Slashdot

Singapore has begun a project to investigate potential uses of asset tokenization as the city state looks to establish itself as a hub for decentralized finance after several key crypto players left. From a report: "Project Guardian," a collaboration between the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the finance industry, will test the feasibility of applications in asset tokenization and decentralized finance (DeFi) while working to manage risks to financial stability and integrity, according to a statement from Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat on Tuesday. The project aims to develop and pilot use cases in areas including open, interoperable networks; trust anchors; and institutional-grade DeFi protocols. The first pilot in the project will explore potential DeFi applications in wholesale funding markets. The pilot, led by DBS Bank, JPMorgan Chase and Marketnode, involves the creation of a permissioned liquidity pool comprising tokenized bonds and deposits. The MAS was relatively early among regulators to look at uses of blockchain technology, and Singapore set up a licensing regime a few years ago. However, applicants have been frustrated by the slowness of approvals, and a crypto advertising ban caught the industry off guard.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

French officials are continuing their centuries-long battle to preserve the purity of the language, overhauling the rules on using English video game jargon. From a report: While some expressions find obvious translations -- "pro-gamer" becomes "joueur professionnel" -- others seem a more strained, as "streamer" is transformed into "joueur-animateur en direct." The culture ministry, which is involved in the process, told AFP the video game sector was rife with anglicisms that could act as "a barrier to understanding" for non-gamers. France regularly issues dire warnings of the debasement of its language from across the Channel, or more recently the Atlantic. Government officials must replace words such as "e-sports" and "streaming" with approved French versions, the new rule says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nearly a third of Hawaii's single-family houses have rooftop solar panels -- more than twice the percentage in California -- and officials expect many more homes to add panels and batteries in the coming years. From a report: Even before energy prices surged globally this year, homeowners, elected leaders and energy executives in Hawaii had decided that rooftop solar panels were one of the best ways to meet demand for energy and tame the state's high power costs. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has only strengthened the state's embrace of renewable energy. Electricity rates in Hawaii jumped 34 percent in April from a year earlier because many of its power plants burn oil, about a third of which came from Russia last year. While Hawaii faces unique challenges, the state's reliance on solar carries lessons for other states and countries looking to fight climate change and bring down energy costs. The state has increased the use of renewable energy in large part by getting electric utilities to accept rooftop solar rather than fight it, as energy companies in California, Florida and other states have been doing. "In Hawaii, we've come to the recognition that rooftop solar is going to be an important part of our grid, has to be part of our grid," said Shelee Kimura, president and chief executive of Hawaiian Electric Company, the state's largest power provider. "Some people think we're crazy. Some people think we're pretty amazing."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India has withdrawn a warning that asked users to not share photocopies of their national biometric ID following a widespread uproar from users on social media, many of whom pointed that this is the first time they were hearing about such a possibility. From a report: A regional office of UIDAI, the body that oversees the national biometric ID system Aadhaar, warned users on Friday that "unlicensed private entities" such as hotels and theatre halls are "not permitted to collect or keep copies of Aadhaar," a 12-digit unique number that ties an individual's fingerprints and retina scan, and people should avoid sharing photocopies of their Aadhaar to prevent misuse.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After years of funneling cash into startups' grand ambitions, Silicon Valley's investors are engaging in the grim ritual of delivering survival advice to their portfolio companies. From a report: In recent online slide presentations, blog posts and social-media threads, venture-capital doyens including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Craft Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Y Combinator are telling the founders that they need to take emergency action for what could be the sharpest turn in more than a decade. Their advice includes cutting costs, preserving cash and jettisoning hopes that hedge funds or other investors will swoop in with big checks. "The boom times of the last decade are unambiguously over," Lightspeed, which has backed companies including social network Snap and crypto exchange FTX, wrote in a dispatch for startup executives that was posted on Medium, a publishing platform, this month. The investors' admonitions are a departure from the growth-above-all mantra for startups in recent years, and come as the venture market is showing signs of sputtering. Funding for global startups -- at around $58 billion in commitments midway through the second quarter -- is on pace to drop by about one-fifth in the period compared with the previous quarter, according to analytics firm CB Insights. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index is down about 25% from its all-time high in November, and SoftBank Group, which has poured more than $100 billion into investments, this month reported a $26.2 billion loss in the first quarter as valuations plummeted in its portfolio of tech companies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has quietly banned deepfake projects on its Colaboratory (Colab) service, putting an end to the large-scale utilization of the platform's resources for this purpose. From a report: Colab is an online computing resource that allows researchers to run Python code directly through the browser while using free computing resources, including GPUs, to power their projects. Due to the multi-core nature of GPUs, Colab is ideal for training machine learning projects like deepfake models or for performing data analysis. Deepfakes can be trained to swap faces on video clips, adding realistic facial expressions to make the result appear genuine, although it's fake. They have been used for spreading fake news, creating revenge porn, or for fun. However, the lack of ethical limitations in their use has been the source of controversy and concern.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Greece has passed its first climate law, which sets out specific targets to fight climate change and wean itself off coal in power generation by 2028. From a report: The legislation sets interim targets for Greece to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 55% by 2030 and by 80% by 2040 before achieving zero-net emissions by 2050. It also engages the country to cut dependence on fossil fuels, including weaning off indigenous lignite or brown coal -- once the main source of energy -- in electricity production from 2028 onwards. This target might be brought forward to 2025, taking into account security of supplies. "It's an existential matter, a very important one, because it has to do with our lives, because it has to do with our children's lives," Energy Minister Kostas Skrekas told lawmakers before the vote. "Is this just going to help protect the environment? ÎÎ, it's not. It also helps the country's energy security."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alarmed by the declining stature of its universities, Japan is planning to shower up to $2.3 billion a year on a handful of schools in hopes of boosting their prominence. From a report: The scheme was approved by the Japanese legislature on 18 May, although many details, including how to pick the favored universities, are still up in the air. But the move, under study for more than a year, has rekindled a debate among academics over how to reverse Japan's sinking research fortunes. Several previous schemes have yielded mixed results. The new plan "aims to provide young promising scholars with the research environment that the world's top universities are supposed to offer, to dramatically enhance international collaborations, and to promote the brain circulation both domestically and internationally," says Takahiro Ueyama, a science policy specialist on the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (CSTI), Japan's highest science advisory body, which was heavily involved in crafting the scheme. But Guojun Sheng, a Chinese developmental biologist at Kumamoto University in Japan, is skeptical. "I am not very optimistic that this [plan] will do much to curb the slide in the ranking of Japanese research activities or international competitiveness," he says. Sheng, who previously studied and worked in China, the United States, and the United Kingdom, says the new plan does not address fundamental problems at Japanese research institutes: too few women and foreign scientists, a fear of change, and lack of support for young scientists. To get better results, "Japan has to change its research culture," he says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has started legal proceedings in the Federal Court against Mastercard Asia Pacific and Mastercard Australia for alleged anti-competitive conduct that substantially lessened competition in the supply of debit card acceptance services. From a report: The consumer watchdog alleges between November 2017 to at least November 2020 that Mastercard had a "substantial degree of power" in the market for the supply of credit card acceptance services under the Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) least-cost routing initiative. The least-cost routing initiative aimed to give merchants the ability to choose which debit card network processed their contactless dual-network debit card payments -- whether that was Mastercard, Visa, or Eftpos -- and was intended to increase competition in the supply of debit card acceptance services, while reduce payments costs associated with processing debit card payments for businesses. For dual-network debit card payments, the fees paid by a merchant can vary depending on the debit card network used for processing the transaction. The ACCC alleges that in response the least-cost routing initiative, Mastercard entered into agreements with more than 20 major retailers, including supermarkets, fast food chains, and clothing retailers, to offer cheaper interchange rates for processing credit card payments if they agreed to process Mastercard-Eftpos debit card transactions through the Mastercard network, rather than the Eftpos network, even though Eftpos was often the lowest cost provider.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The higher you climb, the harder you fall -- and that spells trouble across the board for fintech startups right now. From a report: Already fintech multiples plummeted faster, and harder, than the rest of the tech sector. A chart published by a16z shows that the peak of forward revenue multiples for fintech companies was in October 2021 when it hit near 25x. Now, it's nosedived to below 5x. This is a worse slide than sectors like the cloud, according to data from F-Prime Capital. Up until 2019, fintech had been in relative lockstep with the emerging cloud index, but it ballooned in 2020 and 2021 to be way above the performance of cloud companies. But since the beginning of the year, F-Prime's fintech index has been crashing. It fell below the cloud index at the end of March. As public fintech companies are seeing their market caps shrink, it's going to be harder for private companies to justify their own rich valuations. Publicly traded Marqeta has a market cap now around $6 billion and processed over $100 billion in transactions last year. There are similar startups doing a sliver of Marqeta's volume but with valuations at or near $1 billion, Sacra's Jan-Erik Asplund pointed out -- an outsized mismatch. The trickle-down from the public market's reset hit extra hard this week. More fintech startups began to make cuts. Some might find themselves raising a down round. Of the 19 layoffs listed on Layoffs.FYI this week, nine were at financial companies. Klarna told employees it would lay off 10% of its workforce via a video message this week. "When we set our business plans for 2022 in the autumn of last year, it was a very different world than the one we are in today," CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in the video. It was rumored that the company was going to try to raise its valuation from last summer's $46 billion to $60 billion in February, but it's now facing a potential valuation cut down to $30 billion. Fast was the first to collapse, but now its rival Bolt has had to lay off hundreds. Its layoffs are a particularly nasty kind after many employees took out loans to exercise their stock options. MainStreet, which helps startups discover tax credits, already laid off 30% of its staff weeks ago. Now TechCrunch reports that it's potentially facing a 60% discount in its valuation as part of a recap.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lotus-1-2-3, an ancient spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (and later IBM), has been ported to a new operating system. drewsup writes: As reported by The Register, a Lotus 1-2-3 enthusiast called Tavis Ormandy (who is also a bug-hunter for Google Project Zero), managed to successfully port the program onto Linux, which seems to be quite the feat of reverse engineering. It's important to stress that this isn't an emulated program, but rather the original 1990 Lotus 1-2 -- for x86 Unix running natively on modern x86 Linux.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United States is on top of the supercomputing world in the Top500 ranking of the most powerful systems. From a report: The Frontier system from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) running on AMD EPYC CPUs took first place from last year's champ, Japan's ARM A64X Fugaku system. It's still in the integration and testing process at the ORNL in Tennessee, but will eventually be operated by the US Air Force and US Department of Energy. Frontier, powered by Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) Cray EX platform, was the top machine by a wide margin, too. It's the first (known) true exascale system, hitting a peak 1.1 exaflops on the Linmark benchmark. Fugaku, meanwhile, managed less than half that at 442 petaflops, which was still enough to keep it in first place for the previous two years. Frontier was also the most efficient supercomputer, too. Running at just 52.23 gigaflops per watt, it beat out Japan's MN-3 system to grab first place on the Green500 list. "The fact that the world's fastest machine is also the most energy efficient is just simply amazing," ORNL lab director Thomas Zacharia said at a press conference.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Back in March of 2017, this strange note first appeared at the end of a paper in the journal Nature: "Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations." I looked over the paper, and it didn't have any maps in it. None of the authors had unusual affiliations, just the normal university departments. Why the disclaimer? Before answering this question, let's dig a bit deeper. This notice first started appearing in mid-March of 2017, when it was attached to every single research paper in that issue. I cannot find any papers prior to that with the "Publisher's note." Ever since then, Nature has put this notice on every paper in all of their journals. For example, the current issue has a paper on mapping sound on the planet Mars, by an international team of astronomers and physicists. It does contain maps, but they don't describe any features on Earth. Nonetheless, it has the disclaimer at the end about "jurisdictional claims in published maps." (Nature has done it to me too, for example in this 2018 paper led by a former Ph.D. student of mine. I didn't yet know about the weird disclaimer when that paper appeared, and I didn't catch it until later.) It's not just Nature, but apparently all of the many journals published by the Nature Publishing Group, which today number in excess of 100 publications. I looked at a few randomly chosen papers in Nature Biotechnology and Cancer Gene Therapy, as a test, and they all have exactly the same Publisher's Note. None of these papers, I should add, have any maps in them. I couldn't find anything odd about the institutional affiliations either. Nature is one of the oldest and most-respected journals in all of science, dating back to 1869. Just a few years ago, in 2015, Nature's publishing group merged with Springer, the second-largest for-profit scientific publisher in the world, and they changed their name to Springer Nature. We'll see why this is relevant in a minute. I should also mention that the papers appearing in these journals, especially Nature itself, are rigorously peer-reviewed. Any map that appears undergoes the same peer review. The reviewers also see all the authors' institutional affiliations. Normally, the publisher has no say over any of this content: if it passes peer review, it's published. So what happened? Springer Nature, it seems, added this note because of pressure from the Chinese government. The Chinese government doesn't want any maps to show Taiwan, and it doesn't want any affiliations to from scientists in Taiwan unless they show (incorrectly) that Taiwan is part of China. I admit that I'm speculating, but we have very clear evidence that SpringerNature has succumbed to Chinese demands on related matters. In late 2017, the New York Times reported that Springer was "bowing to pressure from the Chinese government to block access to hundreds of articles on its Chinese website." [...]Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today is Memorial Day in the U.S. — a federal holiday honoring military personnel who died serving their country. After the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, 389 unidentified sailors had been interred in a volcanic crater in Honolulu officially designated as the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. After more than 70 years, the U.S government's Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began the "USS Oklahoma Project." It continued its work for five years, eventually identifying 355 of the 389 unknown sailors. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that "After more than 80 years gone, Paul Boemer finally returned from Hawaii." "And Vince Boemer — who gently accepted the folded American flag that had covered his brother's casket — was happy to welcome him back.""He was a good man," Boemer said. "He was a good older brother." Earlier this month, Paul Boemer was laid to rest at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, in a ceremony scored by the playing of taps and a 21-gun salute. Family, friends, a Navy honor guard in dress whites and several dozen Freedom Rider veterans stood with reverence on a sunny, humid St. Louis day. "It's a great honor to be part of this," said Vince Boemer, who soon will turn 98. "It's wonderful to see the U.S. government go to these lengths to honor its veterans." To be sure, Paul Boemer did not plan to be gone so long when he enlisted in the Navy in late 1938. After growing up in south St. Louis, the eighth of 10 children, and graduating from Cleveland High School, the lanky 18-year-old decided on a stint in the military. He completed basic training, and the Navy assigned the new coxswain — a sailor who helps steer a ship — to the USS Oklahoma. So Boemer boarded a troop transport in Norfolk, Virginia, and sailed to the ship's home port, Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. That's where Boemer was stationed in 1939 — and on Dec. 7, 1941. On that day, Japan launched a surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet; the USS Oklahoma was struck by two torpedoes. The battleship quickly capsized, claiming the lives of 429 crewmen. Paul Boemer was a month shy of turning 22. In all, 2,403 U.S. personnel died that Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor and 19 vessels were destroyed or damaged. But because of "these lengths" taken by the U.S. government, Vince Boemer finally got to see his big brother buried in his hometown. Thank you for your service.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As labor shortages continue, "robot orders increased 40% in the first quarter of 2022," reports Business Insider (citing a report from the Wall Street Journal citing the Association for Advancing Automation)."People want to remove labor," Ametek Inc. CEO David A. Zapico told Bloomberg in November, noting that the automatic equipment company had been "firing on all cylinders" to meet demand. Robots are providing at least a temporary solution for businesses confronted by difficulty hiring in the tightest job market since World War II, marred by the pandemic, record-high quitting rates, and vast economic turmoil.... "The robots are becoming easier to use," Michael Cicco, chief executive officer of industrial robot provider Fanuc America, told the Wall Street Journal. "Companies used to think that automation was too hard or too expensive to implement." But as robot usage climbs, some have expressed concern about the machines displacing human workers as the labor crisis eventually eases. "Automation, if it goes very fast, can destroy a lot of jobs," Daron Acemoglu, an economics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the Journal. "The labor shortage is not going to last. This is temporary."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

North Carolina's largest newspaper, Raleigh's News & Observer newspaper, reports that "In the face of stiff opposition from farm equipment companies and dealers, North Carolina state senators on Tuesday walked back a provision that would have widened access to the repair of farming equipment."The so-called "right to repair" provision was included in the Farm Act of 2022, Senate Bill 762, which was discussed Tuesday in the Senate's Agriculture, Energy and Environment Committee. As introduced, the bill would have required manufacturers of farming equipment that relies on digital components to make diagnostic equipment and parts available at "fair and reasonable terms." Representatives of national farm equipment trade groups and North Carolina equipment dealers opposed the bill. Allowing repairs outside of authorized shops, they argued, could damage equipment, pose a risk of injury, and make it possible for farming equipment to violate the Clean Air Act. After hearing from seven people, Sen. Brent Jackson, a Sampson County Republican, replaced the right to repair provision with language calling on the General Assembly's Agricultural and Forestry Awareness Study Commission to evaluate whether further action is necessary. More from North Carolina TV station WRAL: Manufacturers and their licensed dealerships counter that they spend millions of dollars stocking parts and training field technicians to service equipment safely and within the parameters of federal laws like the Clean Air Act. More than a dozen dealers and representatives lined up to speak against the provision in the state Senate agriculture committee Tuesday... [Right-to-repair] supporters were far outnumbered by opponents, who warned that giving consumers access to embedded software would allow unsafe or illegal modifications to the equipment, from emissions compliance to safety shutoffs. Philip Brooks, a dealer from Monroe, said his service techs receive extensive training. "A simple common rail diesel system with a line broken loose with a wrench under pressure can kill a man. We need to be careful of all these things," he told the committee. Brian Jennings, a farm equipment dealer from Elizabeth City, testified: "I do not support the attacks — and I call them attacks — on our business. We are contracted dealers. We spend a lot of money to be dealers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It was "the furthest any Right to Repair bill for consumer electronics has come to becoming law" in America, reports the nonprofit California Public Interest Research Group. And yet...The California Senate Appropriations committee failed to pass Sen. Susan Eggman's Right to Repair bill, SB 983, on May 19, which would have significantly expanded Californians' access to the parts, tools, and service information needed to fix consumer electronics and appliances....The policy had broad, bipartisan support, with 75% of Californians and majorities of both parties supporting Right to Repair. The bill, which passed through the judiciary committee with only a single opposing vote, met the same fate as a similarly popular medical Right to Repair bill that Sen. Eggman introduced in 2021. Sander Kushen, CALPIRG Advocate issued the following statement in response... "SB 983 could have saved California households as much as $4.3 billion a year in reduced spending on electronics and helped Californians reduce toxic electronic waste. Instead, industry groups' heavy lobbying effort helped to kill the bill." "Other states are pursuing similar legislation and there's also a pending federal bill," reports the San Francisco Chronicle"The right-to-repair movement is gaining steam with President Biden as a vocal advocate. In July 2021, he asked the Federal Trade Commission to draft right-to-repair rules. The FTC said it will target repairs restrictions as antitrust violations. In recent months, major tech players have opened up limited ways to help consumers fix stuff. Apple has said it will sell manuals, parts and tools but only to owners of the iPhone 12 and 13 models. Microsoft said it's looking into repair options for its computer accessories. Google will sell replacement parts for Pixel smartphones via iFixit, a self-described "wikipedia of repair." But they also explore why the California bill failed:The legislative bill, which would have been the first of its kind in the United States, would have required makers of electronic gear such as cell phones, game consoles, washers and dryers, computers — almost anything with a chip inside — to ease the route to fixing broken stuff by providing parts, tools and manuals at reasonable prices. Supporters pitched it as a no-brainer to save consumers money and reduce e-waste. But the electronics industry says that it could have created a free-for-all, allowing pirates to flourish, unauthorized people to access sensitive information and trade secrets to be violated... "We're going up against the rights of some of the biggest companies in the world," said Kevin O'Reilly, a Right to Repair campaign director with U.S. Public Interest Research Group, or PIRG. He's also associated with CALPIRG. "Apple and Google and other tech giants have either lobbied against the bill or supported organizations that lobbied against the bill."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike Bouma (Slashdot reader #85,252) writes: AmiKit is a compilation of pre-installed and pre-configured Amiga programs running emulated on Windows, macOS, and Linux (as well as running on classic 68K Amigas expanded with a Vampire upgrade card). Besides original Workbench (Commodore's desktop environment/graphical filemanager), AmiKit provides Directory Opus Magellan and Scalos as desktop replacements and its "Rabbit Hole" feature allows you to launch Windows, Mac or Linux applications directly from your Amiga desktop! Anti-aliased fonts, Full HD 32-bit screen modes and DualPNG Icons support is included and this package comes with exclusive versions of the Master Control Program (MCP) and MUI 5 (Magic User Interface). The original AmigaOS (version 3.x) and Kickstart ROM (version 3.1) are required, also the recently released AmigaOS 3.2 is supported. You can also get the needed files from the Amiga Forever package(s). It even supports emulating AmigaOS 4.x (for PowerPC) easily through Flower Pot. Here's an extensive overview video by Dan Wood. An Amiga Future review of an earlier 2017 version can be read here. "Everything began in 1994 when my parents bought an Amiga 500 for me and my brother," explains AmiKit's developer. "I was 14 years old..."Fast forward to 2005, the AmiKit was born — an emulated environment including more than 350 programs. It fully replaced my old Amiga and it became a legend in the community over the years. Fast forward to 2017, a brand new AmiKit X is released, originally developed for A.L.I.C.E., followed by the XE version released in 2019, Vampire edition in 2020 and Raspberry Pi in 2021. The latest & greatest version was released in 2020. When someone, who has never heard about Amiga before, asks me why I would want to turn current modern computer into something retro and old fashioned, my short answer is: "Simply because I love Amiga!"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Denmark-based Poul-Henning Kamp describes himself as the "author of a lot of FreeBSD, most of Varnish and tons of other Open Source Software." And he shares this message in June's Communications of the ACM. "The software industry is still the problem."If any science fiction author, famous or obscure, had submitted a story where the plot was "modern IT is a bunch of crap that organized crime exploits for extortion," it would have gotten nowhere, because (A) that is just not credible, and (B) yawn! And yet, here we are.... As I write this, 200-plus corporations, including many retail chains, have inoperative IT because extortionists found a hole in some niche, third-party software product most of us have never heard of. But he's also proposing a solution. In Denmark, 129 jobs are regulated by law. There are good and obvious reasons why it is illegal for any random Ken, Brian, or Dennis to install toilets or natural-gas furnaces, perform brain surgery, or certify a building is strong enough to be left outside during winter. It may be less obvious why the state cares who runs pet shops, inseminates cattle, or performs zoological taxidermy, but if you read the applicable laws, you will learn that animal welfare and protection of endangered species have many and obscure corner cases. Notably absent, as in totally absent, on that list are any and all jobs related to IT; IT architecture, computers, computer networks, computer security, or protection of privacy in computer systems. People who have been legally barred and delicensed from every other possible trade — be it for incompetence, fraud, or both — are entirely free to enter the IT profession and become responsible for the IT architecture or cybersecurity of the IT system that controls nearly half the hydrocarbons to the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.... With respect to gas, water, electricity, sewers, or building stability, the regulations do not care if a company is hundreds of years old or just started this morning, the rules are always the same: Stuff should just work, and only people who are licensed — because they know how to — are allowed to make it work, and they can be sued if they fail to do so. The time is way overdue for IT engineers to be subject to professional liability, like almost every other engineering profession. Before you tell me that is impossible, please study how the very same thing happened with electricity, planes, cranes, trains, ships, automobiles, lifts, food processing, buildings, and, for that matter, driving a car. As with software product liability, the astute reader is apt to exclaim, "This will be the end of IT as we know it!" Again, my considered response is, "Yes, please, that is precisely my point!"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The BBC reports:A Persian-language content moderator for Instagram and a former content moderator have said Iranian intelligence officials offered them money to remove Instagram accounts of journalists and activists.... Both content moderators also accused some Iranian colleagues of exhibiting "pro-regime bias" when reviewing posts on the photo-sharing service. They spoke to the BBC after many Iranian Instagram users complained that posts about recent anti-government protests in their country had been deleted. Instagram's owner, Meta Platforms, and the third-party company it uses to moderate content said there was no validity to the claims.... The protests received very little coverage on Iranian state media, meaning that Iranians had to rely on Instagram and other social media sites to learn what was happening on the ground. As the unrest continued, users noticed that some videos posted on Instagram were being removed.... The former content moderator told the BBC that he "personally knew some reviewers who supported the Iranian regime and received instructions from Iran".... All three interviewees said it was likely that some videos of the protests were removed because they included people shouting: "Death to Khamenei". Meta has previously said that its guidelines around incitement of violence prohibit calls for the death of a head of state. However, in Iran the phrase "Death to..." is commonly chanted at protests to express discontent with something or someone, rather than to express an actual threat.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gas-powered vehicles "have hundreds of moving parts and other components" that keep mechanics busy, argues CalMatters (which describes itself as a "nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization.") "By 2040, the state projects that nearly 32,000 auto mechanics jobs will be lost in California, since electric vehicles need far less maintenance and repair than conventional combustion engines." And they base that prediction on statistics from the state's own Air Resources Board (part of California's Environmental Protection Agency):Throughout the economy, an estimated 64,700 jobs will be lost because of the mandate, according to the California Air Resources Board's calculations. On the other hand, an estimated 24,900 jobs would be gained in other sectors, so the estimated net loss is 39,800 jobs, a minimal amount across the state's entire economy, by 2040. But no single workforce in the state would be hurt more than auto mechanics: California has about 60,910 auto service technicians and mechanics, and more than half of those jobs would be lost over the next two decades if the mandate goes into effect, the air board calculates.... Some industries gain jobs while others lose them as the state shifts to zero-emission vehicles. The retail trade sector, which includes gas station workers and automobile and parts dealers, would lose 38,669 jobs by 2040 or about 2% of the retail workforce. Most of the losses would be at gasoline stations. As the electric vehicle fleet grows, air board officials project gas stations could provide charging to offset the losses.... Another 20,831 jobs in state and local government would be eliminated because of the decrease in gas tax revenue. But the transition to electric cars also will create thousands of jobs. Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and other power industry companies would benefit most, with the creation of about 5,600 jobs by 2040 as car owners spend more on electricity to power their vehicles. Insurance carriers will benefit from about 1,700 new jobs, while the construction industry is expected to gain about 3,600.... Mechanics who work on internal combustion engines would still have plenty of work: The rule would not ban sales of used cars, and it wouldn't force the state's residents to stop driving the roughly 29 million gas-powered cars that are already on the road. Californians also could keep importing new or used vehicles from out of state. That means Californians will still own a lot of gas-powered cars past 2035, softening the blow for car mechanics and industries dependent on fossil fuels, said James Sallee, an economist and research associate at the Energy Institute at University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Sallee said the changes wouldn't occur fast enough to trigger a sharp economic slowdown within the auto repair industry. One 67-year-old mechanic still tells CalMatters that "The electric vehicle repair market is just about nonexistent." But another mechanic tells them "I'm not against electric vehicles. I've always loved cars and I'll work on them until I can't anymore. So we have to adjust. We have to get out of our comfort zones."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LiveScience reports:Despite being around 4,300 miles in length, the Amazon River surprisingly has no bridges. The Amazon River is the world's second-longest river and one of the planet's most significant waterways... Given the Amazon flows through three countries (Peru, Colombia and Brazil) and more than 30 million people live in the river's basin, according to the World Wildlife Fund, it seems somewhat improbable that no bridges span the river. So why is this the case? Are there fundamental difficulties with building such structures in a rainforest containing swaps, extensive wetlands and deep, thick undergrowth? Are there financial barriers? Or is it simply not worth the effort? The site got answers from Walter Kaufmann, the chair of Structural Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shared this summary of the explanations (condensing quotes from the article): There are technical and logistical difficulties. The Amazon is far from an ideal location for bridge builders. It has an array of natural stumbling blocks that would need to be conquered by engineers and construction workers. its extensive marshes and soft soils would necessitate "very long access viaducts and very deep foundations," and this would require hefty financial investment. Additionally, the changing positions of the river's course across the seasons, with "pronounced differences" in water depth, would make construction "extremely demanding." The environment at the Amazon is certainly among the most difficult in the world. Pontoons, or floating structures, are not a solution that would work in most parts of the Amazon, Kaufmann said, because the river is hugely impacted by seasonal variances, which adds an additional layer of complexity. For instance, during the dry season — between June and November — the Amazon averages a width of between 2 and 6 miles (3.2 and 9.7 km), while in the wet season — December through April — the river can be as wide as 30 miles (48 km), and the water level can be 50 feet (15 meters) higher than it is during the dry season, according to Britannica. There is no sufficiently pressing need for a bridge across the Amazon. The Amazon, for much of its 4,300-mile (6,920 kilometers) length, meanders through areas that are sparsely populated, meaning there are very few major roads for any bridge to connect to. And in the cities and towns that border the river, boats and ferries are an established means of moving goods and people from bank to bank, meaning there is no real need for bridges to be built, other than to make trips slightly quicker.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"There's no guarantee that robot umpires will make their way to the majors," writes the San Francisco Chronicle. "But the system is as close as it has been now, one level below." Here's how it looks for a minor league/Triple-A team, the Albuquerque Isotopes:Using the same computerized optical tracking technology known as Hawk-Eye that has been used for several years now in pro tennis and some other sports, MLB's new Automated ball-strike system is a rather in-depth setup. In early April, MLB set up eight high-speed cameras and hundreds of receivers around Isotopes Park that, along with the video from the cameras, add to a triangulation process that can help determine exactly where the ball crosses the strike zone — despite there being no camera directly over or behind the plate. The MLB says it is confident a foul ball hitting one camera or a light drizzle of rain during a game won't affect the data accuracy. "It's here," said Albuquerque Isotopes manager Warren Schaeffer. "We'll all get used to it. As long as we don't see it really messing things up, we'll adjust." The manager also added, "I don't know what human umpires miss in a game — maybe three or four calls a game? And this system seems like it's missing three or four a game, I guess. I'm sure that they can improve it and it's always going to keep improving I guess.""The technology is there," said an MLB official who spoke to the Journal about the implementation of the automated ball-strike system... At this point, MLB is trying to get enough of a sample size to see how the game is affected and troubleshoot any unforeseen issues. There's still an umpire behind the plate making the punching gesture for a strike — but he's just repeating whatever call the system has beamed into his ear. The paper shares this story from a relief pitcher watching another pitcher disagree with a "called ball" early in the game, and asking the umpire whether it was in the strike zone and why it wasn't called a strike. "And the umpire just shrugged and said, 'I don't know.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ford's fuel-economy figures for the 2013-2014 C-Max hybrids "were not based in reality" says Iowa's attorney general. And now the Ford Motor Company "will pay $19.2 million to a consortium of 40 states and Washington,D.C.," writes Consumer Reports (which also covers additional false advertising about the payload capacity of its Super Duty pickup trucks).In these two cases, Ford exaggerated numbers for an advantage in competitive segments. And it was caught.... Ford ran a series of ads that claimed the C-Max provided better fuel economy than the Toyota Prius. The 2013 C-Max was originally rated at 47 mpg in city and highway driving, and 47 mpg overall. The claim was that it delivered 47 mpg in every situation. Back on Dec. 6, 2012, Consumer Reports wrote... "After running both vehicles through our real-world tests, we have gotten very good results. But they are far below Ford's ambitious triple-47 figures." We got 37 mpg overall in our tests. That's close to what owners reported on the Environmental Protection Agency's fueleconomy.gov, at 39 mpg.... In our tests, the Toyota Prius at the time got 44 mpg overall, far more than the C-Max. Iowa's attorney general notes that "In 2013, Ford admitted that its initial fuel economy rating for the C-Max hybrid was likely overstated. The carmaker announced at the time that it would make a 'goodwill payment' of $550 to consumers who purchased a 2013 C-Max hybrid and $325 to those who leased the vehicle, according to Edmunds." Consumer Reports adds:It then made hardware updates for new models, including a higher final gear ratio, lower-viscosity motor oil, and aerodynamic improvements, including a rear spoiler, new hood seals, and air deflectors in front of the tires, and a higher speed threshold for the electric drive. The new mpg figures were 39 mpg combined for 2014 through 2016 (41 city, 36 highway)... This case underscores why Consumer Reports goes to great lengths to test the fuel economy of every nonelectric car we purchase. It provides realistic, objective, independent information for car shoppers and helps keep the auto industry honest. Consumer Reports also quotes Ford's statement on their false advertising. "We are pleased that the matter is closed without any judicial finding of improper conduct." "We worked with the states to resolve their concerns."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader united_notions is trying to envision "the 'human-machine era', a time when the tech has moved out of our hands and into our ears, eyes, and brains."Real-time captioning of conversation. Highly accurate instant translation. Auto voice mimicry making it sound like you speaking the translation. Real-time AR facial augmentation making it also look like you speaking the translation. Meanwhile, super-intelligent Turing-passing chatbots that look real and can talk tirelessly about any topic, in different languages, in anyone's voice. Then, a little further into the future, brain-machine interfaces that turn your thoughts into language, saving you the effort of talking at all... Slashdot has long reported on the development of all these technologies. They are coming. When these are not futuristic but widespread everyday devices, what will language and interaction actually be like? Would you trust instant auto-translation while shopping? On a date? At a hospital? How much would you interact with virtual characters? Debate with them? Learn a new language from them? Socialise with them, or more? Would you wear a device that lets you communicate without talking? And with all this new tech, would you trust tech companies with the bountiful new data they gather? Meanwhile, what about the people who get left behind as these shiny new gadgets spread? As always with new tech, they will be prohibitively expensive for many. And despite rapid improvements, still for some years progress will be slower for smaller languages around the world – and much slower still for sign language – despite the hype. "Language in the Human-Machine Era" is an EU-funded research network putting together all these pieces. Watch our animations setting out future scenarios, read our open access forecast report, and contribute to our big survey!Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Researchers at Trend Micro have discovered some new Linux-based ransomware that's being used to attack VMware ESXi servers," reports CSO Online. (They describe the ESXi servers as "a bare-metal hypervisor for creating and running several virtual machines that share the same hard drive storage.")Called Cheerscrypt, the bad app is following in the footsteps of other ransomware programs — such as LockBit, Hive and RansomEXX — that have found ESXi an efficient way to infect many computers at once with malicious payloads. Roger Grimes, a defense evangelist with security awareness training provider KnowBe4, explains that most of the world's organizations operate using VMware virtual machines. "It makes the job of ransomware attackers far easier because they can encrypt one server — the VMware server — and then encrypt every guest VM it contains. One compromise and encryption command can easily encrypt dozens to hundreds of other virtually run computers all at once." "Most VM shops use some sort of VM backup product to back up all guest servers, so finding and deleting or corrupting one backup repository kills the backup image for all the hosted guest servers all at once," Grimes adds.... The gang behind Cheerscrypt uses a "double extortion" technique to extract money from its targets, the researchers explain. "Security Alert!!!" the attackers' ransom message declares. "We hacked your company successfully. All files have been stolen and encrypted by us. If you want to restore your files or avoid file leaks, please contact us."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Would you drink a glass of Klingon Blood Wine? Or Cardassian Kanar Red Blend? Maybe you'd prefer the Andorian Blue Premium Chardonnay, or the United Federation of Planets Special Reserve Sauvignon Blanc... Star Trek wines — a collaboration between CBS Consumer Products and Wines That Rock — has now added those four new flavors to their original two (which Ars Technica described as "far better than we expected, although very much over-priced.") So Ars hosted a wine tasting including the new wines, with their six testers joining "Q himself — aka actor John de Lancie." Also taste-testing was The Orville writer Andre Bormanis (a former science advisor for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise). "Wine assessments were anonymous, in keeping with the gathering's super-casual vibe. And the wine was purchased out of pocket, not gifted for promotional purposes." They'd tried this once before in 2019. Their three-year mission? To explore strange new wines...Next up: A Bordeaux blend from Chateau Picard (although the label claims it's a 2386 vintage to keep the conceit going): 85 percent cabernet and 15 percent merlot. As I noted [in 2019], this is a bona fide winery, with a centuries-old vineyard in the St.-Estephe region. It just so happens that Jean-Luc Picard's family has long run a fictional vineyard of the same name, albeit in the Burgundy region rather than Bordeaux — it features prominently in Picard. The real winery agreed to collaborate on a special edition of their cru bourgeois vintage for the Star Trek collection. The Bordeaux blend also came out on top with the 2022 tasting crew, who declared it "perfectly quaffable" and "surprisingly good." The wine is light and dry, "easy on the palate," with "a clean finish," and fairly well balanced. It's almost as if Bordeaux wine makers have had centuries of experience to draw upon. This was the only bottle the tasting crew polished off completely. Alas, the four new varieties in the Star Trek wine collection fall far, far short of their predecessors.... I will give the Star Trek Wine folks props for creative bottle design, especially the corkscrew shape of the Cardassian blend. The broad consensus was that the Klingon Blood Wine is trying to be a pinot noir and falling short; it's basically a very fruity California cabernet, with perhaps a hint of pepper. "Whoever supplied this blood ate nothing but fruit salad the week prior," one taster noted, with another simply writing, "Way too sweet." The most generous assessment was that it is "drinkable but not extraordinary...." With the evergreen caveat that taste in wine is highly subjective, here's our recommendation. Stick with the original two bottles for your Star Trek wine, or save yourself some money and get something comparable for a fraction of the price — unless, of course, you're really keen to collect the whole set of unusual bottle designs. Or you're a Cardassian who loves really sweet wine. Meanwhile, William Shatner himself is raising money for charity by auctioning off a bottle of "James T. Kirk" whiskey — the actual prop used on Star Trek: Picard. "The bottle does not contain real Bourbon just a colored liquid," its description notes — but the bottle has actually been autographed by 91-year-old Shatner.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dr. Sola Talabi, an adjunct assistant professor of nuclear engineering, believes nuclear power "has the ability to solve" the world's two biggest problems: global energy poverty and global warming. He tells the Daily Beast, "Nuclear can uniquely address those issues."While novel in the civilian energy sector, SMRs have powered naval warships and submarines for almost 70 years. U.S. naval nuclear reactors have logged more than 5,400 reactor years, and steamed more than 130 million miles without a single radiological incident or radiation-related fatality. This sterling safety record allows the U.S. Navy to operate its reactors largely without controversy even in Japan, a country that has a strong anti-nuclear movement birthed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and amplified by Fukushima... [T]he plant can remove heat generated by its fuel even if electrical power is lost. Next-generation SMRs are also designed such that they don't require a pressurizing system like the one that failed at Three Mile Island. Even in the extraordinarily improbable event of a core meltdown, Talabi said that SMRs are still remarkably safe. Unlike their large-scale predecessors, the diminutive size of SMRs eliminates the need for active safety systems backed by human operators. If radionuclide particles — an unstable element that's harmful to humans — are released from the core, gravity and other natural phenomena such as thermal and steam concentration will force them to settle safely within the confines of the plant's containment vessel. In the yet more unlikely case that radionuclide particles breach the containment vessel, Talabi's research indicates they will settle over a much smaller area than if they were released from a large-scale reactor, posing far less of a health and environmental hazard and simplifying cleanup... [E]conomists don't realize that many of the systems required by large-scale reactors, such as the ones that maintain pressure and coolant flow in the plant's core, won't be miniaturized in the smaller plants. They'll be eliminated. SMRs should also be less expensive because they can be factory-fabricated, and their smaller parts will be easier for more manufacturers to produce.... Despite his optimism for SMRs' potential, Talabi acknowledges that they have some drawbacks. Widespread use may slash carbon emissions, but will necessitate increased uranium mining. They also create a security risk, as nuclear fuel will need to be transported between thousands of locations, and reactor sites may be targeted by warring states and terrorists. Government statutes also fail to account for differences between SMRs and large-scale reactors, inhibiting their construction.... That said, Talabi believes that SMRs' potential in solving climate change and global energy poverty far outweighs their risks, and makes overcoming their obstacles well worth it.... "It's not a technology challenge," Talabi said. With public and government support, SMRs could soon be powering the globe with carbon-free electricity. To Talabi, it's just a matter of awareness and understanding. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader WindBourne for sharing the articleRead more of this story at Slashdot.

"Russia is advancing a new law allowing it to take control of the local businesses of western companies that decide to leave in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine," reports Reuters, "raising the stakes for multinationals trying to exit."The law, which could be in place within weeks, will give Russia sweeping powers to intervene where there is a threat to local jobs or industry, making it more difficult for western companies to disentangle themselves quickly unless they are prepared to take a big financial hit. The law to seize the property of foreign investors follows an exodus of western companies, such as Starbucks, McDonald's and brewer AB InBev, and increases pressure on those still there. It comes as the Russian economy, increasingly cut-off due to western sanctions, plunges into recession amid double-digit inflation.... The bill paves the way for Russia to appoint administrators over companies owned by foreigners in "unfriendly" countries, who want to quit Russia as the conflict with Ukraine drags down its economy. Moscow typically refers to countries as "unfriendly" if they have imposed economic sanctions on Russia, meaning any firms in the European Union or United States are at risk. The European Commission proposed toughening its own stance on Wednesday to make breaking EU sanctions against Russia a crime, allowing EU governments to confiscate assets of companies and individuals that evade restrictions against Moscow. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the story.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Ukrainian fighters are using electric bikes in the battle against Russia," reports the Washington Post, "mostly in support of reconnaissance missions, demining operations and medical deliveries, according to one of the Ukrainian e-bike makers involved." "They've reportedly also been used for carrying out sniper attacks."The bikes have a top speed of 55 miles per hour and are relatively silent — helping their riders evade Russian fire. Ukrainian e-bike firm Eleek initially gave a few bikes to the military when the war began, according to manager Roman Kulchytskyi. Soon after, they began to mass-produce bikes — kitted out in military green, with a small Ukrainian flag on the rear wheel — for Ukraine's fighters.... Working from a bomb shelter, Eleek began making a power bank based on lithium-ion battery cells it had left in stock. After struggling for parts, it turned to electronic cigarettes — launching a social media campaign to get people to send in their devices.... The company added footrests for passengers, improved the charging time, installed a battery control system and included a 220V output that allows soldiers to charge gadgets and can help power Starlink satellite Internet terminals, Kulchytskyi said.... Another advantage of the bikes is that they may not be visible on thermal imaging systems, which are used to detect differences in temperature and help militaries pinpoint potential targets. That's because the electric motor doesn't heat up like an internal combustion engine, Kulchytskyi said. Daniel Tonkopi, founder of e-bike company Delfast, wrote on Facebook this month that his California-based firm has been donating electric bikes to the Ukrainian army since the war broke out. He included pictures of the bikes carrying antitank weapons and said he had received feedback from the military that they planned to use the bikes to target Russian armored vehicles. During one recent mission, they recounted to him that several vehicles came back with holes but that the riders were intact.... The company is donating 5 percent of all sales to fund humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. The article notes electric bikes are also being tested by Asutralia's military and New Zealand's Air Force.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An international investigation uncovered some disturbing results, reports the Washington Post. "Millions of children had their online behaviors and personal information tracked by the apps and websites they used for school during the pandemic..."The educational tools were recommended by school districts and offered interactive math and reading lessons to children as young as prekindergarten. But many of them also collected students' information and shared it with marketers and data brokers, who could then build data profiles used to target the children with ads that follow them around the Web. Those findings come from the most comprehensive study to date on the technology that children and parents relied on for nearly two years as basic education shifted from schools to homes. Researchers with the advocacy group Human Rights Watch analyzed 164 educational apps and websites used in 49 countries, and they shared their findings with The Washington Post and 12 other news organizations around the world.... What the researchers found was alarming: nearly 90 percent of the educational tools were designed to send the information they collected to ad-technology companies, which could use it to estimate students' interests and predict what they might want to buy. Researchers found that the tools sent information to nearly 200 ad-tech companies, but that few of the programs disclosed to parents how the companies would use it. Some apps hinted at the monitoring in technical terms in their privacy policies, the researchers said, while many others made no mention at all. The websites, the researchers said, shared users' data with online ad giants including Facebook and Google. They also requested access to students' cameras, contacts or locations, even when it seemed unnecessary to their schoolwork. Some recorded students' keystrokes, even before they hit "submit." The "dizzying scale" of the tracking, the researchers said, showed how the financial incentives of the data economy had exposed even the youngest Internet users to "inescapable" privacy risks — even as the companies benefited from a major revenue stream.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

25 gigabits per second — both downloading and uploading. CRN reports broadband infrastructure wholesaler Chorus demonstrated those speeds over their existing passive optical fiber network [PON].The demonstration in Auckland achieved 21.4 Gbps throughput, tested simultaneously on the same strand of fibre that ran an 8 Gbps symmetric HyperFibre connection, and a 900/550 Mbps UFB link.... Chorus uses Nokia's Lightspan FX and MX access nodes for multiple types of fibre service, including standard GPON, the XGS-PON behind HyperFibre, point-to-point Ethernet, and envisages the 25 GPON service to run on it as well. It is based on the Quillion chip set line cards, which Nokia says are 50 per cent more energy efficient than earlier models. Currently, Chorus has no wholesale 25 GPON product, with its fastest offering topping out at 8/8 Gbps HyperFibre. The wholesaler expects to develop a 25 GPON based services within the next two to three years, with a Nokia optical network termination unit that supports either 25/25 Gbps or 25/10 Gbps options. Kurt Rodgers, network strategy manager at Chorus, said the faster broadband service would come into its own for industrial metaverse applications, the Internet of Things, and low-latency cloud connectivity.... Chorus chief technology officer Ewen Powell said the 25 GPON service demonstrated "a future-proofed technology." Although two-wavelength 50 Gbps service is appearing as a choice for providers, with 100 GPON on the horizon, Chorus is betting that the 25 Gbps variant will offer the best cost benefit overall for providers, as it can use existing optics equipment. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Bismillah for submitting the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2018, Engadget described Cydia as the maker of an app store for jailbroken iPhones that shut down claiming it just wasn't profitable (after operating for nearly a decade). But now Cydia has filed an antitrust case against Apple, Engadget reports:On Thursday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, the same judge that oversaw the case between Apple and Epic Games, ruled Cydia's creator, Jay "Saurik" Freeman, could present his claim against the company after rejecting a bid by Apple to dismiss the complaint. [According to a paywalled article from Reuters.] Freeman first sued Apple at the end of 2020, alleging the company had an "illegal monopoly over iOS app distribution." Judge Gonzalez Rogers dismissed Cydia's initial complaint against Apple, ruling the suit fell outside the statute of limitations. But she also granted Freeman leave to amend his case, which is what he did. In its latest complaint, Cydia argues that iOS updates Apple released between 2018 and 2021 constituted "overt" acts that harmed distributors like itself. That's a claim Judge Gonzalez Rogers found credible enough to explore.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ZDNet writes that in late 2020 Red Hat decided "they'd no longer release CentOS Linux as a standalone distribution. Instead, CentOS Stream would work as a beta for RHEL." So where are we now?The competition immediately sprang up to replace CentOS. The two most important of these are the AlmaLinux OS Foundation's AlmaLinux and Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation's Rocky Linux. [May 16th saw the release of Rocky Linux 8.6.] Now, mere weeks after the release of RHEL 9, AlmaLinux 9 has arrived. Like RHEL itself, AlmaLinux 9 starts from CentOS Stream via RHEL. Indeed, AlmaLinux developers are CentOS Stream contributors. The bottom line is that CentOS 9 is an identical twin to RHEL 9 — except for the names and trademarks. It has all the same features, all the same advances, and, for better or worse, all the same bugs. Besides the big server architectures, AlmaLinux is also ready to run on everything from cloud and Docker images to Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux and Raspberry Pi, the article points out. And Jack Aboutboul, AlmaLinux's Community Manager, tells ZDNet "We are building AlmaLinux with the specific goal of creating an independent CentOS successor that is truly community-centric and designed for everyone... We offer everyone a uniform platform that is safe, secure, easy to use, and dependable to build your tomorrow on."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNET reviews Obi-Wan Kenobi, the new six-episode miniseries premiering today on Disney+It's a question that's vexed Star Wars fans for decades: How did the bad guys not find Luke Skywalker when he was literally hiding in his father's old home? New Disney Plus miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi, streaming now, will reveal the answer. But the real question is, can a minor continuity error actually be stretched out to create an entire TV series worth your time? And is there really a compelling story to be told when you already know how it turns out? Thankfully, on the strength of the first two episodes — both available to stream on Disney Plus today, followed by further installments each Wednesday — the answer appears to be yes. Obi-Wan Kenobi (the show) is an assured, pacey and exciting new series with a great cast, from creators who know how to use familiar elements — and, crucially, how to hold some back — in a story that is, most importantly, character-driven.... With blaster battles and bounty hunter droids and sneering Imperials, it's all satisfyingly Star Wars, with some nifty worldbuilding like battered drug dealers and a poignant cameo that stops Obi-Wan in his tracks. On top of that are fun new characters — look out for Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, plus Kumail Nanjiani clearly having the time of his life — combined with compelling conflicts for the characters we know. It turns out even when you think he's a beaten man, Obi-Wan Kenobi still has a few tricks up his sleeve. CNET describes Kenobi's character — played again by Ewan McGregor — as "hugely compelling.... a broken war veteran who not only lost a surrogate son but also saw his whole civilization fall to darkness," in a series set just before the original Star Wars movie (Episode 4: A New Hope) — so, just after Revenge of the Sith. "More than any recent Star Wars shows, it's built from Star Wars at its best (the original film) and Star Wars at its worst (the overblown, computer-effects-blighted prequel trilogy)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Let's popularize image-based OSes," writes Lennart Poettering, "with modernized security properties built around immutability, SecureBoot, TPM2, adaptability, auto-updating, factory reset, uniformity — built from traditional distribution packages, but deployed via images." Or, as the Register puts it, the Systemd Linux init system "continues to grow and develop, as does Linux itself." They delve into the rationale for the new systemd-sysupdate and kernel-install features, noting "The former is still described as an experimental feature, so relax — for now."No, this does not mean that systemd is becoming a package manager. Like it or not, though, the nature of operating systems is changing. Modern ones are large, complex, and need regular updates, and as The Register has examined in depth recently, this means that the design of Linux distributions is changing radically.... ChromeOS doesn't have a package manager; neither do Fedora's Silverblue and Kinoite versions. You get a tested, known-good image of the OS. Updates are distributed as a complete image, like they are today with Android or iOS. ChromeOS has two root partitions: one live and one spare. The currently running OS updates the spare partition, then you reboot into that one. If everything works, it updates the now-idle second root partition. If it doesn't all work perfectly, then you still have the previous version available to use, and you can just reboot into that again. When a fixed image becomes available, the OS automatically tries again on the spare instance. The idea is that you always have a known-good OS partition available, which sounds like a benefit to us. Presumably the users are happy too: Chromebook sales may be down, and they only have a fixed lifespan, but there are still well over a hundred million of them out there. So, no, systemd is not going to become a package manager, because ordinary distros won't have a package manager at all, except maybe Flatpak, or Snap or something similar. The new functionality, including managing installed kernels, is to facilitate A/B type dual-live-system partitions. For some insight into this vision, Lennart Poettering, lead architect of systemd, has described this in a blog post titled "Bringing Everything Together." Other updates include "changes to systemd-networkd, such as systemd-resolved starting earlier in the boot sequence, and more cautious allocation of default routes," the article points out, adding that new releases of systemd "ppear roughly twice a year, so the chances are that this will appear in the fall releases of Ubuntu and Fedora... "If you still prefer to avoid systemd, don't despair. There are still a selection of distros that eschew it altogether, including Devuan GNU+Linux, Alpine Linux, and Void Linux.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week Google began a rolling release for stable Chrome version 102 "with 32 security fixes for browser on Windows, Mac and Linux," reports ZDNet:Chrome 102 for the desktop includes 32 security fixes reported to Google by external researchers. There's one critical flaw, while eight are high severity, nine are medium severity, and seven are low severity. Google also creates other fixes for issues found through internal testing... The critical flaw, labelled as CVE-2022-1853, is a 'use after free in IndexedDB', an interface for applications to store data in a user's browser.... "My guess is that an attacker could construct a specially crafted website and take over the visitor's browser by manipulating the IndexedDB," says Pieter Arntz, a malware intelligence researcher at Malwarebytes. None of the flaws fixed in this Chrome 102 stable release were zero days, meaning flaws that were exploited before Google released a patch for it. Google's Project Zero (GPZ) team last year counted 58 zero-day exploits for popular software in 2021. Twenty-five of these were in browsers, of which 14 affected Chrome. Google engineers argue zero-day counts are rising because vendors are improving detection, fixes and disclosure. However, GPZ researchers argue the industry as a whole is not making zero days hard enough for attackers, who often rely on tweaking existing flaws rather than being forced to conjure up entirely new exploitation methods. Linux/Mac/Windows users of Chrome can check Help/About to see if the update has already rolled out to their system — or if they need to update manually.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Multiplayer games assign your opponents using "skill-based matchmaking," reports the Washington Post, "to fairly balance teams and maximize the enjoyment players get..." But not everyone wants that. For example, the Post notes, "streamers want to put on a show."For Jordan "HusKerrs" Thomas, a popular streamer and competitive "Call of Duty: Warzone" player, skill-based matchmaking is a labor issue. It "negatively affects the top 1 percent of players/streamers the most because it forces us to 'sweat' or try hard for good content and to entertain our viewers," Thomas wrote in a Twitter DM. High-level play against skilled opponents in shooting games can be opaque or boring for casual audiences. By racking up high kill streaks or stringing together multiple crushing victories in less balanced matches, streamers can more clearly show off their skill to viewers.... Hate for skill-based matchmaking is hardly a phenomenon confined to top streamers or salty Call of Duty players. As awareness about these algorithms grows, communities in "Valorant," "Overwatch," "Apex Legends" and even more casual games like "FIFA" and "Dead by Daylight" have all, at one point or another, sharply criticized matchmaking for reducing their enjoyment of the game. In part, it's an easy scapegoat for frustrated players. As Vice's Steve Rousseau puts it: "The issue today is not that skill-based matchmaking exists, but that players are now aware of just how prevalent it is." Today, speculation about how matchmaking "truly" works has spawned several analyses as well as its own cottage industry on YouTube, where videos on the subject range from neutral explainers to rants delivered as if from the pulpit... The topic is a perpetual driver of viewership, in part because there are few satisfying answers available to players.... In a phone interview, popular "Call of Duty: Warzone" streamer and XSET content creator JaredFPS said he thought companies like Activision, the studio behind the Call of Duty series, base their matchmaking algorithms on more than a player's skill in any single game. "They know everything about you," said Jared, who requested The Post not publish his full name due to safety concerns. "They have information from every single Call of Duty ever made. They know how much money you've spent, they know if you spend money, they know if you use the buy station [in 'Warzone'] a lot ... the way your movement is, how many loadouts you buy ... they know all that information...." As matchmaking strategies have advanced they have broadened too, using insights from fields like machine learning and data science to further refine player experiences.... Advanced statistics are then used to draw inferences about the plausible outcome of every game before it happens. EA, Epic and Activision Blizzard are all "incorporating sophisticated techniques like machine learning to tune their matchmaking algorithms so that gamers are pitted against similarly skilled opponents." the Post reports. But in the end what players are complaining about are their non-subjective player engagement metrics, and the Post calls that algorithm what it is: "a business strategy, designed to keep players coming back."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm shares this surprising report from Nature. "Salaries for PhD students in the biological sciences fall well below the basic cost of living at almost every institution and department in the United States, according to data collected by two PhD students."The crowdsourced findings, submitted by students, faculty members and administrators and presented on an interactive dashboard, provide fresh ammunition for graduate students in negotiations for higher salaries as economies across the world grapple with rising inflation. As this article went to press, just 2% of the 178 institutions and departments in the data set guaranteed graduate students salaries that exceed the cost of living. The researchers used the living-wage calculator maintained by the Cambridge-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a widely used benchmark that estimates basic expenses for a given city, such as the costs of food, health care, housing and transport. Most institutions fall far short of that standard. At the University of Florida in Gainesville, for example, the basic stipend for biology PhD students is around US$18,650 for a 9-month appointment, about $16,000 less than the annual living wage for a single adult in the city with no dependents. At a handful of institutions — including the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg and the University of South Dakota in Vermillion — the guaranteed minimum stipend is less than $15,000 for 9-month appointments.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the latest preview patch, Windows Server 2022 now supports WSL2 Linux distros, the Register reports:The move ends an odyssey that began with the arrival of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 on Windows 10 several years ago and with users' calls for Windows Server to get the same treatment. The change is also somewhat of an about-face from Microsoft. In 2021, in response to pleas from users to backport the tech to Windows Server 2019, [Principal program manager for Windows Server Jeff] Woolsey described WSL in early 2021 as "fantastic for dev" and "perfect for Windows client" but warned: "If we put it in Windows Server, people will use it in production scenarios for which it isn't intended." The approved path was to spin up a full Linux VM. Quite a bit heftier than the lighter-weight WSL2. Signs of Microsoft listening to feedback showed up earlier this year, as Microsoft Program Manager Craig Loewen "clarified" that WSL2 distros would work on Windows Server version 2004 and 20H2, although the LTSC versions found in many data centers remained free of WSL2. Until this week, that is. TechRadar provides some context:WSL 2, which was originally released in May 2019 (opens in new tab), uses virtualization technology to run an open source Linux kernel inside of a lightweight utility virtual machine (VM). This empowers Windows users to run popular Linux apps such as Docker. Microsoft claims that unlike a traditional VM experience — which it says can be slow to boot up, is isolated, consumes a lot of resources, and requires your time to manage it — WSL 2 does not have these attributes.... The KB5014021 update is currently optional, but will be automatically rolled out to users next month.... Windows Server updates have not been without issues in recent months, however, with Microsoft having to address various problems caused by the January 2021 Patch Tuesday updates. The company issued an emergency out-of-band update to address bugs that forced domain controllers to reboot endlessly, broke Hyper-V, and rendered ReFS volumes inaccessible while showing them as RAW file systems.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boeing's Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2) "is officially a success," reports Space.com:That's the verdict that leaders at NASA and Boeing gave during a press briefing on Wednesday night (May 25), a few hours after the aerospace giant's Starliner capsule returned to Earth to wrap up OFT-2, a crucial uncrewed demonstration mission to the International Space Station. Starliner touched down in the White Sands Missile Range, a U.S. Army facility in New Mexico, at 6:49 p.m EDT (2249 GMT) on Wednesday, hitting the desert dirt just 0.3 miles (0.5 kilometers) from its target landing point. Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, described the landing as "picture perfect" during Wednesday night's briefing, saying that the test flight accomplished all of its mission objectives.... OFT-2 went smoothly from start to finish, though it did have a few minor hiccups. For example, two thrusters on Starliner's service module failed during the orbital insertion burn, which occurred about 30 minutes after launch. And as Starliner approached the space station on Friday (May 20), an additional two thrusters needed to be shut down, this time in the capsule's reaction control system. In both cases, backups for each system worked as they were designed to do, and neither issue substantially affected the mission. But Starliner's thrusters will be a focus of several post-flight checks and tests in the near future. The Washington Post writes that on-the-ground engineers "won't be able to examine the two main thrusters that cut out since they are housed in the spacecraft's service module, which was jettisoned during the return." (And during the flight, their article adds, "the spacecraft's thermal control system, used to keep the spacecraft at the right temperature, also failed.") But NASA's Steve Stich tells Space.com that "Putting the vehicle through its paces on this flight is really the only way to prepare us for the crewed flight test. "Once we work through all the data, we'll be ready to fly crew on this vehicle."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Northwestern University engineers have developed the smallest-ever remote-controlled walking robot -- and it comes in the form of a tiny, adorable peekytoe crab. From the report: Just a half-millimeter wide, the tiny crabs can bend, twist, crawl, walk, turn and even jump. The researchers also developed millimeter-sized robots resembling inchworms, crickets and beetles. Although the research is exploratory at this point, the researchers believe their technology might bring the field closer to realizing micro-sized robots that can perform practical tasks inside tightly confined spaces. Smaller than a flea, the crab is not powered by complex hardware, hydraulics or electricity. Instead, its power lies within the elastic resilience of its body. To construct the robot, the researchers used a shape-memory alloy material that transforms to its "remembered" shape when heated. In this case, the researchers used a scanned laser beam to rapidly heat the robot at different targeted locations across its body. A thin coating of glass elastically returns that corresponding part of structure to its deformed shape upon cooling. As the robot changes from one phase to another -- deformed to remembered shape and back again -- it creates locomotion. Not only does the laser remotely control the robot to activate it, the laser scanning direction also determines the robot's walking direction. Scanning from left to right, for example, causes the robot to move from right to left. The research was published in the journal Science Robotics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists from the University of Michigan have "fabricated a nanoparticle to deliver an inhibitor to brain tumor in mouse models, where the drug successfully turned on the immune system to eliminate the cancer," reports ScienceDaily. "The process also triggered immune memory so that a reintroduced tumor was eliminated -- a sign that this potential new approach could not only treat brain tumors but prevent or delay recurrences." From the report: The small molecule inhibitor AMD3100 was developed to block the action of CXCR12, a cytokine released by the glioma cells that builds up a shield around the immune system, preventing it from firing up against the invading tumor. Researchers showed in mouse models of glioma that AMD3100 prevented CXCR12 from binding with immune-suppressive myeloid cells. By disarming these cells, the immune system remains intact and can attack the tumor cells. But AMD3100 was having trouble getting to the tumor. The drug did not travel well through the bloodstream, and it did not pass the blood brain barrier, a key issue with getting drugs into the brain. The Castro-Lowenstein lab collaborated with Joerg Lahann, Ph.D., Wolfgang Pauli Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the U-M College of Engineering, to create protein-based nanoparticles to encapsulate the inhibitor, in the hopes of helping it pass through the bloodstream. Castro also connected with Anuska V. Andjelkovic, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pathology and research professor of neurosurgery at Michigan Medicine, whose research focuses on the blood brain barrier. They noted that glioma tumors create abnormal blood vessels, interfering with normal blood flow. The researchers injected AMD3100-loaded nanoparticles into mice with gliomas. The nanoparticles contained a peptide on the surface that binds to a protein found mostly on the brain tumor cells. As the nanoparticles traveled through the bloodstream toward the tumor, they released AMD3100, which restored the integrity of the blood vessels. The nanoparticles could then reach their target, where they released the drug, thus blocking the entry of the immune-suppressive myeloid cells into the tumor mass. This allowed the immune cells to kill the tumor and delay its progression. [...] Among the mice whose tumors were eliminated, the researchers then reintroduced the tumor, simulating a recurrence. Without any additional therapy, 60% of mice remained cancer-free. The research has been published in the journal ACS Nano.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Airbus is launching a U.K.-based facility focused on hydrogen technologies, a move which represents the firm's latest attempt to support the design of its next generation of aircraft. In a statement Wednesday, Airbus said the Zero Emission Development Centre in Filton, Bristol, had already begun working on the development of the tech. One of the site's main goals will center around work on what Airbus called a "cost-competitive cryogenic fuel system" that its ZEROe aircraft will need. Details of three zero-emission, "hybrid-hydrogen" concept planes under the ZEROe moniker were released back in Sept. 2020. Airbus has said it wants to develop "zero-emission commercial aircraft" by the year 2035. The ZEDC in the U.K. will join other similar sites in Spain, Germany and France. "All Airbus ZEDCs are expected to be fully operational and ready for ground testing with the first fully functional cryogenic hydrogen tank during 2023, and with flight testing starting in 2026," the company said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Substack stopped fundraising efforts for a round of $75 million to $100 million, the New York Times reported Thursday. Axios reports: The round could have valued the newsletter publication platform between $750 million and $1 billion. But the abandoned plans come amid the market's cooling and layoffs among other tech firms. NYT reported that Substack told investors its 2021 revenue was about $9 million. That means its potential valuation of $1 billion would have been 100x its revenue. Substack touted in November that it has more than 1 million paid subscriptions and that its top 10 writers collectively generate $20 million in annual revenue. But only a fraction of that contributes to Substack's bottom line.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RED filed a lawsuit yesterday suing (PDF) Nikon for infringing on its video compression patents. PetaPixel reports: The lawsuit was filed in a southern California federal court today and asserts that the Japanese camera manufacturer and its United States subsidiaries have illegally infringed on seven patents that deal specifically with "a video camera that can be configured to highly compress video data in a visually lossless manner." In the filing, RED notes a type of compression that it says it has patented and is in use by Nikon in the Z9: "The camera can be configured to transform blue and red image data in a manner that enhances the compressibility of the data. The data can then be compressed and stored in this form. This allows a user to reconstruct the red and blue data to obtain the original raw data for a modified version of the original raw data that is visually lossless when demosaiced. Additionally, the data can be processed so the green image elements are demosaiced first, and then the red and blue elements are reconstructed based on values of the demosaiced green image elements." This compression comes thanks to a partnership with intoPIX's TicoRAW which was announced last December. [...] The TicoRAW feature has been in the news for months, but RED was likely waiting for it to be implemented into a competitor's camera before filing a lawsuit. RED's lawsuit says Nikon's infringement on its patent was "willful" and claims Nikon would have known about RED's patents. [...] RED then cites multiple lawsuits it has filed against Kinefinity, Sony, and Nokia over the years. RED is seeking damages or royalties for the infringement as well as an injunction to ban Nikon from further infringing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Quanta not patching vulnerable baseboard management controllers leaves data centers vulnerable," writes long-time Slashdot reader couchslug. "Pantsdown was disclosed in 2019..." Ars Technica reports: In January 2019, a researcher disclosed a devastating vulnerability in one of the most powerful and sensitive devices embedded into modern servers and workstations. With a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10, the vulnerability affected a wide range of baseboard management controllers (BMC) made by multiple manufacturers. These tiny computers soldered into the motherboard of servers allow cloud centers, and sometimes their customers, to streamline the remote management of vast fleets of computers. They enable administrators to remotely reinstall OSes, install and uninstall apps, and control just about every other aspect of the system -- even when it's turned off. Pantsdown, as the researcher dubbed the threat, allowed anyone who already had some access to the server an extraordinary opportunity. Exploiting the arbitrary read/write flaw, the hacker could become a super admin who persistently had the highest level of control for an entire data center. Over the next few months, multiple BMC vendors issued patches and advisories that told customers why patching the vulnerability was critical. Now, researchers from security firm Eclypsium reported a disturbing finding: for reasons that remain unanswered, a widely used BMC from data center solutions provider Quanta Cloud Technology, better known as QCT, remained unpatched against the vulnerability as recently as last month. As if QCT's inaction wasn't enough, the company's current posture also remains baffling. After Eclypsium privately reported its findings to QCT, the solutions company responded that it had finally fixed the vulnerability. But rather than publish an advisory and make a patch public -- as just about every company does when fixing a critical vulnerability -- it told Eclypsium it was providing updates privately on a customer-by-customer basis. As this post was about to go live, "CVE-2019-6260," the industry's designation to track the vulnerability, didn't appear on QCT's website. [...] "[T]hese types of attacks have remained possible on BMCs that were using firmware QCT provided as recently as last month," writes Ars' Dan Goodin in closing. "QCT's decision not to publish a patched version of its firmware or even an advisory, coupled with the radio silence with reporters asking legitimate questions, should be a red flag. Data centers or data center customers working with this company's BMCs should verify their firmware's integrity or contact QCT's support team for more information."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from an opinion piece, written by Macworld's Michael Simon: Apple killed its Touch Bar on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro last year, but PC makers seem determined to prove the company wrong. First Dell introduced the XPS 13 Plus which sports a "new capacitive touch experience that allows you to switch between media and function keys easily." The laptop is available for purchase but back-ordered for weeks, and there haven't been any reviews so we don't know for sure how it will be received, but Dell's touch bar concept seems even less useful than Apple's: the buttons are static, they merely float above the actual keyboard, and they don't appear to add any functionality. Then Dell added a touch bar to the trackpad on the Latitude 9330. [...] Now there's a new PC touch bar, this time on the Voyager a1600, Corsair's first-ever gaming laptop. Corsair hasn't named or even officially announced the new feature -- it only appeared as a sneak peek -- but the company told The Verge that the strip features "10 easy-access customizable S-key shortcut buttons." [...] Corsair's Touch Bar doesn't replace the row of function keys but it is in an odd location -- on the hinge below the display. Even in pictures, it looks incredibly uncomfortable to reach. According to renders, you can still access the Touch Bar when the laptop is closed, which seems like an accident waiting to happen (not to mention a battery drain). But the biggest question I have is: why? No one shed a tear for the Touch Bar when it was killed. While it has its merits, it was never a proper pro-level feature and the implementation didn't evolve past the original idea. It was too skinny, lacked tactile feedback, required constant scrolling, and didn't actually save time. It looked nice, but even Apple didn't seem to know what to do with it. The MacBook Pro Touch Bar was one of Apple's most polarizing features and it never really caught on with developers. Maybe a niche use like gaming or video conferencing will have better results, but ultimately the Touch Bar, Apple's or otherwise, is a failed concept that should stay in the past.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Broadcom has signaled its $61 billion acquisition of VMware will involve a "rapid transition from perpetual licenses to subscriptions." The Register reports: That's according to Tom Krause, president of the Broadcom Software Group, on Thursday's Broadcom earnings call. He was asked how the semiconductor giant plans to deliver on its guidance that VMware will add approximately $8.5 billion of pro forma EBITDA to Broadcom within three years of the deal closing -- significant growth given VMware currently produces about $4.7 billion. And subscriptions was the answer. Krause also repeatedly said Broadcom intends to invest in VMware's key product portfolio and is pleased to be acquiring a sales organization and channel relationships that give it reach Broadcom does not currently enjoy. [...] Krause and Broadcom CEO Hock Tan both said Broadcom plans to nurture VMware's 300,000-plus customer base. The move to subscription-based licensing will apparently happen over the course of the next few years. [...] VMware may also experience slower growth in the short term due to the licensing shift. Krause said Broadcom is willing to live with lower margins for VMware than it expects from CA and Symantec, with R&D to benefit as a result. The software boss pledged ongoing investment and innovation for VMware's core infrastructure products, naming vSphere, VSAN, vRealize and NSX as the subjects of ongoing love and attentionRead more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter Grokew writes: "GoodWill ransomware group propagates very unusual demands in exchange for the decryption key," reports CloudSEK. "The Robin Hood-like group is forcing its victims to donate to the poor and provides financial assistance to the patients in need." ["Once infected, the GoodWill ransomware worm encrypts documents, photos, videos, databases, and other important files and renders them inaccessible without the decryption key," reports CloudSEK.] In order for the victims to obtain the decryption keys, they must provide proof of donating to the homeless, sharing a meal with the less fortunate, and pay a debt of someone who can't afford it. [The decryption kit includes the main decryption tool, password file and a video tutorial on how to recover all important files. It's only given to infected users after the three activities are verified by the ransomware operators, who appear to be operating out of India.]Read more of this story at Slashdot.