For the first time since 2020, Ethereum mining has become unprofitable for many miners connected to a traditional energy grid. CryptoSlate reports: The price of Ethereum has dropped below $1,250 while energy prices are skyrocketing. The average cost of electricity in states such as New England, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island is over $0.22 per kWh. Using a single Nvidia 3090 overclocked to generate 130mh/s will cost miners around $1.85-$2.13 per day in electricity. The Ethereum reward for the same GPU is just (0.001625 ETH) $2.03 at today's price. Therefore any miner paying more than $0.245 for electricity is now paying more for electricity than the value of Ethereum being mined. At this point, it becomes more cost-effective to turn off the mining rig and buy Ethereum spot using the money that would otherwise be used on electricity. [...] There are plenty of alternative cryptocurrencies that can be mined with a GPU. However, the others are also down considerably. At $0.245kwh, Ergo yields -$0.06, RavenCoin -$0.58/day, Ethereum Classic -$0.66, and Firo -$0.70 using a single Nvidia 3090. These are the contenders for GPU hashrate when Ethereum finally goes to proof of stake. The issue is that an increase in miners on the network will dramatically increase the mining difficulty meaning that, to be remotely profitable, the price of the tokens will also have to increase considerably. For Ethereum to become profitable again, either the difficulty needs to decrease or the price needs to rise above $1,400. Alternatively, should energy prices drop below $0.24kwh to match average costs in other parts of the United States, Ethereum would also become profitable.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese bank depositors planning a protest about their frozen funds saw their health code mysteriously turn red and were stopped from traveling to the site of a rally, confirming fears that China's vast COVID-tracking system could be weaponized as a powerful tool to stifle dissent. Motherboard reports: A red health code designated the would-be protesters as suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients, limiting their movement and access to public transportation. Their rallies in the central Henan province this week were thwarted as some were forced into quarantine and others detained by police. A 38-year-old software engineer was among hundreds who could not access their savings at four rural banks since mid-April. She had planned to travel from her home in Jiangxi province to Zhengzhou, Henan's capital city, to join a group petition this week to demand her money back. But her health code turned from green to red shortly after she bought a train ticket on Sunday. She said a nucleic test for COVID she took the night before came back negative and her hometown has not reported any infection recently. "Henan authorities targeted the health code of bank depositors in order to stop us from defending our rights," she told VICE World News, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid government reprisal. She eventually managed to reach Zhengzhou using her green health code on a different app, but was daunted by the sight of police officers out in force. More than 200 bank depositors from all over the country saw their health codes turned red over the past week, which effectively foiled a planned protest outside the Henan branch of China's banking regulator. Chinese activists and dissidents have reported similar experiences in the past, but the latest crackdown appears to be the most brazen example of how the authorities could exploit the supposed COVID-19 measure for political purposes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elon Musk's Boring Company has received unanimous approval to expand its system of tunnels beneath downtown Las Vegas. The Verge reports: The expansion will add stops at landmarks like the Stratosphere and Fremont Street, letting customers hop aboard a Tesla and travel from one part of the city to the next. The network of tunnels, called the Vegas Loop, is supposed to span 29 miles and have 51 stops when finished. But for now, only 1.7-mile tunnels are operational beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), turning what would be a 25-minute walk across the convention center into a two-minute ride. This most recent expansion gets The Boring Company closer to its goal of building a transportation system that spans the most popular destinations in Las Vegas. "Thanks to the entire team at the City of Last Vegas!" The Boring Company wrote on Twitter in response to the city's approval. "Great discussion today, and TBC is excited to build a safe, convenient, and awesome transportation system in the City." [...] According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Steve Hill, the president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, expects the tunnel system beneath the Strip to start serving customers in 2023. Hill says the portion connecting the LVCC and Resorts World should be operational by the end of this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Cisco advises owners of end-of-life Small Business RV routers to upgrade to newer models after disclosing a remote code execution vulnerability that will not be patched. The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2022-20825 and has a CVSS severity rating of 9.8 out of 10.0. According to a Cisco security advisory, the flaw exists due to insufficient user input validation of incoming HTTP packets on the impacted devices. An attacker could exploit it by sending a specially crafted request to the web-based management interface, resulting in command execution with root-level privileges. The vulnerability impacts four Small Business RV Series models, namely the RV110W Wireless-N VPN Firewall, the RV130 VPN Router, the RV130W Wireless-N Multifunction VPN Router, and the RV215W Wireless-N VPN Router. This vulnerability only affects devices with the web-based remote management interface enabled on WAN connections. [...] Cisco states that they will not be releasing a security update to address CVE-2022-20825 as the devices are no longer supported. Furthermore, there are no mitigations available other than to turn off remote management on the WAN interface, which should be done regardless for better overall security. Users are advised to apply the configuration changes until they migrate to Cisco Small Business RV132W, RV160, or RV160W Routers, which the vendor actively supports.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brave CEO Brendan Eich took aim at rival DuckDuckGo on Wednesday by challenging the web search engine's efforts to brush off revelations that its Android, iOS, and macOS browsers gave, to a degree, Microsoft Bing and LinkedIn trackers a pass versus other trackers. The Register reports: Eich drew attention to one of DuckDuckGo's defenses for exempting Microsoft's Bing and LinkedIn domains, a condition of its search contract with Microsoft: that its browsers blocked third-party cookies anyway. "For non-search tracker blocking (e.g. in our browser), we block most third-party trackers," explained DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg last month. "Unfortunately our Microsoft search syndication agreement prevents us from doing more to Microsoft-owned properties. However, we have been continually pushing and expect to be doing more soon." However, Eich argues this is disingenuous because DuckDuckGo also includes exceptions that allow Microsoft trackers to circumvent third-party cookie blocking via appended URL parameters. "Trackers try to get around cookie blocking by appending identifiers to URL query parameters, to ID you across sites," he explained. DuckDuckGo is aware of this, Eich said, because its browser prevents Google, Facebook, and others from appending identifiers to URLs in order to bypass third-party cookie blocking. "[DuckDuckGo] removes Google's 'gclid' and Facebook's 'fbclid'," Eich said. "Test it yourself by visiting https://example.org/?fbclid=sample in [DuckDuckGo]'s macOS browser. The 'fbclid' value is removed." "However, [DuckDuckGo] does not apply this protection to Microsoft's 'msclkid' query parameter," Eich continued. "[Microsoft's] documentation specifies that 'msclkid' exists to circumvent third-party cookie protections in browsers (including in Safari's browser engine used by DDG on Apple OSes)." Eich concluded by arguing that privacy-focused brands need to prioritize privacy. "Brave categorically does not and will not harm user privacy to satisfy partners," he said. A spokesperson for DuckDuckGo characterized Eich's conclusion as misleading. "What Brendan seems to be referring to here is our ad clicks only, which is protected in our agreement with Microsoft as strictly non-profiling (private)," a company spokesperson told The Register in an email. "That is these ads are privacy protected and how he's framed it is ultimately misleading. Brendan, of course, kept the fact that our ads are private out and there is really nothing new here given everything has already been disclosed." In other words, allowing Bing to append its identifier to URLs enables Bing advertisers to tell whether their ad produced a click (a conversion), but not to target DuckDuckGo browser users based on behavior or identity. DuckDuckGo's spokesperson pointed to Weinberg's attempt to address the controversy on Reddit and argued that DuckDuckGo provides very strong privacy protections. "This is talking about link tracking which no major browser protects against (see https://privacytests.org/), however we've started protecting against link tracking, and started with the primary offenders (Google and Facebook)," DuckDuckGo's spokesperson said. "To note, we are planning on expanding this to more companies, including Twitter, Microsoft, and more. We are not restricted from this and will be doing so."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft updated the Microsoft Store policies yesterday to prohibit publishers from charging fees for software that is open source or generally available for free. They're also no longer allowed to set irrationally high price tags for their products. gHacks reports: If you have been to the Microsoft Store in the past couple of years, you may have noticed that it is home to more and more open source and free products. While that would be a good thing if the original developer would have uploaded the apps and games to the store, it is not, because the uploads have been made by third-parties. Even worse is the fact that many of these programs are not freely available, but available as paid applications. In other words: Microsoft customers have to pay money to buy a Store version of an app that is freely available elsewhere. Sometimes, free and paid versions exist side by side in the Store. Having to pay for a free application is bad enough, but this is not the only issue that users may experience when they make the purchase. Updates may be of concern as well, as the copycat programs may not be updated as often or as quickly as the source applications. Open source and free products may not be sold anymore on the Microsoft Store, if generally available for free, and publishers are not allowed to set irrationally high price tags for their products anymore. The developers of open source and free applications may charge for their products on the Microsoft Store, the developer of Paint.net does that, for example. If Microsoft enforces the policies, numerous applications will be removed from the Store. Developers could report applications to Microsoft before, but the new policies give Microsoft control over application listings and submissions directly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The memory of "Batterygate" continues to be a thorn in Apple's side. In case you need a reminder, "Batterygate" refers to a 2016/17 scandal where Apple added an undocumented battery throttling capabilities to iOS 10.2.1 designed to slow the performance of the iPhone if the battery was deemed to be worn. It also came with unexpected side effects, causing handsets to reboot in cold weather or when the battery's charge level was low. The feature was initially rolled out to iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, and iPhone SE and later expanded to include the iPhone 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X models. This latest UK-based multimillion-pound legal claim has been launched by Justin Gutmann, a consumer rights campaigner, and alleges that Apple deliberately misled users, and rather than roll out a battery recall or replacement program; the company instead pushed out this feature to cover up the fact that older iPhone batteries were not able to cope with the new power demands put on them. Apple did eventually roll out a $29 battery replacement program, a program that saw the company carry out 11 million battery replacements in 2018, compared to the 1 to 2 million that would normally be carried out in a year. This resulted in Apple issuing a profit warning in January 2019, the company's first since 2002. If Apple loses, the company could be forced to pay damages of more than $950m to the 25 million people who purchased affected iPhones. Following the US settlement in March 2020, Apple agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit over the same issue, paying out $25 per iPhone, with the total capped at $310m. "We have never -- and would never -- do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades," Apple said in a statement on Thursday. "Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nepal is preparing to move its Everest base camp because global warming and human activity are making it unsafe. From a report: The camp, used by up to 1,500 people in the spring climbing season, is situated on the rapidly thinning Khumbu glacier. A new site is to be found at a lower altitude, where there is no year-round ice, an official told the BBC. Researchers say melt-water destabilises the glacier, and climbers say crevasses are increasingly appearing at base camp while they sleep. "We are now preparing for the relocation and we will soon begin consultation with all stakeholders," Taranath Adhikari, director general of Nepal's tourism department, told the BBC. "It is basically about adapting to the changes we are seeing at the base camp and it has become essential for the sustainability of the mountaineering business itself." The camp currently sits at an altitude of 5,364m. The new one will be 200m to 400m lower, Mr Adhikari said. The plans follow the recommendations of a committee formed by Nepal's government to facilitate and monitor mountaineering in the Everest region. The Khumbu glacier, like many other glaciers in the Himalayas, is rapidly melting and thinning in the wake of global warming, scientists have found. A study by researchers from Leeds University in 2018 showed that the segment close to base camp was thinning at a rate of 1m per year. Most of the glacier is covered by rocky debris, but there are also areas of exposed ice, called ice cliffs, and it is the melting of the ice cliffs that most destabilises the glacier, one of the researchers, Scott Watson, told the BBC.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over the past year, large-scale robberies have swept through stores like Louis Vuitton in San Francisco's Union Square and a nearby Nordstrom, which was robbed by 80 people. Law enforcement and retailers have warned the public that this isn't traditional shoplifting. Rather, what they're seeing is theft organized by criminal networks. And there's a reason it's on the rise. From a report: "What fuels this as an enterprise is the ease of reselling stolen merchandise on online marketplaces," said Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who convened a national task force of state attorneys to make it easier to investigate across state lines. "It's no longer the age where it's done at flea markets or in the alley or in parking lots." Retailers say a total of $68.9 billion of products were stolen in 2019. In 2020, three-quarters said they saw an increase in organized crime and more than half reported cargo theft. Some big chains blame organized theft for recent store closures or for their decisions to limit hours. For the U.S. Government's Homeland Security Investigations unit, organized retail crime probes are on the rise. Arrests and indictments increased last year from 2020, along with the value of stolen goods that was seized. While data is imprecise about the perpetrators, there's growing consensus that an entirely different group should be held accountable: e-commerce sites. Amazon, eBay and Facebook are the places where these stolen goods are being sold, and critics say they're not doing enough to put an end to the racket. The companies disagree.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than 100 million Americans are being warned to stay indoors if possible as high temperatures and humidity settle in over states stretching through parts of the Gulf coast to the Great Lakes and east to the Carolinas. From a report: The National Weather Service Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said on Monday 107.5 million people will be affected by combination of heat advisories, excessive heat warnings and excessive heat watches through Wednesday. The heatwave, which set several high temperature records in the west, the south-west and into Denver during the weekend, moved east into parts of the Gulf coast and the midwest on Monday and will expand to the Great Lakes and east to the Carolinas, the National Weather Service said. St Louis, Memphis, Minneapolis and Tulsa are among several cities under excessive heat warnings, with temperatures forecast to reach about 100F (38C), accompanied by high humidity that could make conditions feel close to 110F (43C). In Jackson, Mississippi, residents braved temperatures reaching 95F (35C) on Monday to complete their chores. Roger Britt, 67, ventured to a neighborhood garden in search of vegetables for dinner. Britt thinks the weather in Jackson has been more unpredictable in recent years. "It was so cold this past winter, so I know it's going to be a hot summer," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On the painful occasion of a mass shooting in the US, it has become customary for some politician or pundit to point an accusatory finger at video games. In late May, after two such attacks -- in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, it was Texas Senator Ted Cruz. These tragedies, he said in a speech at a National Rifle Association convention, were a mirror of our culture, and specifically, where our culture is failing. In addition to "broken families" and "declining church attendance," he said, "desensitizing the act of murder in video games" has contributed to the epidemic of mass shootings. What surprised me wasn't what Cruz said. It was how little traction it received in the mainstream media. A Fox News host asked his guest, Arizona State University criminal justice professor Bernard Zapor, whether violent video games' heightened realism contributed to an increase in mass homicides. Zapor dodged, instead citing the dissolution of community bonds. Most coverage of Cruz's comments (and Fox's interview) were in the service of invalidating the question itself: Decades of research have shown no connection between playing violent video games and committing violent acts. For more than 20 years years, the idea that video games like Doom somehow spurred these heinous shootings held sway in popular culture. In the '90s, "There was really no pushback," said Chris Ferguson, Stetson University's co-chair of psychology, who has studied violent video games' impact on gamers for about 20 years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.K. government has published its final response to a data 'reform' consultation it kicked off last year, laying out how it intends to diverge from EU-based data protection rules. From a report: At first pass, it looks like it has stepped away from some of the more extreme 'reforms' it had been tossing around -- such as removing the right for human review of automated/AI decisions; which the consultation admits was opposed by the "vast majority" of respondents (ergo, the government writes that it "recognises the importance of appropriate safeguards, and will not pursue this proposal"; although it says it's still considering how to amend Article 22 of the U.K. GDPR -- so watch that space). That said, there are still a lot of potentially wide-ranging amendments being announced in this package -- such as a switch to an opt-out model for most online tracking; which the government is spinning as an end to cookie consent pop-ups but which raises plenty of wider questions -- and changes to the U.K.'s data protection regulator that could still sum to substantial differences for the rights of citizens, businesses and other types of data processors operating in the country. There's plenty more incoming from the U.K. government on the digital policy front too -- such as the sprawling Online Safety Bill, which is currently making its way through parliament, and is set to dramatically ramp up compliance demands for all sorts of businesses. So it pays to keep the wider picture in mind as the government spins its pitch of post-Brexit, rebooted data laws that will give British business a "boost" by cutting EU 'red tape.'Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is facing a looming crisis: It could run out of people to hire in its US warehouses by 2024, according to leaked Amazon internal research from mid-2021 that Recode reviewed. If that happens, the online retailer's service quality and growth plans could be at risk, and its e-commerce dominance along with it. From a report: Raising wages and increasing warehouse automation are two of the six "levers" Amazon could pull to delay this labor crisis by a few years, but only a series of sweeping changes to how the company does business and manages its employees will significantly alter the timeline, Amazon staff predicted. "If we continue business as usual, Amazon will deplete the available labor supply in the US network by 2024," the research, which hasn't previously been reported, says. The report warned that Amazon's labor crisis was especially imminent in a few locales, with internal models showing that the company was expected to exhaust its entire available labor pool in the Phoenix, Arizona, metro area by the end of 2021, and in the Inland Empire region of California, roughly 60 miles east of Los Angeles, by the end of 2022. Amazon's internal report calculated the available pool of workers based on characteristics like income levels and a household's proximity to current or planned Amazon facilities; the pool does not include the entire US adult population.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Speaking of TikTok moving US users' data to Oracle, a new report says that ByteDance staff in China accessed US TikTok users' data between September 2021 and January 2022. From the report: For years, TikTok has responded to data privacy concerns by promising that information gathered about users in the United States is stored in the United States, rather than China, where ByteDance, the video platform's parent company, is located. But according to leaked audio from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings, China-based employees of ByteDance have repeatedly accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users -- exactly the type of behavior that inspired former president Donald Trump to threaten to ban the app in the United States. The recordings, which were reviewed by BuzzFeed News, contain 14 statements from nine different TikTok employees indicating that engineers in China had access to US data between September 2021 and January 2022, at the very least. Despite a TikTok executive's sworn testimony in an October 2021 Senate hearing that a "world-renowned, US-based security team" decides who gets access to this data, nine statements by eight different employees describe situations where US employees had to turn to their colleagues in China to determine how US user data was flowing. US staff did not have permission or knowledge of how to access the data on their own, according to the tapes. "Everything is seen in China," said a member of TikTok's Trust and Safety department in a September 2021 meeting. In another September meeting, a director referred to one Beijing-based engineer as a "Master Admin" who "has access to everything." (While many employees introduced themselves by name and title in the recordings, BuzzFeed News is not naming anyone to protect their privacy.) The recordings range from small-group meetings with company leaders and consultants to policy all-hands presentations and are corroborated by screenshots and other documents, providing a vast amount of evidence to corroborate prior reports of China-based employees accessing US user data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: For Jung Ki-young, a South Korean software engineer, Microsoft's decision to retire its Internet Explorer web browser marked the end of a quarter-century love-hate relationship with the technology. To commemorate its demise, he spent a month and 430,000 won ($330) designing and ordering a headstone with Explorer's "e" logo and the English epitaph: "He was a good tool to download other browsers." After the memorial went on show at a cafe run by his brother in the southern city of Gyeongju, a photo of the tombstone went viral.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TikTok has completed migrating its U.S. users' information to servers at Oracle, in a move that could address U.S. regulatory concerns over data integrity on the popular video app, the company confirmed to Reuters. From a report: The move comes nearly two years after a U.S. national security panel ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok because of fears that U.S. user data could be passed on to China's government.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India has lifted business restrictions on Mastercard, nearly a year after imposing the ban, once again allowing the cards giant to add new customers in the South Asian market after it demonstrated "satisfactory compliance" with the local data storage rules, the central bank said on Thursday. From a report: In a series of moves last year, the Reserve Bank of India indefinitely barred Mastercard, American Express and Diners Club from issuing new debit, credit or prepaid cards to customers over noncompliance with local data storage rules. The business restrictions on American Express and Diners Club remain in place in the country, though they are permitted to continue to serve their existing customer base. The report adds: Unveiled in 2018, the local data-storage rules require payments firms to store all Indian transaction data within servers in the country. Visa, Mastercard and several other firms, as well as the U.S. government, previously requested New Delhi to reconsider its rules, which they argued were designed to allow the regulator "unfettered supervisory access."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The member countries of the World Trade Organization agreed Friday on a narrow measure aimed at boosting the supplies of Covid-19 vaccines in developing countries, wrapping up a bitter fight over corporate patent rights governing critical medical products during a pandemic. WSJ: The compromise measure on intellectual property rights will make it easier for companies in developing nations such as South Africa to manufacture and export a patented Covid-19 vaccine -- under limited circumstances -- without a consent from the patent holder if they have the approval of their own governments. Meeting for the first time in nearly five years, trade ministers from more than 100 countries also agreed on measures to reduce fisheries subsidies to protect fish stocks and pledged to minimize export restrictions on food items amid shortages triggered by the war in Ukraine. An existing ban on the collection of customs duty on digitally-transmitted products like music and movies was continued, to the relief of U.S. officials who had feared a possible change in the status quo would harm U.S. businesses.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. today officially introduced its N2 (2nm class) manufacturing technology, its first node that will use gate-all-around field-effect transistors (GAAFETs), at its 2022 TSMC Technology Symposium. From a report: The new fabrication process will offer a full-now performance and power benefits, but when it comes to transistor density, it will barely impress in 2025 when it comes online. Being an all-new process technology platform, TSMC's N2 brings in two essential innovations: nanosheet transistors (which is what TSMC calls its GAAFETs) and backside power rail that both serve the same goal of increasing performance-per-watt characteristics of the node. GAA nanosheet transistors feature channels surrounded by gates on all four sides, which reduces leakage; furthermore, their channels can be widened to increase drive current and boost performance or shrunken to minimize power consumption and cost. To feed these nanosheet transistors with enough power and now waste any of it, TSMC's N2 uses backside power delivery, which the foundry considers to be among the best solutions to fight resistances in the back-end-of-line (BEOL). Indeed, when it comes to performance and power consumption, TSMC's nanosheet-based N2 node can boast of a 10% to 15% higher performance at the same power and complexity as well as a 25% to 30% lower power consumption at the same frequency and transistor count when compared to TSMC's N3E. However, the new node increases chip density by only around 1.1X compared to N3E. In general, TSMC's N3 does offer full-node performance increases and power consumption reductions. But density-wise, the new technology can hardly impress. For example, TSMC's N3E node offers a 1.3X chip density increase over N5, which is a substantial increase.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

State securities regulators in Alabama, Kentucky, New Jersey, Texas and Washington are investigating crypto lender Celsius Network's decision this week to suspend customer redemptions, Joseph Rotunda, enforcement director at the Texas State Securities Board told Reuters on Thursday. From a report: Officials met and began investigating the matter first thing Monday morning, Rotunda said, adding he considered the probe to be a "priority." Celsius said that due to extreme market conditions, it was pausing withdrawals, swaps and transfers between accounts. The company said that doing so would put it "in a better position to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations." "I am very concerned that clients -- including many retail investors -- may need to immediately access their assets yet are unable to withdraw from their accounts. The inability to access their investment may result in significant financial consequences," he said. Alabama Securities Commission Director Joseph Borg also told Reuters that Alabama, Texas, New Jersey and Kentucky securities regulators were probing the matter. Celsius has been responsive to questions from the regulators, but that the investigation is in the initial stages, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A video producer claims he was fired after he complained that an obscure group based in the Sierra foothills dominated a business unit at Google. From a report: In a tiny town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, a religious organization called the Fellowship of Friends has established an elaborate, 1,200-acre compound full of art and ornate architecture. More than 200 miles away from the Fellowship's base in Oregon House, Calif., the religious sect, which believes a higher consciousness can be achieved by embracing fine arts and culture, has also gained a foothold inside a business unit at Google. Even in Google's freewheeling office culture, which encourages employees to speak their own minds and pursue their own projects, the Fellowship's presence in the business unit was unusual. As many as 12 Fellowship members and close relatives worked for the Google Developer Studio, or GDS, which produces videos showcasing the company's technologies, according to a lawsuit filed by Kevin Lloyd, a 34-year-old former Google video producer. Many others staffed company events, working registration desks, taking photographs, playing music, providing massages and serving wine. For these events, Google regularly bought wine from an Oregon House winery owned by a member of the Fellowship, according to the lawsuit. Mr. Lloyd claimed he was fired last year because he complained about the influence of the religious sect. His suit also names Advanced Systems Group, or ASG, the company that sent Mr. Lloyd to Google as a contractor. Most of the Google Developer Studio joined the team through ASG as contractors, including many members of the Fellowship. The suit, which Mr. Lloyd filed in August in California Superior Court, accuses Google and ASG of violating a California employment law that protects workers against discrimination. It is in the discovery stage. The New York Times corroborated many of the lawsuit's claims through interviews with eight current and former employees of the Google business unit and examinations of publicly available information and other documents. These included a membership roster for the Fellowship of Friends, Google spreadsheets detailing event budgets and photos taken at these events.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A retracted paper highlights chemistry's history of trying to avoid the expensive, toxic -- but necessary -- catalyst. From a report: It's hard to find a place on Earth untouched by palladium. The silvery-white metal is a key part of catalytic converters in the world's 1.4 billion cars, which spew specks of palladium into the atmosphere. Mining and other sources add to this pollution. As a result, traces of palladium show up in some of the most remote spots on Earth, from Antarctica to the top of the Greenland ice sheet. Palladium is also practically indispensable for making drugs. That's because catalysts with palladium atoms at their core have an unmatched ability to help stitch together carbon --carbon bonds. This kind of chemical reaction is key to building organic molecules, especially those used in medications. "Every pharmaceutical we produce at some point or another has a palladium-catalysed step in it," says Per-Ola Norrby, a pharmaceutical researcher at drug giant AstraZeneca in Gothenburg, Sweden. Palladium-catalysed reactions are so valuable that, in 2010, their discoverers shared a Nobel prize. But despite its versatility, chemists are trying to move away from palladium. The metal is more expensive than gold, and molecules that contain palladium can also be extremely toxic to humans and wildlife. Chemical manufacturers have to separate out all traces of palladium from their products and carefully dispose of the hazardous waste, which adds extra expense. Thomas Fuchb, a medicinal chemist at the life-sciences company Merck in Darmstadt, Germany, gives the example of a reaction to make 3 kilograms of a drug molecule for which the ingredients cost US$250,000. The palladium catalyst alone adds $100,000; purifying it out of the product another $30,000. Finding less-toxic alternatives to the metal could help to reduce environmental harm from palladium waste and move the chemicals industry towards 'greener' reactions, says Tianning Diao, an organometallic chemist at New York University. Researchers hope to swap palladium for more common metals, such as iron and nickel, or invent metal-free catalysts that sidestep the issue altogether. Several times in the past two decades, researchers have reported finding palladium-free catalysts. But in what has become a recurring pattern for the field, each heralded discovery turned out to be a mistake.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nolan Lawson, writing in a blogpost: Anyone who's worked in the tech industry for long enough, especially at larger organizations, has seen it before. A legacy system exists: it's big, it's complex, and no one fully understands how it works. Architects are brought in to "fix" the system. They might wheel out a big whiteboard showing a lot of boxes and arrows pointing at other boxes, and inevitably, their solution is... to add more boxes and arrows. Nobody can subtract from the system; everyone just adds. This might go on for several years. At some point, though, an organizational shakeup probably occurs -- a merger, a reorg, the polite release of some senior executive to go focus on their painting hobby for a while. A new band of architects is brought in, and their solution to the "big diagram of boxes and arrows" problem is much simpler: draw a big red X through the whole thing. The old system is sunset or deprecated, the haggard veterans who worked on it either leave or are reshuffled to other projects, and a fresh-faced team is brought in to, blessedly, design a new system from scratch. As disappointing as it may be for those of us who might aspire to write the kind of software that is timeless and enduring, you have to admit that this system works. For all its wastefulness, inefficiency, and pure mendacity ("The old code works fine!" "No wait, the old code is terrible!"), this is the model that has sustained a lot of software companies over the past few decades. Will this cycle go on forever, though? I'm not so sure. Right now, the software industry has been in a nearly two-decade economic boom (with some fits and starts), but the one sure thing in economics is that booms eventually turn to busts. During the boom, software companies can keep hiring new headcount to manage their existing software (i.e. more engineers to understand more boxes and arrows), but if their labor force is forced to contract, then that same system may become unmaintainable. A rapid and permanent reduction in complexity may be the only long-term solution. One thing working in complexity's favor, though, is that engineers like complexity. Admit it: as much as we complain about other people's complexity, we love our own. We love sitting around and dreaming up new architectural diagrams that can comfortably sit inside our own heads -- it's only when these diagrams leave our heads, take shape in the real world, and outgrow the size of any one person's head that the problems begin. It takes a lot of discipline to resist complexity, to say "no" to new boxes and arrows. To say, "No, we won't solve that problem, because that will just introduce 10 new problems that we haven't imagined yet." Or to say, "Let's go with a much simpler design, even if it seems amateurish, because at least we can understand it." Or to just say, "Let's do less instead of more."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars on several rounds of programs to upgrade internet speeds in rural areas over the past decade. Despite those efforts, many residents are still stuck with service that isn't fast enough to do video calls or stream movies -- speeds that most take for granted. From a report: Many communities have been targeted for broadband upgrades at least twice already, but flaws in the programs' design have left residents wanting. The Wall Street Journal analyzed 1.4 million largely rural census blocks that were included in a series of nationwide Federal Communications Commission broadband programs over the past decade. In the latest program, the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, rolled out in 2020, internet service providers won rights to public funding in about 750,000 census blocks, covering every state except Alaska. The Journal's analysis found that more than half of those census blocks -- areas with a combined population of 5.3 million people -- had been fully or partially covered by at least one previous federal broadband program. Most U.S. households today have access to internet download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and upload speeds of 10 Mbps, according to government data. Although the FCC's programs have made progress, some rural Americans still can't get 4 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds -- the level of service that was the federal standard in 2011. The broadband saga around Heavener, Okla., illustrates some of the problems. Heavener, with a population of around 3,000, is surrounded by cattle pastures and forested hills. Today some buildings on the main streets have good broadband service, but the internet deteriorates outside town, residents say. Much of the area, in Le Flore County, was slated for upgrades under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund in 2020 -- and some of those areas had already been part of prior programs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Three Arrows Capital failed to meet demands from lenders to stump up extra funds after its digital currency bets turned sour, tipping the prominent crypto hedge fund into a crisis that comes as a credit crunch grips the industry. Financial Times reports: The group's failure to meet margin calls this past weekend makes the group the latest victim of an acute fall in the prices of many tokens like bitcoin and ether that is rippling across the market. Singapore-based Three Arrows is among the biggest and most active players in the crypto industry with investments across lending and trading platforms. Lenders have sharply tightened up how much credit is on offer following tremors over the past month. Celsius, a major crypto financial services company, blocked withdrawals last week, while a pair of major tokens collapsed in May. US-based crypto lender BlockFi was among the groups that liquidated at least some of Three Arrows's positions, meaning it reduced its exposure by taking collateral the fund had put down to back its borrowing, according to people familiar with the matter. Three Arrows, which made a "strategic" investment in BlockFi in 2020, had borrowed bitcoin from the lender, the people said, but had been unable to meet a margin call. One of the people said the liquidation had occurred by mutual consent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

European telecom regulator BEREC has updated its net neutrality guidelines to include a strict ban on zero-rating practices that exempt specific apps or categories of apps from data caps imposed by Internet service providers. From a report: The document published Tuesday provides guidance to national regulatory authorities on their "obligations to closely monitor and ensure compliance with the rules to safeguard equal and non-discriminatory treatment of traffic in the provision of Internet access services and related end-users' rights." BEREC stands for Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications. "Despite intense lobbying from big carriers and giant platforms, BEREC voted to clearly ban zero-rating offers that benefit select apps or categories of apps by exempting them from people's monthly data caps," Stanford Law Professor Barbara van Schewick wrote. "The ban applies whether the app pays to be included or not, closing a loophole in the draft guidelines." While Europe strengthens its net neutrality regime, the US hasn't had any federal net neutrality rules since they were removed under former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. The FCC won't be re-imposing net neutrality rules any time soon because it still has a 2-2 partisan deadlock, and President Biden's nomination of Gigi Sohn has languished in the Senate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Crypto staking and yield generation platform Finblox has imposed a $1,500 monthly withdrawal limit and paused rewards in light of uncertainty surrounding crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, which made a $3.6 million investment in the Hong Kong-based platform last December. From a report: According to a statement shared on Twitter, Finblox has made the changes as it evaluates the impact of Three Arrow Capital's reported issues. It was reported on Wednesday that Three Arrows Capital is facing possible insolvency after incurring at least $400 million in liquidations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Police forces around the world have increasingly used hacking tools to identify and track protesters, expose political dissidents' secrets, and turn activists' computers and phones into inescapable eavesdropping bugs. Now, new clues in a case in India connect law enforcement to a hacking campaign that used those tools to go an appalling step further: planting false incriminating files on targets' computers that the same police then used as grounds to arrest and jail them. Wired: More than a year ago, forensic analysts revealed that unidentified hackers fabricated evidence on the computers of at least two activists arrested in Pune, India, in 2018, both of whom have languished in jail and, along with 13 others, face terrorism charges. Researchers at security firm SentinelOne and nonprofits Citizen Lab and Amnesty International have since linked that evidence fabrication to a broader hacking operation that targeted hundreds of individuals over nearly a decade, using phishing emails to infect targeted computers with spyware, as well as smartphone hacking tools sold by the Israeli hacking contractor NSO Group. But only now have SentinelOne's researchers revealed ties between the hackers and a government entity: none other than the very same Indian police agency in the city of Pune that arrested multiple activists based on the fabricated evidence. "There's a provable connection between the individuals who arrested these folks and the individuals who planted the evidence," says Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, a security researcher at SentinelOne who, along with fellow researcher Tom Hegel, will present findings at the Black Hat security conference in August. "This is beyond ethically compromised. It is beyond callous. So we're trying to put as much data forward as we can in the hopes of helping these victims." SentinelOne's new findings that link the Pune City Police to the long-running hacking campaign, which the company has called Modified Elephant, center on two particular targets of the campaign: Rona Wilson and Varvara Rao. Both men are activists and human rights defenders who were jailed in 2018 as part of a group called the Bhima Koregaon 16, named for the village where violence between Hindus and Dalits -- the group once known as "untouchables" -- broke out earlier that year. (One of those 16 defendants, 84-year-old Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, died in jail last year after contracting Covid-19. Rao, who is 81 years old and in poor health, has been released on medical bail, which expires next month. Of the other 14, only one has been granted bail.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has failed to convince a California federal judge to dismiss a privacy lawsuit that alleges the Alphabet Inc unit sells or gives personal information to third parties through its digital advertising system, without informing users. From a report: In a Monday opinion, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland said Google account holders have sufficiently alleged most of their claims in the lawsuit over the company's "real-time bidding" process. A Google spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday that privacy and transparency are "core" to its ad services. "We never sell people's personal information, we have strict policies specifically prohibiting personalized ads based on sensitive categories of information, and sensitive user data like health, race, or religion is not shared with our partners," the spokesperson said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A tracking tool installed on many hospitals' websites has been collecting patients' sensitive health information -- including details about their medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor's appointments -- and sending it to Facebook. From a report: The Markup tested the websites of Newsweek's top 100 hospitals in America. On 33 of them we found the tracker, called the Meta Pixel, sending Facebook a packet of data whenever a person clicked a button to schedule a doctor's appointment. The data is connected to an IP address -- an identifier that's like a computer's mailing address and can generally be linked to a specific individual or household -- "creating an intimate receipt of the appointment request for Facebook. The Markup found 33 of Newsweek's top 100 hospitals in the country sending sensitive data to Facebook via the pixel. Data accurate as of June 15, 2022. On the website of University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, for example, clicking the "Schedule Online" button on a doctor's page prompted the Meta Pixel to send Facebook the text of the button, the doctor's name, and the search term we used to find her: "pregnancy termination." Clicking the "Schedule Online Now" button for a doctor on the website of Froedtert Hospital, in Wisconsin, prompted the Meta Pixel to send Facebook the text of the button, the doctor's name, and the condition we selected from a dropdown menu: "Alzheimer's."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. government has pushed new, increased funding into three technology companies since the start of the Ukraine conflict to help Russians sidestep censors and access Western media, Reuters is reporting, citing five people familiar with the situation. From a report: The financing effort is focused on three firms that build Virtual Private Networks (VPN) -- nthLink, Psiphon and Lantern -- and is designed to support a recent surge in their Russian users, the sources said. VPNs help users hide their identity and change their online location, often to bypass geographic restrictions on content or to evade government censorship technology. Reuters spoke to executives at all three U.S. government-backed VPNs and two officials at a U.S. government-funded nonprofit organization that provided them with financing -- the Open Technology Fund (OTF) -- who said the anti-censorship apps have seen significant growth in Russia since President Vladimir Putin launched his war in Ukraine on Feb. 24. Between 2015 and 2021, the three VPNs received at least $4.8 million in U.S. funding, according to publicly available funding documents reviewed by Reuters. Since February, the total funding allocated to the companies has increased by almost half in order to cope with the rise in demand in Russia, the five people familiar with the matter told Reuters.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Embedded and internet of things (IoT) devices are a growing category of computing, and with that growth has come expanded needs for security and manageability. One way to help secure embedded and IoT deployments is with a secured operating system, such as Canonical's Ubuntu Core. The Ubuntu Core provides an optimized version of the open-source Ubuntu Linux operating system for smaller device footprints, using an approach that puts applications into containers. On June 15, Ubuntu Core 22 became generally available, providing users with new capabilities to help accelerate performance and lock down security. Ubuntu Core 22 is based on the Ubuntu 22.04 Linux operating system, which is Canonical's flagship Linux distribution that's made available for cloud, server and desktop users. Rather than being a general purpose OS, Ubuntu Core makes use of the open-source Snap container technology that was originally developed by Canonical to run applications. With Snaps, an organization can configure which applications should run in a specific IoT or embedded device and lock down the applications for security. Snaps provide a cryptographically authenticated approach for application updates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As the Supreme Court's expected decision to overturn Roe v. Wade looms over Washington, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has announced sweeping legislation to ban the sale of location and health data. From a report: Warren's Health and Location Protection Act -- cosponsored by a slate of Democratic senators, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) -- would bar "data brokers from selling or transferring location data and health data." There are few limitations, making the bill one of the most strident proposals aimed at regulating data sales. "Data brokers profit from the location data of millions of people, posing serious risks to Americans everywhere by selling their most private information," Warren said in a statement on Wednesday. "With this extremist Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and states seeking to criminalize essential health care, it is more crucial than ever for Congress to protect consumers' sensitive data."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The World Health Organization's top official in Europe on Wednesday called for urgent action by the authorities and civic groups to control fast-rising cases of monkeypox that he said posed a real risk to public health. From a report: Europe has emerged as the epicenter of an outbreak of monkeypox, with more than 1,500 cases identified in 25 European countries, which account for 85 percent of global cases, the official, Dr. Hans Kluge, the W.H.O.'s director of its European region, said at a news conference. The W.H.O. will convene its emergency committee in Geneva next week, Dr. Kluge added, to determine if the outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, a formal declaration that calls for a coordinated response between countries. "The magnitude of this outbreak poses a real risk," Dr. Kluge said. "The longer the virus circulates, the more it will extend its reach, and the stronger the disease's foothold will get in nonendemic countries." Monkeypox is a viral infection endemic in West Africa, but it has now spread to 39 countries, including 32 that have no previous experience of it, the W.H.O. director, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told reporters on Tuesday. Countries outside Africa and Europe that have identified cases of monkeypox include Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel and the United States.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Many commercials continue to play on ad-supported streaming services after viewers turn off their television, new research shows, a problem that is causing an estimated waste of more than $1 billion a year for brands. From a report: The findings come as an ever-growing share of ad dollars is shifting from traditional TV to streaming platforms, a trend that is likely to accelerate now that industry giants Netflix and Walt Disney's Disney+ have embraced the idea of offering an ad-supported version of their services. Some 17% of ads shown on televisions connected through a streaming device -- including streaming boxes, dongles, sticks and gaming consoles -- are playing while the TV is off, according to a study by WPP's ad-buying giant GroupM and ad-measurement firm iSpot.tv. That is because when a TV set is turned off, it doesn't always send a signal to the streaming device connected to the TV through its HDMI port, GroupM said. As a result, the streaming device will continue playing the show and its ads unless users had exited or paused the streaming app they were watching before turning off their TV. Due to the nature of the problem, using a smart TV -- on which streaming apps are loaded -- makes it far less likely that ads would be shown while the TV is off, since in this instance the television and streaming device are just a single piece of hardware. GroupM said it found "virtually no incidence" of the issue on smart TV apps. The study, which included smart TVs and some hooked up with a streaming device, found that on average, between 8% and 10% of all streaming ads were shown while the TV was off.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Keeping people out of rip currents is more about reading human behavior than reading warning signs. From a report: Worldwide, rips cause hundreds of drownings and necessitate tens of thousands of rescues every year. In Australia, where 85 percent of the population lives within an hour's drive of the coast, rips cause more fatalities than floods, cyclones, and shark attacks combined. In 1938, one of the country's most popular beaches, Sydney's Bondi Beach, was the site of an infamous rip-current tragedy: within minutes, roughly 200 swimmers were swept away by a rip, leaving 35 people unconscious and five dead. More often, however, rips take one life at a time, garnering little media attention. For many casual beach visitors, the toll of rip currents goes unnoticed. [...] Although almost three-quarters of beach users said they knew what a rip current is, only 54 percent could correctly define it. In addition, only half of the people she surveyed remembered seeing either the warning signs or the colored flags denoting surf conditions that were posted on or near the main access point to each beach. An even smaller percentage could recall what color the flags had been -- green for calm, yellow for moderate, or red for dangerous conditions. "I was genuinely shocked," Locknick says. [...] Part of the challenge of preventing rip-related drownings stems from the lack of a simple method to escape them. Rip currents form when waves pile water near the shoreline. The water then gushes back out to sea, taking the path of least resistance. It might flow along channels carved in between sandbars or next to solid structures, such as jetties or rocky headlands. These types of rips can stick around year after year. Others are more erratic, creating fleeting bursts of seaward-flowing water on smooth, open beaches. People often mislabel rip currents as undertows or rip tides. Rip currents are not caused by tides, however, and undertows are a different, weaker current, formed when water pushed onto the beach moves back offshore along the seabed. Some telltale signs of a rip include a streak of churned-up, sandy water or a dark, flat gap between breaking waves. It's not surprising that rip currents are often misunderstood by the public because, for decades, beach-safety experts also had an oversimplified perception of their mechanics. In some of the earliest research on rips in the mid-20th century, American scientists watched sticks, pieces of kelp, and volleyballs float out to sea and described lanes of flowing water extending more than 300 meters offshore. This work formed the basis for the popular view of rip currents as jets flowing perpendicular to the beach, shooting out past the surf. To escape the river of current, experts recommended that bathers swim parallel to the beach -- a message once broadcast through education campaigns and warning signs in the United States and Australia. As it turns out, that approach may not always work.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microprocessors from Intel, AMD, and other companies contain a newly discovered weakness that remote attackers can exploit to obtain cryptographic keys and other secret data traveling through the hardware, researchers said on Tuesday. From a report: Hardware manufacturers have long known that hackers can extract secret cryptographic data from a chip by measuring the power it consumes while processing those values. Fortunately, the means for exploiting power-analysis attacks against microprocessors is limited because the threat actor has few viable ways to remotely measure power consumption while processing the secret material. Now, a team of researchers has figured out how to turn power-analysis attacks into a different class of side-channel exploit that's considerably less demanding. The team discovered that dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) -- a power and thermal management feature added to every modern CPU -- allows attackers to deduce the changes in power consumption by monitoring the time it takes for a server to respond to specific carefully made queries. The discovery greatly reduces what's required. With an understanding of how the DVFS feature works, power side-channel attacks become much simpler timing attacks that can be done remotely. The researchers have dubbed their attack Hertzbleed because it uses the insights into DVFS to expose -- or bleed out -- data that's expected to remain private. The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2022-24436 for Intel chips and CVE-2022-23823 for AMD CPUs. The researchers have already shown how the exploit technique they developed can be used to extract an encryption key from a server running SIKE, a cryptographic algorithm used to establish a secret key between two parties over an otherwise insecure communications channel.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point on Wednesday, its biggest move since 1994, as the central bank ramps up its efforts to tackle the fastest inflation in four decades. From a report: The big rate increase, which markets had expected, underlined that Fed officials are serious about crushing price increases even if it comes at a cost to the economy. Officials predicted that the unemployment rate will increase to 3.7 percent this year and to 4.1 percent by 2024, and that growth will slow notably as policymakers push borrowing costs sharply higher and choke off economic demand. The Fed's policy rate is now set in a range between 1.50 to 1.75. Policymakers penciled in interest rates hitting 3.4 percent by the end of 2022 -- a level that would be the highest since 2008 -- and officials saw their policy rate peaking at 3.8 percent at the end of 2023. Those figures are significantly higher than previous estimates, which showed rates topping out at 2.8 percent next year. Fed officials newly expected to be cutting rates in 2024, which could be a sign that they think the economy will weaken so much that they will need to reorient their policy approach. The major takeaway from the Fed's economic forecasts, which it released for the first time since March, was that officials have become more pessimistic about their chances of letting the economy down gently.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Don't count Bill Gates among the fans of cryptocurrencies and NFTs. From a report: Those digital asset trends are "100% based on greater fool theory," the Microsoft co-founder said Tuesday at a TechCrunch conference, referencing the notion that investors can make money on worthless or overvalued assets as long as people are willing to bid them higher. Gates added that he's "not long or short" crypto. And he mocked Bored Apes NFTs, joking that "expensive digital images of monkeys" will "improve the world immensely." Instead, Gates said he prefers old fashioned investing. "I'm used to asset classes, like a farm where they have output, or like a company where they make products," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm on Wednesday won its fight against a 997 million euro ($1.05 billion) fine imposed by EU antitrust regulators four years ago, dealing a major setback to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager's crackdown on Big Tech. From a report: The European Commission in its 2018 decision said Qualcomm paid billions of dollars to Apple from 2011 to 2016 to use only its chips in all its iPhones and iPads in order to block out rivals such as Intel. Qualcomm's fine is one of several imposed by Vestager on companies ranging from Alphabet unit Google to banks and truckmakers over anti-competitive practices.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A decade ago, particle physicists thrilled the world. On 4 July 2012, 6000 researchers working with the world's biggest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, announced they had discovered the Higgs boson, a massive, fleeting particle key to their abstruse explanation of how other fundamental particles get their mass. The discovery fulfilled a 45-year-old prediction, completed a theory called the standard model, and thrust physicists into the spotlight. Then came a long hangover. From a report: Before the 27-kilometer-long ring-shaped LHC started to take data in 2010, physicists fretted that it might produce the Higgs and nothing else, leaving no clue to what lies beyond the standard model. So far, that nightmare scenario is coming true. "It's a bit disappointing," allows Barry Barish, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology. "I thought we would discover supersymmetry," the leading extension of the standard model. It's too early to despair, many physicists say. After 3 years of upgrades, the LHC is now powering up for the third of five planned runs, and some new particle could emerge in the billions of proton-proton collisions it will produce every second. In fact, the LHC should run for another 16 years, and with further upgrades should collect 16 times as much data as it already has. All those data could reveal subtle signs of novel particles and phenomena. Still, some researchers say the writing is on the wall for collider physics. "If they don't find anything, this field is dead," says Juan Collar, a physicist at the University of Chicago who hunts dark matter in smaller experiments. John Ellis, a theorist at King's College London, says hopes of a sudden breakthrough have given way to the prospect of a long, uncertain grind toward discovery. "It's going to be like pulling teeth, not like teeth falling out."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The UK's digital minister reiterated the government's ambition to make Britain a global crypto hub while sounding a cautious note about the potential criminal uses of digital assets. From a report: "We do intend the United Kingdom and London to be crypto centers," Chris Philp said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio on Wednesday. "But of course we've got to do that in a way that protects the public and in particular pays attention to issues concerning for example money laundering, and making sure that crypto is not used as a way to circumvent things like sanctions." The UK Treasury in April announced plans to make the country a global crypto hub, soothing an industry that had sparred with the financial regulator over what it considered to be overly strict guardrails. Retail investors in the UK are barred from using crypto derivatives, and authorities are imposing tougher rules on marketing. [...] "The Treasury are working closely with the Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority to make sure that balance is struck in the right way," said Philp.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In an effort to present itself as a viable competitor to the reigning short-form video platform TikTok, YouTube announced today its rival service YouTube Shorts is now being watched by over 1.5 billion logged-in users every month, less than two years after its launch. By comparison, TikTok announced 1 billion monthly users in September 2021. From a report: Though it hasn't announced updated figures since, TikTok was forecast to hit the 1.5 billion month user figure sometime this year. Related to its new milestone, YouTube also promoted Shorts' ability to drive viewers to creators' long-form video channels as a byproduct of its investments in Shorts. It's referring to the trend as "the rise of the multiformat creator" but, in reality, it seems to be more an admission that YouTube still sees more value in its longer-form content. The company, in its announcement, positioned its video platform as one that better reflects the reality of today's viewer, who engages with video at different times and places throughout the day. In some cases, users will want to quickly scroll through shorter content -- such as when killing time while out and about. At other times, they may be able to watch for longer periods and will turn to traditional YouTube videos to do so.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Block reports: The future of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital hangs in the balance as the firm faces potential insolvency after being liquidated by its lenders. According to well-placed sources, the investment firm -- which counts the likes of options exchange Deribit and financial services firm BlockFi among its venture bets -- is in the process of figuring out how to repay lenders and other counter-parties after it was liquidated by top tier lending firms in the space. Sources declined to share the names of those firms on the record for fear of reprisal, but three people said the liquidation totaled at least $400 million. They added that the firm has maintained limited contact with its counter-parties since being liquidated. The liquidation event is just one of several setbacks by the firm, which has backed projects like Avalanche, Polkadot, and Ether which are all down 57%, 38.8%, and 47% over the last 30 days respectively. The fund sustained significant losses during the collapse of the Terra ecosystem last month, after investing heavily in its native token LUNA. The firm, which reportedly managed approximately $10 billion at market peak by some estimates, is led by former classmates Su Zhu and Kyle Davies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dr. Saul Griffith, the author of "Electrify" and the founder and chief scientist of Rewiring America, Rewiring Australia and Otherlab, writes in a column: I recently moved back here to my home country partly because I believe Australians can show the world how much money households can save through simple climate solutions like rooftop solar. How is it that Australia, a country that historically has been a coal-burning climate pariah, is leading the world on solar? The four-bedroom house we recently bought provides a hint: It came with two rooftop solar systems of 11 kilowatts of combined capacity and a battery with 16 kilowatt-hours of storage. This system should produce more than enough to power my family's home, one electric car and both of our electric bikes with some left over to send back to the grid. Solar is now so prevalent in Australia that over a quarter of households here have rooftop panels, compared with roughly 2.5 percent of American households. Australia pays its solar installers salaries comparable to those in the United States, and it buys most of its solar modules from China at 25 cents per watt, just a little less than what American buyers pay. Our houses are mostly detached single-family, like America, too. But unlike in the United States, it's easy to get permits and install rooftop solar in Australia. Australia's rooftop solar success is a function partly of luck, partly of design. In the early 1990s, regulators considered rooftop solar a hobby, and no one stood in the way of efforts to make the rules favorable to small-scale solar. Looking for a good headline to varnish over Australia's refusal to agree to the same greenhouse emissions reductions as the rest of the world in the 1997 Kyoto climate agreement, the federal government embraced renewable energy policies that set the stage for rooftop solar. Households were given rebates for the upfront costs, and were paid to send excess electricity back to the grid. In 2007, Prime Minister John Howard doubled the rebate, a move that is credited with kick-starting a solar installation boom. Why has America been significantly slower to adopt this solution to high energy costs? The failures are mostly regulatory: local building codes and zoning laws, state rules that govern the grid connection and liability issues. Permitting can take as little as a day in Australia and is done over the web; in the United States permitting and connecting to the grid can take as long as six months. Many customers just give up. America also generally requires a metal conduit around the wiring; in Australia, the connections can be less expensive soft cables, similar to extension cords. The cost of rooftop solar in the United States depends on many things, including the latitude, tree cover and federal and state incentives. Installation costs can also vary quite a bit, depending on what laborers charge and the local permitting and inspection policies. My friend Andrew Birch, co-founder of the solar and solar software companies OpenSolar in Sydney and Sungevity in the United States, wrote an excellent critique of American rooftop solar and its high price in 2018.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung has been caught cheating by designing its TVs to recognize and react to test patterns used by reviewers. The company promises to provide software updates to address the situation. From a report: Reviewers, calibrators and certification bodies typically use a 10% window for HDR testing, which simply means that it takes up 10% of the screen. In this window multiple steps from black to white as well as a set of colors are measured. Samsung has designed its TVs to recognize this and other commonly used window sizes, after which the TV adjusts its picture output to make measurements appear more accurate than the picture really is. When using a non-standard window such as 9% (everything else equal), the cheating algorithm can be bypassed so the TV reveals its true colors. This is deliberate cheating, an orchestrated effort to mislead reviewers. Vincent Teoh of HDTVTest first identified and documented the issue on Samsung's S95B QD-OLED TV. FlatpanelsHD has since identified and documented the issue on Samsung's QN95B 'Neo QLED' LCD TV where it gets even worse. QN95B not only changes its color and luminance tracking during measurements to appear very accurate, it also boosts peak brightness momentarily by up to 80%, from approx. 1300 nits to 2300 nits. This is possible because the power supply can send short bursts into the miniLED backlight -- these cannot be sustained without damaging the panel. In our QN95B review we found no evidence of the TV surpassing 1300 nits with real content.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China said its giant Sky Eye telescope may have picked up signs of alien civilizations, according to a report by the state-backed Science and Technology Daily, which then appeared to have deleted the report and posts about the discovery. From a report: The narrow-band electromagnetic signals detected by Sky Eye -- the world's largest radio telescope -- differ from previous ones captured and the team is further investigating them, the report said, citing Zhang Tonjie, chief scientist of an extraterrestrial civilization search team co-founded by Beijing Normal University, the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California, Berkeley. It isn't clear why the report was apparently removed from the website of the Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China's science and technology ministry, though the news had already started trending on social network Weibo and was picked up by other media outlets, including state-run ones.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US defence contractor L3Harris is in talks to take over NSO Group's surveillance technology, in a possible deal that would give an American company control over one of the world's most sophisticated and controversial hacking tools. From a report: Multiple sources confirmed that discussions were centred on a sale of the Israeli company's core technology â" or code â" as well as a possible transfer of NSO personnel to L3Harris. But any agreement still faces significant hurdles, including requiring the blessing of the US and Israeli governments, which have not yet given the green light to a deal. In a statement, a senior White House official said: "Such a transaction, if it were to take place, raises serious counterintelligence and security concerns for the US government." If agreed, the deal would mark an astounding turnaround for NSO, less than a year after the Biden administration placed the company on a US blacklist and accused it of acting "contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the US."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a review: In its early pre-pandemic days, Keychron made a name for itself with its series of affordable mechanical keyboards -- including a few low-profile ones that remain a rarity to this day. Those boards didn't necessarily appeal to enthusiasts, but were more than good enough for most mainstream users who wanted a different kind of keyboard. Last year, Keychron upped the ante with the launch of the Q1, an enthusiast-level, fully customizable hotswap keyboard with a 75% layout that had more than a few similarities to the heavily hyped GMMK Pro. Since then, Keychron has expanded this series with the 65% Q2, which received pretty rave reviews at the time and now the Q3. The QMK-compatible Q3 clearly follows in the footsteps of the Q1 and Q2. It uses the same double-gasket design that should make for a relatively bouncy typing experience (though in my experience, there's less bounce than I would've expected), and the overall design is pretty much the same, with the exception that it's a tenkeyless (TKL), so you get a full keyboard with standalone arrow keys and a full row of function keys, but without the numpad. The body is made from aluminum and the whole unit weighs in at a hefty 4.5 pounds. In part, that's because Keychron opted for a steel plate here. You can opt to get a bare-bones version where you supply your own switches and keycaps for $154 (or $164 if you want to get the optional volume knob), or a fully assembled version with keycaps and your choice of Gateron Pro Red, Blue or Brown switches for $174 (or $184 with knob). For the extra $20, I think getting the assembled version is a no-brainer, given that the keycaps and switches will cost you significantly more and even if you want to replace them, you could always reuse them in another project (because who only has one keyboard, right?).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The open source Thunderbird email client has a long and storied history, but until now, that history has been limited to the desktop. That's about to change, according to a post on the Thunderbird blog. Thunderbird will be coming to Android through the popular open source mobile email client K-9 Mail. From a report: According to Thunderbird's Jason Evangelho, the Thunderbird team has acquired the source code and naming rights to K-9 Mail. K-9 Mail project maintainer Christian Ketterer (who goes by "cketti" in the OSS community) will join the Thunderbird team, and over time, K-9 Mail will become Thunderbird for Android. Thunderbird's team will invest finance and development time in K-9 to add several features and quality-of-life enhancements before that happens, though.Read more of this story at Slashdot.