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Last week America's Justice Department "launched its first criminal prosecution involving the alleged use of cryptocurrency to evade U.S. economic sanctions," reports the Washington Post. They cite a nine-page opinion from a federal judge approving the government's criminal complaint against an American "accused of transmitting more than $10 million worth of bitcoin to a virtual currency exchange in one of a handful of countries comprehensively sanctioned by the U.S. government: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria or Russia. "In the ruling, the judge called cryptocurrency's reputation for providing anonymity to users a myth."He added that while some legal experts argue that virtual moneys such as bitcoin, ethereum or Tether are not subject to U.S. sanctions laws because they are created and move outside the traditional financial system, recent action taken by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control [OFAC] require federal courts to find otherwise. "Issue One: virtual currency is untraceable? WRONG ... Issue Two: sanctions do not apply to virtual currency? WRONG," Faruqui wrote... "The Department of Justice can and will criminally prosecute individuals and entities for failure to comply with OFAC's regulations, including as to virtual currency," Faruqui said. In the opinion, Faruqui wrote that he adopted guidance issued in October by OFAC, which stated that sanctions regulations apply equally to transactions involving virtual currencies as those involving the U.S. dollar or other traditional fiat currencies. Ari Redbord, who served in 2019 and 2020 as a senior adviser to the Treasury Department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, called the case the first U.S. criminal prosecution targeting solely the use of cryptocurrency in a sanctions case. He said the ruling made clear such conduct is traceable and "immutable — in other words, transactions using cryptocurrency are forever.... What we are seeing is that the Department of Justice is going to actively go after actors that attempt to use cryptocurrency, but also that it is hard to use cryptocurrency to evade sanctions," Redbord said. "It shows, in many respects, cryptocurrency is not a good tool for sanctions evasion or money laundering." In this case, The Register reports, "An unnamed American citizen allegedly used a US-based IP address to run an online payments platform" in a sanctioned country.The service advertised itself as being "designed to evade US sanctions" and claimed its transactions were untraceable, it was alleged. We're told the defendant bought and sold Bitcoin using a US-based online currency exchange using fiat currency from a US bank account. The Post argues that this prosecution represents "a new U.S. criminal sanctions enforcement push targeting cryptocurrency transactions at a time of rising concern over the extent to which illicit actors can use or are using such methods to launder money or do business with countries the United States has cut off from the dollar..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Made In Space, Redwire, and Bigelow, move over," writes long-time Slashdot reader Dr. Crash. "There's yet another 3D printing in space group — and it's not a startup."Mitsubishi Electric just went public with a UV-sensitive resin specially made to print in zero-G and in a hard vacuum — as in outside the airlock. The polymer is tuned to harden with solar ultraviolet light, so no UV lasers needed (saving power and launch weight). Their first goal? Printing cubesat parabolic dishes in orbit, so a 300mm cubesat could have what looks like a one-meter dish antenna — or anything else that can be freeform-printed. This "photopolymerization" technology "specifically addresses the challenge of equipping small, inexpensive spacecraft buses with large structures, such as high-gain antenna reflectors," according to Mitsubishi's announcement — arguing that it also ultimately "enables on-orbit fabrication of structures that greatly exceed the dimensions of launch vehicle fairings."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The head of the UK government's digital transformation unit recently announced a change to the nation's government services site gov.uk: they've "removed jQuery as a dependency for all frontend apps, meaning 32 KB of minified and compressed JavaScript was removed" for everything from selecting elements to attaching event listeners.... Nearly 84% of mobile pages used jQuery in 2021, points out a new essay at Gov.UK — before explaining why they decided not to:jQuery was an instrumental tool in a time when we really needed a way to script interactivity in a way that smoothed over the differing implementations of stuff like event handling, selecting elements, animating elements, and so on. The web is better because of jQuery — not just because it has such incredible utility, but because its ubiquity led to making what it provided part of the web platform itself. Nowadays, we can do just about anything jQuery can do in vanilla JavaScript... It really begs the question: Do we really need jQuery today? That's a question that GOV.UK has answered with a resounding "no".... This is a big deal when it comes to the user experience, because GOV.UK provides services and information online for The United Kingdom at scale. Not everyone is tapping away on their 2022 MacBook Pro on a rip-roarin' broadband connection. GOV.UK has to be accessible to everyone, and that means keepin' it lean.... dependencies matter when it comes to performance. Don't shortchange your users if the web platform can easily do the job a framework can. This level of commitment to the user experience from a institution that works at the scale GOV.UK does is commendable. I can only hope others follow in their footsteps.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike Bouma (Slashdot reader #85,252) writes: With the release of the A500 mini (which also supports A1200 games) and its side loading feature you may be interested to get started with Amiga Retro games development. This is why I collected some recent Amiga games development tutorials and added some additional information. A popular game programming language on the Amiga is Blitz BASIC or AmiBlitz as the freely available and open source version is called now. The latest version (v 3.9.2) was recently released. The best known game developed with Blitz Basic is Team 17's original Worms game for the Amiga 500 in 1995. Meanwhile the Worms franchise has sold over 75 million game units across many different platforms. Daedalus2097 has just started an AmiBlitz video tutorial series on Twitch.tv: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. An example AmiBlitz game currently under development is Super Metal Hero (A1200) and here's a shooter level in the game. REDPILL is a 2D game creation tool written in AmiBlitz by Carlos Peris and is designed to empower people to create many games for Amiga without programming knowledge. It's still early days but the first games are already being designed using this tool. An example game designed with this tool is Guardian — The legend of flaming sword. The "Scorpion Engine" developed by Erik 'Earok' Hogan is a closed source game engine with all software developed for it open source. It offers a modern Windows IDE for development. In this video, Erik Hogan guides Micheal Parent from Bitbeam Cannon step by step as they create a legit retro video game from scratch. Various new games have and are being developed using this engine. An already released game is Amigo the Fox and an example game under development is Rick Dangerous (A1200 version). If you want to dig deeper into Amiga coding then here's a series of Assembly game development tutorials by Phaze101. An example game currently being written in assembler is RESHOOT PROXIMA 3 (A1200). If you are unexperienced with coding but would like to then here are some Amos (BASIC) tutorials for you: Rob Smith's How to program Wordle in AMOS on the AMIGA and Lets Code Santa's Present Drop Game.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes:Today sees an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of 1970s children's programming giants Sid & Marty Krofft. (Born in 1929, Sid Krofft will turn 93 in July). And reportedly Marty Krofft has now partnered with NFT producer Orange Comet "in a multiyear contract to release NFTs based on the often enigmatic and much-beloved television shows they have brought to us since 1969." The first one commemorates Land of the Lost — dropping sometime after September. Today I learned their big break in America came from making puppets for Dean Martin's show, followed by designing and directing the Banana Splits and a string of successful children's shows on Saturday mornings. ( Land of the Lost, H.R. Pufunstuf, Lidsville, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters...) Looking back, Krofft muses that even today somewhere in New York City, "some guy 50 years old, remembers the damn theme songs. Because there were only three networks, so basically every kid in America saw our shows." In the article Marty Krofft describes their style as "a nightmare and bizarre" — or, more pragmatically, as "Disney without a budget" (while crediting future Disney CEO Michael Eisner for being their mentor). Yet the article adds that "They were nearly unstoppable with styrofoam, paint and cloth. In a digital universe of truly endless possibilities, there is no telling where they could take their stories."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sentinel Labs provides malware/threat intelligence analysis for the enterprise cybersecurity platform SentinelOne. Thursday they reported on "a supply-chain attack against the Rust development community that we refer to as 'CrateDepression'."On May 10th, 2022, the Rust Security Response Working Group released an advisory announcing the discovery of a malicious crate hosted on the Rust dependency community repository. The malicious dependency checks for environment variables that suggest a singular interest in GitLab Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines. Infected CI pipelines are served a second-stage payload. We have identified these payloads as Go binaries built on the red-teaming framework, Mythic. Given the nature of the victims targeted, this attack would serve as an enabler for subsequent supply-chain attacks at a larger-scale relative to the development pipelines infected. We suspect that the campaign includes the impersonation of a known Rust developer to poison the well with source code that relies on the typosquatted malicious dependency and sets off the infection chain.... In an attempt to fool rust developers, the malicious crate typosquats against the well known rust_decimal package used for fractional financial calculations.... The malicious package was initially spotted by an avid observer and reported to the legitimate rust_decimal github account.... Both [Linux and macOs] variants serve as an all-purpose backdoor, rife with functionality for an attacker to hijack an infected host, persist, log keystrokes, inject further stages, screencapture, or simply remotely administer in a variety of ways.... Software supply-chain attacks have gone from a rare occurrence to a highly desirable approach for attackers to 'fish with dynamite' in an attempt to infect entire user populations at once. In the case of CrateDepression, the targeting interest in cloud software build environments suggests that the attackers could attempt to leverage these infections for larger scale supply-chain attacks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boeing's Starliner successfully docked to the International Space Station Friday night for the first time. And right now, Boeing is beginning the official hatch-opening ceremon, in which the space station astronauts already on the ISS "open the hatch to the vehicle and retrieve some cargo that's packed inside," explains the Verge:NASA tasked Boeing with conducting an uncrewed flight demonstration of Starliner to show that the capsule can hit all of the major milestones it'll need to hit when it is carrying passengers... This mission is called OFT-2 since it's technically a do-over of a mission that Boeing attempted back in 2019, called OFT. During that flight, Starliner launched to space as planned, but a software glitch prevented the capsule from getting in the right orbit it needed to reach to rendezvous with the ISS. Boeing had to bring the vehicle home early, and the company never demonstrated Starliner's ability to dock with the ISS.... Using a series of sensors, the capsule autonomously guided itself onto an open docking port on the space station.... Docking occurred a little over an hour behind schedule, due to some issues with Starliner's graphics and docking ring, which were resolved ahead of the docking.... [Thursday] At 6:54PM ET, Starliner successfully launched to space on top of an Atlas V rocket, built and operated by the United Launch Alliance. Once Starliner separated from the Atlas V, it had to fire its own thrusters to insert itself into the proper orbit for reaching the space station. However, after that maneuver took place, Boeing and NASA revealed that two of the 12 thrusters Starliner uses for the procedure failed and cut off too early. The capsule's flight control system was able to kick in and rerouted to a working thruster, which helped get Starliner into a stable orbit.... Today, Boeing revealed that a drop in chamber pressure had caused the early cutoff of the thruster, but that system behaved normally during follow-up burns of the thrusters. And with redundancies on the spacecraft, the issue "does not pose a risk to the rest of the flight test," according to Boeing. Boeing also noted today that the Starliner team is investigating some weird behavior of a "thermal cooling loop" but said that temperatures are stable on the spacecraft. From the space station, NASA astronaut Bob Hines said the achievement "marks a great milestone towards providing additional commercial access to low Earth orbit, sustaining the ISS and enabling NASA's goal of returning humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars. "Great accomplishments in human spaceflight are long remembered by history. Today will be no different." Long-time Slashdot reader mmell shares this schedule (EST):5/20, 3:30 pm — Starliner docking with ISS.5/21, 11:30 am — Safety checks completed. Hatches opened.5/24, 12:00 pm — Starliner loading completed. Hatched closed.5/25, 2:00 pm — Starliner undocking from ISS.5/25, 5:45 pm — Coverage of Starliner landing begins. Again, the streams will be broadcast at NASA Television. I don't know about any of you, but I know what I'm doing this weekend.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"In the last six months, we observed a 254% increase in activity from a Linux trojan called XorDdos," writes the Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team. It's a trojan combining denial-of-service functionality with XOR-based encryption for communication. Microsoft calls it part of "the trend of malware increasingly targeting Linux-based operating systems, which are commonly deployed on cloud infrastructures and Internet of Things devices." And ZDNet describes the trojan "one of the most active Linux-based malware families of 2021, according to Crowdstrike."XorDdos conducts automated password-guessing attacks across thousands of Linux servers to find matching admin credentials used on Secure Shell (SSH) servers... Once credentials are gained, the botnet uses root privileges to install itself on a Linux device and uses XOR-based encryption to communicate with the attacker's command and control infrastructure. While DDoS attacks are a serious threat to system availability and are growing in size each year, Microsoft is worried about other capabilities of these botnets. "We found that devices first infected with XorDdos were later infected with additional malware such as the Tsunami backdoor, which further deploys the XMRig coin miner," Microsoft notes... Microsoft didn't see XorDdos directly installing and distributing the Tsunami backdoor, but its researchers think XorDdos is used as a vector for follow-on malicious activities... XorDdoS can perform multiple DDoS attack techniques, including SYN flood attacks, DNS attacks, and ACK flood attacks. Microsoft's team warns that the trojan's evasion capabilities "include obfuscating the malware's activities, evading rule-based detection mechanisms and hash-based malicious file lookup, as well as using anti-forensic techniques to break process tree-based analysis. "We observed in recent campaigns that XorDdos hides malicious activities from analysis by overwriting sensitive files with a null byte. It also includes various persistence mechanisms to support different Linux distributions."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via Wired: Spiders and scorpions may seem like creatures that need to be crushed rather than conserved, but wildlife experts say a growing global pet trade is putting wild populations at risk, even though they help humans and ecosystems. Collectors are now trading more than 1,200 species of arachnids (the group that includes both spiders and scorpions), according to a new report out today in the journal Communications Biology, with 80 percent of them unmonitored and vulnerable to extinction. "These are species for which trade is completely legal, but there's no data on how sustainable it is," says Alice Hughes, an author of the study and an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Hong Kong. Hughes and her colleagues developed an algorithm to scan websites that sell spiders and scorpions online, including those that represent brick-and-mortar pet shops. Then they compared those to existing trading databases compiled by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The researchers found that from 2000 to 2021, 77 percent of one species known as the emperor scorpion were collected from the wild, with 1 million imported into the US. More than half of the existing species of tarantulas are being traded, including 600,000 Grammostola tarantulas, a group that includes the Chilean rose tarantula, which is commonly found in pet stores. The study estimates that two-thirds of spiders and scorpions that are traded commercially were collected from the wild, rather than captive-bred. Researchers like Hughes, who conducts field studies throughout southeast Asia, still do not have enough information about the abundance of arachnids worldwide; her study notes that there are more than a million invertebrate species on the planet that have been identified by biologists but fewer than 1 percent have been assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as to their population status. And commercial trade is putting arachnids at risk before scientists can learn much about them. While spiders and scorpions may seem dangerous, they are usually not so if left alone. Arachnids also keep insect pests in check, and spider venoms have been found to contain antimicrobial, painkilling, and cancer-fighting compounds, making them potential candidates for new drug development.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

System76's CEO Carl Richell announced that HP has chosen the Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS operating system to run on its 14-inch developer-focused notebook called "Dev One." Brian Fagioli from BetaNews speculates that a HP acquisition of System76 "could be a possibility in the future -- if this new relationship pans out at least." He continues: HP could be testing the waters with the upcoming Dev One. Keep in mind, System76 does not even build its own laptops, so we could see the company leave the notebook business and focus on desktops only -- let HP handle the Pop!_OS laptops. "We've got you covered. Experience exceptional multi-core performance from the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO processor and multitask with ease. Compile code, run a build, and keep all your apps running with more speed from the 16GB memory. Plus, load and save files in a flash, thanks to 1TB fast PCIe NVMe M.2 storage. We've even added a Linux Super key so shortcuts are a click away. Simply put, HP Dev One is built to help you code better," explains HP. The company adds, "Pop!_OS is at your service. Create your ideal work experience with multiple tools to help you perform with peak efficiency. Use Stacking to organize and access multiple applications, browsers, and terminal windows. Move, resize, and arrange windows with ease or, let Pop!_OS keep you organized and efficient with Auto-tiling. And use Workspaces to reduce clutter by organizing windows across multiple desktops." Apparently, there will only be one configuration priced at $1,099. So far, no details about a release date have been announced other than "coming soon."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Some 5400 years ago, about the time humans were inventing writing, an alerce tree (Fitzroya cupressoides) may have started to grow in the coastal mountains of present-day Chile. Sheltered in a cool, damp ravine, it avoided fires and logging that claimed many others of its kind, and it grew into a grizzled giant more than 4 meters across. Much of the trunk died, part of the crown fell away, and the tree became festooned with mosses, lichens, and even other trees that took root in its crevices. Now, the tree -- known as the Alerce Milenario or Gran Abuelo (great-grandfather) tree -- might claim a new and extraordinary title: the oldest living individual on Earth. Using a combination of computer models and traditional methods for calculating tree age, Jonathan Barichivich, a Chilean environmental scientist who works at the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory in Paris, has estimated that the Alerce Milenario is probably more than 5000 years old. That would make it at least 1 century senior to the current record holder: Methuselah, a bristlecone pine in eastern California with 4853 years' worth of annual growth rings under its gnarled bark. (Some clonal trees that originate from a common root systems, such as that of the Utah-based aspen colony known as "Pando," are thought to be older, but dendrochronologists tend to focus on individual trunks with countable rings.) Many dendrochronologists are likely to be skeptical of Barichivich's claim, which has not yet been published, because it does not involve a full count of tree growth rings. But at least some experts are open to the possibility. "I fully trust the analysis that Jonathan has made," says Harald Bugmann, a dendrochronologist at ETH Zurich. "It sounds like a very smart approach."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Jokes, sarcasm and humor require understanding the subtleties of language and human behavior. When a comedian says something sarcastic or controversial, usually the audience can discern the tone and know it's more of an exaggeration, something that's learned from years of human interaction. But PaLM, or Pathways Language Model, learned it without being explicitly trained on humor and the logic of jokes. After being fed two jokes, it was able to interpret them and spit out an explanation. In a blog post, Google shows how PaLM understands a novel joke not found on the internet. Understanding dad jokes isn't the end goal for Alphabet, parent company to Google. The capability to parse the nuances of natural language and queries means that Google can get answers to complex questions faster and more accurately across more languages and peoples. This, in turn, can break down barriers and move humans away from communicating with machines through predetermined means and instead more seamlessly interact. This can include answering questions in one language by finding information in another or writing code to a program as a person is speaking into the model with a specific task. PaLM is Google's largest AI model to date and trained on 540 billion parameters. It can generate code from text, answer a math word problem and explain a joke. It does this through chain-of-thought prompting, which can describe multi-step problems as a series of intermediate steps. On stage, Pichai described it as a teacher giving a step-by-step example to help a student understand how to solve a problem. If what Pichai said on stage is accurate, Google has essentially leapfrogged over Star Trek and 400 years of fictional AI development, as evidenced by the character Data, who never truly understood the subtleties of humor. More so, it seems that Google has caught up with TARS from the movie Interstellar, which takes place in the year 2090, an AI that was so adept at humor that Matthew McConaughey's character told it to tune it down.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese engineers will take the ideas of a research paper and turn it into the world's largest 3D-printed project. Popular Mechanics: Within two years, officials behind this project want to fully automate the unmanned construction of a 590-foot-tall dam on the Tibetan Plateau to build the Yangqu hydropower plant -- completely with robots. The paper, published last month in the Journal of Tsinghua University (Science and Technology), laid out the plans for the dam, as first reported in the South China Morning Post. Researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing explain the backbone of automation for the planned Yellow River dam that will eventually offer nearly five billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. (It's worth noting that China's Three Gorges Dam -- a hydroelectric gravity dam spanning the Yangtze River -- is the world's largest power station in terms of energy output.) But it's hard to tell what's more ambitious: the fact that the researchers plan to turn a dam site into effectively a massive 3D-printing project, or that through every step of the process the project eliminates human workers as they go fully robotic. In the dam-"printing" process, machinery will deliver construction materials to the worksite -- the exact location needed, eliminating human error, they say -- and then unmanned bulldozers, pavers, and rollers will form the dam layer by layer. Sensors on the rollers will keep the artificial intelligence (AI) system informed about the firmness and stability of each of the 3D-printed layers until it reaches 590 feet in height, about the same height as the Shasta Dam in California and shorter than the Hoover Dam's 726 feet. With the largest existing 3D-printed structures rising about 20 feet tall -- from houses in China to an office building in Dubai -- the exploration of 3D-printed projects continues to expand. Already we've seen a 1,640-foot-long retention wall in China, housing and office buildings across the globe, and now the U.S. Army has plans for barracks at Fort Bliss in Texas.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens sat down with Ars Technica to discuss the fight for the right to repair. Here's an excerpt from their report: Tech repairs got complicated in 1998 when Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [PDF]. Section 1201 of the copyright law essentially made it illegal to distribute tools for, or to break encryption on, manufactured products. Created with DVD piracy in mind, it made fixing things like computers and tractors significantly harder, if not illegal, without manufacturer permission. It also represented "a total sea change from what historic property rights have been," Wiens said. This makes Washington, DC, the primary battleground for the fight for the right to repair. "Because this law was passed at the federal level, the states can't preempt. Congress at the federal level reset copyright policy. This fix has to happen at the US federal level," Wiens told Ars Technica during the Road to Frontiers talk. The good news is that every three years, the US Copyright Office holds hearings to discuss potential exemptions. Right to repair advocates are hoping Congress will schedule this year's hearing soon. Wiens also highlighted the passing of the Freedom to Repair Act [PDF] introduced earlier this year as critical for addressing Section 1201 and creating a permanent exemption for repairing tech products. Apple's self-service repair program launched last month marked a huge step forward for the right to repair initiated by a company that has shown long-standing resistance. Wiens applauded the program, which provides repair manuals for the iPhone 12, 13, and newest SE and will eventually extend to computers. He emphasized how hard it is for iFixit to reverse-engineer such products to determine important repair details, like whether a specific screw is 1 or 1.1 mm. [...] Wiens envisioned a world where gadgets not only last longer but where you may also build relationships with local businesses to keep your products functioning. He lamented the loss of businesses like local camera and TV repair shops extinguished by vendors no longer supplying parts and tools. [...] He also discussed the idea of giving gadgets second and even third lives: An aged smartphone could become a baby monitor or a smart thermostat. "I think we should be talking about lifespans of smartphones in terms of 20, 25 years," Wiens said. The livestream of the discussion can be viewed here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Pakistani operator of popular torrent site MKVCage can be held personally liable for contributory copyright infringement in the US. The case in question was filed by the makers of the film Hellboy. US District Court Judge Seabright concludes that the use of US-based services invokes jurisdiction, even though a magistrate judge concluded otherwise.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Citing a report from The Information's Wayne Ma (paywalled), MacRumors reports Apple's long-rumored AR/VR headset is said to feature 14 cameras that enable lifelike avatars with accurate facial expressions. The company is also working with former design chief Jony Ive on the project. From the report: For starters, one of the headset's marquee features is said to be lifelike avatars with accurate facial expressions captured by 14 cameras: "Other challenges, such as incorporating 14 cameras on the headset, have caused headaches for hardware and algorithm engineers. The cameras include those that will track the user's face to ensure virtual avatars accurately represent their expressions and mouth movements, a marquee feature." The report adds that Apple's former design chief Jony Ive has remained involved with the headset project as an external consultant to the company: "One person familiar with the matter said Ive's consulting work for Apple since he left includes the headset, adding that he is often brought in to help his former team push through their preferences in areas such as battery, camera placement and ergonomics over those of engineers. Two people said even after Ive left Apple, some employees on the headset project were still required to make the trek from Cupertino to San Francisco, where Ive has a home, to get his approval on changes. Ive has continued to tweak the headset's design. While earlier prototypes had the battery in the headband, he prefers a design that would tether the headset to a battery the user wears, similar to Magic Leap's headset design. It couldn't be learned if this approach will make it into the final design." The initial version of Apple's headset is said to lack a focus on gaming: "Four people who have worked on the project also criticized its lack of focus on gaming, a category of software that appeals to early adopters, which was important to the success of the iPhone and has been a big priority for Meta's VR group. Those people said Rockwell's group almost never mentioned games in internal presentations about possible uses for the headset. Apple isn't developing game controllers for the device and is aiming to use hand tracking or in combination with a clothespin-like finger clip as inputs for the device, multiple people familiar with the project say." On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Apple executives previewed the upcoming headset to the company's board last week, "indicating that development of the device has reached an advanced stage."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The collapse of the tokens linked to the Terra ecosystem, stablecoin terraUSD (UST) and Luna (LUNA), has led to some major investors coming clean and detailing their losses. Two more backers of Terra are disclosing exactly how their balance sheets have been affected. CoinDesk reports: Delphi Digital, a research firm and boutique investor, said in a blog post that it always had concerns about the structure of UST and LUNA, but believed that the sizable reserves in the Luna Foundation Guard, a nonprofit that supports the Terra network, would prevent the unthinkable from happening. The firm wrote that in the first quarter of 2021, Delphi Ventures Master Fund purchased a small amount of LUNA, worth 0.5% of its net asset value (NAV) at the time. That position grew as LUNA's value increased and the fund increased its holdings, including a $10 million investment in the LFG's funding round in February. That investment is now worthless. While Delphi said that it didn't sell any LUNA, it's now sitting on "a large unrealized loss." One of Terra's other prominent backers is Hashed, an early-stage venture fund based in Seoul, South Korea. The company played a part in Terra's 2021 venture round, where it helped raise $25 million according to Crunchbase data. Publicly, Hashed has said that it is "financially sound" and Hashed Ventures hasn't been affected by the crisis. Hashed didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but on-chain data shows that the firm had staked over 27 million in LUNA on the Columbus 3 mainnet, 9.7 million in LUNA for the Columbus 4 mainnet and 13.2 million in LUNA on the current Columbus 5 mainnet. All in all, Hashed's losses amount to over $3.5 billion using pricing data from early April.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The saga surrounding Arm's joint venture in China just took another intriguing turn: a mysterious firm named Lotcap Group claims it has signed a letter of intent to buy a 51 percent stake in Arm China from existing investors in the country. In a Chinese-language press release posted Wednesday, Lotcap said it has formed a subsidiary, Lotcap Fund, to buy a majority stake in the joint venture. However, reporting by one newspaper suggested that the investment firm still needs the approval of one significant investor to gain 51 percent control of Arm China. The development comes a couple of weeks after Arm China said that its former CEO, Allen Wu, was refusing once again to step down from his position, despite the company's board voting in late April to replace Wu with two co-chief executives. SoftBank Group, which owns 49 percent of the Chinese venture, has been trying to unentangle Arm China from Wu as the Japanese tech investment giant plans for an initial public offering of the British parent company. According to the South China Morning Post, Lotcap claimed in the press release that its proposed deal has "support" from Arm. We asked Arm about this, and despite a spokesperson saying in an email to The Register that the British chip designer is "not commenting at this time," the representative did say that an updated press release from Lotcap does not mention Arm or SoftBank supporting Lotcap's deal.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Google search engine collects data on users who think they can be anonymous if they use a "private browsing" mode, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed on Thursday, filing an amended privacy lawsuit against the Alphabet unit. Reuters reports: Texas, Indiana, Washington State and the District of Columbia filed separate suits against Google in January in state courts over what they called deceptive location-tracking practices that invade users' privacy. Paxton's filing adds Google's Incognito mode to the lawsuit filed in January. Incognito mode or "private browsing" is a web browser function that Paxton said implies Google will not track search history or location activity. The lawsuit said Google offers the option of "private browsing" that could include "viewing highly personal websites that might indicate, for example, their medical history, political persuasion, or sexual orientation. Or maybe they simply want to buy a surprise gift without the gift recipient being tipped off by a barrage of targeted ads." The suit said "in reality, Google deceptively collects an array of personal data even when a user has engaged Incognito mode." Paxton previously alleged Google misled consumers by continuing to track their location even when users sought to prevent it. Google has a "Location History" setting and informs users if they turn it off "the places you go are no longer stored," Texas said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As part of its landmark campaign for its 75th anniversary celebrations, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is "opening up a large portion of its archives, making the first 50 years of its published records -- more than 117,500 documents dating from 1951 to 2000 -- accessible to the public without a login," writes Ernie Smith via Associations Now. From the report: Vicki L. Hanson, the group's CEO, noted that the ACM Digital Library initiative is part of a broader effort to make its archives available via open access by 2025. "Our goal is to have it open in a few years, but there's very real costs associated with [the open-access work]," Hanson said. "We have models so that we can pay for it." While the organization is still working through its open-access effort, it saw an opportunity to make its "backfile" of materials available, timed to the organization's 75th anniversary. "It's nice to link it to the 75th celebration year in general, but the emphasis was really coming from what it takes to get the Digital Library fully open," she said. "All those seminal articles from years ago can be made available to everyone." The collection has some of what you'd expect: technical documents, magazine articles, and research papers, many of which highlight the history of computing -- for example, one of the first documents ACM ever published was about the groundbreaking UNIVAC system. But the treasure trove also goes to the heart of ACM itself, with a number of pieces related to the creation of the organization and how it was run, with in-depth records from early conferences included within the digital library. The opening of ACM's digital backfile is one of many components to marking the organization's 75th anniversary -- the largest of which, a celebratory panel, will take place June 10 as a hybrid event that will bring together well-known figures in computer science, such as noted social media scholar danah boyd of Microsoft Research, Stanford University's Jure Leskovec, and Google chief economist Hal Varian. ACM is also highlighting its history on its social media channels, including by showcasing notable papers within its archives.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the best things about electric cars, other than their power trains, immediate torque, and relaxing quiet, is the fact that as the electrical grid becomes cleaner, so too does every EV that uses that grid to charge. That process took a step forward this week with the news that by next year, the Electrify America (EA) charging network will be entirely offset by solar energy. On Wednesday, EA signed a 15-year agreement with Terra-Gen to purchase electricity from a 75 MW solar farm being built by the latter in San Bernardino County, California. The Electrify America Solar Glow 1 project will break ground later this year, and when it's fully operational in 2023, it should have an annual energy production of 225,000 MWh. That's more than enough to account for the annual energy use of the EA charging network. In fact, EA says that as of April, its electricity is already 100 percent renewable thanks to purchases from various suppliers, but with the commissioning of Solar Glow 1, the charging company should have complete confidence that it's putting more solar energy into the grid than it uses to charge our cars.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In the late 1990s, Yoshitaka Murayama made a name for himself among a subset of video game fans by creating and directing Suikoden, a series of Japanese roleplaying games (RPGs) that became beloved for their scope and depth. A catchy way to think of them is "Game of Thrones" meets Pokemon. But in 2002, as the third Suikoden game was finishing development, Murayama quit his job at the game publisher Konami Holdings and went off on his own. In the two decades that followed, he didn't work on many games of note, leaving fans to wonder what had become of him. Eventually Konami abandoned the Suikoden franchise, perhaps believing that RPGs weren't lucrative enough. In the early 2010s, players started asking Murayama: why not fund a new RPG on Kickstarter? In the summer of 2020, Murayama finally answered fans' wishes. He raised 481.6 million yen (around $4.5 million at the time) from more than 46,000 backers, with a Kickstarter for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, a spiritual successor to the Suikoden series. It became the No. 1 video game on Kickstarter that year. Getting to that point was a long journey, Murayama told me in a recent interview. He said he only started seriously considering a Kickstarter after meeting up with some of his old collaborators, such as artist Junko Kawano, at a concert for Suikoden music. Murayama was also driven by the success of Nintendo's Octopath Traveler, which has sold more than 2.5 million copies since its release in 2018. The audience for turn-based RPGs had been "shrinking," Murayama said, but Octopath Traveler proved that âoethere is a promising marketâ for games like his.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Match Group, the parent company of dating apps Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid, is getting along better with Google, just by a little bit. From a report: On Friday, Match withdrew its request for a temporary restraining order against the company, which it accuses of wielding unfair monopoly power in its mobile app marketplace. Match filed an antitrust lawsuit against the search giant earlier this month over the company's restrictions on Android in-app payments, which drive app users toward remaining in its mobile ecosystem. The company filed the temporary restraining order request a day after suing Google. Match cited a handful of "concessions" from Google in its decision to withdraw the restraining order request, including assurances that its apps would not be rejected or deleted from the Google Play Store for providing alternative payment options. The company will also place up to $40 million aside in an escrow account in lieu of paying fees to Google directly for Android app payments that happen outside of Google Play's payment system, arguing that those fees are "illegal under federal and state law." The escrow account will remain in place while the case awaits its day in court.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An ancient forest has been found at the bottom of a giant sinkhole in China, with trees up to 40 metres (130ft) tall. From a report: Scientists believe it could contain undiscovered plant and animal species. Cave explorers in the Guangxi region of southern China alerted scientists when they found the sinkhole, which had a primitive forest inside. Among 30 sinkholes in Leye County this is the largest, at 306 metres long, 150 metres wide and 192 metres deep. Zhang Yuanhai, a senior engineer at the Institute of Karst Geology of the China Geological Survey, told the state news agency Xinhua that the site had three caves in its walls and a well-preserved primitive forest at the bottom. Scientists trekked for hours to reach the base of the sinkhole to see what it contained. Chen Lixin, who led the expedition team, said that as well as the trees there was dense undergrowth on the floor that came up to his shoulders.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

All new buildings in the EU would be fitted with solar panels on their roofs under plans to turbocharge a drive for renewable energy to replace the continent's need for Russian oil and gas. From a report: The European Commission wants half the bloc's energy to come from renewable sources by 2030, more than double the current figure. The total cost of achieving this would reach hundreds of billions of euros but be offset by an annual $88.6bn saving on imported fuel, according to a copy of the plan seen by the Financial Times and dubbed RepowerEU. One proposal is to "introduce an obligation to have rooftop solar installations for all new buildings and all existing buildings of energy performance class D and above [the most energy-intensive]." The original EU plan to cut carbon emissions by 55 per cent of their 1990 level by 2030 called for a target of 40 per cent renewables. But the war in Ukraine has spurred Brussels to seek energy independence from Russia, which accounts for 40 per cent of the region's gas and about 20 per cent of its oil supplies. Householders will pay an average of $326 extra a year under the plans.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Consumers with low credit scores are falling behind on payments for car loans, personal loans and credit cards, a sign that the healthiest consumer lending environment on record in the U.S. is coming to an end. From a report: The share of subprime credit cards and personal loans that are at least 60 days late is rising faster than normal, according to credit-reporting firm Equifax. In March, those delinquencies rose month over month for the eighth time in a row, nearing their prepandemic levels. Rising delinquencies were inevitable following their decline during the pandemic, many lenders and analysts said. Even so, the increase is getting attention from investors partly because the Federal Reserve, facing the highest inflation since the early 1980s, is embarking on what is expected to be the sharpest series of interest-rate rises in years. Higher loan delinquency figures can indicate stress on the part of consumers whose spending is a significant driver of economic activity. Fears that rising rates will throw the economy into recession have fueled the worst start of the year for stocks in decades. A poor earnings season for major U.S. retail chains has intensified those concerns this week, prompting large declines in major retail shares and sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its steepest drop of the year Wednesday. Delinquencies on subprime car loans and leases hit an all-time high in February, based on Equifax's tracking that goes back to 2007. Many people, including those with less-than-perfect credit, paid off debts and built up savings during the pandemic, a surprising outcome considering that lenders at first thought borrowers would default en masse when Covid-19 hit. The government's response, including stimulus payments and child tax credits, boosted many families' financial health.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An 18-year-old graduate student exploited a weakness in Indexed Finance's code and opened a legal conundrum that's still rocking the blockchain community. Then he disappeared. An excerpt from a report: On Oct. 14, in a house near Leeds, England, Laurence Day was sitting down to a dinner of fish and chips on his couch when his phone buzzed. The text was from a colleague who worked with him on Indexed Finance, a cryptocurrency platform that creates tokens representing baskets of other tokens -- like an index fund, but on the blockchain. The colleague had sent over a screenshot showing a recent trade, followed by a question mark. "If you didn't know what you were looking at, you might say, 'Nice-looking trade,'" Day says. But he knew enough to be alarmed: A user had bought up certain tokens at drastically deflated values, which shouldn't have been possible. Something was very wrong. Day jumped up, spilling his food on the floor, and ran into his bedroom to call Dillon Kellar, a co-founder of Indexed. Kellar was sitting in his mom's living room six time zones away near Austin, disassembling a DVD player so he could salvage one of its lasers. He picked up the phone to hear a breathless Day explaining that the platform had been attacked. "All I said was, 'What?'" Kellar recalls. They pulled out their laptops and dug into the platform's code, with the help of a handful of acquaintances and Day's cat, Finney (named after Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney), who perched on his shoulder in support. Indexed was built on the Ethereum blockchain, a public ledger where transaction details are stored, which meant there was a record of the attack. It would take weeks to figure out precisely what had happened, but it appeared that the platform had been fooled into severely undervaluing tokens that belonged to its users and selling them to the attacker at an extreme discount. Altogether, the person or people responsible had made off with $16 million worth of assets. Kellar and Day stanched the bleeding and repaired the code enough to prevent further attacks, then turned to face the public-relations nightmare. On the platform's Discord and Telegram channels, token-holders traded theories and recriminations, in some cases blaming the team and demanding compensation. Kellar apologized on Twitter to Indexed's hundreds of users and took responsibility for the vulnerability he'd failed to detect. "I f---ed up," he wrote. The question now was who'd launched the attack and whether they'd return the funds. Most crypto exploits are assumed to be inside jobs until proven otherwise. "The default is going to be, 'Who did this, and why is it the devs?'" Day says. As he tried to sleep the morning after the attack, Day realized he hadn't heard from one particular collaborator. Weeks earlier, a coder going by the username "UmbralUpsilon" -- anonymity is standard in crypto communities -- had reached out to Day and Kellar on Discord, offering to create a bot that would make their platform more efficient. They agreed and sent over an initial fee. "We were hoping he might be a regular contributor," Kellar says. Given the extent of their chats, Day would have expected UmbralUpsilon to offer help or sympathy in the wake of the attack. Instead, nothing. Day pulled up their chat log and found that only his half of the conversation remained; UmbralUpsilon had deleted his messages and changed his username. "That got me out of bed like a shot," Day says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 set the stage for the biggest Android smartphones of 2022, including Samsung's flagship Galaxy -- but it's about to be surpassed by a better "Plus" version that'll no doubt appear in buy-it-for-the-bragging-rights gaming phones and luxury handsets. It's called the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, which just rolls off the tongue, and Qualcomm says it'll offer 10 percent faster CPU performance, 10 percent faster GPU clocks, and -- get this -- use 15 percent less power for "nearly 1 hour" of extra gameplay or, say, 50 minutes of social media browsing. Technically, Qualcomm says it's achieved "up to 30 percent" better power efficiency from both the CPU and GPU, and 20 percent better AI performance per watt, but that doesn't necessarily all transfer into more battery life -- some of it's about performance, too. Qualcomm is particularly touting better sustained performance from the new chip too -- theoretically maintaining its clockspeed for longer as it heats up while gaming or tapping into 5G. Of course, that all depends on how phone manufacturers decide to cool the chip. The company's not breaking down where the extra performance and efficiencies are coming from, but you can see some of the chip's other features in the slide above, even though many of them (like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 10Gbps of theoretical 5G, and 8K HDR video capture) haven't changed from the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Qualcomm says it'll live alongside that older chip, so you can probably expect a price premium.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon.com is testing a service that uses the company's sprawling network of gig drivers to fetch packages from mall-based retailers and deliver them to customers. From a report: The program, should it become a permanent part of the e-commerce giant's delivery options, could help Amazon expand the variety of goods it has available for fast shipment. Shoppers who want same-day or quicker shipping could be shown products stocked by a local mall store. They order the item from the retailer on Amazon.com, and one of the Seattle-based company's contract drivers delivers it. The service was up and running by last year and relies on Amazon Flex drivers, who use their own vehicles to deliver packages. The geographic range of the pilot is unclear, but communications with drivers reviewed by Bloomberg reference malls with participating retailers in Chandler, Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Tysons Corner, Virginia.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A class action law firm sent a letter to the yield generation project Stablegains, demanding records on customer accounts, marketing and advertising strategies, and communications relating to the Terra stablecoin. Web3 is Going Great reports: [...] Unfortunately for their customers, it turned out that Stablegains was heavily invested in the Terra project's Anchor protocol, which collapsed along with the rest of the Terra ecosystem last week. Stablegains' website had stated they primarily generated yields through the asset-backed stablecoin USDC. However, after the collapse of Terra, Stablegains admitted that "All users' holdings are in UST" -- which lost over 90% of its value. Stablegains was part of Y Combinator's W22 batch and had received over $3 million in funding from several venture capital firms, including SNO Ventures, Moonfire and Goodwater Capital.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canada has banned the use of Huawei and fellow Chinese tech giant ZTE's equipment in its 5G networks, its government has announced. From a report: In a statement, it cited national security concerns for the move, saying that the suppliers could be forced to comply with "extrajudicial directions from foreign governments" in ways that could "conflict with Canadian laws or would be detrimental to Canadian interests." Telcos will be prevented from procuring new 4G or 5G equipment from the companies by September this year, and must remove all ZTE- and Huawei-branded 5G equipment from their networks by June 28th, 2024. Equipment must also be removed from 4G networks by the end of 2027. "The Government is committed to maximizing the social and economic benefits of 5G and access to telecommunications services writ large, but not at the expense of security," the Canadian government wrote in its statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An upgradeable laptop is only worthwhile if you can actually upgrade it [...], and Framework is making that possible starting today: The company is introducing a new iteration of the Framework Laptop's motherboard that uses 12th-gen Intel CPUs. A brand-new 12th-gen Framework Laptop starts at $1,049 for a Core i5-equipped base model, or $819 for a build-it-yourself kit with no memory or storage. These products will be available for preorder starting today, and shipping will start in July. The 12th-generation Core processors use Intel's latest Alder Lake CPU architecture, which combines high-performance P-cores and high-efficiency E-cores to maximize performance under heavy load and reduce power usage when your computer is mostly idle. The base Core i5-1240P CPU includes four P-cores and eight E-cores, a big boost in core count compared to the quad-core 11th-gen CPUs. The Core i7-1260P upgrade has the same CPU core count with boosted clock speeds and a small increase in integrated GPU performance, while the top-end Core i7-1280P option will get you six P-cores and eight E-cores. The rest of the Framework Laptop's hardware is staying mostly the same, though there are a few additional upgrades to be aware of. One is a 2.5Gbps Ethernet expansion card, the first wired LAN module to be available for the laptop. The card is based on Realtek's RTL8156 chipset and will be available "later this year." The company is also releasing a redesigned version of its top cover made with a new CNC manufacturing process that "substantially improv[es] rigidity." The new top cover will be the default option for all Framework Laptops going forward, though you can buy a new cover for your existing Framework Laptop for $89. You can view pricing and configuration info here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thelasko shares a report from the BBC: Yury Borisov, the deputy prime minister in charge of military development, told Russian TV that a laser prototype called Zadira was being deployed in Ukraine and had burned up a Ukrainian drone within five seconds at a distance of 5km (three miles). [...] Little is known about the Zadira laser program, but in 2017 Russian media said state nuclear corporation Rosatom had helped develop it as part of a program to create weapons based on new physical principles, news agency Reuters reported. [...] However, an official with the US Department of Defense said he had not seen "anything to corroborate reports of lasers being used" in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mocked the Russian claim, comparing it to the so-called "wonder weapons" that Nazi Germany claimed to be developing during World War Two. "The clearer it became that they had no chance in the war, the more propaganda there was about an amazing weapon that would be so powerful as to ensure a turning point," said Zelensky in a video address. "And so we see that in the third month of a full-scale war, Russia is trying to find its 'wonder weapon'... this all clearly shows the complete failure of the mission." There is at least one country which has developed a laser weapon though, notes the BBC. Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett unveiled prototype laser-based interceptors that would use lasers to super-heat incoming drones or rockets. "Within a year already the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) will bring into action a laser-based interception system, first experimentally, and later operationally, first in the south, then in other places," he said in a speech to Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies. "And this will enable us, as the years advance, to surround Israel with a wall of lasers which will protect us from missiles, rockets, UAVs and other threats." The U.S. Navy also deployed the world's first active laser weapon in the Persona Gulf in 2017. "It operates in an invisible part of the electromagnetic spectrum so you don't see the beam, it doesn't make any sound, it's completely silent and it's incredibly effective at what it does," said Lt. Cale Hughes, laser weapons system officer, at the time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Two satellites recently exchanged more than 200 gigabits of data over a distance of about 60 miles (100 kilometers) using laser communication in space. Gizmodo reports: Satellites generally don't communicate directly with each other. Instead, they use radio signals to transfer data down to a ground station on Earth, which then relays this data to another satellite. Optical terminals between satellites are considered to be faster and more secure. CACI International -- the company that developed the optical terminals for the space lasers -- announced the achievement on Tuesday in a press release. The two satellites, named Able and Baker, were launched last summer by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as part of its Blackjack project. DARPA is seeking to build a constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit for the purpose of supporting military operations. The two satellites successfully pulled off the 40-minute laser communications experiment on April 14, during which time Able and Baker used CACI's CrossBeam free-space optical terminals. Infrared lasers transmit data by encoding the message into an optical signal, which is then carried to a receiver. The experiment, known as Mandrake 2, was funded by the Space Development Agency (SDA) and the Air Force Research Laboratory. Mandrake 2 launched on June 30, 2021 as an early risk-reduction flight for DARPA's Blackjack constellation project. The Blackjack constellation aims to deploy an initial batch of 20 small satellites in low Earth orbit, which will connect with each other to form a mesh network in space. The idea is not to rival commercial satellite constellations such as SpaceX's Starlink, but rather to have a government-owned constellation that the military can use to connect to its bases, sensors, and weapons across the world. The SDA is planning to launch the 20 satellites this fall and then launch an additional 126 satellites by 2024, according to SpaceNews. The agency is seeking to create a full constellation that would include somewhere between 300 and 500 satellites in low Earth orbit. The satellites are being developed by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and York Space.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: In 1958, a combine carrying a full load of freshly harvested crops might weigh 8,800 pounds (4000 kg). Today, a fully loaded combine can clock in at 80,000 pounds (36,000 kg). The story of increasingly large farm vehicles isn't necessarily bad. The invention of these huge machines -- along with advances like new fertilizers and genetically modified crops -- mean that today's farmers can grow far more food than ever before. But there's reason to worry that equipment manufacturers have begun pushing the envelope too far. In a paper published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS, researchers show that farm equipment has grown so large that its heft can damage the soil that lies more than 20 inches (0.5 m) below the surface. It's been obvious for a long time that the weight of farm vehicles driving over fields causes the upper layers of soil to compact. Engineers have mitigated this by putting progressively bigger tires on heavier farm vehicles. They've also used more flexible materials that make it possible to inflate the tires to lower pressure. Those changes increase the amount of surface area contact between the vehicle and the ground. These measures have enabled engineers to build larger and larger vehicles without increasing the amount of contact stress on the upper layers of soil. It's not just the upper layers of soil that farmers need to worry about. In their analysis, the researchers found that "subsoil stresses under farm vehicles have affected progressively deeper soil layers over the past six decades." In the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, farm vehicles weren't heavy enough to compress soil below the level that's tilled each year. But that's no longer the case. Pressure from tractors, combines, and other pieces of equipment "has now penetrated deeper into the subsoil, thus potentially affecting untilled crop root zones," the authors write. Those layers of subsoil may be hidden from view, but they play an important role in what happens at the surface. The researchers say the consequences can combine to result in "a persistent decline in crop yields." This isn't a niche problem either. According to the researchers, "The fraction of arable land that is presently at high risk of subsoil compaction is about 20% of global cropland area, concentrated in mechanized regions in Europe, North America, South America, and Australia." They say the issue could be addressed if "future agricultural vehicles [are] designed with intrinsic soil mechanical limits in mind to avoid chronic soil compaction."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Thursday, Twitter announced a new policy for dealing with misinformation during a period of crisis, establishing new standards for gating or blocking the promotion of certain tweets if they are seen as spreading misinformation. The Verge reports: "Content moderation is more than just leaving up or taking down content," explained Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of safety and integrity, in a blog post detailing the new policy, "and we've expanded the range of actions we may take to ensure they're proportionate to the severity of the potential harm." The new policy puts particular scrutiny on false reporting of events, false allegations involving weapons or use of force, or broader misinformation regarding atrocities or international response. Hoax tweets and other misinformation regularly go viral during emergencies, as users rush to share unverified information. The sheer speed of events makes it difficult to implement normal verification or fact-checking systems, creating a significant challenge for moderators. Under the new policy, tweets classified as misinformation will not necessarily be deleted or banned; instead, Twitter will add a warning label requiring users to click a button before the tweet can be displayed (similar to the existing labels for explicit imagery). The tweets will also be blocked from algorithmic promotion. The stronger standards are meant to be limited to specific events. Twitter will initially apply the policy to content concerning the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the company expects to apply the rules to all emerging crises going forward. For the purposes of the policy, crisis is defined as "situations in which there is a widespread threat to life, physical safety, health, or basic subsistence."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Paul Sawers writes via VentureBeat: It has been a frosty few years for Elastic and Amazon's AWS cloud computing arm, with the duo frequently locking horns over various issues relating to Elastic's ex-open-source database search engine -- Elasticsearch. To cut a War and Peace-esque story short, Amazon had introduced its own managed Elasticsearch service called Amazon Elasticsearch Service way back in 2015, and in the intervening years the "confusion" this (among other shenanigans) caused in the cloud sphere ultimately led Elastic to transition Elasticsearch from open source to "free and open" (i.e., a less permissive license), exerting more control over how the cloud giants of the world could use the product and Elasticsearch name. In response, Amazon launched an Elasticsearch "fork" called OpenSearch, and the two companies finally settled a long-standing trademark dispute, which effectively meant that Amazon would stop associating the Elasticsearch brand with Amazon's own products. This was an important final piece of the kiss-and-make-up puzzle, as it meant that customers searching for Elastic's fully-managed Elasticsearch service (Elastic Cloud) in the AWS Marketplace, wouldn't also stumble upon Amazon's incarnation and wonder which one they were actually looking for. Fast-forward to today, and you would hardly know that the two companies were once at loggerheads. Over the past year, Elastic and Amazon have partnered to bring all manner of technologies and integrations to market, and they've worked to ensure that their shared customers can more easily onboard to Elastic Cloud within Amazon's infrastructure. Building on a commitment last month to make AWS and Elastic work even better together, Elastic and AWS today announced an even deeper collaboration, to "build, market and deliver" frictionless access to Elastic Cloud on AWS. In essence, this means that the two companies will go full-throttle on their "go-to-market" sales and marketing strategies -- this includes a new free 7-day trial for customers wanting to test-drive Elastic Cloud directly from the AWS Marketplace. On top of that, AWS has committed to working with Elastic to generate new business across Amazon's various cloud-focused sales organizations -- this is a direct result of Elastic joining the AWS ISV Accelerate program. All of this has been made possible because of the clear and distinct products that now exist -- Amazon has OpenSearch, and Elastic has Elasticsearch, which makes collaboration that much easier. What does Amazon get for all of this? "Put simply, companies accessing Elastic's services on AWS infrastructure drive a lot of cloud consumption -- which translates into ka-ching for Amazon," adds Sawers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canada is planning to ban Huawei from working on Canada's fifth-generation networks. CBC.ca reports: The move puts Canada in line with key intelligence allies like the United States which have expressed concerns about the national security implications of giving the Chinese tech giant access to key infrastructure. [...] Critics have warned that Huawei's participation in Canada's 5G networks could give the company an inside look at how, when and where Canadians use internet-connected devices -- and that the Chinese government could force the company to hand over that personal information. China's National Intelligence Law says Chinese organizations and citizens must support, assist and co-operate with state intelligence work. [...] Huawei insists it is a fiercely independent company that does not engage in espionage for anyone, including Beijing. Huawei already supplies some Canadian telecommunications firms with 4G equipment. As Global News has reported, telecommunication companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Huawei equipment while the federal government's review of 5G was ongoing -- although that number has waned over the years. It's not clear whether Ottawa's decision to bar Huawei from 5G will require those companies to rip out existing Huawei equipment, or whether compensation would be provided.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Seeking Alpha: Microsoft shares remained near their breakeven point in late trading, Thursday, amid a report that the company has started censoring Bing searches in the U.S. for certain Chinese names considered to be politically sensitive. According to the Wall Street Journal, the cybersecurity research organization Citizen Lab found that Microsoft's Bing search engine had been adjusted to not automatically fill in suggestions for the names of some prominent Chinese dissidents, and national political leaders. The autofill feature is common on Bing and other search engines and makes suggestions for terms after a few letters have been typed into a search query field. Citizens Lab said it first noticed the issue last fall when names such as that of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the late human rights activist Liu Xiaobo failed to automatically fill in in either English or Chinese in Bing searches. The Journal reported that Microsoft had corrected the issue, which it attributed to a "technical error."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The developer of the open source email client FairEmail pulled all of his applications from Google Play and announced that he would stop development," reports gHacks. The announcement comes shortly after the developer received an email from Google stating that they believed the app was spyware. From the report: FairEmail was a popular email client for Google's Android operating system that was free to use. It was privacy-friendly, had no limitations in regards to email accounts that users could set up in the app, supported unified inbox, conversation threading, two-way synchronizing, support for OpenPGP, and a lot more. Marcel Bokhorst, the developer of the application, announced major changes to the project yesterday on XDA Developers. Earlier that week, Bokhorst received a policy violation email from Google stating that Google believed that the FairEmail application was spyware. The full statement has not been published, but Bokhorst believes that Google might have misinterpreted the use of favicons in the app. He resubmitted a new version of the application that had the use of favicons removed. The appeal he received as a response "resulted in a standard answer". While the content of the answer is unclear, it appears to have been a generic answer that Google Play Store developers have been frustrated with for a long time. Bokhorst decided to pull the application and all of his other applications from the Google Play Store. The apps won't be maintained and supported anymore according to the info. Other factors played a role in Bokhorst's decision, including the discrepancy between answering thousands of support questions per month and the application's revenue, and the inability to do something against unfair reviews in the Google Play Store. He considered keeping the applications on GitHub, but this would result in an 98% loss of audience. Google also recently forced Total Commander's developer to remove the ability to install APKs from the File Manager. If you're looking for an alternative email client, gHacks recommends the open-source app K-9 Mail.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vangelis, the Greek composer and musician whose synth-driven work brought huge drama to film soundtracks including Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire, has died aged 79. The Guardian reports: Born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou in 1943, Vangelis won an Oscar for his 1981 Chariots of Fire soundtrack. Its uplifting piano motif became world-renowned, and reached No 1 in the US charts, as did the accompanying soundtrack album. [...] Chariots of Fire became inextricable from Vangelis's timeless theme, and the music became synonymous with slow-motion sporting montages. "My music does not try to evoke emotions like joy, love, or pain from the audience. It just goes with the image, because I work in the moment," he later explained. His score to Blade Runner is equally celebrated for its evocation of a sinister future version of Los Angeles, where robots and humans live awkwardly alongside one another, through the use of long, malevolent synth notes; saxophones and lush ambient passages enhance the film's romantic and poignant moments. "It has turned out to be a very prophetic film -- we're living in a kind of Blade Runner world now," he said in 2005. Later in the decade he scored the Palme d'Or-winning Costa-Gavras political drama Missing, starring Jack Lemmon; the Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins drama The Bounty; and the Mickey Rourke-starring Francesco. He worked again with the Blade Runner director, Ridley Scott, on 1992 film 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and elsewhere during the 1990s, soundtracked Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon and documentaries by Jacques Cousteau. [...] A fascination with outer space found voice in 2016's Rosetta, dedicated to the space probe of the same name, and Nasa appointed his 1993 piece Mythodea (which he claimed to have written in an hour) as the official music of the Mars Odyssey mission of 2001. His final album, 2021's Juno to Jupiter, was inspired by the Nasa probe Juno and featured recordings of its launch and the workings of the probe itself in outer space.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: WhatsApp is continuing its push into the business market with today's news it's launching the WhatsApp Cloud API to all businesses worldwide. Introduced into beta testing last November, the new developer tool is a cloud-based version of the WhatsApp Business API -- WhatsApp's first revenue-generating enterprise product -- but hosted on parent company Meta's infrastructure. The company had been building out its Business API platform over the past several years as one of the key ways the otherwise free messaging app would make money. Businesses pay WhatsApp on a per-message basis, with rates that vary based on the region and number of messages sent. As of late last year, tens of thousands of businesses were set up on the non-cloud-based version of the Business API including brands like Vodafone, Coppel, Sears Mexico, BMW, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Itau Brazil, iFood, Bank Mandiri and others. This on-premise version of the API is free to use. The cloud-based version, however, aims to attract a market of smaller businesses and reduces the integration time from weeks to only minutes, the company had said. It is also free. Businesses integrate the API with their back-end systems, where WhatsApp communication is usually just one part of their messaging and communication strategy. They may also want to direct their communications to SMS, other messaging apps, emails and more. Typically, businesses would work with a solutions provider like Zendeks or Twilio to help facilitate these integrations. Providers during the cloud API beta tests had included Zendesk in the U.S., Take in Brazil and MessageBird in the E.U. "The best business experiences meet people where they are," said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, during its "Conversations" live event today. "Already more than 1 billion users connect with a business account across our messaging services every week. They're reaching out for help, to find products and services, and to buy anything from big-ticket items to everyday goods. And today, I am excited to announce that we're opening WhatsApp to any business of any size around the world with WhatsApp Cloud API." Meta also claims the Cloud API "will help partners to eliminate costly server expenses and help them provide customers with quick access to new features as they arrive," adds TechCrunch.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Malicious hackers, some believed to be state-backed, are actively exploiting two unrelated vulnerabilities -- both with severity ratings of 9.8 out of a possible 10 -- in hopes of infecting sensitive enterprise networks with backdoors, botnet software, and other forms of malware. ArsTechnica: The ongoing attacks target unpatched versions of multiple product lines from VMware and of BIG-IP software from F5, security researchers said. Both vulnerabilities give attackers the ability to remotely execute malicious code or commands that run with unfettered root system privileges. The largely uncoordinated exploits appear to be malicious, as opposed to benign scans that attempt to identify vulnerable servers and quantify their number.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley kingmaker, is advising its portfolio founders to "plan for the worst" as startups across the globe scramble to navigate a sharp reversal after a 13-year bull run. From a report: The investment firm -- whose early backings include investments in Dropbox, Coinbase, Airbnb and Reddit -- this week suggested startups to cut their expenses and focus on extending their runways within the next 30 days. Those who don't have the runway to "reach default alive," the firm said in the letter, titled "Economic Downturn," YC is strongly suggesting that they consider raising money. "If your plan is to raise money in the next 6-12 months, you might be raising at the peak of the downturn. Remember that your chances of success are extremely low even if your company is doing well. We recommend you change your plan," it said. The note from YC, which backs hundreds of young startups a year, is a signal that the market teardown that has significantly slashed the value of a large number of tech companies including giants such as Shopify and Netflix in recent weeks is trickling down to the early-stage startups universe.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tether, the operator of the world's most used cryptocurrency, said it had reduced the amount of commercial paper in the reserve backing its $74 billion stablecoin, revealing information about its holdings while dollar-pegged assets face tougher scrutiny from regulators. From a report: Tether Holdings had assets totaling at least $82.4 billion as of March 31, along with $82.2 billion in liabilities relating to the digital tokens it issues, according to an assurance from Cayman Islands-based MHA Cayman. Tether is the issuer of USDT, a stablecoin which relies on a reserve of US dollar and dollar-equivalent assets to maintain a one-to-one peg with the currency. The quality of those reserves have previously been called into question for an over-reliance on assets with limited liquidity, with criticism levied at Tether over its lack of transparency on the matter. The crypto company was brought under an intense spotlight over the last week following the collapse of algorithmic stablecoin Terra, which briefly knocked USDT off its peg with the dollar during a period of mass market instability. In a statement on Thursday, Tether noted a 17% decrease in its commercial paper holdings to $20.1 billion compared to the previous quarter, and added that it had completed a further 20% reduction on that amount since April 1, which will be included in its upcoming report for the second quarter. Conversely, Tether said it had increased its investments in money market funds and US Treasury bills, rising more than 13% to a total of $39.2 billion. The average rating of its commercial paper and certificates of deposit has increased from A-2 to A-1, it added, while secured loans have decreased by $1 billion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is relaxing business terms for its cloud computing service in an attempt to appease complaints from rivals and avoid a full antitrust probe in Brussels. Financial Times: The move follows concerns from rival cloud providers that Microsoft is using anti-competitive practices to draw customers to its Azure cloud computing platform and away from competitors. On Wednesday, Microsoft president Brad Smith said the tech giant was taking steps that were "very broad but not exhaustive" as he sought to address concerns from regulators and competitors. Smith said the changes being introduced were "grounded in feedback" he had received from multiple cloud providers across Europe. In a blog post, he wrote: "Some of the most compelling feedback for me personally came from a CEO who said that he felt that he 'was a victim of friendly fire in Microsoft's competition with Amazon.' It was hard to hear this -- but he was right." [...] Under the new terms, customers will not be forced to buy an additional licence if they have already purchased Microsoft's cloud services. These new rules only apply if the services are moved to a European cloud provider and not to US rivals such as AWS and Google's cloud services. Smith said that in its fight against AWS, which dominates the cloud market, Microsoft had overlooked the effects some of its business terms were having on its cloud provider clients.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple executives previewed its upcoming mixed-reality headset to the company's board last week, indicating that development of the device has reached an advanced stage, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: The company's board, made up of eight independent directors and Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, convenes at least four times a year. A version of the device was demonstrated to the directors during the latest gathering, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the meeting was private. In recent weeks, Apple has also ramped up development of rOS -- short for reality operating system -- the software that will run on the headset, according to other people familiar with the work. That progress, coupled with the board presentation, suggests that the product's debut could potentially come within the next several months. The headset, which combines elements of virtual and augmented reality, is Apple's next big bet.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Department of Justice announced today a policy shift in that it will no longer prosecute good-faith security research that would have violated the country's federal hacking law the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Motherboard: The move is significant in that the CFAA has often posed a threat to security researchers who may probe or hack systems in an effort to identify vulnerabilities so they can be fixed. The revision of the policy means that such research should not face charges. "Computer security research is a key driver of improved cybersecurity," Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said in a statement published with the announcement. "The department has never been interested in prosecuting good-faith computer security research as a crime, and today's announcement promotes cybersecurity by providing clarity for good-faith security researchers who root out vulnerabilities for the common good." The policy itself reads that "the Department's goals for CFAA enforcement are to promote privacy and cybersecurity by upholding the legal right of individuals, network owners, operators, and other persons to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information stored in their information systems."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TikTok has been conducting tests so users can play games on its video-sharing app in Vietnam, part of plans for a major push into gaming, Reuters reported Thursday, citing four people familiar with the matter. From the report: Featuring games on its platform would boost advertising revenue as well as the amount of time users spend on the app -- one of the world's most popular with more than 1 billion monthly active users. TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, also plans to roll out gaming more widely in Southeast Asia, the people said. That move could come as early as the third quarter, said two of them. A TikTok representative said the company has tested bringing HTML5 games, a common form of minigame, to its app through tie-ups with third-party game developers and studios such as Zynga.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Melvin Capital, the hedge fund run by Gabe Plotkin that struggled with heavy losses last year as it reeled from wrong-way bets on GameStop, is shutting down, according to a letter sent to investors on Wednesday that was reviewed by The New York Times. From the report: Mr. Plotkin wrote to his investors that he had decided that the "appropriate next step" was to liquidate the fund's assets and return cash to all investors. Mr. Plotkin, who founded Melvin in 2014, also wrote that he recognized he needed to "step away from managing external capital." Mr. Plotkin, a protege of the hedge fund billionaire and New York Mets owner Steven A. Cohen, had wagered that shares GameStop, AMC Entertainment and other mall mainstays from the 1990s would fall as their businesses shrank. Instead, the stocks skyrocketed when amateur investors, coordinating via Reddit, Twitter and other social media sites and determined to outsmart big Wall Street funds, kept buying up shares and propping up their price. That caused Melvin, which started 2021 with more than $12 billion, to lose 53 percent in January, forcing it to scramble to cover its so-called short positions. It was propped up by a $2.75 billion bailout from the hedge funds Point72, run by Mr. Cohen, and Citadel, as well as fresh capital from new investors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.