a simulated conversation; a man with an Indian accent reads a familiarly tortured call center script about a missing package. Click the "With Sanas" slider, and the voice transforms instantly into something slightly robotic, a tad uncanny and unmistakably white. Since its August 2021 launch, Sanas has been showered with funding by investors. Amid a trying time for the tech industry, the "accent translation" company -- founded by three former Stanford students, Maxim Serebryakov, Shawn Zhang and Andres Perez Soderi -- snagged a $32 million Series A funding round in June 2022, which they claim is the largest ever for a speech technology service. One press release boasts that investors who tried the service called it "magical." Eventually, the company wants to expand beyond call centers by changing accents on consumer video and audio calls; Sanas has even mentioned an interest in film and TV. New voices are in the works, too: Someday, workers' accents may be "translated" into a Southern drawl for a caller in Louisville, or a Midwestern lilt for someone in Cleveland, instead of the more generic Standard American English, colloquially known as white person voice. "We don't want to say that accents are a problem because you have one," Sanas president Marty Sarim told SFGATE. "They're only a problem because they cause bias and they cause misunderstandings." The tacit promise of Sanas seems to be that callers will be more polite -- and more amenable to being helped -- if they think the person on the other end is more like them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Biden has announced a sweeping effort to forgive up to $20,000 of federal student loan debt for Pell Grant recipients, and up to $10,000 for other qualifying borrowers. Biden also extended the federal student loan payment pause through Dec. 31. From a report: "In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023," Biden said in a tweet on Wednesday. U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement, "Today, we're delivering targeted relief that will help ensure borrowers are not placed in a worse position financially because of the pandemic, and restore trust in a system that should be creating opportunity, not a debt trap." To qualify for the $10,000 forgiveness, individual borrowers must earn less than $125,000 a year, or less than $250,000 a year for couples. To qualify for the $20,000 forgiveness, borrowers must meet those income requirements and must have received a Pell Grant in college. Pell Grants are designed to help low-income students pay for higher education.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest crisis that rocked the Greek government shows the bloc's surveillance problem goes beyond the notorious NSO Group. From a report: The ripple effects of the scandal are reaching the heart of the European Union. Over the past 13 months, it has been revealed that spyware had targeted opposition leaders, journalists, lawyers and activists in France, Spain, Hungary, Poland and even staff within the European Commission, the EU's cabinet-style government, between 2019 and 2021. The bloc has already set up an inquiry into its own use of spyware, but even as the 38-person committee works toward producing a report for early 2023, the number of new scandals is quickly mounting up. What sets the scandal in Greece apart is the company behind the spyware that was used. Until then the surveillance software in every EU scandal could be traced back to one company, the notorious NSO Group. Yet the spyware stalking Koukakis' phone was made by Cytrox, a company founded in the small European nation of North Macedonia and acquired in 2017 by Tal Dilian -- an entrepreneur who achieved notoriety for driving a high-tech surveillance van around the island of Cyprus and showing a Forbes journalist how it could hack into passing people's phones. In that interview, Dilian said he had acquired Cytrox and absorbed the company into his intelligence company Intellexa, which is now thought to now be based in Greece. The arrival of Cytrox into Europe's ongoing scandal shows the problem is bigger than just the NSO Group. The bloc has a thriving spyware industry of its own. As the NSO Group struggles with intense scrutiny and being blacklisted by the US, its less well-known European rivals are jostling to take its clients, researchers say. Over the past two months, Cytrox is not the only local company to generate headlines for hacking devices within the bloc. In June, Google discovered the Italian spyware vendor RCS Lab was targeting smartphones in Italy and Kazakhstan. Alberto Nobili, RCS' managing director, told WIRED that the company condemns the misuse of its products but declined to comment on whether the cases cited by Google were examples of misuse. "RCS personnel are not exposed, nor participate in any activities conducted by the relevant customers," he says. More recently, in July, spyware made by Austria's DSIRF was detected by Microsoft hacking into law firms, banks, and consultancies in Austria, the UK, and Panama.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Monday, Apple expanded its DIY repair program to include MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops equipped with M1 chips (including the Pro and Max). At least, in theory. The repairability experts at iFixit, who regularly dissect Apple's gadgets, have taken a look at the new program, and their outlook is...mixed. iFixit's Sam Goldheart writes that the new MacBook Pro guides "threw us for a loop." The issue: the documentation "makes MacBook Pros seem less repairable" than they have been in the past. From a report: The repair manual for replacing the 14-inch MacBook Pro's battery, for example, is a whole 162 pages long. (One of the first steps, of course, is "Read the entire manual first.") The reason the guide is so long, it turns out, is that replacing these batteries isn't just a matter of popping the battery out. A user needs to replace the entire top case and keyboard in order to replace the battery. Needless to say, it is unusual for a laptop battery replacement to require a full-computer teardown. And then, as Goldheart points out, there's the matter of the money. The "top case with battery" part that you'll need to purchase for the 2020 and 2021 MacBook Pro models is not cheap -- after rooting around Apple's store, Verge editor Sean Hollister found that you can expect to pay well upwards of $400 for the top case with battery after the repair credit. "Apple is presenting DIY repairers with a excruciating gauntlet of hurdles: read 162 pages of documentation without getting intimidated and decide to do the repair anyway, pay an exorbitant amount of money for an overkill replacement part, decide whether you want to drop another 50 bucks on the tools they recommend, and do the repair yourself within 14 days, including completing the System Configuration to pair your part with your device," Goldheart writes in summary. "Which makes us wonder, does Apple even want better repairability?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung has unveiled its latest lineup of NVMe solid state drives, the 990 Pro series. The company claims the SSD will reach almost the highest speeds that are theoretically possible from the PCIe 4.0 interface (PCI 5.0 SSDs will be much faster). Samsung hopes to deliver better performance for PC and console games, 4K and 8K content and other heavy data use cases. From a report: The 990 Pro boasts sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,450 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s. The 980 Pro offers up to 7,000 MB/s and 5,100 MB/s read and write speeds. The 990 Pro's random read and write speeds are up to 1,400K and 1,550K input/output operations per second, according to Samsung. The company says that marks up to a 55 percent improvement over the 980 Pro's performance. Moreover, the company says the 990 Pro will be more power efficient than the previous lineup by up to 50 percent. The new SSD will go on sale in October at a starting price of $179 for the 1TB model.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ethereum's developers have officially confirmed September 6 as the date for Ethereum's long-anticipated transition from proof of work to proof of stake, known as The Merge. From a report: "Following years of hard work, Ethereum's proof-of-stake upgrade is finally here!" the Ethereum Foundation wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "The successful upgrade of all public testnets is now complete, and The Merge has been scheduled for the Ethereum mainnet." The Merge will be split into two upgrades, called Bellatrix and Paris. Bellatrix is timed to occur at 11:34 AM UTC on September 6 and Paris will be triggered sometime between September 10 and September 20, according to the blog post. Proof of stake relies on validators instead of miners. Instead of expending lots of computing power, like proof-of-work miners do, proof-of-stake validators lock up sums of money to prove their trustworthiness to the network. The switch has been a long-held goal for Ethereum's developers. In the final testing step, the Goerli testnet successfully merged on August 10.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Insects can be turned into meat-like flavors, helping provide a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional meat options, scientists have discovered. From a report: Mealworms, the larval form of the yellow mealworm beetle, have been cooked with sugar by researchers who found that the result is a meat-like flavoring that could one day be used on convenience food as a source of protein. While mealworms have until now mostly been used as snacks for pets or as bait while fishing, they have potential as a food source for humans to help get the recognizable flavors of meat without the harmful impacts upon the climate, as well as direct air and water pollution, of raising beef, pork and other animal-based foods. "Insects are a nutritious and healthy food source with high amounts of fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, fiber and high-quality protein, which is like that of meat," says In Hee Cho, a researcher at Wonkwang University in South Korea who led the study. "Many consumers seriously like and need animal protein in our diet. However, traditional livestock farming produces more greenhouse gas emissions than cars do. On the other hand, insect farming requires just a fraction of the land, water and feed in comparison to traditional livestock farming." Cho said that edible insects, such as mealworms and crickets, were "superfoods" that have long been enjoyed by communities in Asia, Africa and South America. However, people in Europe and North America are generally more squeamish about eating insects, despite recent forays by several restaurants and supermarkets into providing insect options for consumers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Six months after switching to a four-day working week, the UK's Atom Bank said it's seen benefits from talent retention to improved productivity. From a report: There was a 49% increase in job applications at the bank in January 2022 compared to a year ago, while staff retention rates have also risen, according to a press release Wednesday. Days lost to sickness fell over the period and customer service ratings also improved. The Durham, England-based challenger bank is one of a number of UK companies exploring new working patterns to meet growing demand for flexible employment following the pandemic. While some have questioned the feasibility of a shorter working week, Atom Bank has no such qualms. "We firmly believe the four-day week is the future of working life," said Anne-Marie Lister, chief people officer at Atom Bank. "We hope Atom's experiences will encourage more businesses to make the shift permanently."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The National Meteorological Service predicted a severe storm over the weekend, prompting the government to postpone fireworks planned for a national holiday. The weather ended up being calm. The New York Times: Meteorology is sometimes referred to as the only field where the experts can be consistently wrong and still keep their jobs. But that did not seem to apply in Hungary on Monday, when the country's top two weather officials were fired after an inaccurate forecast. Their predictions of extreme weather conditions in Budapest had prompted the government to postpone fireworks for its national holiday, St. Stephen's Day, seven hours before they were scheduled to begin on Saturday. The night turned out to be calm. On Sunday, Hungary's national meteorological service, the Orszagos Meteorologiai Szolgalat, issued an apology, saying that the weather on Saturday had been the least likely scenario based on its models. "Unfortunately, this uncertainty factor is part of our profession, we have tried to communicate this as well," the agency said on its Facebook page. By Monday, the head of the weather service and her deputy had been fired by Hungary's innovation minister, Laszlo Palkovics, a top official under Prime Minister Viktor Orban. On Tuesday, the service issued another statement on Facebook, saying it was a professional institution and not a political one. The agency said it did the best it could to prepare the forecasts, based on the date and time of the planned fireworks, using the available information to its experts. St. Stephen's Day celebrates the role of Stephen I, who became king in 1000 A.D., in the founding of the Hungarian state. "Our firm position is that despite significant decision-making pressure, the colleagues of the O.M.S.Z. performed the best of their knowledge and are not responsible for any alleged or real damage," the agency said, using an acronym for the agency.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Streaming media platform Plex sent out an email to its customers earlier today notifying them of a security breach that may have compromised account information, including usernames, email addresses, and passwords. Although there is no sign that the encrypted passwords were exposed, Plex nevertheless is advising all users to change their passwords immediately. From a report: Plex is one of the largest media server apps available, used by around 20 million people to stream video, audio, and photos they upload themselves in addition to an increasing variety of content the service provides to paid subscribers. The email states, "yesterday, we discovered suspicious activity on one of our databases. We immediately began an investigation and it does appear that a third-party was able to access a limited subset of data that includes emails, usernames, and encrypted passwords." There is no confirmation that other personal account information has been compromised, and there's no mention of private media libraries (which may or may not include pirated content, private nudes, and other sensitive content) having been accessed in the breach.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A study found losing just one hour of rest could kill people's desire to help others, even relatives and close friends. The team noted that a bad night appeared to dampen activity in the part of the brain that encouraged social behavior. "We discovered that sleep loss acts as a trigger of asocial behavior, reducing the innate desire of humans to help one another," said Prof Matthew Walker, co-author of the study at the University of California, Berkeley. "In a way, the less sleep you get, the less social and more selfish you become." Writing in the PLoS Biology journal, the team suggest that a chronic sleep deficit could harm social bonds and compromise the altruistic instincts that shape society. "Considering the essentiality of humans helping in maintaining cooperative, civilized societies, together with the robust erosion of sleep time over the last 50 years, the ramifications of these discoveries are highly relevant to how we shape the societies we wish to live in," said Walker. The team examined the willingness of 160 participants to help others with a "self-reported altruism questionnaire", which they completed after a night's sleep. Participants responded to different social scenarios on a scale from "I would stop to help" to "I would ignore them." In one experiment involving 24 participants, the researchers compared answers from the same person after a restful night and after 24 hours without sleep. The results revealed a 78% decline in self-reported eagerness to help others when tired. The team then performed brain scans of those participants and found a short night was associated with reduced activity in the social cognitive brain network, a region involved in social behavior. Participants were as reluctant to assist friends and family as strangers, the researchers said. "A lack of sleep impaired the drive to help others regardless of whether they were asked to help strangers or close relatives. That is, sleep loss triggers asocial, anti-helping behavior of a broad and indiscriminate impact," said Walker. To determine whether altruism takes a hit in the real world, the team then tracked more than 3m charitable donations in the US before and after clocks were shifted an hour forward to daylight saving time, suggesting a shorter period of sleep. They found a 10% drop in donations after the transition. "Our study adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that inadequate sleep not only harms the mental and physical wellbeing of an individual but also compromises the bonds between individuals, and even the altruistic sentiment of an entire nation," said Walker. Luckily, we can catch up on sleep. Walker said: "The positive note emerging from all our studies is that once sleep is adequate and sufficient the desire to help others is restored. But it's important to note that it is not only sleep duration that is relevant to helping. We found that the factor that was most relevant was actually sleep quality, above and beyond sleep quantity," he added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony's PlayStation VR2 headset is coming in "early 2023," according to posts the company made on Twitter and Instagram. The Verge reports: While the company released details of the headset's design earlier this year, it still hasn't announced a price. It is, however, promising a lot for the PlayStation VR2 -- it'll feature displays that add up to 4K resolution and can run at 90 or 120Hz, have a 110-degree field of view, and use foveated rendering, which renders certain parts of the image as sharper than others to make things easier for the computer (or, in this case, the PlayStation 5). The company also says the headset connects to your console with a single USB C cable. Sony has already announced it will have a lineup of about 20 "major" games available when it launches. The titles include games set in the Horizon and Walking Dead universes, as well as VR versions of No Man's Sky and Resident Evil Village. Unlike the original PlayStation VR headset, the PS VR2 won't use a camera connected to your console to track your movements. Instead, it'll use inside-out tracking, similar to the Quest 2, where cameras on the headset itself are in charge of the motion tracking. This means that the PS VR2 will also be able to let you see your surroundings while you're wearing the headset. Sony also says that the PlayStation 5 will let you broadcast yourself playing VR games, though you will have to have a PlayStation HD camera connected. Sony has also shown off the orb-shaped controllers, which will have adaptive triggers and haptic feedback like what's offered with Sony's DualSense controller for the PS5. They'll also have finger-touch detection, which can sense where you rest your thumb, index, or middle fingers without having to press anything.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After years of revelations about strange lights in the sky, first hand reports from Navy pilots about UFOs, and governmental investigations, Congress seems to have admitted something startling in print: it doesn't believe all UFOs are "man-made." Motherboard reports: Buried deep in a report that's an addendum to the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, a budget that governs America's clandestine services, Congress made two startling claims. The first is that "cross-domain transmedium threats to the United States national security are expanding exponentially." The second is that it wants to distinguish between UFOs that are human in origin and those that are not: "Temporary nonattributed objects, or those that are positively identified as man-made after analysis, will be passed to appropriate offices and should not be considered under the definition as unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena," the document states. The admission is stunning chiefly because, as more information about the U.S. government's study of UFOs has become public, many politicians have stopped just short of claiming the unidentified objects were extraterrestrial or extradimensional in origin. The standard line is typically that, if UFOs exist, then they're likely advanced -- although human-made -- vehicles. Obama refused to confirm the existence of aliens but did say that people have seen a lot of strange stuff in the sky lately when asked directly on The Late Show with James Corden, for example. But now Congress seems to want to specifically distinguish between objects that are "man-made" and those that are not. The admission is stunning chiefly because, as more information about the U.S. government's study of UFOs has become public, many politicians have stopped just short of claiming the unidentified objects were extraterrestrial or extradimensional in origin. A large question, of course, is why Congress is seemingly admitting this now, in public. After all, lawmakers are privy to classified information that the general public isn't. "It strains credulity to believe that lawmakers would include such extraordinary language in public legislation without compelling evidence," Marik von Rennenkampff, an Obama-era DoD official, said in an op-ed in The Hill about the budget. According to the op-ed, the comments were first noticed by UFO researcher Douglas Johnson. "This implies that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee believe (on a unanimous, bipartisan basis) that some UFOs have non-human origins," von Rennenkampff continued. "After all, why would Congress establish and task a powerful new office with investigating non-'man-made' UFOs if such objects did not exist?" "Make no mistake: One branch of the American government implying that UFOs have non-human origins is an explosive development."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A recent report by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found more than 80 percent of urine samples from children and adults in the U.S. contained the herbicide glyphosate. A study by Florida Atlantic University and Nova Southeastern University takes this research one step further and is the first to link the use of the herbicide Roundup, a widely used weed killer, to convulsions in animals. Glyphosate, the weed killer component in Roundup, is the world's most commonly used herbicide by volume and by land-area treated. Glyphosate-resistant crops account for almost 80 percent of transgenic crop cultivated land, which has resulted in an estimated 6.1 billion kilos of glyphosate sprayed across the world from 2005 to 2014. Roundup is used at both industrial and consumer levels, and its use is projected to dramatically increase over the coming years.A major question, yet to be fully understood, is the potential impact of glyphosate on the nervous system. Results, published in Scientific Reports, showed that glyphosate and Roundup increased seizure-like behavior in soil-dwelling roundworms and provides significant evidence that glyphosate targets GABA-A receptors. These communication points are essential for locomotion and are heavily involved in regulating sleep and mood in humans. What truly sets this research apart is that it was done atsignificantly lesslevels than recommended by the EPA and those used in past studies. "The concentration listed for best results on the Roundup Super Concentrate label is 0.98 percent glyphosate, which is about 5 tablespoons of Roundup in 1 gallon of water," said [project lead Akshay S. Naraine]. "A significant finding from our study reveals that just 0.002 percent glyphosate, a difference of about 300 times less herbicide than the lowest concentration recommended for consumer use, had concerning effects on the nervous system." Using C. elegans, a soil-dwelling roundworm, researchers first tested glyphosate alone and then both the U.S. and United Kingdom formulations of Roundup from two distinct time periods -- before and after the U.K.'s 2016 ban on polyethoxylated tallowamine (POEAs). These conditions were selected to pinpoint which effects are specific to the active ingredient glyphosate, Roundup formulations in general, the POEAs surfactants, or any combination of these. The study found that the active ingredient glyphosate exacerbated convulsions in C. elegans and suggest the GABA-A receptor as a neurological target for the observed physiological changes. The data also indicate that there is an important distinction between exposure to glyphosate and Roundup, with Roundup exposure increasing the percentage of C. elegans that did not recover from seizure activity. The non-recovery phenotype and prolonged convulsions in C. elegans from this study have helped to set a foundation for understanding nuanced physiological effects of herbicide that occur at concentrations exponentially below neurotoxic levels.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The end-to-end encryption email service, Tutanota, says they are receiving reports that Crunchyroll is not allowing the use of their email addresses when signing up for their service. After contacting their team requiring that their domains be unblocked, they received the following response: "The ban of your domains is because we encountered a lot of hackers that used your domains emails to hack our accounts." From a report: In other words, Crunchyroll believes that many hackers used Tutanota domain emails to hack their accounts, which is why they banned Tutanota from their list. Moreover, they recommend users to use email accounts powered by "Big Tech" companies for hassle-free sign up to their services. This is not entirely a new phenomenon, notes It's FOSS. "DeviantArt actively blocked Proton Mail in the past because spammers used the platform to create accounts. Now, they have unblocked them." Tutanota recently called out Microsoft for blocking Tutanota users from registering an account with its cloud-based collaboration platform, Teams.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese authorities have punished 27 people over the publication of a maths textbook that went viral over its "tragically ugly" illustrations. The Guardian reports: A months-long investigation by a ministry of education working group found the books were "not beautiful," and some illustrations were "quite ugly" and did not "properly reflect the sunny image of China's children." The mathematics books were published by the People's Education Press almost 10 years ago, and were reportedly used in elementary schools across the country. But they went viral in May after a teacher published photos of the illustrations inside, including people with distorted faces and bulging pants, boys pictures grabbing girls' skirts and at least one child with an apparent leg tattoo. Social media users were largely amused by the illustrations, but many also criticized them as bringing disrepute and "cultural annihilation" to China, speculating they were the deliberate work of western infiltrators in the education sector. Related hashtags were viewed billions of times, embarrassing the Communist party and education authorities who announced a review of all textbooks "to ensure that the textbooks adhere to the correct political direction and value orientation." In a lengthy statement released on Monday, the education authorities said 27 individuals were found to have "neglected their duties and responsibilities" and were punished, including the president of the publishing house, who was given formal demerits, which can affect a party member's standing and future employment. The editor-in-chief and the head of the maths department editing office were also given demerits and dismissed from their roles. The statement said the illustrators and designers were "dealt with accordingly" but did not give details. They and their studios would no longer be engaged to work on textbook design or related work, it said. The highly critical statement found a litany of issues with the books, including critiquing the size, quantity and quality of illustrations, some of which had "scientific and normative problems."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta will now allow users of its Quest VR headsets to log in with a new Meta account instead of a Facebook account, the company announced on Tuesday. The Verge reports: The company had said in July that this change would be rolling out in August, and it marks a shift from an unpopular policy announced in 2020 that required users to log in to their headsets with a Facebook account instead of a separate Oculus account. Users can create Meta accounts through the Meta mobile app using an email address, Facebook account, or Instagram account. Once you create a Meta account, you'll need to set up a linked Meta Horizon social profile that will be used in VR. As with Facebook accounts before, you'll need one of these accounts to use a Quest headset. "Our new Meta account structure gives you more flexibility and control, letting you choose how you do and don't show up -- and whether Facebook and / or Instagram is part of your experience in VR and other surfaces where you use your Meta Horizon profile," Meta says in its blog post. If you want to set up a Meta account, the company has instructions in the blog post and in a video. If you are still using an Oculus account, you'll be able to do so until January 1st, 2023. After that date, you'll need to make a Meta account. The company says the option to make a Meta account and a Meta Horizon profile is rolling out now, so if you aren't able to just yet, you should be given the option soon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Skirting the official macOS system requirements to run new versions of the software on old, unsupported Macs has a rich history. Tools like XPostFacto and LeopardAssist could help old PowerPC Macs run newer versions of Mac OS X, a tradition kept alive in the modern era by dosdude1's patchers for Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, and Catalina. For Big Sur and Monterey, the OpenCore Legacy Patcher (OCLP for short) is the best way to get new macOS versions running on old Macs. It's an offshoot of the OpenCore Hackintosh bootloader, and it's updated fairly frequently with new features and fixes and compatibility for newer macOS versions. The OCLP developers have admitted that macOS Ventura support will be tough, but they've made progress in some crucial areas that should keep some older Macs kicking for a little bit longer. [...] First, while macOS doesn't technically include system files for pre-AVX2 Intel CPUs, Apple's Rosetta 2 software does still include those files, since Rosetta 2 emulates the capabilities of a pre-AVX2 x86 CPU. By extracting and installing those files in Ventura, you can re-enable support on Ivy Bridge and older CPUs without AVX2 instructions. And this week, Grymalyuk showed off another breakthrough: working graphics support on old Metal-capable Macs, including machines as old as the 2014 5K iMac, the 2012 Mac mini, and even the 2008 cheese grater-style Mac Pro tower. The OCLP team still has other challenges to surmount, not least of which will involve automating all of these hacks so that users without a deep technical understanding of macOS's underpinnings can continue to set up and use the bootloader. Grymalyuk still won't speculate about a timeframe for official Ventura support in OCLP. But given the progress that has been made so far, it seems likely that people with 2012-and-newer Macs should still be able to run Ventura on their Macs without giving up graphics acceleration or other important features.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Research has released an open source project it calls MultiNerf that does an "out of this world" job at removing digital noise from pictures, according to TechCrunch. "The algorithms run on raw image data and adds AI magic to figure out what footage 'should have' looked like without the distinct video noise generated by imaging sensors." "I can write a million words about how awesome this is," writes TechCrunch's Haje Jan Kamps. You can see how Nerf performs in the dark in this YouTube video.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Xiaolang Zhang, a former Apple employee who was accused of stealing computer files with trade secrets about Apple's secretive car division, pleaded guilty in federal court in San Jose on Monday. CNBC reports: Zhang's plea agreement with the U.S. government is under seal, according to court filings on Monday. Zhang faces as much as 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty to a felony charge of theft of trade secrets. Sentencing is scheduled for November. Zhang was accused of downloading internal Apple files about the company's car project -- specifically, a 25-page document including engineering schematics of a circuit board for an autonomous vehicle. Zhang was also accused of taking reference manuals and PDFs describing Apple's prototypes and prototype requirements. Zhang was arrested by federal agents in July 2018 at the San Jose airport, where he planned to fly to China. He had previously worked for Apple since 2015, most recently as a hardware engineer on Apple's autonomous vehicle team, according to charging documents from the FBI and U.S. attorney's office. The charges gave a peek into a secretive side of Apple that the company even years later still doesn't often acknowledge: its division developing autonomous electric vehicles.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Twitter has major security problems that pose a threat to its own users' personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy, according to an explosive whistleblower disclosure obtained exclusively by CNN and The Washington Post. The disclosure, sent last month to Congress and federal agencies, paints a picture of a chaotic and reckless environment at a mismanaged company that allows too many of its staff access to the platform's central controls and most sensitive information without adequate oversight. It also alleges that some of the company's senior-most executives have been trying to cover up Twitter's serious vulnerabilities, and that one or more current employees may be working for a foreign intelligence service. The whistleblower, who has agreed to be publicly identified, is Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, who was previously the company's head of security, reporting directly to the CEO. Zatko further alleges that Twitter's leadership has misled its own board and government regulators about its security vulnerabilities, including some that could allegedly open the door to foreign spying or manipulation, hacking and disinformation campaigns. The whistleblower also alleges Twitter does not reliably delete users' data after they cancel their accounts, in some cases because the company has lost track of the information, and that it has misled regulators about whether it deletes the data as it is required to do. The whistleblower also says Twitter executives don't have the resources to fully understand the true number of bots on the platform, and were not motivated to. Bots have recently become central to Elon Musk's attempts to back out of a $44 billion deal to buy the company (although Twitter denies Musk's claims). Zatko was fired by Twitter in January for what the company claims was poor performance. According to Zatko, his public whistleblowing comes after he attempted to flag the security lapses to Twitter's board and to help Twitter fix years of technical shortcomings and alleged non-compliance with an earlier privacy agreement with the Federal Trade Commission. Zatko is being represented by Whistleblower Aid, the same group that represented Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. John Tye, founder of Whistleblower Aid and Zatko's lawyer, told CNN that Zatko has not been in contact with Musk, and said Zatko began the whistleblower process before there was any indication of Musk's involvement with Twitter. After this article was initially published, Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk, told CNN, "We have already issued a subpoena for Mr. Zatko, and we found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding." "Mr. Zatko was fired from his senior executive role at Twitter in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance," the Twitter spokesperson said. "What we've seen so far is a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context. Mr. Zatko's allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders. Security and privacy have long been company-wide priorities at Twitter and will continue to be." Zatko also alleges that the Indian government forced Twitter to put a government agent on the payroll, giving them access to sensitive user data. "Twitter is engaged in a legal challenge against the Indian government after it asked a local court in July to overturn some government orders to remove content from the social media platform, and alleged abuse of power by officials," adds Reuters.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft could be preparing to name its next big OS update the "Windows 11 2022 Update." A report adds: References to this naming have appeared in near-final versions of the next big Windows 11 release, currently named 22H2. Twitter user XenoPanther spotted the Windows 11 2022 Update naming in the Get Started app that appears when you set up a new PC. The naming could simply be a placeholder, or it could indicate Microsoft is finally simplifying its often confusing update names for Windows. We've seen a variety of names over the years, including the Creators Update naming for a big Windows 10 update, more mundane naming like the Windows 10 May 2021 Update, and more recently, the Windows 10 21H2 moniker. Microsoft had considered naming its updates after animals or people but transitioned to the more safe monthly naming instead of point releases like Apple does with iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and many other software updates. A move to just the yearly naming for Windows 11 updates would make sense if Microsoft is planning fewer big drops of features.Read more of this story at Slashdot.