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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Intel could really use a few bucks from the recently passed (by Congress, at least) $280 billion CHIPS and Science ACT. The U.S. chipmaker shocked investors on Thursday, revealing it lost nearly $500 million in Q2, its first quarterly loss in years. The company cited weakened demand for PC components and downturns in the broader economy as the main culprits for the declines. Overall, Intel's revenues were down 22% year over year. Those results have forced Intel to lower its expected yearly revenues down from $68 billion to $65 billion. Yikes. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said the results were "disappointing." "This quarter's results were below the standards we have set for the company and our shareholders," Gelsinger said. "We must and will do better. The sudden and rapid decline in economic activity was the largest driver, but the shortfall also reflects our own execution issues." He continued. "We are being responsive to changing business conditions, working closely with our customers while remaining laser-focused on our strategy and long-term opportunities. We are embracing this challenging environment to accelerate our transformation." In his prepared statements, Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner elaborated on the declines, saying a worse than expected covid-19 related downturn was partly responsible for declining consumer demand. On the economic side, Zinsner said a combination of rising inflation, higher interest rates, and downstream effects from the war in Ukraine hit the company particularly hard. "Due to the difficult macroeconomic environment together with our own execution challenges, our results for the quarter were well below expectations and necessitate a significant revision to our full-year financial guidance," Zinsner said. Now, Intel says it's planning to pass on some of that inflationary pricing to consumers. In statements first spotted by PC World, Zinsner reportedly confirmed the company's getting ready to hike prices for components, so you might want to buy any new Intel chips before the fourth quarter. While Zinsner didn't say how much prices will rise by, previous reports claim the company's considering increases of up to 20% for certain processors. "You know we can absorb a lot of inflationary impacts that others can't," Zinsner said, according to PC World. "But at this point now that some of the price increases, inflationary increases, have turned out to be more permanent, where there's a certain amount that we do need to pass on to the customers." "As we look beyond the near term, the semiconductor industry continues to be at the beginning of a new structural growth phase driven by four superpowers: ubiquitous compute, pervasive connectivity, cloud-to-edge infrastructure and AI," added Gelsinger. "What remains very clear, even during this period of uncertainty, is the growing importance of silicon to the global economy and to each of our daily lives."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers at Stanford University, MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and the Autodesk AI Lab have collaborated to develop a novel learning-based framework that can interpret 2D instructions to build 3D objects. The Register reports: The Manual-to-Executable-Plan Network, or MEPNet, was tested on computer-generated Lego sets, real Lego set instructions and Minecraft-style voxel building plans, and the researchers said it outperformed existing methods across the board. Interpreting 2D instructions isn't easy for artificial intelligence. The researchers said there are a couple key problems going from visual instructions that, like Lego sets, consist entirely of images: Identifying correspondence between 2D and 3D objects, and dealing with a lot of basic pieces, like Lego. Basic Lego bricks, the researchers said, are often assembled into complex forms before being added to the main body of the model. This "increases the difficulty for machines to interpret Lego manuals: it requires inferring 3D poses of unseen objects composed of seen primitives," the researchers said. Existing methods of parsing manual steps into machine-executable plans mainly consist of two forms, the researchers said: Search-based methods that are simple and accurate but computationally expensive; and learning-based models that are fast but aren't very good at handling unseen 3D shapes. MEPNet, the researchers said, combines both. Starting with a 3D model of the components, the current state of the Lego set, and 2D manual images, MEPNet "predicts a set of 2D keypoints and masks for each component," the researchers wrote. Once that's done, the 2D keypoints "are back-projected to 3D by finding possible connections between the base shape and the new components." The combination "maintains the efficiency of learning-based models, and generalizes better to unseen 3D components," the team wrote. In the paper, the researchers said their aim is to create machines that help people assemble complex objects, and they include furniture alongside Lego bricks and voxel worlds in their list of applications. The researchers have made their code available on Github.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In Twitter's 20th transparency report, the company says it saw "record highs" in the number of account data requests during the July-December 2021 reporting period, with 47,572 legal demands on 198,931 accounts. Engadget reports: The media in particular faced much more pressure. Government demands for data from verified news outlets and journalists surged 103 percent compared to the last report, with 349 accounts under scrutiny. The largest slice of requests targeting the news industry came from India (114), followed by Turkey (78) and Russia (55). Governments succeeded in withholding 17 tweets. As in the past, US demands represented a disproportionately large chunk of the overall volume. The country accounted for 20 percent of all worldwide account info requests, and those requests covered 39 percent of all specified accounts. Russia is still the second-largest requester with 18 percent of volume, even if its demands dipped 20 percent during the six-month timeframe. The company said it was still denying or limiting access to info when possible. It denied 31 percent of US data requests, and either narrowed or shut down 60 percent of global demands. Twitter also opposed 29 civil attempts to identify anonymous US users, citing First Amendment reasons. It sued in two of those cases, and has so far had success with one of those suits. There hasn't been much success in reporting on national security-related requests in the US, however, and Twitter is still hoping to win an appeal that would let it share more details.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Samsung is introducing an interesting new feature for people sending in their Galaxy phones for repair: "repair mode." When shipping off your phone, you might want to do something to protect your data, and the new feature sounds like a great solution. It locks down your data, but not your phone. [...] While in repair mode, technicians can still poke around in your device and test everything, but they'll only see the default apps with blank data. When you get your device back, you can re-authenticate and disable repair mode and you'll get all your data back. The feature was first spotted by SamMobile, and Samsung has so far only announced the feature in a Korean press release; it is first launching in Korea for the Galaxy S21 (the S22 is Samsung's latest flagship phone). Repair mode can be turned on from the settings menu, and Samsung says (through Google translate), "You won't be able to access your personal data, such as photos, messages, and accounts," and anyone with the phone will "only use the default installed apps." Repair mode can be exited the same way, though you'll need to authenticate with a pattern, pin, or fingerprint.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After admonishing crypto lender Voyager Digital for "false and misleading" statements on the subject, the FDIC said banks must ensure that crypto firms they partner with are clear about whether customer deposits are insured. From a report: In industry guidance published Friday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said insured banks should monitor that crypto firms they work with do not misrepresent the availability of deposit insurance and "should take appropriate action to address such misrepresentations." The notice comes a day after the FDIC and Federal Reserve demanded Voyager Digital correct what it called misrepresentations that suggested some of its customers were covered by federal insurance if the firm collapsed. When Voyager filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, its banking partner, Metropolitan Commercial Bank, issued a statement clarifying that FDIC insurance is available "only to protect against the failure of Metropolitan Commercial Bank," not Voyager. Metropolitan is holding about $350 million in customer funds, which Voyager has told customers will be released after the bank undergoes a fraud prevention process. Metropolitan is far from the only bank holding deposits on behalf of crypto companies, and now the FDIC wants to ensure customers are not further confused about how, or if, their assets are covered.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Iran has made steady advances in the design and production of military drones in recent years, and has stepped up their transfer to militant groups across the Middle East as it seeks to shift the dynamics of battlefields from Yemen to Gaza. Those efforts have now extended far beyond the region. From a report: Iran is now seeking to build its global clout and sell increasingly sophisticated weapons-capable drones commercially to other nations, including those that have been subject to various sanctions in recent years, like Venezuela and Sudan, according to Iranian news media, satellite images and defense experts inside and outside Iran. That has provided an important source of funds and political influence for Iran, which is itself isolated and struggling under U.S. financial restrictions. Now, Russia may be a potential client. Washington said this month that it had intelligence that Moscow planned to purchase hundreds of drones from Iran to bolster its arsenal for the war in Ukraine. U.S. officials have urged Iran not to sell drones to Russia and warned of consequences for both countries. Iran's foreign ministry said in a statement that its military cooperation with Russia predated the war, without providing details, and its foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said in an interview with the Italian daily La Repubblica in July that the country had no plans to provide military equipment to either side of the conflict.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta Platforms, grappling with its first-ever quarterly sales slump, now has another problem: Jobs in the metaverse are disappearing. From a report: New monthly job postings across all industries with "metaverse" in the title declined 81% between April and June, according to workplace researcher Revelio Labs, after surging in the months following Facebook's rebranding last fall. The dropoff coincides with a broader slowdown across the tech sector, which has prompted layoffs and hiring freezes, leaving workers from the Bay Area to Bangalore increasingly rattled. Job postings in tech hubs like San Francisco and Austin, Texas, dropped 8.4% in the past four weeks, according to job site Indeed. Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg's big bet on virtual reality and other nascent, immersive technologies encouraged companies of all stripes to look for experts in those fields, which may have created "short-lived hype from the demand side," Revelio Labs economist Jin Yan said. Now, as employers recalibrate their hiring needs and labor budgets amid growing concerns of a recession, that hype has come face to face with a sobering, and fully non-virtual, reality.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A study of 39,000 video gamers has found "little to no evidence" time spent playing affects their wellbeing. From a report: The average player would have to play for 10 hours more than usual per day to notice any difference, it found. And the reasons for playing were far more likely to have an impact. Well-being was measured by asking about life satisfaction and levels of emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger and frustration. The results contradict a 2020 study. Conducted by the same department at the Oxford Internet Institute -- but with a much smaller group of players -- the 2020 study had suggested that those who played for longer were happier. "Common sense says if you have more free time to play video games, you're probably a happier person," said Prof Andrew Przybylski, who worked on both studies. "But contrary to what we might think about games being good or bad for us, we found [in this latest study] pretty conclusive evidence that how much you play doesn't really have any bearing whatsoever on changes in well-being. "If players were playing because they wanted to, rather than because they felt compelled to, they had to, they tended to feel better."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kenya's national cohesion watchdog threatened to suspend Facebook from the country Friday if it doesn't mitigate hate speech ahead of the country's general elections next month. From a report: The regulator has given the company one week to remediate the problem, which included Facebook's approval of ads advocating for ethnic cleansing. Human rights organizations and the Facebook whistleblower are calling on Facebook to immediately suspend all advertising in Kenya and take other emergency steps. The National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), a Kenyan agency founded to mitigate ethnic violence and promote national healing in the wake of the 2007-08 post-election crisis, told reporters on Friday that Facebook was "in violation of the laws of our country."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Jersey police may have used blood samples taken from babies to investigate crimes, according to public defenders in the state. From a report: According to a lawsuit filed by the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (OPD), the practice came to light after a case in which New Jersey State Police successfully subpoenaed a testing lab for a blood sample drawn from a child. Police then performed DNA analysis on the blood sample that reportedly linked the child's father to a crime committed more than 25 years ago. The suspect then became a client of the OPD, which alerted the office to the techniques used to identify the man. The lawsuit, filed jointly by the OPD and the New Jersey Monitor, now seeks to compel the state of New Jersey to disclose information on the full extent of the practice. All babies born in the state of New Jersey are required to have a blood sample drawn within 48 hours as part of a mandatory testing program that screens them for 60 different disorders. These samples are processed in a state-run lab, which shares data with the state health authority and communicates results to parents. The blood samples are not directly shared with law enforcement agencies. But if police are able to reliably obtain the samples through subpoena, then effectively, the disease screening process is entering all babies born in the state into a DNA database with no ability to opt out.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon sent emails out Friday morning to Amazon Drive users to notify them that the company is shutting down its cloud storage service on Dec. 31, 2023. From a report: "We are taking the opportunity to more fully focus our efforts on Amazon Photos to provide customers a dedicated solution for photos and video storage," Amazon says in an FAQ. Amazon says photos and videos in Amazon Drive accounts have been automatically saved to Amazon Photos. "If you rely on Amazon Drive for your file storage, you will need to go to the Amazon Drive website and download your files by December 31, 2023," Amazon noted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schnell writes: A story (paywalled) analyzes the more uncertain fortunes of Marvel's most recent movies compared to their predecessors. From the article: "Since Disney acquired Marvel in 2009, the studio has produced 25 superhero films that have grossed a total $25 billion worldwide, making it one of the highest-earning film studios in Hollywood history. Among them are Marvel's 2019 Avengers: Endgame, the highest-grossing movie of all time with $2.8 billion at the global box office; Avengers: Infinity War, which grossed $2 billion, and eight more that topped $1 billion each. But since the beginning of 2021, the average global box-office gross of the six films produced by Marvel has fallen to $773.6 million — roughly half the $1.5 billion average of the previous six films ... Critical reception of the films has suffered as well. According to Rotten Tomatoes, a website that tracks movie reviews, the last six Marvel titles averaged a 75% approval rating among critics, compared with 88.5% for the prior six." Some films starring less established characters drove a part of the drop-off such as The Eternals ($402M total box office gross), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings ($420.7 million) and Black Widow ($373.2 million). But tentpole characters haven't always been a guarantee of success -- while Spider-Man: No Way Home grossed $1.9B globally and Captain Marvel took in $1.1B, Thor: Love and Thunder suffered a surprising 68% box office drop-off from week one to two and is trending towards a disappointing performance. Are Marvel's more recent films just victims of unrealistic expectations or pandemic-era changes in movie viewership? Have audience tastes changed, or has Marvel lost the plot when it comes to its newer movies?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google Stadia hasn't been as successful as the Internet super-giant wanted it to be. While the game streaming service did end up getting its foot in the door for a little while, it hasn't been making waves since its release, and many have theorized that Google would end up scuttling the service entirely in the relatively near future. This idea isn't without precedent, either, as Google is known to shut down underperforming services in surprisingly short order, and Google Stadia, in particular, isn't doing all that well in the grand scheme of things. The latest rumors suggest that the plans to shut down Stadia may be further along than some would think, with Google aiming to close it down before the end of 2022. Google Stadia was originally announced in 2019, and while it was presented as the next big thing for gaming, it barely made a splash in the end. According to Twitter account Killed by Google, which keeps track of all the services that Google closes down, it might not be long before Stadia's time is up. It's a "he said, she said" situation, to be fair, but according to the account holder's sources, Google may shut down Stadia "by the end of summer." The source also claims that there'd be no license transfer of any sort, which means that any purchases made on Stadia would effectively be nullified as the service closes down.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Chinese government entity responsible for public relations attempted to open a stealth account on TikTok targeting Western audiences with propaganda, according to internal messages seen by Bloomberg. From a report: The attempt, which met with push-back from TikTok executives, highlights the internal tensions within the fast-growing social media app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, which has constantly attempted to distance itself from Chinese state influence. In an April 2020 message addressed to Elizabeth Kanter, TikTok's head of government relations for the UK, Ireland, Netherlands and Israel, a colleague flagged a "Chinese government entity that's interested in joining TikTok but would not want to be openly seen as a government account as the main purpose is for promoting content that showcase the best side of China (some sort of propaganda)." The messages indicate that some of ByteDance's most senior government relations team, including Kanter and US-based Erich Andersen, Global Head of Corporate Affairs and General Counsel, discussed the matter internally but pushed back on the request, which they described as "sensitive." TikTok used the incident to spark an internal discussion about other sensitive requests, the messages state. "We declined to offer support for this request, as we believed the creation of such an account would violate our Community Guidelines," said a TikTok spokeswoman, who downplayed the incident as an informal request from a friend of an employee. TikTok has rules against "coordinated inauthentic behavior," where accounts conceal their true identity to exert influence or sway public opinion, and against political advertising, the spokeswoman said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Babel Finance, the troubled Asian crypto lender that abruptly halted client withdrawals last month, suffered heavy losses due to proprietary trading with customer funds, according to its restructuring proposal deck obtained by The Block. From a report: The deck, dated July 2022, reveals that Babel Finance lost more than $280 million in bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) due to its proprietary trading failure. Specifically, it lost around 8,000 BTC and 56,000 ETH in June after facing liquidation due to a significant market downturn. "In that volatile week of June when BTC fell precipitously from 30k to 20k, unhedged positions in [proprietary trading] accounts chalked up significant losses, directly leading to forced liquidation of multiple Trading Accounts and wiped out ~8,000 BTC and ~56,000 ETH," reads the deck. Due to these massive losses, Babel's lending and trading departments were unable to meet margin calls from counterparties. "Conclusion: Single point of failure - The Proprietary Trading team's failed operation falls outside of the company's normal business which has otherwise been running smoothly with proper management and control," according to the deck. Babel Finance describes its proprietary trading business as a "risky" business yet it failed to hedge its positions. "A Proprietary Trading team operates several Trading Accounts not controlled or monitored by Trading Department; no trading mandate or risk controls were implemented for these accounts; no PnL [profit and loss] was reported," per the deck.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The heat that demolished records in Britain last week, bringing temperatures as high as 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit to a country unaccustomed to scorching summers, would have been "extremely unlikely" without the influence of human-caused climate change, a new scientific report issued Thursday has found. From a report: Heat of last week's intensity is still highly unusual for Britain, even at current levels of global warming, said Mariam Zachariah, a research associate at Imperial College London and lead author of the new report. The chances of seeing the daytime highs that some parts of the country recorded last week were 1-in-1,000 in any given year, she and her colleagues found. Still, Dr. Zachariah said, those temperatures were at least 10 times as likely as they would have been in a world without greenhouse-gas emissions, and at least 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit hotter. "It's still a rare event today," said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and another author of the report. "It would have been an extremely unlikely event without climate change." Severe heat has become more frequent and intense across most regions of the world, and scientists have little doubt that global warming is a key driver. As the burning of fossil fuels causes average global temperatures to rise, the range of possible temperatures shifts upward, too, making blistering highs more likely. This means every heat wave is now made worse, to some extent, by changes in planetary chemistry caused by greenhouse-gas emissions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: The New Orleans City Council has reversed itself and approved police use of facial recognition software and cellphone surveillance towers to investigate violent crimes. The ordinance, approved by the council on a 4-to-2 vote Thursday, comes as killings in the city reach numbers last seen in the mid-2000s after Hurricane Katrina. It partly reverses an ordinance passed nearly two years ago, when crime was low. Mayor LaToya Cantrell called it "a tremendous stride towards greater public safety." The ordinance lists 39 specific crimes that can be investigated by using the technologies, including murder, rape, stalking, and battery of a police officer. Two other kinds of policing software remain forbidden: programs that seek to predict spots where crime is likely and those which use characteristics such as size, clothing or vehicle model to track people. The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana said facial recognition software has been shown to be biased by race and sex, and "there is absolutely no evidence that reinstating facial recognition will help reduce violence." Council member Eugene Green, who proposed the ordinance, said new police policies, including procedures for ensuring accuracy, were adequate safeguards. John Thomas, director of public safety and homeland security for the city, added: "The facial recognition in and of itself cannot get you any arrest warrants, no search warrants. It is just a tool for us to say, 'OK, this is a lead.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russian space officials have informed U.S. counterparts that Moscow would like to keep flying its cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) until their own orbital outpost is built and operational, a senior NASA official told Reuters on Wednesday. Reuters reports: Taken together with remarks from a senior Russian space official published on Wednesday, the latest indications are that Russia is still at least six years away from ending an orbital collaboration with the United States that dates back more than two decades. A schism in the ISS program seemed to be closer at hand on Tuesday, when Yuri Borisov, the newly appointed director-general of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, surprised NASA by announcing that Moscow intended to withdraw from the space station partnership "after 2024." Kathy Lueders, NASA's space operations chief, said in an interview that Russian officials later on Tuesday told the U.S. space agency that Roscosmos wished to remain in the partnership as Russia works to get its planned orbital outpost, named ROSS, up and running. "We're not getting any indication at any working level that anything's changed," Lueders told Reuters on Wednesday, adding that NASA's relations with Roscosmos remain "business as usual."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) hope to take custody of the samples Perseverance has been patiently collecting and return them safely to Earth, and they'll need the help of two more helicopters. IFLScience reports: NASA and the ESA are collaborating on putting a lander on Mars that is capable of taking off again and making a rendezvous with an orbiter which will then bring the cargo back to Earth. Rather than collect its own samples, the return mission will take over those collected by Perseverance, and the biggest change to the plans lies in how that transfer will occur. The project has not got funding yet but the space agencies are refining their plans. In a quest for the backing they need new details have been announced, along with a return date -- 2033 -- only slightly further off than 1969 was when Kennedy promised a Moon landing "before this decade is out." Previously the Sample Return Lander was planned to carry a Sample Fetch Rover and its associated second lander. Instead, NASA and the ESA are now proposing to equip the lander with two helicopters based on the phenomenally successful Ingenuity. They will be able to traverse the gap between the Mars Ascent Vehicle and where Perseverance left them much more quickly and having two offers redundancy if one fails. There's also a possibility that Perseverance could deliver the samples directly to the Mars Ascent Vehicle if it is still operating when the ascent vehicle lands. If everything goes to plan the Earth Return Orbiter and Sample Retrieval Lander will launch in 2027 and 2028 respectively. Although delays are common for space missions, the fact Ingenuity has continued to operate -- and even set records for its flights -- well beyond its anticipated mission time has increased the sample return team's optimism.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: The US Senate is going to move forward with a sweeping new bill after Senator Joe Manchin finally accepted to include investments to curb climate change. The new bill is going to include the long-awaited electric vehicle tax credit reform that is going to give back access to the tax credit to Tesla GM vehicles, along with other changes. Last year, the US House of Representatives passed the $1.9 trillion "Build Back Better" legislation, but it has been stuck in the divided Senate ever since. The bill is interesting to the EV community because it includes a long-needed reform to the federal tax credit for electric vehicles. Even though it is technically a small part of the overall bill, it is a point of contention. The main goal of the reform, and the one most people agree on, is the need to eliminate the tax credit cap after automakers hit 200,000 EVs sold, since it is putting automakers that were early in pushing electric vehicles at a disadvantage. It also happens that those automakers are American automakers, like Tesla and GM, while many foreign automakers still have access to the credit. Joe Manchin, a Democrat and senior United States senator from West Virginia, has been holding his vote, which is the deciding vote since the Democrats need every single one of their votes in the Senate to pass anything. The senator, who comes from a very conservative state, has proven to be difficult to deal when it comes to initiatives that deal with climate change, but in a reversal today, he announced that he accepted a new version of the bill, now called "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022." Here are some of the key changes to the EV federal tax credit in the new bill (as confirmed by Electrek): - Federal tax credit for EVs maintained at $7,500- Eliminates tax credit cap after automakers hit 200,000 EVs sold, making GM and Tesla once again eligible- The language in the bill indicates that the tax credit would be implemented at the point of sale instead of on taxes.- In order to get the full credit, the electric vehicle needs to be assembled in North America, the majority of battery components need to come from North America, and contain a certain percentage of minerals from countries with free trade agreements with the US- A new federal tax credit of $4,000 for used EVs- Zero-emission vans, SUVs, and trucks with MSRPs up to $80,000 qualify - Electric sedans priced up to $55,000 MSRP qualify - The full EV tax credit will be available to individuals reporting adjusted gross incomes of $150,000 or less, $300,000 for joint filersRead more of this story at Slashdot.

"Swiss researchers have developed a prototype disposable graphite-anode zinc-air battery that can be printed on a paper substrate, which they hope will reduce e-waste by replacing button cells in disposable paper-mounted electronics," writes Slashdot reader drinkypoo. "They demonstrated using it to operate a LCD digital clock." Here's an excerpt from the research published today in Scientific Report: The battery is based on a metal-air electrochemical cell that uses Zinc as a biodegradable metal in the anode, graphite in the cathode, paper as a separator between the electrodes, and a water-based electrolyte. In addition to paper's inherent biodegradability, sustainability and low cost, this design takes advantage of its natural wicking behavior and hygroscopic nature; The battery remains inactive until it contacts with water which then passively absorbs and transports across the paper membrane, thus activating the battery. The anode and cathode materials developed in this work are compatible with additive manufacturing techniques and we demonstrate that the battery can be stencil printed in a wide range of shapes and sizes. "The current collector is composed of graphite flakes, carbon black, shellac and ethanol," adds drinkypoo.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader HnT shares a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft said on Wednesday that an Austria-based company named DSIRF used multiple Windows and Adobe Reader zero-days to hack organizations located in Europe and Central America. Members of the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center, or MSTIC, said they have found Subzero malware infections spread through a variety of methods, including the exploitation of what at the time were Windows and Adobe Reader zero-days, meaning the attackers knew of the vulnerabilities before Microsoft and Adobe did. Targets of the attacks observed to date include law firms, banks, and strategic consultancies in countries such as Austria, the UK, and Panama, although those aren't necessarily the countries in which the DSIRF customers who paid for the attack resided. "MSTIC has found multiple links between DSIRF and the exploits and malware used in these attacks," Microsoft researchers wrote. "These include command-and-control infrastructure used by the malware directly linking to DSIRF, a DSIRF-associated GitHub account being used in one attack, a code signing certificate issued to DSIRF being used to sign an exploit, and other open source news reports attributing Subzero to DSIRF." Referring to DSIRF using the work KNOTWEED, Microsoft researchers wrote: In May 2022, MSTIC found an Adobe Reader remote code execution (RCE) and a 0-day Windows privilege escalation exploit chain being used in an attack that led to the deployment of Subzero. The exploits were packaged into a PDF document that was sent to the victim via email. Microsoft was not able to acquire the PDF or Adobe Reader RCE portion of the exploit chain, but the victim's Adobe Reader version was released in January 2022, meaning that the exploit used was either a 1-day exploit developed between January and May, or a 0-day exploit. Based on KNOTWEED's extensive use of other 0-days, we assess with medium confidence that the Adobe Reader RCE is a 0-day exploit. The Windows exploit was analyzed by MSRC, found to be a 0-day exploit, and then patched in July 2022 as CVE-2022-22047. Interestingly, there were indications in the Windows exploit code that it was also designed to be used from Chromium-based browsers, although we've seen no evidence of browser-based attacks. The CVE-2022-22047 vulnerability is related to an issue with activation context caching in the Client Server Run-Time Subsystem (CSRSS) on Windows. At a high level, the vulnerability could enable an attacker to provide a crafted assembly manifest, which would create a malicious activation context in the activation context cache, for an arbitrary process. This cached context is used the next time the process spawned. CVE-2022-22047 was used in KNOTWEED related attacks for privilege escalation. The vulnerability also provided the ability to escape sandboxes (with some caveats, as discussed below) and achieve system-level code execution. The exploit chain starts with writing a malicious DLL to disk from the sandboxed Adobe Reader renderer process. The CVE-2022-22047 exploit was then used to target a system process by providing an application manifest with an undocumented attribute that specified the path of the malicious DLL. Then, when the system process next spawned, the attribute in the malicious activation context was used, the malicious DLL was loaded from the given path, and system-level code execution was achieved. Microsoft recommends a number of security considerations to help mitigate this attack, including patching CVE-2022-22047, updating Microsoft Defender Antivirus to update 1.371.503.0 or later, and enabling multifactor authentication (MFA).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter know-nothing cunt shares a report from The Register: Scientists from Rice University in Texas have used a dead spider as an actuator at the end of a robot arm -- a feat they claim has initiated the field of "necrobotics." "Humans have relied on biotic materials -- non-living materials derived from living organisms -- since their early ancestors wore animal hides as clothing and used bones for tools," the authors state in an article titled Necrobotics: Biotic Materials as Ready-to-Use Actuators. The article, published by Advanced Science, also notes that evolution has perfected many designs that could be useful in robots, and that spiders have proven especially interesting. Spiders' legs "do not have antagonistic muscle pairs; instead, they have only flexor muscles that contract their legs inwards, and hemolymph (i.e., blood) pressure generated in the prosoma (the part of the body connected to the legs) extends their legs outwards." The authors had a hunch that if they could generate and control a force equivalent to blood pressure, they could make a dead spider's legs move in and out, allowing them to grip objects and release them again. So they killed a wolf spider "through exposure to freezing temperature (approximately -4C) for a period of 5-7 days" and then used a syringe to inject the spider's prosoma with glue. By leaving the syringe in place and pumping in or withdrawing glue, the researchers were able to make the spider's legs contract and grip. The article claims that's a vastly easier way to make a gripper than with conventional robotic techniques that require all sorts of tedious fabrication and design efforts. "The necrobotic gripper is capable of grasping objects with irregular geometries and up to 130 percent of its own mass," the article notes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Intel is slowly moving into the dedicated graphics market, and its graphics driver releases are looking a lot more like Nvidia's and AMD's than they used to. For its dedicated Arc GPUs and the architecturally similar integrated GPUs that ship with 11th- and 12th-generation Intel CPUs, the company promises monthly driver releases, along with "Day 0" drivers with specific fixes and performance enhancements for just-released games. At the same time, Intel's GPU driver updates are beginning to de-emphasize what used to be the company's bread and butter: low-end integrated GPUs. The company announced yesterday that it would be moving most of its integrated GPUs to a "legacy support model," which will provide quarterly updates to fix security issues and "critical" bugs but won't include the game-specific fixes that newer GPUs are getting. The change affects a wide swath of GPUs, which are not all ancient history. Among others, the change affects all integrated GPUs in the following processor generations, from low-end unnumbered "HD/UHD graphics" to the faster Intel Iris-branded versions: 6th-generation Core (introduced 2015, codenamed Skylake), 7th-generation Core (introduced 2016, codenamed Kaby Lake), 8th-generation Core (introduced 2017-2018, codenamed Kaby Lake-R, Whiskey Lake, and Coffee Lake), 9th-generation Core (introduced 2018, codenamed Coffee Lake), 10th-generation Core (introduced 2019-2020, codenamed Comet Lake and Ice Lake), and various N4000, N5000, and N6000-series Celeron and Pentium CPUs (introduced 2017-2021, codenamed Gemini Lake, Elkhart Lake, and Jasper Lake). Intel is still offering a single 1.1GB driver package that supports everything from its newest Iris Xe GPUs to Skylake-era integrated graphics. However, the install package now contains one driver for newer GPUs that are still getting new features and a second driver for older GPUs on the legacy support model. The company uses a similar approach for driver updates for its Wi-Fi adapters, including multiple driver versions in the same download package to support multiple generations of hardware. "The upshot is that these GPUs' drivers are about as fast and well-optimized as they're going to get, and the hardware isn't powerful enough to play many of the newer games that Intel provides fixes for in new GPU drivers anyway," writes Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham. "Practically speaking, losing out on a consistent stream of new gaming-centric driver updates is unlikely to impact the users of these GPUs much, especially since Intel will continue to fix problems as they occur."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nirvana Finance, a Solana-based yield protocol, suffered a $3.5 million exploit utilizing flash loans to manipulate and drain its liquidity pools, blockchain data shows. CoinDesk reports: The price of the protocol's native ANA token fell over 80% in the past few hours, while its NIRV stablecoin lost its peg to the U.S. dollar and dropped to 8 cents at writing time, CoinGecko data shows. Nirvana allowed users to earn annual yields of over 100% on their locked assets by creating and destroying tokens based on user demand as the ANA tokens were bought from and sold to the protocol. Over $3.5 million worth of ANA was locked on the protocol before the attack on Thursday. Data from blockchain explorers shows the attack used over 10 million USDC sourced from lending tool Solend in a flash loan. At that point over $10 million worth of ANA was minted, or created, and the entire amount swapped to receive $3.5 million worth of tether (USDT) from Nirvana's treasury wallet. This was possible because the treasury considered the 10 million USDC infusion to be genuine. However, it wasn't, and the protocol was hence tricked into releasing its treasury's liquidity. The total value locked (TVL) on Nirvana fell to 7 cents in European morning hours following the attack. Its entire liquidity pool was effectively drained, data from DeFi Llama shows. The 10 million USDC was returned to Solend after the exploit. The stolen funds were transferred to the Ethereum network using Wormhole, a blockchain tool that connects Solana to other networks, and converted to DAI, an Ethereum-based stablecoin, blockchain data shows. The attacker address -- 0xB9AE2624Ab08661F010185d72Dd506E199E67C09 -- currently holds over $3.5 million worth of DAI, blockchain data shows. Nirvana's trading functions were suspended by developers following the attack, as per messages by admins on the protocol's Telegram channel.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Justice Department is investigating a data breach of the U.S. federal courts system dating to early 2020, a top official testified on Capitol Hill Thursday. Politico reports: House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) told fellow lawmakers that there had been a "system security failure" of the U.S. Courts' document management system. He said the committee learned in March about the "startling breadth and scope" of the breach. It was the first public disclosure of the hack. Nadler said the data breach of the courts was separate from the SolarWinds hack revealed in late 2020, which involved Russian government-backed hackers infiltrating the networks of over a dozen U.S. federal agencies for much of 2020, including the federal court systems. He spoke at a committee hearing on oversight of the Justice Department's National Security Division. Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olsen testified to the committee that NSD is "working very closely with the judicial conference and judges around the country to address this issue," and committed to updating the committee on the investigation as it progressed. A committee aide said that Nadler's questions came after the committee received a briefing on the attack, noting that "the sweeping impact it may have had on the operation of the Department of Justice is staggering." The aide was granted anonymity in order to discuss a private briefing. Committee member Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) pressed Olsen for more details on how many cases had been impacted by the breach. "I would expect your preparation and for us to be able to get that information as quickly as possible in a setting that would be appropriate, but this is a dangerous set of circumstances that has now been publicly announced, and we need to know how many... were dismissed," Jackson Lee said. Nadler questioned Olsen on whether the breach had in any way affected cases pursued by the NSD, and Olsen testified he could not "think of anything in particular."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Instagram will walk back some recent changes to the product following a week of mounting criticism, the company said today. A test version of the app that opened to full-screen photos and videos will be phased out over the next one to two weeks, and Instagram will also reduce the number of recommended posts in the app as it works to improve its algorithms. "I'm glad we took a risk -- if we're not failing every once in a while, we're not thinking big enough or bold enough," Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in an interview. "But we definitely need to take a big step back and regroup. [When] we've learned a lot, then we come back with some sort of new idea or iteration. So we're going to work through that." The changes come amid growing user frustration over a series of changes to Instagram designed to help it better compete with TikTok and navigate the broader shift in user behavior away from posting static photos toward watching more video. Redesigns often incur the wrath of users who are hostile to change, but in this case the high-profile dissatisfaction was backed up by Instagram's own internal data, Mosseri said. The trend toward users watching more video is real, and pre-dated the rise of TikTok, he said. But it's clear that people actually do dislike Instagram's design changes. "For the new feed designs, people are frustrated and the usage data isn't great," he said. "So there I think that we need to take a big step back, regroup, and figure out how we want to move forward." The company also plans to show users fewer recommendations. On Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said [on an earnings call (PDF)] that recommended posts and accounts in feeds currently account for about 15 percent of what you see when you browse Facebook, and an even higher percentage on Instagram. By the end of 2023, that figure will be around 30 percent, Zuckerberg said. But Instagram will temporarily reduce the amount of recommended posts and accounts as it works to improve its personalization tools. (Mosseri wouldn't say by how much, exactly.) "When you discover something in your field that you didn't follow before, there should be a high bar -- it should just be great," Mosseri said. "You should be delighted to see it. And I don't think that's happening enough right now. So I think we need to take a step back, in terms of the percentage of feed that are recommendations, get better at ranking and recommendations, and then -- if and when we do -- we can start to grow again." ("I'm confident we will," he added.) Mosseri made clear that the retreat Instagram announced today is not permanent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JetBlue Airways on Thursday announced it would purchase Spirit Airlines, a combination that would create America's fifth-largest airline. From a report: The announcement comes a day after Spirit pulled the plug on a deal to merge with Frontier. JetBlue had been pursuing a hostile bid for Spirit even while Spirit sought shareholder approval for a lower-priced deal with Frontier. Spirit had continually expressed concern whether regulators would approve a deal with JetBlue. But shareholders had balked at accepting Frontier's less-valuable cash-and-stock offer when they had JetBlue's all-cash offer on the table. JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes said the deal will be fruitful for investors and passengers. "We are excited to deliver this compelling combination that turbocharges our strategic growth, enabling JetBlue to bring our unique blend of low fares and exceptional service to more customers, on more routes," he said in a statement. The companies said the deal is worth $3.8 billion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sky Mavis, the company that makes the online game, says the executive was shoring up funds to protect the business and help users after Ronin attack. From a report: This spring, Sky Mavis, the startup that makes the video game Axie Infinity, announced it had suffered a devastating hack. While most video games are primarily recreational, Axie Infinity's popularity relied largely on its players' ability to trade and earn crypto tokens that had financial value, and players had stashes that represented significant savings. The hack forced the Vietnam-based game developer to shut down its system for pulling tokens out of the game, essentially freezing the assets of its users before they could react to the news. Most of them, anyway. In the hours before the announcement and freeze, a digital wallet belonging to its chief executive officer and co-founder, Trung Nguyen, made a large transaction that included about $3 million worth of Axie Infinity's main token, AXS. The tokens moved from Axie's blockchain -- a digital ledger for recording transactions -- to the crypto exchange Binance. Although the transfer was visible to anyone with an internet connection, there's nothing about the wallet that directly connects it to the person controlling it, as is true of most crypto transactions. But after being presented with analysis of public data that seemed to link the wallet to Nguyen, Sky Mavis confirmed that he controlled it. The unusual activity took place during a moment of acute stress for Sky Mavis. For months, the first version of its game had been showing showing signs of steep decline, and many players were losing faith. The company was rushing to get the new version of Axie Infinity out when hackers on March 23 drained its system of cryptocurrencies that were worth over $600 million at the time. It was one of the biggest cyberattacks in the history of crypto. Anyone who knew what was going on would have had a strong incentive to sell tokens in the system before they were temporarily locked up, and moving them to the Binance exchange would have been a necessary first step toward cashing them out. But Sky Mavis says that this wasn't the reason Nguyen made the transfer. In emails, Kalie Moore, a company spokeswoman, said that Nguyen had been working to shore up the company's finances during the crisis, and had to do so in way that wasn't obvious to the broader crypto market, for the good of the overall Axie Infinity economy. By moving AXS to the exchange, said Moore, the company could provide liquidity to its users as it restored access to funds via Binance.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Although PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X have always been extremely close in their tech specs, features, and performance, one area where the Microsoft console established an early lead was in its compatibility with a range of modern displays and display technologies. That gap is finally now set to be closed. After PS5 was updated with support for variable refresh rates in April, Sony has now confirmed that the system will finally be able to output at 1440p resolution. The new feature is introduced in a system software beta available to invited users today, which Sony expects to roll out to everyone "later this year." Also included in the beta are a bunch of interface customizations, including the ability to group games together in folder-style Gamelists. Although most modern TV sets have 1080p or 4K resolutions, compatibility with 1440p (also known as QHD) matters because it's a very popular resolution for gaming PC monitors. There are a lot of these displays around, many with features like VRR, that PS5 owners will be happy to finally use to their full ability. Games which support 1440p will display at native resolution, while games that display at 4K will supersample down to 1440p for a smoother image.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Two U.S. senators are preparing legislation that would give merchants power to process many Visa and Mastercard credit cards over different networks. From a report: The bill, which could be introduced as soon as this week, aims to create more competition among U.S. credit-card networks, a sector where Visa and Mastercard have long dominated. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, are expected to introduce the bill. Mr. Marshall said banks and major card networks lobbied his office to not sign onto the bill. He decided to move forward after hearing from a growing number of merchants, including small businesses, restaurants, gas stations and convenience stores, about the toll of the rising credit-card fees set by Visa and Mastercard that are often pocketed by large banks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

joshuark writes: Dan Goodin of Ars Technica reports that security researchers have found that rootkits for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) are not rare, and difficult to detect. Kaspersky researchers profiled CosmicStrand, the security firm's name for a sophisticated UEFI rootkit that the company detected and obtained through its antivirus software. They state: "The most striking aspect of this report is that this UEFI implant seems to have been used in the wild since the end of 2016 -- long before UEFI attacks started being publicly described." The researchers warned that "the multiple rootkits discovered so far evidence a blind spot in our industry that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Billionaire Jack Ma plans to relinquish control of Ant Group, WSJ reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter, part of the fintech giant's effort to move away from affiliate Alibaba Group after more than a year of extraordinary pressure from Chinese regulators. From a report: The authorities halted Ant's $34 billion-plus IPO in 2020 at the eleventh hour and are forcing the technology firm to reorganize as a financial holding company regulated by China's central bank. As the overhaul progresses, Ant is taking the opportunity to reduce the company's reliance on Mr. Ma, who founded Alibaba. Mr. Ma, a 57-year-old former English teacher and one of China's most prominent entrepreneurs, has been the target of government action that appears designed to reduce his influence and the power of his companies. He has controlled Ant since he carved its precursor assets out of Alibaba more than a decade ago. Over time he built it into a company that owns the Alipay payments network with more than one billion users, an investing platform that houses what was once the world's largest money-market fund, and a large microlending business. Ant was expected to be valued at more than $300 billion had it gone public. Diminishing his ownership could put back a potential revival of Ant's IPO for a year or more. Chinese securities regulations require a timeout on public listings for companies that have gone through a recent change in control.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI has deciphered the structure of virtually every protein known to science, paving the way for the development of new medicines or technologies to tackle global challenges such as famine or pollution. From a report: Proteins are the building blocks of life. Formed of chains of amino acids, folded up into complex shapes, their 3D structure largely determines their function. Once you know how a protein folds up, you can start to understand how it works, and how to change its behaviour. Although DNA provides the instructions for making the chain of amino acids, predicting how they interact to form a 3D shape was more tricky and, until recently, scientists had only deciphered a fraction of the 200m or so proteins known to science. In November 2020, the AI group DeepMind announced it had developed a program called AlphaFold that could rapidly predict this information using an algorithm. Since then, it has been crunching through the genetic codes of every organism that has had its genome sequenced, and predicting the structures of the hundreds of millions of proteins they collectively contain. Last year, DeepMind published the protein structures for 20 species â" including nearly all 20,000 proteins expressed by humans -- on an open database. Now it has finished the job, and released predicted structures for more than 200m proteins. "Essentially, you can think of it as covering the entire protein universe. It includes predictive structures for plants, bacteria, animals, and many other organisms, opening up huge new opportunities for AlphaFold to have an impact on important issues, such as sustainability, food insecurity, and neglected diseases," said Demis Hassabis, DeepMind's founder and chief executive. Scientists are already using some of its earlier predictions to help develop new medicines.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: From Elon Musk Twitter impersonators to dubious Discord chats, cryptocurrency and non-fungible token (NFT) scammers have stolen billions of dollars from investors over the last few years. But now, politicians and law enforcement are turning their attention to Apple and Google -- companies that operate huge app stores -- and how they review fraudulent crypto apps. In letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) asked that the companies explain their processes in reviewing and approving crypto trading and wallet apps for download on their app stores. Brown's inquiry follows a recently released FBI report warning that 244 investors have been scammed out of $42.7 million from fraudulent cryptocurrency apps claiming to be credible investment platforms in under a year. "Crypto mobile apps are available to the public through app stores, including Apple's App Store," the senator wrote to Cook on Thursday. "While cryptocurrency apps have offered investors easy and convenient ways to trade cryptocurrency, reports have emerged of fake crypto apps that have scammed hundreds of investors."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Democrats on Capitol Hill plan to introduce legislation that could restore net neutrality and the Federal Communications Commission's authority to regulate broadband. From a report: With President Joe Biden's pick to be the fifth commissioner at the FCC stalled, two Senate Democrats will introduce the Net Neutrality and Broadband Justice Act that would codify Obama-era net neutrality rules repealed under President Donald Trump's administration. The renewed effort to pass a federal net neutrality law is being led by Sens. Edward J. Markey from Massachusetts and Ron Wyden from Oregon, according to a press release sent by Markey's office Thursday. The legislation would reestablish the FCC's authority over broadband infrastructure by reclassifying internet service as a telecommunications service, the press release states. This would mean stricter oversight for broadband companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, The Washington Post reports. Rep. Doris Matsui, a Democrat from California, will introduce companion legislation in the House, George Hatamiya, a spokesman for Matsui, confirmed last week. "I strongly believe that net neutrality principles should form the foundation of an open internet," Matsui said in an emailed statement to CNET. "These protections will help defend free expression and innovation -- protecting consumers and securing a more equitable online ecosystem."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Comcast fell the most in two years after its prized internet business added no new customers last quarter, its worst performance in decades, due to a housing slowdown and heavy competition. From a report: The largest US cable TV provider had added broadband customers in every quarter since at least 2005, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Analysts were looking for around 83,000 new subscribers in the second quarter, and none of them predicted the gain would be in fact, zero. The shares slid as much as 9.9% on Thursday, their biggest intraday decline since March 2020. Rival Charter Communications, which reports earnings on Friday, dropped as much as 7.5%. "We expect the stock to face pressure absent forward-looking comments that suggest an improvement in broadband trends," New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin wrote of Comcast. As home buying slows and competition among fiber and wireless broadband providers intensifies, the prospects of Comcast and its cable peers returning to prepandemic internet growth has become more challenging.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

El Salvador's finance minister defended the country's strategy to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender even as critics urge the nation to ditch the experiment as the cryptocurrency world suffers through a bear market. From a report: Almost a year into the country's bet on Bitcoin, Alejandro Zelaya said the digital currency has brought financial services to a largely unbanked population and attracted tourism and investments. While its use as a means of exchange is low, he said he remains a believer in digital money and added the government is still planning to issue a Bitcoin-backed bond using blockchain technology. "For some, it's something new and something they don't entirely understand, but it's a phenomenon that exists and is gaining ground and will continue to be around in the coming years," Zelaya said in an interview on Wednesday. The government has purchased 2,381 Bitcoin with public funds, which, today, are worth about 50% less than what authorities paid for them, according to calculations by Bloomberg based on tweets by President Nayib Bukele. A survey by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research found that most businesses and consumers in El Salvador still prefer to use hard currency to pay for goods and services and send remittances. The International Monetary Fund has urged the nation to strip Bitcoin of its legal standing. The government is negotiating a $1.3 billion extended fund facility with the IMF, but no deal has yet been reached.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Union found evidence that smartphones used by some of its staff were compromised by an Israeli company's spy software, the bloc's top justice official said in a letter seen by Reuters. From the report: In a July 25 letter sent to European lawmaker Sophie in 't Veld, EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said iPhone maker Apple had told him in 2021 that his iPhone had possibly been hacked using Pegasus, a tool developed and sold to government clients by Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group. The warning from Apple triggered the inspection of Reynders' personal and professional devices as well as other phones used by European Commission employees, the letter said. Though the investigation did not find conclusive proof that Reynders' or EU staff phones were hacked, investigators discovered "indicators of compromise" â" a term used by security researchers to describe that evidence exists showing a hack occurred.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Developers in west London face a potential ban on new housing projects until 2035 because the electricity grid has run out of capacity to support new homes, jeopardising housebuilding targets in the capital. From a report: The Greater London Authority wrote to developers this week warning them that it might take more than a decade to bulk up grid capacity and get developments under way again in three west London boroughs -- Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow. In those boroughs, "major new applicants to the distribution network... including housing developments, commercial premises and industrial activities will have to wait several years to receive new electricity connections," according to the GLA's note, which has been seen by the Financial Times. A recent applicant to the distribution network was told that there is not "sufficient electrical capacity for a new connection" until up to 2035, according to the note. The three boroughs accounted for almost 5,000 homes in 2019-20, equivalent to 11 per cent of London's housing supply. Stalling new projects would exacerbate a chronic housing shortage in a city which already routinely undershoots its delivery targets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Charter Communications must pay out $7 billion in damages after one of its Spectrum cable technicians robbed and killed an elderly woman, a jury decided Tuesday. The Register reports: Betty Thomas, 83, was stabbed to death by Roy Holden Jr in December 2019. He had dropped by her home in Irving, Texas, on a service call after she reported a problem with her internet-TV bundle, and returned the next day in his company uniform and van, inviting himself in and killing her using his Spectrum-issued gloves and utility knife. She was found dead by her family on her living room floor after she didn't show up to a Christmas and birthday party that night. Holden pleaded guilty to murder last year and was sentenced to life behind in bars. Thomas' family sued Charter [PDF] in 2020 for negligence. It was alleged in testimony that Holden had complained to his bosses that he was penniless and desperate after a divorce. It was further alleged that he had stolen credit cards and checks from elderly Spectrum subscribers, and that the corporation turned a blind eye to a pattern of theft by its installers and technicians. During that civil trial it was also claimed Thomas' family was charged $58 for Holden's service call, and continued to be billed after their grandmother's brutal slaying to the point where her account was sent to collections. The court heard how Holden was not working the day he killed Thomas, and went out to her home anyway to rob her. He was able to use his company keycard to access a Charter vehicle lot and drive off in one of its service vans even though he was off-duty. According to the family's legal team, while Holden was seemingly making repairs, he tried to steal one or more of her bank cards from her purse, and murdered her when he was caught in the act. He later went on a spending spree with her funds, it was claimed. "This was a shocking breach of faith by a company that sends workers inside millions of homes every year," said the one of family's trial lawyers Chris Hamilton, of Dallas-based Hamilton Wingo, in a statement. According to the law firm, Holden lied about his employment history -- such as not revealing he had been previously fired -- which wasn't checked by Charter when it hired him and would have been one of many red flags against him. During the civil trial, the court heard how Holden would break down crying at work, at one point was convinced he was a former Dallas Cowboys football player, suffered from insomnia, and was probably sleeping overnight in his Spectrum van. It was further claimed the cable giant tried to force the lawsuit into closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages limited.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What if we glimpsed alien life for the first time by peering through a natural telescope made by the Sun's gravity? This wild idea, known as a solar gravitational lens (SGL) mission, may sound like an Einsteinian fever dream, but scientists have now found that it is "feasible with technologies that are either extant or in active development," according to a new study. Motherboard reports: Researchers led by Henry Helvajian, senior scientist in the Physical Sciences Laboratories at the nonprofit research center The Aerospace Corporation, have now shared the initial results of this ongoing NIAC study on the preprint server arxiv, which have not been peer-reviewed. Though the team cautioned that the mission would need to overcome several technical challenges, it could ultimately answer one of humanity's most fundamental questions: Are we alone in the universe? "The SGL offers capabilities that are unmatched by any planned or conceivable optical instrument," according to the study, which was co-authored by Slava Turyshev, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and principal investigator of the NIAC mission concept. "With its unique optical properties, the SGL can be used to obtain detailed, high resolution images of Earth-like exoplanets as far as 100 light years from Earth, with measurement durations lasting months, or at most a few years." "Of particular interest is the possibility of using the SGL to obtain images of high spatial and spectral resolution of a yet-to-be-identified, potentially life-bearing exoplanet in another solar system in our Galactic neighborhood," the researchers added. "The direct high-resolution images of an exoplanet obtained with the SGL could lead to insight on the on-going biological processes on the target exoplanet and find signs of habitability." The focal point of the Sun's gravitational lens is located all the way out in interstellar space, some 550 and 900 times the distance that Earth orbits our star, which is much farther than any spacecraft has ventured beyond our planet. Helvajian and his colleagues envision their mission as consisting of a one-meter telescope that is accompanied by a sunshade and propelled by solar sails that produce thrust by capturing solar radiation, in a somewhat analogous fashion to wind-propelled sails. Even if they were able to overcome the technical hurdles involved with this concept -- which include the development of more reliable solar sails and long-duration navigation and communications systems -- the team estimated that it would take at least 25 to 30 years for a spacecraft to reach this far-flung location, in the best case scenario. That said, if a telescope were able to spot alien life, arguably the biggest breakthrough in science, it would be well worth the long wait.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The oldest patient yet has been cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant for leukaemia, researchers reported on Wednesday. While the transplant was planned to treat the now-66-year-old's leukaemia, the doctors also sought a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS, a mechanism that first worked to cure the "Berlin patient," Timothy Ray Brown, in 2007. The latest patient, the fourth to be cured in this way, is known as the "City of Hope" patient after the U.S. facility in Duarte, California, where he was treated, because he does not want to be identified. As well as being the oldest, the patient has also had HIV the longest, having been diagnosed in 1988 with what he described as a "death sentence" that killed many of his friends. He has been on antiretroviral therapy (ART) to control his condition for more than 30 years. [...] Scientists think the process works because the donor individual's stem cells have a specific, rare genetic mutation which means they lack the receptors used by HIV to infect cells. "Scientists think the process works because the donor individual's stem cells have a specific, rare genetic mutation which means they lack the receptors used by HIV to infect cells," adds Reuters. "After the transplant three and a half years ago, which followed chemotherapy, the City of Hope patient stopped taking ART in March 2021. He has now been in remission from both HIV and leukaemia for more than a year, the team said." Researchers in Spain also presented a case of a 59-year-old woman who is considered to be in a state of viral remission. "She has now maintained a fully suppressed viral load for over 15 years," reports NBC News. "Unlike the handful of people either cured or possibly cured by stem cell transplants, however, she still harbors virus that is capable of producing viable new copies of itself. Her body has actually controlled the virus more efficiently with the passing years, according to Dr. Juan Ambrosioni, an HIV physician in the Barcelona clinic."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The average cost of a data breach rose to an all-time high of $4.4 million this year, according to the IBM Security report released Wednesday. That marked a 2.6% increase from a year ago and a 13% jump since 2020. CNET reports: More than half of the organizations surveyed acknowledged they had passed on those costs to their customers in the form of higher prices for their products and services, IBM said. The annual report is based on an analysis of data breaches experienced by 550 organizations around the world between March 2021 and March 2022. The research, which was sponsored and analyzed by IBM, was conducted by the Ponemon Institute. The cost estimates are based on both immediate and longer-term expenses. While some costs like the payment of ransoms and those related to investigating and containing the breach tend to be accounted for right away, others such as regulatory fines and lost sales can show up years later. On average, those polled said they accrued just under half of the costs related to a given breach more than a year after it occurred.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is adding "photorealistic aerial views" to almost 100 landmarks in Google Maps, the company announced on Wednesday. The Verge reports: The views, which remind me of Apple Maps' Flyover feature, give you an overhead look at landmarks in cities including Barcelona, London, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo, according to Google. The aerial views are a "first step" toward launching the "immersive view" the company showed off at Google I/O, according to a blog post from Google Maps director of product Amanda Leicht Moore. Immersive view will also include indoor views and information like traffic and the weather layered on the map, Google spokesperson Genevieve Park tells The Verge. At I/O, Google said immersive view would begin rolling out in Los Angeles, London, New York City, San Francisco, and Tokyo "later this year." Google Maps will also feature cycling routes, which will include additional information "like whether a specific road you'll be instructed to travel on is a major or minor road, if your route includes stairs or steep hills, and whether you can expect to hit heavy traffic," reports The Verge. Additionally, you'll be able to get notifications if someone who is sharing their location with you leaves or arrives at their location.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instagram's head defended the app against a user backlash, after the social network launched a series of changes intended to make it more like its arch-rival TikTok. The Guardian reports: The changes, which include an extremely algorithmic main feed, a push for the service's TikTok-style "reels" videos, and heavy promotion of the TikTok-style "remix" feature, have resulted in users struggling to find content from friends and family, once the bread and butter of the social network. "We're hearing a lot of concerns from all of you," Adam Mosseri said in a video posted to Twitter. "I'm hearing a lot of concerns about photos, and how we're shifting to video. We're going to continue to support photos, but I need to be honest: more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time. We're going to have to lean in to that shift while continuing to support photos." The Instagram boss also defended the platform's new "recommendations" feature, which puts content from people users do not follow on to their feed. "The idea is to help you discover new and interesting things on Instagram that you might not even know exist," he said. "You can snooze all recommendations for up to a month, but we're going to try and get better at recommendations because we think it's one of the best ways to help creators reach a new audience and grow their following. He added: "We're going to need to evolve, because the world is changing quickly and we're going to need to change with it." Instagram's makeover is widely seen as a response to TikTok's continued growth, in particular among younger American users. [...] By boosting algorithmic recommendations, allowing users to "remix" posts (akin to TikTok's "Duet" feature), and promoting full-screen vertical video above photos, Instagram is attempting to turn its main app experience into something similar to that of the Chinese-owned upstart. In a widely shared story, Kardashian clan member and social media star, Kylie Jenner, called on the service to "make Instagram Instagram again." She added: "Stop trying to be TikTok, I just want to see cute photos of my friends."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Siemens and Philadelphia-based ConnectDER have partnered to debut a groundbreaking simple home EV charger connector. Previously, homeowners who wanted to install EV chargers might have had to spend thousands of dollars to modify their home's electrical panel. This new proprietary plug-in adapter will eliminate that cost and allow installation and connection in minutes. ConnectDER makes meter collars that are installed between the home's meter and the meter socket to create a single plug-and-play access point for distributed energy resources (DER) installation. In other words, the collars easily add new electrical service capacity for things like solar and energy storage. Now ConnectDER will exclusively manufacture and supply a proprietary plug-in EV charger adapter to Siemens. The new adapter will enable electric car owners to charge their EVs by connecting chargers directly through the meter socket, which is on every home. It provides more useable capacity by monitoring total load and controlling the EV circuit to ensure the total capacity rating is within the limit. Bypassing the electrical panel reduces the EV charger installation cost by around 60 to 80% because electrical panel upgrades aren't needed. [...] Nearly half of US home electrical panels previously would have needed upgrades to allow the installation of a typical Level 2 charger, usually a 7-11kW device requiring 40-60 Amps on a 240V line. A Siemens spokesperson said that the company is still finalizing pricing, but "it will be a fraction of the cost of a service panel upgrade or other modifications often needed to make for a charger. Additionally, in some cases, the cost may be fully borne by utility programs." The adapters themselves are expected to be available by first quarter 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook parent company Meta has just reported its earnings for the second quarter of 2022, and it was another quarter of shrinking profits. Engadget reports: Total revenue of $28.8 billion was only down one percent compared to Q2 one year ago, but net income dropped 36 percent to $6.7 billion. Making almost $7 billion in profit is not a bad quarter for anyone, but the size of the decline compared to a year ago is pretty significant. And, according to the Wall Street Journal, this is the first-ever drop in revenue for Meta / Facebook -- so even though we're only talking one percent, it's still noteworthy. Revenue from advertising and Meta's "family of apps" was essentially flat year-over-year, and Reality Labs (home to hardware like the Meta Quest and other metaverse-related initiatives) actually grew 48 percent year-over-year to $452 million. But Reality Labs accounted for a $2.8 billion loss this quarter, a 15 percent larger loss than Q2 one year ago. At this rate, it seems likely that Reality Labs will lose Meta more than the $10 billion it cost the company in 2021. Indeed, the company said it expects Reality Labs revenue to be lower in the third quarter. [...] In June, Meta said that it had 2.88 billion daily active users in its family of apps (which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) and 3.65 billion monthly active users, both of which are up four percent compared to a year ago. Facebook-specific growth was smaller, though -- average daily and monthly users only increased three percent and one percent, respectively. Further reading: FTC Files To Block Meta's Virtual Reality DealRead more of this story at Slashdot.

As reported by CNET, Google will allow law enforcement to access data from its Nest products -- or theoretically any other data you store with Google -- without a warrant. PetaPixel reports: "If we reasonably believe that we can prevent someone from dying or from suffering serious physical harm, we may provide information to a government agency -- for example, in the case of bomb threats, school shootings, kidnappings, suicide prevention, and missing person cases," reads Google's TOS page on government requests for user information. "We still consider these requests in light of applicable laws and our policies." An unnamed Nest spokesperson did tell CNET that the company tries to give its users notice when it provides their data under these circumstances. Google "reserves the right" to make emergency disclosures to law enforcement even when there is no legal requirement to do so. "A provider like Google may disclose information to law enforcement without a subpoena or a warrant 'if the provider, in good faith, believes that an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure without delay of communications relating to the emergency,'" a Nest spokesperson tells CNET. While Amazon and Google have both said they would hand over a user's data to law enforcement without a warrant, Arlo, Apple, Wyze, and Anker, owner of Eufy, all confirmed to CNET that they won't give authorities access to a user's smart home camera's footage unless they're shown a warrant or court order. These companies would be legally bound to provide data to the authorities if they were shown a legal document. But, unlike Google and Amazon, they will not otherwise share camera footage with law enforcement, even if they had an emergency request for data. Apple's default setting for video cameras connected via Homekit is end-to-end encryption which means the company is unable to share user video at all. In an updated statement, a Google spokesperson clarified that they have never sent Nest data to authorities, "but it's important that we reserve the right to do so." They added: "To reiterate, and as we've specified in our privacy commitments, we will only share video footage and audio recordings with third-party apps and services that work with our devices if you or a member of your home explicitly gives us permission, and we'll only ask for this permission in order to provide a helpful experience from an approved partner (such as a home security service provider)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"If combating attacks and hijackings of legitimate software on open source registries like npm weren't challenging enough, app makers are increasingly experiencing the consequences of software self-sabotage," writes security researcher and reporter Ax Sharma via TechCrunch. "A developer can, on a whim, change their mind and do whatever they want with their open source code that, most of the time anyway, comes 'as is' without any warranty. Or, as seen by a growing trend this year, developers deliberately sabotaging their own software libraries as a means of protest -- turning software into 'protestware.'" One of the many examples Sharma mentions happened during the first week of 2022, when thousands of applications that rely on the heavily used npm projects colors and faker broke and began printing gibberish text on users' screens. "It wasn't a malicious actor hijacking and altering these legitimate libraries," writes Sharma. "It turned out the projects' developer Mark Squires had intentionally corrupted his own work to send a message of protest to big corporations..." An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from his report: Open source developers are discovering new and creative avenues that no longer limit them to implementing new features for their projects, but to actively express their views on larger social matters by modifying their projects for a cause. And, unlike proprietary code that has to function in line with a paying customer's expectations, most open source licenses are quite permissive -- both for the consumer and the developer -- offering their code with licenses that offer no guarantees as to what a developer is not supposed to and will never do with their code, making protestware a gray area for defenders. In fact, as a security researcher at Sonatype, I observed how protestware posed a challenge for us in the early stages and how we would tweak our automated malware detection algorithms to now catch self-sabotages with projects like colors and faker. Traditionally, the system was designed to spot typosquatting malware uploaded to open source repositories, but cases like malicious hijacks or developers modifying their own libraries without warning required a deeper understanding of the intricacies of how protestware works. The theme has also put major open source registries like npm -- owned by GitHub, a Microsoft subsidiary -- at a crossroads when having to deal with these edge cases. Socket's founder Feross Aboukhadijeh told TechCrunch that registries like GitHub are in a difficult position. "On the one hand, they want to support maintainers' right to freedom of expression and the ability to use their platform to support the causes they believe in. But on the other hand, GitHub has a responsibility to npm users to ensure that malicious code isn't served from npm servers. It's sometimes a difficult balancing act," said Aboukhadijeh. A simple solution to ensuring you are getting only vetted versions of a component in your build is to pin your npm dependency versions. That way, even if future versions of a project are sabotaged or hijacked, your build continues to use the "pinned" version as opposed to fetching the latest, tainted one. But this may not always be an effective strategy for all ecosystems, like PyPI, where existing versions of a component can be republished -- as we saw in the case of the hijacking of the ctx PyPI project. "The conversation around 'protestware' is really a conversation about software supply chain security. You can't trust what you can't verify," Dan Lorenc, the co-founder and chief executive at Chainguard, a startup that specializes in software supply chain security, told TechCrunch. Lorenc's advice against preventing protestware is to follow good open source security hygiene and best practices that can help developers develop protestware more easily and early on. "Knowing and understanding your dependencies, conducting regular scans and audits of open source code you are using in your environments are a start." But Lorenc warns the debate about protestware could draw in copycats who would contribute to the problem and detract open source software defenders from focusing on tackling what's truly important -- keeping malicious actors at bay. And with protestware there remain unknown unknowns. What issue is too small -- or too big -- for protestware? While no one can practically dictate what an open source developer can do with their code -- it is a power developers have always possessed, but are now just beginning to harness.Read more of this story at Slashdot.