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Microsoft has done a lot to make their flagship tablet-laptop more repairable. Following iFixit's recent teardown, the Surface Pro 9 was the "most repairable we've seen from the product line yet." Ars Technica shares the major findings: iFixit has consulted with Microsoft's hardware teams for a while now, providing advice on making devices more repairable. As evidence of this, Microsoft claims in a statement that it will: - Make repair guides available for the Surface Pro 9's components by the end of the year - Work with "a major US retailer" to build out an authorized (in-store) repair network by early 2023 - Offer parts to individuals and repair shops by the first half of 2023 All these factors improve repairability, both in practice and in iFixit's (and French, European, and potentially other nations') repair scores. iFixit's editorial teardowns, however, are conducted independently. When the team dug in, they found that the glass display has some flex built into it now, making it harder to shatter when you pry on the (now softer) glue underneath. With the screen off, you have access to all the modular components: motherboard, thermal module, the Surface Connect Port, speakers, Wi-Fi module, front and rear cameras, and side buttons. Most notably, the battery is now screwed down instead of held in place with glue. That makes the most common and predictable repair to the device "just plain simple," iFixit claims. The RAM is soldered to the motherboard, something that iFixit would typically penalize in the past. But iFixit says that given the power savings and performance boost from proximity to the CPU, it can't punish the decision. "Adding it all up, iFixit gives the Surface Pro 9 a 7 out of 10," concludes Ars' report. "That's a notable leap from prior Surface models, like the Pro 7, which received a 1 out of 10. But the Surface Pro 9's score will likely move up a notch or two if Microsoft keeps its promises to release manuals and spare parts to anyone who wants them next year."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DeviantArt is launching an AI art generator called DreamUp, promising "safe and fair" generation for creators. Engadget reports: The website says one of artists' main concerns about AI art is that their work may be used to train artificial intelligence models, which means the generator could spit out pieces in their style without their consent. In an attempt to give artists control over their work, DeviantArt is giving them the ability to choose whether or not the tool can use their style for direct inspiration. Further, the website is giving them the power to declare whether or not to allow their work to be used in datasets used to train third-party AI models. If they choose not to be included in those datasets, their content pages' HTML files will contain a "noimageai" directive. Also a "noai" directive protects their artwork when media files are directly downloaded from DeviantArt's servers. "DeviantArt encourages other creator platforms to adopt this approach in order to ensure artists remain able to share their work with online audiences while retaining control over non-human usage," the website wrote in its announcement. Those directives, of course, won't be added to their pages' HTML files if they're cool with their work being used to train AI models. And if they choose to allow DreamUp to use their style as a direct inspiration, they will be "clearly credited" on the output when it's published on DeviantArt. Engadget notes that "all DreamUp submissions will be automatically tagged as #AIArt, and users will be able to choose to see or to hide posts under the topic." The generator is available for DeviantArt's paid Core subscription plans, but all users can sample the tool with up to five free prompts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Four years after Laserlike was acquired by Apple to boost its web search technology, the founders have quit to rejoin Google. AppleInsider reports: Prior to forming Laserlike in 2015, Anand Shukla, Srinivasan Venkatachary and Steven Baker were all Google employees. Their work at Apple is one reason the company has been predicted to launch its own search engine equivalent to Google's. Apple acquired Laserlike in 2018, though the deal wasn't made public until the following year. As part of the acquisition, the company's three founders were, and ultimately they led a 200-strong search team at Apple. According to The Information, Srinivasan Venkatachary has now returned to Google. He is reportedly the company's new vice president of engineering. Venkatachary reports to James Manyika, senior vice president of technology and society. Baker and Shukla now both work on Manyika's team. It's not known whether all three quit Apple at the same time, or whether Venkatachary is just the latest to move. According to The Information's source, Apple is estimated to be about four years away from launching a Google Search rival.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Benzinga: Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao on Friday came down heavily on a report the cryptocurrency exchange holds $74.6 billion in tokens, out of which nearly 40% are its own stablecoin BUSD and native coin BNB. Sharing data provided by blockchain analytics firm provided by Nansen, the Bloomberg report said about $23 billion of the $74.6 billion net worth is in the company's own stablecoin BUSD and $6.4 billion was in its own cryptocurrency, BNB. According to Nansen data, the exchange has also allocated 10.5% of its holdings to Bitcoin and 9.8% to Ether. Challenging the report, Zhao, popularly known as "CZ" in the crypto industry, said: "#BUSD is issued by Paxos, an NYDFS regulated entity, not Binance. The numbers are all wrong too. These are users' assets, in the form users choose to store with us. We don't convert for them." According to data shared by Binance, it holds around 475,000 Bitcoin ($7.8 billion), 4.8 million Ether ($5.57 billion), 17.6 billion USDT ($607 million), as well as close to 21.7 billion of its own stablecoin BUSD (worth $21.9 billion) and 58 million of its BNB tokens (worth $16 billion). The current value of these tokens is about $72.3 billion, according to Nansen.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MachineShedFred writes: Tesla has opened their charging connector and equipment standards as the "North American Charging Standard" (NACS), including links to technical specifications and connector data sheets and CAD files. The formerly proprietary connector, now called NACS, is the most common charging standard in North America: "NACS vehicles outnumber CCS two-to-one, and Tesla's Supercharging network has 60% more NACS posts than all the CCS-equipped networks combined." Tesla noted that charging network operators "already have plans in motion to incorporate NACS at their chargers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta is exiting its Portal smart display business and will wind down work on smartwatch projects, reports Reuters citing company executives during an employee townhall meeting on Friday. The news comes two days after Meta announced about 11,000 job cuts, or 13% of its workforce, "the first mass layoffs in the company's 18-year history."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a post to /r/reddit, Reddit announced that it began rolling out a feature that will allow users to mute specific communities that contain content they don't want to see. Ars Technica reports: If you mute a subreddit using this feature, posts from it won't show up in your notifications, home feed recommendations, or Popular, Reddit's feed of the most upvoted content from across its various communities. Later, Reddit plans to apply muting to other places like "All" and "Discover." Muting a community won't stop you from being able to visit or post it, though. You can mute up to 1,000 communities and tweak your muted list at any time in Settings. The report notes that this new muting feature is only available in Reddit's iOS and Android apps for now. For updates on availability, Reddit directs users to their changelog feed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple's surge Thursday was one for the record books. The world's most valuable company added $190.9 billion in market value, the most ever by a US-listed company, as softer-than-expected inflation data buoyed equity markets across the board. The jump eclipsed Amazon's $190.8 billion gain in February, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Apple, which after Thursday's 8.8% jump has a market capitalization of $2.34 trillion, now accounts for four out of the top five biggest daily gains. The stock remains down 17% this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the venerable Flight Simulator series today with the launch of the aptly named Microsoft Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary update. As the company had teased before, this update to the sim will introduce helicopters and gliders, as well as a few classic aircraft. Gliders and helicopters aren't new to Flight Simulator, but when Microsoft and Asobo resurrected the sim back in 2020, they were still missing from the game. From a report: In total, the update includes 12 new planes (2 helicopters, 2 gliders and 8 fixed-wing aircraft). The highlights here are what Microsoft and Asobo call their first "true-to-life" airliner in the base game -- an Airbus 310-300 -- and the Spruce Goose, the largest seaplane and wooden aircraft ever built. Other new aircraft include classics like the 1903 Wright Flyer, the 1915 Curtiss JN-4 Jenny, the 1927 Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis, the 1935 Douglas DC-3, the 1937 Grumman G-21 Goose and the 1947 Havilland DHC-2 Beaver. To celebrate the launch, Microsoft and the sim's developer Asobo Studio invited a small group of flight sim influencers and tech media to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. Why? It's where the Spruce Goose is on display, so what better place to celebrate the launch of this update (and the Spruce Goose just celebrated the 75th anniversary of its flight on November 2). During the event, I got a bit of hands-on time with the new planes. Just like in real life, flying helicopters is going to be hard -- hard enough that Microsoft added quite a few new assistance settings that simplify the experience. Without those -- and especially if you are playing on a gamepad, for example -- you will crash. Repeatedly. Once you get the hang of it, flying those helicopters (a large Bell and the small two-seat Guimbal Cabri G2 trainer) is good fun, though, and allows you to fly slow and low across Microsoft's impressive virtual model of the earth.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United Nations is betting that satellites could help the world catch up on emissions reductions. From a report: The organization has unveiled a Methane Alert and Response System (MARS) that, as the name implies, will warn countries and companies of "major" methane emission releases. The technology will use satellite map data to identify sources, notify the relevant bodies and help track progress on lowering this output. The initial MARS platform will focus on "very large" energy sector sources. It'll gradually expand to include less powerful sources, more frequent alerts and data from animals, coal, rice and waste. Partners in the program, such as the International Energy Agency and UN's Climate and Clean Air Coalition, will provide help and advice. The information also won't remain a secret, as the UN will make both data and analyses public between 45 to 75 days after it's detected. The system will get its early funding from the US government, European Commission, Bezos Earth Fund and the Global Methane Hub. Both Bezos' fund and GMH are backing related efforts, such as studies on spotting and counteracting agricultural methane emissions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Italy's police said on Friday they had dismantled the country's largest network for online TV piracy, one that accounted for 70% of illegal streaming across the nation. From a report: The network had more than 900,000 users and yielded "millions of euros" in monthly profits, a police statement said. As part of the operation, premises were searched and material seized in more than 20 cities up and down the country, including Rome, Naples and Catania, the statement added. The raids were ordered by prosecutors in Catania, Sicily, who were due to give more details in a press conference later on Friday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Global fossil fuel emissions will most likely reach record highs in 2022 and do not yet show signs of declining, researchers said Thursday, a trend that puts countries further away from their goal of stopping global warming. From a report: This year, nations are projected to emit roughly 36.6 billion tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide by burning coal, natural gas and oil for energy, according to new data from the Global Carbon Project. That's 1 percent more than the world emitted in 2021 and slightly more than the previous record in 2019, which came before the coronavirus pandemic caused a temporary drop in global energy use and emissions. The findings were released at the United Nations climate change summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, where world leaders have gathered to discuss how to avert catastrophic levels of warming. Scientists have warned that the world as a whole will need to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by around midcentury in order to stabilize global temperatures and minimize the risks from deadly heat waves, sea-level rise and ecosystem collapse. That deadline is getting harder to hit, experts said, with each passing year. "Every year that emissions go up makes it that much more challenging to bring them back down again by a certain date," said Glen Peters, a research director at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, who is one of more than 100 scientists involved in the research.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Carvana, the used car dealer that trusts robotic algorithms to buy your car practically sight unseen, was the third-fastest company to ever make it onto the Fortune 500 -- only Amazon and Google did it faster. But for the third day in a row, its stock is trading for just around $7 a share, plummeting 98 percent from its all-time high of over $360 last August. From a report: My first thought on reading the news: maybe the company shouldn't let robots pay people more than their cars cost brand-new? This February, I sold a seven-year-old car to Carvana for more than I paid out the door and wrote a story about the perfect storm of factors that led to that outcome. (Stimulus checks! Chip shortages! Covid fears! Unheard-of demand for vehicles! Blind trust in algorithms!) But after reading through the past six quarters of the company's financial results and shareholder letters, it seems much simpler than algorithms running amok. Carvana's humans bet badly by buying too many cars. Throughout 2021, as Carvana saw its first and only quarterly profit, the company kept telling investors how it planned to scale up production (read: get more used cars ready to sell) to meet the pandemic's unprecedented demand.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google says it has evidence that a commercial surveillance vendor was exploiting three zero-day security vulnerabilities found in newer Samsung smartphones. From a report: The vulnerabilities, discovered in Samsung's custom-built software, were used together as part of an exploit chain to target Samsung phones running Android. The chained vulnerabilities allow an attacker to gain kernel read and write privileges as the root user, and ultimately expose a device's data. Google Project Zero security researcher Maddie Stone said in a blog post that the exploit chain targets Samsung phones with a Exynos chip running a specific kernel version. Samsung phones are sold with Exynos chips primarily across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, which is likely where the targets of the surveillance are located. Stone said Samsung phones running the affected kernel at the time include the S10, A50, and A51. The flaws, since patched, were exploited by a malicious Android app, which the user may have been tricked into installing from outside of the app store. The malicious app allows the attacker to escape the app sandbox designed to contain its activity, and access the rest of the device's operating system. Only a component of the exploit app was obtained, Stone said, so it isn't known what the final payload was, even if the three vulnerabilities paved the way for its eventual delivery.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Modern airliner designs date from the 1950s: a metal tube and swept-back wings with jet engines slung underneath. They get you where you're going and back. But after decades of research, something very different could be flying you on vacation by the late 2030s. From a report: Unconventional designs such as "blended-wing" shapes now used for some military jets, which combine the cabin and wings in one piece, have been floated for years as possibilities for passenger aircraft. Now the rise of climate-change concerns and emergence of new manufacturing materials have brought a rethink a step closer to reality, scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration say. Just about every fuel-saving aerodynamic efficiency has been wrung out of existing aircraft. The next generation will need bolder designs to meet new environmental standards and airline economics, and that's forcing plane makers back to the drawing board. The designs now exist mainly as artists' renderings, models and small-scale prototypes. That could be set to finally change. NASA in June launched a competition for U.S. companies to design and build a full-scale demonstrator. The rules require entrants to target planes around the size of a Boeing Co. 737 that can carry 150 passengers. The agency wants a prototype that could fly as early as 2027 and be ready for mass production in the next decade. The agency won't comment on the proposals submitted by the September deadline, but points to the recent history of alternative designs by researchers and aircraft makers. These include plane bodies that look like flying wings with passengers seated 10 or more across, compared with rows of six on a Boeing 737. Others have long, thin wings that would have to fold to fit into airport gates. In some designs, jets under the wing are replaced by rear-facing propellers mounted on the back of the plane. NASA held a similar competition 10 years ago that focused more on the efficiency of the designs than the ability to make them commercially feasible. Now, it is focused on aircraft that are more efficient and can enter the fleet to make a difference to aviation industry emissions. "We've been working on advanced configurations for 20 years, but last time I went to the airport I didn't see any of them flying around," says Brent Cobleigh, NASA's flight demonstrations and capabilities project manager. Aircraft designers have coalesced around three main designs, which people involved in the latest contest said are expected to feature prominently in the entries. They carry exotic names -- such as transonic truss-braced wings, blended-wing bodies and double bubbles -- that reflect how far removed they are from most of the conventional planes that now carry commercial passengers worldwide. NASA earmarked only around $1 billion of its $26 billion fiscal 2023 budget request for aircraft-related activities, in line with past years, but officials say its work has influenced every part of planes now flying.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A small clinical trial has shown that researchers can use CRISPR gene editing to alter immune cells so that they will recognize mutated proteins specific to a person's tumours. Those cells can then be safely set loose in the body to find and destroy their target. It is the first attempt to combine two hot areas in cancer research: gene editing to create personalized treatments, and engineering immune cells called T cells so as to better target tumours. From a report: The approach was tested in 16 people with solid tumours, including in the breast and colon. "It is probably the most complicated therapy ever attempted in the clinic," says study co-author Antoni Ribas, a cancer researcher and physician at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We're trying to make an army out of a patient's own T cells." The results were published in Nature and presented at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer meeting in Boston, Massachusetts on 10 November. Ribas and his colleagues began by sequencing DNA from blood samples and tumour biopsies, to look for mutations that are found in the tumour but not in the blood. This had to be done for each person in the trial. "The mutations are different in every cancer," says Ribas. "And although there are some shared mutations, they are the minority." The researchers then used algorithms to predict which of the mutations were likely to be capable of provoking a response from T cells, a type of white blood cell that patrols the body looking for errant cells. "If [T cells] see something that looks not normal, they kill it," says Stephanie Mandl, chief scientific officer at PACT Pharma in South San Francisco, California, and a lead author on the study. "But in the patients we see in the clinic with cancer, at some point the immune system kind of lost the battle and the tumour grew." After a series of analyses to confirm their findings, validate their predictions and design proteins called T-cell receptors that are capable of recognizing the tumour mutations, the researchers took blood samples from each participant and used CRISPR genome editing to insert the receptors into their T cells.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission issued a statement today that restores the agency's policy of rigorously enforcing the federal ban on unfair methods of competition. From a report: Congress gave the FTC the unique authority to identify and police against these practices, beyond what the other antitrust statutes cover. But in recent years the agency has not always carried out that responsibility consistently. The FTC's previous policy restricted its oversight to a narrower set of circumstances, making it harder for the agency to challenge the full array of anticompetitive behavior in the market. Today's statement removes this restriction and declares the agency's intent to exercise its full statutory authority against companies that use unfair tactics to gain an advantage instead of competing on the merits. "When Congress created the FTC, it clearly commanded us to crack down on unfair methods of competition," said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. "Enforcers have to use discretion, but that doesn't give us the right to ignore a central part of our mandate. Today's policy statement reactivates Section 5 and puts us on track to faithfully enforce the law as Congress designed." Congress passed the Federal Trade Commission Act in 1914 because it was unhappy with the enforcement of the Sherman Act, the original antitrust statute. Section 5 of the FTC Act bans "unfair methods of competition" and instructs the Commission to enforce that prohibition.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan said on Friday it will invest up to 70 billion yen ($500 million) in a new semiconductor company led by tech firms including Sony and NEC as it rushes to re-establish itself as a lead maker of advanced chips. From a report: "Semiconductors are going to be a critical component for the development of new leading-edge technologies such as AI, digital industries and in healthcare," Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura said at a news briefing. The new chip company will be named Rapidus and aims to begin making chips in the second half of the decade, he added. As trade friction between the United States and China deepens and Washington restricts Beijing's access to advanced semiconductor technology, Japan is rushing to revive its chip manufacturing base to ensure its carmakers and information technology companies do not run short of the key component. Japan is also concerned that China may attempt to take control of Taiwan, the global hub for advanced chip production.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sam Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency exchange FTX has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S., according to a company statement posted on Twitter. From a report: Bankman-Fried has also stepped down as CEO and has been replaced by John J. Ray III, though the outgoing chief will stay on to assist with the transition. Approximately 130 additional affiliated companies are part of the proceedings, including Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried's crypto trading firm, and FTX.us, the company's U.S. subsidiary. In the 23-page bankruptcy filing obtained by CNBC, FTX indicates that it has more than 100,000 creditors, assets in the range of $10 billion to $50 billion, as well as liabilities in the range of $10 billion to $50 billion. Bankman-Fried also indicated that he wishes to appoint Stephen Neal as the firm's new chairman of the board. "The immediate relief of Chapter 11 is appropriate to provide the FTX Group the opportunity to assess its situation and develop a process to maximize recoveries for stakeholders," said the new FTX chief, Ray. "The FTX Group has valuable assets that can only be effectively administered in an organized, joint process. I want to ensure every employee, customer, creditor, contract party, stockholder, investor, governmental authority and other stakeholder that we are going to conduct this effort with diligence, thoroughness and transparency," continued Ray.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Players can take days or even weeks to take a turn, and they have embraced the use of software to find the best moves. The New York Times: [...] The International Correspondence Chess Federation allows players to consult engines during their games, making the matches a hybrid competition that involves the strategy and planning of humans guided by the accuracy of machines. In correspondence chess, players may spend days or even weeks on a single move. A typical game can last for more than a year. What does it mean to be the best in the world at a game in which a player's strength is enhanced -- or neutralized -- by computers? When asked about his own approach, Mr. Edwards said that his style was similar to that of Tigran Petrosian, the Armenian grandmaster known for his fortresslike defensive play. In most of Mr. Edwards's games, he tries to create and press a small advantage with the goal of gently nudging his opponents over the edge where, even with the help of the strongest engine, they are unable to escape an inevitable defeat. Even with such a plan, a majority of correspondence games end in a draw because it is nearly impossible to beat an opponent who has access to the defensive resources of a chess engine. Out of the 136 games played in the 32nd World Correspondence Chess Championship, 119 were draws. What's more, when games are decisive, this is sometimes because of human error. Given the high number of draws and the difficulty of winning even a single game, could Mr. Edwards be the last world champion correspondence player? He didn't seem to think so. "Most outsiders and many players believe that correspondence chess is dying," he said, "but the best correspondence players don't believe that."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For a second time in less than a year, regulators in California moved on Thursday to roll back the compensation that homeowners receive from utilities for the excess electricity their rooftop solar panels send to the electric grid -- payments that power companies and some consumer groups have argued hurt poor and low-income households.The new proposal from the California Public Utilities Commission would cut the benefit for almost all new rooftop solar customers by about 75 percent starting in April. Under current rules, households that send excess power to the grid receive credits on their utility bills that are equivalent to retail electricity rates. The system of credits is known as net energy metering. The measure, which will be subject to public comment before the commission's five members vote on it, would also limit solar systems to 150 percent of a building's electricity load. Regulators in other states are closely watching how California changes its net metering program. Utilities and solar energy companies have been fighting over energy credits in numerous states. Billions of dollars in investment and revenue are potentially at stake. More generous credits typically encourage people to buy solar panels but can cut into the profits of utilities. California leads the nation by far in the use of rooftop solar, with about 1.5 million such installations. The utilities commission estimates that those systems have the collective capacity to generate 12 gigawatts of electricity, or the equivalent of 12 nuclear power plants. In a statement, the commission said the new proposal would make net metering more equitable. Average residential customers of Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric who install solar panels would save $100 a month on their electricity bill, and average residential customers installing solar paired with battery storage would save at least $136 a month, the commission stated. As a result of those savings, it said, the average household that installs a new solar or solar and battery system would be able to fully pay off the system in nine years or less. Compensation would not change for homeowners who already had rooftop solar panels, for at least 20 years from when their system was installed. "As rooftop solar systems have spread over the last decade, the utility industry has criticized use of the technology and called net metering an unjust subsidy," adds the report. "Utilities argue that rooftop solar homes that greatly reduce or zero out their monthly electric bills are effectively forcing households without panels to bear more of the cost of maintaining the electric grid. But the solar industry has argued that net metering is needed to encourage use of rooftop solar and reduce the emissions responsible for climate change."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

John Timmer writes via Ars Technica: Over the last few decades, we've gotten much better at observing supernovae as they're happening. Orbiting telescopes can now pick up the high-energy photons emitted and figure out their source, allowing other telescopes to make rapid observations. And some automated survey telescopes have imaged the same parts of the sky night after night, allowing image analysis software to recognize new sources of light. But sometimes, luck still plays a role. So it is with a Hubble image from 2010, where the image happened to also capture a supernova. But, because of gravitational lensing, the single event showed up at three different locations within Hubble's field of view. Thanks to the quirks of how this lensing works, all three of the locations captured different times after the star's explosion, allowing researchers to piece together the time course following the supernova, even though it had been observed over a decade earlier. [...] By checking that Hubble data against different classes of supernovae that we've imaged in the modern Universe, it was likely to be produced by the explosion of either a red or blue supergiant star. And the detailed properties of the event were a much better fit to a red supergiant, one that was roughly 500 times the size of the Sun at the time of its explosion. The intensity of the light at different wavelengths provides an indication of the explosion's temperature. And the earliest image indicates that it was roughly 100,000 Kelvin, which suggests we were looking at it just six hours after it exploded. The latest lensed image shows that the debris had already cooled to 10,000 K over the eight days between the two different images. Obviously, there are more recent and closer supernovae that we can study in far more detail if we want to understand the processes that drive a massive star's explosion. If we're able to find more of these lensed supernovae in the distant past, however, we'll be able to infer things about the population of stars that were present much earlier in the Universe's history. At the moment, however, this is only the second one we've found. The authors of the paper describing it make an effort to draw some inferences, but it's clear those will have a higher uncertainty. So, in many ways, this doesn't help us make major advances in understanding the Universe. But as an example of the strange consequences of the forces that govern the Universe's behavior, it's a pretty impressive one. The findings appear in the journal Nature.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A large section of the destroyed space shuttle Challenger has been found buried in sand at the bottom of the Atlantic, more than three decades after the tragedy that killed a schoolteacher and six others. CBC.ca reports: NASA's Kennedy Space Center announced the discovery Thursday. "Of course, the emotions come back, right?" said Michael Ciannilli, a NASA manager who confirmed the remnant's authenticity. When he saw the underwater video footage, "My heart skipped a beat, I must say, and it brought me right back to 1986 ... and what we all went through as a nation." It's one of the biggest pieces of Challenger found in the decades since the accident, according to Ciannilli, and the first remnant to be discovered since two fragments from the left wing washed ashore in 1996. Divers for a History Channel TV documentary first spotted the piece in March while looking for wreckage of a Second World War plane. NASA verified through video a few months ago that the piece was part of the shuttle that broke apart shortly after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986. All seven on board were killed, including the first schoolteacher bound for space, Christa McAuliffe. The underwater video provided "pretty clear and convincing evidence," said Ciannilli. The piece is more than 4.5 metres by 4.5 metres, and likely bigger because part of it is covered with sand. Because there are square thermal tiles on the piece, it's believed to be from the shuttle's belly, Ciannilli said. The fragment remains on the ocean floor just off the Florida coast near Cape Canaveral as NASA determines the next step. It remains the property of the U.S. government. The families of all seven Challenger crew members have been notified. "We want to make sure whatever we do, we do the right thing for the legacy of the crew," Ciannilli said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SciTechDaily: ISRIB, a tiny molecule identified by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) researchers can repair the neural and cognitive effects of concussion in mice weeks after the damage, according to a new study. ISRIB blocks the integrated stress response (ISR), a quality control process for protein production that, when activated chronically, can be harmful to cells. The study, which was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, discovered that ISRIB reverses the effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI) on dendritic spines, an area of neurons vital to cognition. The drug-treated mice also showed sustained improvements in working memory. The authors suggest that TBI triggers a persistent activation of the ISR, which in turn leads to the ongoing proliferation of transient spines that fail to support memory formation. Future experiments will explore whether ISRIB has similar effects on other cell types, brain areas, and cognitive tasks. ISR activation has been implicated in many neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis (MS), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Thus, the researchers believe ISRIB may have therapeutic potential in multiple patient populations. While there was no evidence of the drug's toxicity in mice, clinical trials are currently evaluating the safety and effectiveness of ISRIB in humans.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kaspersky is stopping the operation and sales of its VPN product, Kaspersky Secure Connection, in the Russian Federation, with the free version to be suspended as early as November 15, 2022. BleepingComputer reports: As the Moscow-based company informed on its Russian blog earlier this week, the shutdown of the VPN service will be staged, so that impact on customers remains minimal. Purchases of the paid version of Kaspersky Secure Connection will remain available on both the official website and mobile app stores until December 2022. Customers with active subscriptions will continue to enjoy the product's VPN service until the end of the paid period, which cannot go beyond the end of 2023 (one-year subscription). Russian-based users of the free version of Kaspersky Secure Connection will not be able to continue using the product after November 15, 2022, so they will have to seek alternatives. BleepingComputer emailed Kaspersky questions regarding its decision to stop offering VPN products in Russia, but a spokesperson has declined to provide more information. Russia's telecommunications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, announced VPN bans in June 2021 and then again in December 2021. "The reason for banning 15 VPNs in the country was because their vendors refused to connect their services to the FGIS database, which would apply government-imposed censorship in VPN connections, and would also make user traffic and identity subject to state scrutiny," reports BleepingComputer. "Ever-increasing controls are strangling VPN usage in Russia. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Digital Transformation requested all state-owned companies to declare what VPN products they use, for what purposes, and in what locations."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Crypto Lender BlockFi said it could not conduct business as normal and would be limiting activity in the wake of FTX's collapse. CoinDesk reports: The company said in a tweet that the "lack of clarity" around FTX's current situation meant it would pause client withdrawals. It also told clients not to deposit to its wallet or interest accounts. Developing...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Pierce writes via The Verge: In the summer of 2019, Kevin Moody and Dennis Xu started meeting with investors to pitch their new app. They had this big idea about reshaping the way users' personal information moves around the internet, coalescing all their data into a single tool in a way that could actually work for them. But they quickly ran into a problem: all of their mock-ups and descriptions made it seem like they were building a note-taking app. And even in those hazy early days of product development -- before they had a prototype, a design, even a name -- they were crystal clear that this would not be a note-taking app. Instead, the founders wanted to create something much bigger. It would encompass all of your notes but also your interests, your viewing history, your works-in-progress. "Imagine if you had a Google search bar but for all nonpublic information," Xu says. "For every piece of information that was uniquely relevant to you." That's what Moody and Xu were actually trying to build. So they kept tweaking the approach until it made sense. At one point, their app was going to be called NSFW, a half-joke that stood for "Notes and Search for Work," and for a while, it was called Supernote. But after a few meetings and months, they eventually landed on the name "Mem." Like Memex, a long-imagined device that humans could use to store their entire memory. Or like, well, memory. Either way, it's not a note-taking app. It's more like a protocol for private information, a way to pipe in everything that matters to you -- your email, your calendar events, your airline confirmations, your meeting notes, that idea you had on the train this morning -- and then automatically organize and make sense of it all. More importantly, it's meant to use cutting-edge AI to give all that information back to you at exactly the right time and in exactly the right place. [...] So far, Mem is mostly a note-taking app. It's blisteringly fast and deliberately sparse -- mostly just a timeline of every mem (the company's parlance for an individual note) you've ever created or viewed, with a few simple ways to categorize and organize them. It does tasks and tags, but a full-featured project manager or Second Brain system this is not. But if you look carefully, the app already contains a few signs of where Mem is headed: a tool called Writer that can actually generate information for you, based on both its knowledge of the public internet and your personal information; AI features that summarize tweet threads for you; a sidebar that automatically displays mems related to what you're working on. All this still barely scratches the surface of what Mem wants to do and will need to do to be more than a note-taking app...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bahamian regulators have frozen the assets of FTX Digital Markets and related parties, calling it a "prudent course of action" to "preserve assets and stabilize the company," according to a press release on Thursday. CoinDesk reports: The Securities Commission of the Bahamas also suspended FTX's registration and appointed an attorney -- Brian Sims, a senior partner at Lennox Paton -- as a provisional liquidator of the assets. FTX is based in the Bahamas and is a separate entity from FTX US. "The commission is aware of public statements suggesting that clients' assets were mishandled, mismanaged and/or transferred to Alameda Research. Based on the commission's information, any such actions would have been contrary to normal governance, without client consent and potentially unlawful," the commission said in its release. For a recap of events surrounding FTX, check out the related links below.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WeWork said Thursday that it was going to close roughly 40 "underperforming" locations in the United States and tempered its revenue forecast for the year, highlighting the challenges the co-working company still faces after its near collapse and subsequent bailout in 2019. The New York Times reports: For the third quarter, WeWork said it lost $568 million, an improvement from the same period last year, when it lost $802 million. Revenue of $817 million in the latest quarter was more than 20 percent higher than the $661 million reported a year earlier. WeWork does not own its buildings but leases office space and parcels it out to its customers, which include individuals, small businesses and larger companies. Memberships rose in the third quarter. But occupancy was only slightly higher in WeWork's 647 consolidated locations around the world, rising to 71 percent in the third quarter from 70 percent in the second. The company said it expected revenue of $3.35 billion to $3.37 billion this year. The upper end of that forecast is lower than the forecast it issued last quarter, when WeWork projected up to $3.5 billion in 2022 revenue. One factor leading to the pared back forecast, the company said, was "slower than expected growth" in its operations in the United States, Canada and Japan. WeWork said closing the locations was likely to reduce revenue but would benefit the company by cutting costs. The company has lost more than $12 billion since the end of 2018. Demand for office space has plummeted since companies started letting employees work from home during the pandemic. But WeWork considers this trend an opportunity. Because it offers space for shorter periods than traditional landlords, the company has claimed that it provides businesses more flexibility. "The headwinds in the office sector are really benefiting the flex model," Sandeep Mathrani, WeWork's chief executive, said Thursday on a call to discuss third-quarter results. Still, large companies' share of memberships has fallen, to 47 percent in the third quarter from 49 percent a year earlier. The enormous costs of WeWork's office leases and the expenses involved in running the locations have led many investors to express skepticism about WeWork's turnaround plan. The company's stock has lost more than three-quarters of its value since WeWork went public last year, giving it a market capitalization of $1.9 billion, a small fraction of the $47 billion value that private investors placed on the company in 2019.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Amazon on Thursday showed off a new robot that could one day assist warehouse workers with some of the more tedious aspects of the job. The company unveiled "Sparrow," a robotic arm that can pluck millions of items of varying shapes and sizes, on stage at the Delivering the Future conference near Boston, where it showcased new robotics, transportation and last-mile delivery technologies. Amazon says Sparrow uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to move products before they're packaged. A video of Sparrow shows the robotic arm picking up a board game, a bottle of vitamins and a set of sheets -- all the kinds of items that might flow through one of the company's warehouses -- and deftly placing them in crates. Suction cups attached to the surface of the robot allow it to firmly grasp items. Previous iterations of robotic arms have been able to pick up boxes, which are generally uniform in their shape but might vary in size. But Sparrow is capable of handling items with varying curvature and size, said Jason Messinger, principal technical product manager of robotic manipulation at Amazon Robotics, in a demonstration. "This is not just picking the same things up and moving it with high precision, which we've seen in previous robots," Messinger said. The robotic arm can identify around 65% of Amazon's product inventory, the company said. While the introduction of robots to the warehouse often raises questions about whether human jobs will be replaced, Amazon says Sparrow will "take on repetitive tasks," freeing employees up to focus on other things. The company also said the technology can improve safety in the workplace, although that prospect has been debated. An investigation by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting found the company's warehouses with robots have higher injury rates than facilities without automation. Further reading: Amazon Unveils Smaller Delivery Drone That Can Fly in RainRead more of this story at Slashdot.

In an press release published earlier today, the National Security Agency (NSA) says it will be making a strategic shift to memory safe programming languages. The agency is advising organizations explore such changes themselves by utilizing languages such as C#, Go, Java, Ruby, or Swift. From the report: The "Software Memory Safety" Cybersecurity Information Sheet (PDF) highlights how malicious cyber actors can exploit poor memory management issues to access sensitive information, promulgate unauthorized code execution, and cause other negative impacts. "Memory management issues have been exploited for decades and are still entirely too common today," said Neal Ziring, Cybersecurity Technical Director. "We have to consistently use memory safe languages and other protections when developing software to eliminate these weaknesses from malicious cyber actors." Microsoft and Google have each stated that software memory safety issues are behind around 70 percent of their vulnerabilities. Poor memory management can lead to technical issues as well, such as incorrect program results, degradation of the program's performance over time, and program crashes. NSA recommends that organizations use memory safe languages when possible and bolster protection through code-hardening defenses such as compiler options, tool options, and operating system configurations. The full report is available here (PDF).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Studio Ghibli, the beloved animation producer behind worldwide hits like Spirited Away, Ponyo, My Neighbor Totoro, and Grave of the Fireflies, is teaming up with Lucasfilm, home to the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, for a mysterious new project. Polygon reports: On Thursday, the Japanese studio tweeted a cryptic video teaser, with the Lucasfilm and Studio Ghibli logos back to back and... maddeningly nothing else. The video is silent, so there are no John Williams-penned themes to work from here. But suffice it to say, the teaser is most likely for an animated project based on a Lucasfilm property, and Star Wars seems like a safe bet. Lucasfilm and Disney have multiple animated Star Wars series, including the recently released Tales of the Jedi and -- the most likely candidate for Studio Ghibli -- Star Wars: Visions. A second season of Star Wars: Visions is coming to Disney Plus in spring 2023. And while Disney and Lucasfilm have not revealed much about who is contributing to it, Star Wars: Visions Volume 2 is pitched as a "global tour, celebrating the incredible animation happening across countries and cultures."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Queensland, Australia police have used DNA phenotyping for the first time ever in hopes of leading to a breakthrough for a 1982 murder. The department partnered with a U.S.-based company called Parabon NanoLabs to create a profile image of the murder suspect, a Caucasian man with long blonde hair. Police claim that this image was generated using blood samples found at the scene of the murder of a man from 40 years ago; according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation this is the first time "investigative genetic genealogy" has been used in Queensland. This image does not factor in any environmental characteristics, such as tattoos, facial hair, and scars, and cannot determine the age or body mass of the suspect. However, Queensland investigators have published the image online and are offering a $500,000 reward and indemnity from prosecution to anyone who might have information about the suspect. The image is a vague rendering of a man that does not provide any more information than the sketch that the department already has of the suspect. This further perpetuates the hyper-surveillance of any man who resembles the image. Parabon NanoLabs has already been criticized by criminal justice and privacy experts for disseminating images that implicate too broad a pool of suspects. The Queensland police department said that the DNA sample from the case generated a genealogy tree of "15,000 'linked' individuals" and they have not been able to find a close match yet. Instead of facing the possibility that DNA phenotyping may not be an effective tool for narrowing down a suspect, the police department's strategy is to ask the public for their DNA samples. Criminologist Xanthe Mallett said in a press release that to help police find a match, people can "opt-in" to share their own DNA samples with investigators through DNA services such as Family Tree and GEDMatch. "Many members of the public that see this generated image will be unaware that it's a digital approximation, that age, weight, hairstyle, and face shape may be very different, and that accuracy of skin/hair/eye color is approximate," said Callie Schroeder, the Global Privacy Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel's latest plan to ward off rivals from high-performance computing workloads involves a CPU with large stacks of high-bandwidth memory and new kinds of accelerators, plus its long-awaited datacenter GPU that will go head-to-head against Nvidia's most powerful chips. From a report: After multiple delays, the x86 giant on Wednesday formally introduced the new Xeon CPU family formerly known as Sapphire Rapids HBM and its new datacenter GPU better known as Ponte Vecchio. Now you will know them as the Intel Xeon CPU Max Series and the Intel Data Center GPU Max Series, respectively, which were among the bevy of details shared by Intel today, including performance comparisons. These chips, set to arrive in early 2023 alongside the vanilla 4th generation Xeon Scalable CPUs, have been a source of curiosity within the HPC community for years because they will power the US Department of Energy's long-delayed Aurora supercomputer, which is expected to become the country's second exascale supercomputer and, consequently, one of the world's fastest. In a briefing with journalists, Jeff McVeigh, the head of Intel's Super Compute Group, said the Max name represents the company's desire to maximize the bandwidth, compute and other capabilities for a wide range of HPC applications, whose primary users include governments, research labs, and corporations. McVeigh did admit that Intel has fumbled in how long it took the company to commercialize these chips, but he tried to spin the blunders into a higher purpose. "We're always going to be pushing the envelope. Sometimes that causes us to maybe not achieve it, but we're doing that in service of helping our developers, helping the ecosystem to help solve [the world's] biggest challenges," he said. [...] The Xeon Max Series will pack up to 56 performance cores, which are based on the same Golden Cove microarchitecture features as Intel's 12th-Gen Core CPUs, which debuted last year. Like the vanilla Sapphire Rapids chips coming next year, these chips will support DDR5, PCIe 5.0 and Compute Express Link (CXL) 1.1, which will enable memory to be directly attached to the CPU over PCIe 5.0.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Thursday morning, NASA sent a giant inflatable device to space and then brought it back down from orbit, splashing in the ocean near Hawaii. From a report: You might think of it as a bouncy castle from space, although the people in charge of the mission would prefer you did not. "I would say that would be inaccurate," Neil Cheatwood, principal investigator for the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator, or LOFTID for short, said of the comparison during an interview. LOFTID may sound like just an amusing trick, but the $93 million project demonstrates an intriguing technology that could help NASA in its goal of getting people safely to the surface of Mars someday. The agency has landed a series of robotic spacecraft on Mars, but the current approaches only work for payloads weighing up to about 1.5 tons -- about the bulk of a small car. That is inadequate for the larger landers, carrying 20 tons or more, that are needed for people and the supplies they will need to survive on the red planet. A more accurate description of the device might be that it is a saucer, 20 feet wide when inflated. It is made of layers of fabric that can survive falling into the atmosphere at 18,000 miles per hour and temperatures close to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Still, an inflatable heat shield shares a key characteristic with a bouncy castle: Uninflated, it can be folded and packed tightly. LOFTID fit in a cylinder a bit over four feet wide and one and a half feet high. For a traditional rigid heat shield, there is no way to cram something 20 feet in diameter into a rocket that is not that wide. A larger surface like LOFTID's generates much more air friction -- essentially it is a better brake as it slices through the upper atmosphere, and the greater drag allows heavier payloads to be slowed down. For future Mars missions, the inflatable heat shield would be combined with other systems like parachutes and retrorockets to guide the lander en route to a soft landing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google today announced it's expanding its user choice billing pilot, which allows Android app developers to use other payment systems besides Google's own. The program will now become available to new markets, including the U.S., Brazil and South Africa, and Bumble will now join Spotify as one of the pilot testers. From a report: Google additionally announced Spotify will now begin rolling out its implementation of the program starting this week. The company had first announced its intention to launch a third-party billing option back in March of this year, with Spotify as the initial tester. Since then, the program has steadily expanded. Last month, for example, Google invited other non-game developers to apply for the user choice billing program in select markets, including India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and the European Economic Area (EEA). The company also introduced a similar policy for developers in the EEA region in July, but the new guidelines raised the commission discount from 3% to 4% for developers who opted in. With today's expansion, user choice billing will be made available to 35 countries worldwide. Google says it's been working with Spotify to help develop the experience and now the streaming music service will begin to put the new features into action in supported markets. The experience could still change over time, Google warned, as this is still the early days of the pilot test.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has started testing a new search and filtering system for the Task Manager on Windows 11. It will allow Windows users to easily search for a misbehaving app and end its process or quickly create a dump file, enable efficiency mode, and more. From a report: "This is the top feature request from our users to filter / search for processes," explains the Windows Insider team in a blog post. "You can filter either using the binary name, PID or publisher name. The filter algorithm matches the context keyword with all possible matches and displays them on the current page." You'll be able to use the alt + F keyboard shortcut to jump to the filter box in the Task Manager, and results will be filtered into single or groups of processes that you can monitor or take action on. Alongside the new search and filter functionality, Microsoft is also adding the ability to pick between light or dark themes in the Task Manager. Themes will also be applied fully throughout Task Manager, with some updates to its UI to fit more closely with Microsoft's overall Fluent work.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon unveiled a new delivery drone on Thursday that's smaller, makes less noise and can fly through light rain, the latest effort to get the troubled and long-developing project off the ground. From a report: The company has spent nearly a decade pursuing founder Jeff Bezos' vision of autonomous drones that can deliver a package weighing less than 5 pounds as little as 30 minutes after a customer places an order. Beyond speeding delivery times, drones could significantly cut the cost of delivery which still mostly requires a person driving a vehicle to someone's home. The new drone, dubbed MK30, will go into service in 2024 and replace the existing MK27-2, the model that will be used to make deliveries in Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas, this year. The new unit has a longer range, can fly in a wider range of temperatures and has new safety features, Amazon said. It will be years before the Federal Aviation Administration approves commercial drone deliveries, although the agency is letting companies conduct test flights in increasingly populated areas so long as they don't pose significant safety risks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple said Thursday it will spend $450 million with U.S. companies to enable its new emergency satellite texting feature. From a report: The majority of that money will go to Globalstar, Apple said, a Louisiana-based company that operates the satellites that make the feature possible. Apple isn't taking an equity stake in the company but it is committing to spend money for equipment and the service's operations. The funds will pay for satellites, as well as equipping ground stations with a new kind of antenna designed by Apple. In September, Apple announced Emergency SOS with Satellite as a banner feature on new iPhone 14 models. If users are out of range of a cellular tower, such as in a remote area while camping, they can still connect to emergency services by pointing their phone into the sky and connecting to one of 24 Globalstar satellites in low Earth orbit. It will launch later this month through an iPhone software update. Thursday's announcement underscores the significant costs of operating the service. The feature is free for two years but Apple has left open the possibility of charging for it after that. The service is not entirely automated and it requires human-staffed call centers -- over 300 Globalstar employees will work on the service, Apple said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy is leading a cost-cutting review of the tech giant and paring back on businesses at the company that haven't been profitable, Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The Seattle-based company, whose stock is down about 45% year to date, has been experiencing a slowdown in its core retail business as it tries to manage costs from its logistics network. Other technology companies have been making cuts to better navigate a potential recessionary environment. This week, Facebook parent Meta Platforms said it would cut more than 11,000 workers, or 13% of staff. As part of the monthslong cost-cutting review, Amazon has told employees in certain unprofitable divisions to look for jobs elsewhere in the company, because the teams they were working on were being suspended or closed, some of the people said. Efforts to scrutinize expenses across a sprawling array of businesses have become common at the world's largest technology companies. Alphabet's Google has slowed the pace of hiring and scaled back support for a startup incubator, and Chief Executive Sundar Pichai has voiced concerns this year about employee productivity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

whoever57 writes: Would you trust your communications to a company that has links to a spyware company and claims that its address is a UPS store in Toronto? You probably already do. Washington Post reports: An offshore company that is trusted by the major web browsers and other tech companies to vouch for the legitimacy of websites has connections to contractors for U.S. intelligence agencies and law enforcement, according to security researchers, documents and interviews. Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, nonprofit Firefox and others allow the company, TrustCor Systems, to act as what's known as a root certificate authority, a powerful spot in the internet's infrastructure that guarantees websites are not fake, guiding users to them seamlessly. The company's Panamanian registration records show that it has the identical slate of officers, agents and partners as a spyware maker identified this year as an affiliate of Arizona-based Packet Forensics, which public contracting records and company documents show has sold communication interception services to U.S. government agencies for more than a decade. One of those TrustCor partners has the same name as a holding company managed by Raymond Saulino, who was quoted in a 2010 Wired article as a spokesman for Packet Forensics. Saulino also surfaced in 2021 as a contact for another company, Global Resource Systems, that caused speculation in the tech world when it briefly activated and ran more than 100 million previously dormant IP addresses assigned decades earlier to the Pentagon. The Pentagon reclaimed the digital territory months later, and it remains unclear what the brief transfer was about, but researchers said the activation of those IP addresses could have given the military access to a huge amount of internet traffic without revealing that the government was receiving it. whoever57 has also shared a unpaywalled link to the story.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than two dozen Lenovo notebook models are vulnerable to malicious hacks that disable the UEFI secure-boot process and then run unsigned UEFI apps or load bootloaders that permanently backdoor a device, researchers warned on Wednesday. From a report: At the same time that researchers from security firm ESET disclosed the vulnerabilities, the notebook maker released security updates for 25 models, including ThinkPads, Yoga Slims, and IdeaPads. Vulnerabilities that undermine the UEFI secure boot can be serious because they make it possible for attackers to install malicious firmware that survives multiple operating system reinstallations. Short for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, UEFI is the software that bridges a computer's device firmware with its operating system. As the first piece of code to run when virtually any modern machine is turned on, it's the first link in the security chain. Because the UEFI resides in a flash chip on the motherboard, infections are difficult to detect and remove. Typical measures such as wiping the hard drive and reinstalling the OS have no meaningful impact because the UEFI infection will simply reinfect the computer afterward. ESET said the vulnerabilities -- tracked as CVE-2022-3430, CVE-2022-3431, and CVE-2022-3432 -- "allow disabling UEFI Secure Boot or restoring factory default Secure Boot databases (incl. dbx): all simply from an OS." Secure boot uses databases to allow and deny mechanisms. The DBX database, in particular, stores cryptographic hashes of denied keys. Disabling or restoring default values in the databases makes it possible for an attacker to remove restrictions that would normally be in place.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

France opened a hub for testing electric air taxis as it seeks to introduce the world's first service with the new category of aircraft in time for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. From a report: Aeroports de Paris, which runs the French capital's major airports, will operate the facility alongside UK-based Skyports, a leading developer of so-called vertiports, as flying-taxi bases have been termed. The hub at Pontoise Cormeilles aerodrome, unveiled Thursday, combines a passenger terminal, take-off and landing area, mission control zone and hangar, all as close as possible to the configuration envisaged for 2024. As part of the launch, Volocopter GmbH, a German developer of electric vertical take-off and landing craft or eVTOLs, as flying taxis are known, carried out a flight integrated into conventional air traffic. The project is also backed by RATP Group, which provides public transport in the Paris area, and the DGAC aviation regulator, as well as the transport ministry and Ile-de-France region.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sam Bankman-Fried said on Thursday that he will be winding down the trading firm Alameda Research and is attempting to raise liquidity for the troubled FTX International exchange, as he scrambles to keep the world's second largest crypto exchange alive after a bailout deal with Binance failed earlier this week. From a report: Bankman-Fried said in a series of tweets that he is engaging with a "number of players" to raise capital for FTX's international business and those discussions are at various stages including reaching letter of intents and termsheets deliberations. FTX's U.S. business is "fine" and "100% liquid," he said. He did not disclose the names of the firms or individuals he is engaging, but one of them appears to be Justin Sun, the founder of Tron blockchain. Axios reported on Thursday that Bankman-Fried is also in talks with Kraken, another large crypto exchange.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Western security advisers are warning delegates at the COP27 climate summit not to download the host Egyptian government's official smartphone app, amid fears it could be used to hack their private emails, texts and even voice conversations. From a report: Policymakers from Germany, France and Canada were among those who had downloaded the app by November 8, according to two separate Western security officials briefed on discussions within these delegations at the U.N. climate summit. Other Western governments have advised officials not to download the app, said another official from a European government. All of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss international government deliberations. The potential vulnerability from the Android app, which has been downloaded thousands of times and provides a gateway for participants at COP27, was confirmed separately by four cybersecurity experts who reviewed the digital application for POLITICO. The app is being promoted as a tool to help attendees navigate the event. But it risks giving the Egyptian government permission to read users' emails and messages. Even messages shared via encrypted services like WhatsApp are vulnerable, according to POLITICO's technical review of the application, and two of the outside experts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple has limited the AirDrop wireless file-sharing feature on iPhones in China after the mechanism was used by protesters to spread images to other iPhone owners. AirDrop allows the quick exchange of files like images, documents or videos between Apple devices. The latest version -- iOS 16.1.1, released Wednesday -- caps the window in which users can receive files from non-contacts at 10 minutes. The previous options didn't limit the time involved. Users could choose to get files from everyone, no one or just their contacts. After the 10-minute period expires, the system reverts to the mode where files can only be received from contacts. That means that individuals won't be able to get an AirDrop transfer from a stranger without actively turning on the feature in the preceding few minutes. It makes it harder for anyone seeking to distribute content and reach people in a discreet manner. Apple made the change to AirDrop on iPhones sold in China. The shift came after protesters in the country used the service to spread posters opposing Xi Jinping and the Chinese government. The use of AirDrop to sidestep China's strict online censorship has been well-documented over the past three years and was highlighted again recently. Apple didn't comment on why the change was introduced in China, but said that it plans to roll out the new AirDrop setting globally in the coming year. The idea is to mitigate unwanted file sharing, the company said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry on Wednesday unveiled a carbon offset plan that would allow corporations to fund renewable energy projects in developing countries that are struggling to transition away from fossil fuels. CNBC reports: The program, called the Energy Transition Accelerator, is in partnership with philanthropic groups like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund and will be finalized over the coming year. Officials argue it could funnel billions of dollars from the private sector into the economies of developing countries working to shift to renewable power sources like wind or solar. The plan will create a new class of carbon offsets that represent investments in projects that help accelerate renewable energy projects or build climate change resilience in a developing country. Businesses can buy these offsets to balance out some portion of their CO2 emissions, and the money will go to these projects. Chile and Nigeria are among the developing countries interested in the program, the State Department said, and Bank of America, Microsoft, PepsiCo and Standard Chartered Bank have "expressed interest in informing the ETA's development." [...] In order to buy these credits under the new program, companies must commit to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and report annually on emissions as well as progress toward the target, according to a draft of the plan. Fossil fuel companies are also not allowed to participate in the program. But several major environmental groups said they are not supporting the plan, arguing the proposal lacked details and could ultimately undermine efforts to reduce global emissions. "Carbon offsets are not an answer in a world already on fire, under water and facing mounting climate losses and damage," said Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "A voluntary carbon credit program won't guarantee deep, real cuts in emissions -- it's tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs as the climate ship is going down."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rocket designers with China's main launch vehicle institute have scrapped plans for an expendable super heavy-lift launcher in favor of a design featuring a reusable first stage. SpaceNews reports: A new model of a Long March 9 rocket featuring grid fins and no side boosters recently went on display at the ongoing Zhuhai Airshow in southern China, prompting speculation that the long-standing plan of an expendable rocket had been dropped. Liu Bing, director of the general design department at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), later confirmed the new direction in an interview with China Central Television Nov. 7. The new, current plan for the rocket will be a three-stage, 108-meter-high, 10-meter-diameter and 4,180 metric ton rocket capable of delivering 150 tons to low Earth orbit (LEO), 50 tons to lunar transfer orbit (LTO), or 35 tons to Mars transfer orbit. The rocket is scheduled to be ready for test flight around 2030. Liu told CCTV however that the design has not been finalized and will likely see changes as the team selects the optimal pathway, while committing to the goal of constantly breaking through technological challenges and increasing its launching power.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Amazon, one of the first companies to join the prestigious $1 trillion dollar valuation club, just passed another, admittedly less desirable milestone. This week, Jeff Bezos' Everything Store became the first publicly traded company to lose $1 trillion in market valuation. The mind boggling figures, first noted by Bloomberg, are the results of a worsening economy, repeatedly dour earnings reports, and massive stock selloffs. Amazon, valued at $1.882 trillion on June 21, on Thursday reported a comparatively measly $878 billion valuation. Microsoft, which briefly surpassed Apple as the world's most valuable company last year, wasn't far behind, with market valuation losses hovering around $900 billion. Combined, the two companies' declines capture the effect of a lousy year most in tech would like to soon forget. Those declines aren't just limited to Amazon and Microsoft. The top five most valuable U.S. tech companies reportedly lost a combined $4 trillion in value this year. To put that in perspective, that's more than the combined GDPs of Turkey, Argentina, and Switzerland. Amazon, in particular, disappointed investors last month with third quarter revenues that failed to meet expectations. Worse still, the company said it's expecting to post fourth quarter year-over-year growth of just 2-8%. That's fine for a normal company, but there's nothing normal about Amazon which was, until now, a relentless growth machine. Like many other companies Amazon's also had to contend with declining e-commerce shopping as consumers, less concerned with covid-19, begin to trickle back into retail stores. "There is obviously a lot happening in the macroeconomic environment," CEO Andy Jassy said following the third quarter earnings report. "And we'll balance our investments to be more streamlined without compromising our key long-term, strategic bets."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Solana's SOL is down much further than any of the other major cryptocurrencies today, all of which are down badly following the sudden unraveling of the wildly fast growing crypto exchange FTX on Tuesday. Axios reports: Blockchain principles aim to instantiate the ideals of decentralization. That is, no single points of failure. Blockchain realities, though, show that each community tends to have its major leaders. For Solana, one of those was definitely FTX's c0-founder, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). SBF has long been bullish on Solana, including working to build Serum, an order book style exchange that runs in a decentralized fashion. His firms are rumored to have owned a substantial amount of the total SOL supply. FTX and Alameda Trading are in trouble. If they hold large amounts of SOL, they are very likely to exit those positions, which will tank SOL price. CoinDesk reported on Nov. 2 that Alameda had $292 million in SOL and $863 million in locked SOL (on the Solana blockchain, large holders can earn more by backing the blockchain's validators by committing not to sell -- or locking -- for a certain period of time). "People are dumping already -- self-fulfilling prophecy," Economics Design's Lisa Jy Tan told Axios over Twitter DM. Tomorrow, the entities verifying the Solana blockchain have already publicly indicated their intention to unlock about a billion dollars worth of SOL (at current prices), about 17% of its market cap. It's reasonable to expect they might intend to sell. Solana's fall has put stress on one of its leading decentralized finance applications, Solend, a money market that works much like Ethereum's Compound. Solend is gradually unwinding a single, almost $30 million USDC (stablecoin) loan, collateralized by SOL, which is falling fast while the protocol tries to sell. Much like SOL's price, the total value locked (TVL) in various DeFi projects on Solana has fallen much further in the last day than on other smart contract blockchains, according to DefiLlama. Solana TVL is down 45% over the last day, to $470 million, as of Wednesday afternoon, New York time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.