An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Today, the European Space Agency leadership took steps toward suspending the ExoMars mission, a joint project with Russian space agency Roscosmos. It's the latest scientific fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has forced institutions collaborating with Russian entities to reevaluate their positions. ExoMars a two-part mission: an orbiter, launched in 2016, that studies the chemistry of the Red Planet's atmosphere, and a Mars rover, named for scientist Rosalind Franklin and set to launch this year -- or at least, it was. The mission has been a long time coming; funding was granted 10 years ago this week, but technical delays and the covid-19 pandemic pushed the rover launch date back to fall 2022. That target was looking viable until the Russian invasion of Ukraine last month. From the off, it was clear that ExoMars was in doubt. In a statement shortly after the invasion, the ESA said it was "fully implementing sanctions imposed on Russia by our Member States" and that "the sanctions and the wider context make a launch in 2022 very unlikely." The agency's most recent move codifies that unlikeliness. Meeting in Paris this week, the agency's ruling council unanimously mandated that the ESA Director General take steps to suspend cooperation with Roscosmos and authorized a study of how to get ExoMars off the ground without Roscosmos involvement. [...] In its newest statement, ESA announced that its director general would convene a meeting of the agency council in several weeks to submit proposals for how to proceed with ExoMars without Russian involvement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Chinese Weiqi Association has issued a statement suspending a Chinese player from attending competitions of weiqi, more commonly known as Go overseas, for a year after he violated the "no use of AI" rules when participating in a national chess competition earlier that day. From a report: According to the statement, Go player Liu Ruizhi used an AI program during the first round of the Chinese professional Go Championship preliminaries, and his supervisors did not fulfill their supervisory responsibilities. The authority pronounced Liu's opponent Yin Qu the winner of the match and decided to suspend Liu from participating in professional competitions until March 15, 2023. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, competitions have been held online and the organizing committee requires each player to have a supervisor during matches. According to the rules of the competition, the use of AI is strictly prohibited during competitions. Players who break this rule will be banned for one year. If the player is a member of the national training team, they will be expelled from the team immediately.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Alongside their spring driver update, AMD this morning is also unveiling the first nugget of information about the next generation of their FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) technology. From a report: Dubbed FSR 2.0, the next generation of AMD's upscaling technology will be taking the logical leap into adding temporal data, giving FSR more data to work with, and thus improving its ability to generate details. And, while AMD is being coy with details for today's early teaser, at a high level this technology should put AMD much closer to competing with NVIDIA's temporal-based DLSS 2.0 upscaling technology, as well as Intel's forthcoming XeSS upscaling tech. AMD's current version of FSR, which is now being referred to as FSR 1.0, was released last summer by the company. Implemented as a compute shader, FSR 1.0 was a (relatively) simple spatial upscaler, which could only use data from the current frame for generating a higher resolution frame. Spatial upscaling's simplicity is great for compatibility but it's limited by the data it has access to, allowing for more advanced multi-frame techniques to generate more detailed images. For that reason, AMD has been very careful with their image quality claims for FSR 1.0, treating it more like a supplement to other upscaling methods than a rival to NVIDIA's class-leading DLSS 2.0.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
HSBC is buying a plot of virtual real estate in an online gaming space called The Sandbox for an undisclosed sum, the bank's first major foray into the metaverse as it shrinks its UK branch network. From a report:The digital push will enable HSBC to engage with sports, e-sports and gaming fans via its slice of turf in The Sandbox, a virtual space majority-owned by Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands. Its venture into the virtual world comes as the British-based lender slashes its footprint in the real world, announcing on Tuesday it would cut a further 69 branches in Britain as its customers move online.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google's Threat Analysis Group has observed a financially-motivated threat actor working as an intermediary for the Russian hackers, including the Conti ransomware gang. From a report: The group, which Google refers to as "Exotic Lily," acts as an initial access broker, finding vulnerable organizations and selling access to their networks to the highest bidder. By contracting out the initial access to a victim's network, ransomware gangs like Conti can focus on the execution phase of an attack. In the case of Exotic Lily, this initial access was gained through email campaigns, in which the group masqueraded as legitimate organizations and employees through the use of domain and identity spoofing. In the majority of cases, a spoofed domain was nearly identical to the real domain name of an existing organization, but changed the top-level domains to ".us," ".co" or ".biz." In order to appear as legitimate employees, Exotic Lily set up social media profiles and AI-generated images of human faces. The attackers, which Google believes are operating from Central or Eastern Europe due to the threat actors' working hours, would then send spear-phishing emails under the pretext of a business proposal, before ultimately uploading a payload to a public file-sharing service such as WeTransfer or Microsoft OneDrive.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft brought DirectStorage to Windows PCs this week. The API promises faster load times and more detailed graphics by letting game developers make apps that load graphical data from the SSD directly to the GPU. Now, Nvidia and IBM have created a similar SSD/GPU technology, but they are aiming it at the massive data sets in data centers. From a report: Instead of targeting console or PC gaming like DirectStorage, Big accelerator Memory (BaM) is meant to provide data centers quick access to vast amounts of data in GPU-intensive applications, like machine-learning training, analytics, and high-performance computing, according to a research paper spotted by The Register this week. Entitled "BaM: A Case for Enabling Fine-grain High Throughput GPU-Orchestrated Access to Storage" (PDF), the paper by researchers at Nvidia, IBM, and a few US universities proposes a more efficient way to run next-generation applications in data centers with massive computing power and memory bandwidth. BaM also differs from DirectStorage in that the creators of the system architecture plan to make it open source.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a report:When Apple introduced the M1 Ultra -- the company's most powerful in-house processor yet and the crown jewel of its brand new Mac Studio -- it did so with charts boasting that the Ultra capable of beating out Intel's best processor or Nvidia's RTX 3090 GPU all on its own. The charts, in Apple's recent fashion, were maddeningly labeled with "relative performance" on the Y-axis, and Apple doesn't tell us what specific tests it runs to arrive at whatever numbers it uses to then calculate "relative performance." But now that we have a Mac Studio, we can say that in most tests, the M1 Ultra isn't actually faster than an RTX 3090, as much as Apple would like to say it is.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Executives at companies like Meta, Google, Twitter and TikTok could face jail time sooner than anticipated if they fail to cooperate with the U.K. internet regulator, Ofcom. From a report: The U.K. government announced Wednesday that executives may face prosecution or jail time within two months of the new Online Safety Bill becoming law, instead of two years as it was previously drafted. The Online Safety Bill will be presented to lawmakers in Parliament on Thursday and could become law later this year. It aims to make it mandatory for social media services, search engines and other platforms that allow people to share their own content to protect children, tackle illegal activity and uphold their stated terms and conditions. The government said Wednesday that a range of new offenses had been added to the bill that makes the senior managers at tech firms criminally liable for destroying evidence, failing to attend or providing false information in interviews with Ofcom, and for obstructing the watchdog when it enters company offices.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Stephen Hawking's black hole information paradox has bedevilled scientists for half a century and led some to question the fundamental laws of physics. Now scientists say they may have resolved the infamous problem by showing that black holes have a property known as "quantum hair." From a report: If correct, this would mark a momentous advance in theoretical physics. Prof Xavier Calmet, of the University of Sussex, who led the work, said that after working on the mathematics behind the problem for a decade, his team made a rapid advance last year that gave them confidence that they had finally cracked it. "It was generally assumed within the scientific community that resolving this paradox would require a huge paradigm shift in physics, forcing the potential reformulation of either quantum mechanics or general relativity," said Calmet. "What we found -- and I think is particularly exciting -- is that this isn't necessary." Hawking's paradox boils down to the following: the rules of quantum physics state that information is conserved. Black holes pose a challenge to this law because once an object enters a black hole, it is essentially gone for good -- along with any information encoded in it. Hawking identified this paradox and for decades it has continued to confound scientists. There have been innumerable proposed solutions, including a "firewall theory" in which information was assumed to burn up before entering the black hole, the "fuzzball theory" in which black holes were thought to have indistinct boundaries, and various exotic branches of string theory. But most of these proposals required rewriting of the laws of quantum mechanics or Einstein's theory of gravity, the two pillars of modern physics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon has closed its $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM, the companies said Thursday. From a report: The pact was first announced in May and has been winding its way through the regulatory process. Per Amazon, "The storied, nearly century-old studio -- with more than 4,000 film titles, 17,000 TV episodes, 180 Academy Awards, and 100 Emmy Awards -- will complement Prime Video and Amazon Studios' work in delivering a diverse offering of entertainment choices to customers." The completion of the transaction comes two days after the Amazon-MGM deal received clearance from the European Union's antitrust regulator, which "unconditionally" approved Amazon's proposed acquisition of MGM, in part because "MGM's content cannot be considered as must-have." The European Commission, in its antitrust review, found that the overlaps between the Amazon and MGM businesses are "limited."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An online commotion around seemingly irregular trading of a NFT collection prior to the acquisition of the project is shining light again on a perceived lack of regulatory clarity in one of the most explosive corners of crypto. From a report: During the days leading up to the March 11 purchase by Yuga Labs of the intellectual property of the Meebits collection from Larva Labs, more than a dozen addresses on the Ethereum blockchain purchased a large amount of the nonfungible tokens. The price floor, or the lowest price a seller is willing to accept, went as high as 6.134 Ether, or about $15,800, on March 12, according to NFT Price Floor. That's nearly double two days earlier. Whether that was just good timing or individuals acting off information, legal observers said that may be hard to quantify because of the anonymous nature of crypto and the vague regulatory framework around NFTs. U.S. authorities have said existing regulations are a solid precedent for rules about cryptocurrencies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"A little noticed side effect of all the sanctions Russia is under for its invasion of Ukraine is that related to IT," writes Slashdot reader quonset. "U.S. sanctions prohibit any technology transfers to the country, including computer chips. However, another issue is Russia is now cut off from cloud storage companies in the West. As a result, Russia is two months away from using up all its domestic storage capacity. Four options have been proposed to counter this issue. BleepingComputer reports: Last week, the Ministry of Digital Development amended the Yarovaya Law (2016) to suspend a yearly requirement for telecom operators to increase storage capacity allocations by 15% for anti-terrorist surveillance purposes. Another move that could free up space would be to demand ISPs abandon media streaming services and other online entertainment platforms that eat up precious resources. Thirdly, there's the option of buying out all available storage from domestic data processing centers. However, this will likely lead to further problems for entertainment providers who need additional storage to add services and content. Russia is also considering seizing IT servers and storage left behind by companies who pulled out of Russia and integrating them into public infrastructure. There is one more option mentioned in the report and it has to do with China. Russia could "tap into Chinese cloud service providers and IT system sellers," reports BleepingComputer, although China has yet to decide how much it's willing to help Russia.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A team of researchers from Cornell University used a computational aesthetic system to teach an AI robot "to not only determine the most pleasing picture in a given dataset, but capture new, original -- and most importantly, good -- shots on its own," writes Engadget's A. Tarantola. The project is called AutoPhoto and was presented last fall at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. From the report: This robo-photographer consists of three parts: the image evaluation algorithm, which evaluates a presented image and issues an aesthetic score; a Clearpath Jackal wheeled robot upon which the camera is affixed; and the AutoPhoto algorithm itself, which serves as a sort of firmware, translating the results from the image grading process into drive commands for the physical robot and effectively automating the optimized image capture process. For its image evaluation algorithm, the Cornell team led by second year Masters student Hadi AlZayer, leveraged an existing learned aesthetic estimation model, which had been trained on a dataset of more than a million human-ranked photographs. AutoPhoto itself was virtually trained on dozens of 3D images of interior room scenes to spot the optimally composed angle before the team attached it to the Jackal. When let loose in a building on campus, as you can see in the video above, the robot starts off with a slew of bad takes, but as the AutoPhoto algorithm gains its bearings, its shot selection steadily improves until the images rival those of local Zillow listings. On average it took about a dozen iterations to optimize each shot and the whole process takes just a few minutes to complete. "You can essentially take incremental improvements to the current commands," AlZayer told Engadget. "You can do it one step at a time, meaning you can formulate it as a reinforcement learning problem." This way, the algorithm doesn't have to conform to traditional heuristics like the rule of thirds because it already knows what people will like as it was taught to match the look and feel of the shots it takes with the highest-ranked pictures from its training data, AlZayer explained. "The most challenging part was the fact there was no existing baseline number we were trying to improve," AlZayer noted to the Cornell Press. "We had to define the entire process and the problem." Looking ahead, AlZayer hopes to adapt the AutoPhoto system for outdoor use, potentially swapping out the terrestrial Jackal for a UAV. "Simulating high quality realistic outdoor scenes is very hard," AlZayer said, "just because it's harder to perform reconstruction of a controlled scene." To get around that issue, he and his team are currently investigating whether the AutoPhoto model can be trained on video or still images rather than 3D scenes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
BeerFartMoron shares a report from CBS News: After weeks of microscopic adjustments, NASA unveiled the first fully focused image from the James Webb Space Telescope Wednesday, a razor-sharp engineering photo of a nondescript star in a field of more distant galaxies that shows the observatory's optical system is working in near-flawless fashion. The goal was to demonstrate Webb can now bring starlight to a near-perfect focus, proving the $10 billion telescope doesn't suffer from any subtle optical defects like the aberration that initially hobbled the Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxies in the image were a bonus, whetting astronomers' appetites for discoveries to come. "This is one of the most magnificent days in my whole career at NASA, frankly, and for many of us astronomers, one of the most important days that we've had," said NASA science chief Thomas Zurbuchen. "Today we can announce that the optics will perform to specifications or even better. It's an amazing achievement."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A new study in the journal Earth's Future led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows that, since Euro-American settlement approximately 160 years ago, agricultural fields in the midwestern U.S. have lost, on average, two millimeters of soil per year. This is nearly double the rate of erosion that the USDA considers sustainable. Furthermore, USDA estimates of erosion are between three and eight times lower than the figures reported in the study. Finally, the study's authors conclude that plowing, rather than the work of wind and water, is the major culprit. Using an extraordinarily sensitive GPS unit that looks more like a floor lamp than a hand-held device, the team walked dozens of transects, or perpendicular routes across the escarpment, from the untouched prairie to the eroded farm field, stopping every few inches to measure the change in altitude. They did this hundreds of times throughout the summers of 2017, 2018 and 2019. Once they had their raw data, the team used historical land-use records and cutting-edge computer models to reconstruct erosion rates throughout the Midwest. What they discovered is that Midwestern topsoil is eroding at an average rate of 1.9 millimeters per year. Put another way, the authors estimate that the Midwest has lost approximately 57.6 trillion metric tons of topsoil since farmers began tilling the soil, 160 years ago. And this is despite conservation practices put in place in the wake of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. As noted above, much of the erosion was due to tillage, or plowing. "The modeling that I do shows that tilling has a 'diffusive' effect," says Jeffrey Kwang, a postdoctoral researcher at UMass Amhers. "It melts the landscape away, flattening higher points in a field and filling in the hollows." Furthermore, the USDA doesn't include "tillage erosion" in its own analysis, meaning it's drastically underestimated the rate of erosion that's occurred in the area. The team suggests that more sustainable practice, such as no-till farming and soil regeneration, "will likely be required to reduce soil erosion rates in the Midwest to levels that can sustain soil productivity, ecosystem services, and long-term prosperity."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For two decades, researchers have used brain-imaging technology to try to identify how the structure and function of a person's brain connects to a range of mental-health ailments, from anxiety and depression to suicidal tendencies. But a new paper, published Wednesday in Nature, calls into question whether much of this research is actually yielding valid findings. The New York Times reports: Many such studies, the paper's authors found, tend to include fewer than two dozen participants, far shy of the number needed to generate reliable results. "You need thousands of individuals," said Scott Marek, a psychiatric researcher at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and an author of the paper. He described the finding as a "gut punch" for the typical studies that use imaging to try to better understand mental health. Studies that use magnetic-resonance imaging technology commonly temper their conclusions with a cautionary statement noting the small sample size. But enlisting participants can be time-consuming and expensive, ranging from $600 to $2,000 an hour, said Dr. Nico Dosenbach, a neurologist at Washington University School of Medicine and another author on the paper. The median number of subjects in mental-health-related studies that use brain imaging is around 23, he added. But the Nature paper demonstrates that the data drawn from just two dozen subjects is generally insufficient to be reliable and can in fact yield 'massively inflated' findings," Dr. Dosenbach said. The findings from the Nature paper can "absolutely" be applied to other fields beyond mental health, said Marek. "My hunch this is much more about population science than it is about any one of those fields," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and House Representative Mondaire Jones have introduced legislation in their respective congressional chambers that would effectively ban large technology mergers. Engadget reports: The Prohibiting Anticompetitive Mergers Act (PAMA) would make it illegal to pursue "prohibited mergers," including those worth more than $5 billion or which provide market shares beyond 25 percent for employers and 33 percent for sellers. The bills would also give antitrust regulators more power to halt and review mergers. They would have authority to reject mergers outright, without requiring court orders. They would likewise bar mergers from companies with track records of antitrust violations or other instances of "corporate crime" in the past decade. Officials would have to gauge the impact of these acquisition on labor forces, and wouldn't be allowed to negotiate with the companies to secure "remedies" for clearing mergers. Crucially, PAMA would formalize procedures for reviewing past mergers and breaking up "harmful deals" that allegedly hurt competition. The Federal Trade Commission has signaled a willingness to split up tech giants like Meta despite approving mergers years earlier. PAMA might make it easier to unwind those acquisitions and force brands like Instagram and WhatsApp to operate as separate businesses.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Winamp will sell a non-fungible token (NFT) linked to its media player's original 1997 graphical skin, becoming the latest company to blend nostalgia and crypto. The Verge reports: Winamp will put the NFT up for auction through OpenSea between May 16th and May 22nd, followed by a separate sale of 1997 total NFTs based on 20 artworks derived from the original skin. The proceeds will go to the Winamp Foundation, which promises to donate them to charity projects, starting with the Belgian nonprofit Music Fund. The NFT sale appears to be a combination of a publicity move and a fundraising effort. Winamp is sourcing the derivative art NFTs by asking artists to submit Winamp-based works between now and April 15th, then giving selected artists 20 percent of the proceeds from each sale of their image as an NFT. Nineteen of the pieces will sell in editions of 100 copies, and the remaining one will have 97; they'll all sell for 0.08 Ethereum -- around $210 at current exchange rates. The artists will get 10 percent of any royalties on later sales, where the seller will set their own price. Winamp's head of business development Thierry Ascarez tells The Verge that buyers will get a blockchain token linked to an image of either the original skin seen above or one of its derivatives, which is a common setup for NFTs. Buyers will have the right to "copy, reproduce, and display" the image, but they won't own the copyright. Likewise, selected artists will agree to transfer all intellectual property for their work to Winamp, according to a page of terms and conditions (PDF).Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy legalized crypto in the country, signing into law a bill on virtual assets, amid a frenzy of digital asset donations to support the country's defense against a Russian invasion. CoinDesk reports: The law determines the legal status, classification, ownership and regulators of virtual assets, as well as setting registration requirements for crypto services providers, the Ministry of Digital Transformation said in a statement Wednesday. The market will be regulated by Ukraine's National Commission on Securities and the Stock Market. Exchanges will be able to operate legally, and banks will open accounts for them, the digital ministry said in a tweet. The state body is tasked with "shaping and pursuing a policy in the field of virtual assets; determining the order of circulation of virtual assets; issuing permits to virtual asset service providers; and carrying out supervision and financial monitoring in this area," according to a Feb. 17 government announcement. The Ministry of Finance is working on amendments to the country's tax and civil codes to fully launch the market for virtual assets, the statement said. The report notes that Ukraine has received at least $100 million in crypto donations following Russia's unprovoked and unjustified attack on the country. Zelenskyy rejected an earlier version of the bill in September 2021.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Several outlets -- including Slashdot -- reported last week that LimeWire is making a comeback as an NFT marketplace. But as it turns out, the new LimeWire project has absolutely nothing to do with the team that originally developed the file-sharing software. They just happen to share the same name. TorrentFreak, a news website that tracks piracy and copyright, interviewed Mark Gorton, founder and chief executive of the original LimeWire company, called Lime Group LLC. An excerpt from the story: Gorton says that he had never even heard of this NFT project before it hit the news. "I was not approached about this NFT project, and I didn't hear about it until the public announcement," Gorton tells TorrentFreak. There was probably no legal obligation to inform the former LimeWire chief. The original trademarks have expired and the NFT website uses a new logo, so they can use the brand. However, Gorton is not happy to see the name used in a way that deviates from its original purpose. "I am not thrilled about an unrelated group of people using the LimeWire name. Using the LimeWire name in this way creates confusion and falsely uses that brand that we created for purposes for which it was never intended," Gorton says. The new LimeWire does have at least one asset that previously belonged to the original LimeWire team; the Limewire.com domain name.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google is rolling out a Google Docs update that lets Workspace and legacy G Suite users collaborate on Gmail drafts. Engadget reports: Open the email draft template (Insert > Building Blocks > Email draft) and your colleagues can comment or make suggestions. You won't always need to know recipients' email addresses, either, as you can mention people by name. When you're ready to send the email, you just need to click a button to open a Gmail compose window and finalize the message. Docs will automatically populate all the relevant fields. The feature will take up to 15 days to reach companies on Rapid Release domains, and will start reaching more cautious Scheduled Release customers on March 22nd. There's no mention of availability for personal use.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday approved its first interest rate increase in more than three years, an incremental salvo to address spiraling inflation without torpedoing economic growth. From a report: After keeping its benchmark interest rate anchored near zero since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee said it will raise rates by a quarter percentage point, or 25 basis points. That will bring the rate now into a range of 0.25%-0.5%. The move will correspond with a hike in the prime rate and immediately send financing costs higher for many forms of consumer borrowing and credit. Fed officials indicated the rate increases will come with slower economic growth this year. Along with the rate hikes, the committee also penciled in increases at each of the six remaining meetings this year, pointing to a consensus funds rate of 1.9% by year's end. That is a full percentage point higher than indicated in December. The committee sees three more hikes in 2023 then none the following year. The rate rise was approved with only one dissent. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard wanted a 50 basis point increase. The committee last raised rates in December 2018, then had to backtrack the following July and begin cutting.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In Wednesday's issue of Nature, a new paper describes a potentially useful way of measuring the interactions between normal matter and exotic particles, like antiprotons and unstable items like kaons or elements containing a strange quark. The work is likely to be useful, as we still don't understand the asymmetry that has allowed matter to be the dominant form in our Universe. But the study is probably most notable for the surprising way that it collected measurements. A small research team managed to put an antiproton in orbit around the nucleus of a helium atom that was part of some liquid helium chilled down to where it acted as a superfluid. The researchers then measured the light emitted by the antiproton's orbital transitions.[...]At temperatures above the point at which liquid helium becomes a superfluid, the transition created a broad peak instead of a sharp one. The peak narrowed as the temperature dropped, and it eventually separated into two distinct peaks at the transition temperature. This separation -- called the hyperfine split -- is caused by interactions between the antiproton and the helium nucleus. The fact that it can be detected with this level of precision indicates that an experimental system can be used to tell us about both the antimatter and the fundamental physics behind these interactions. Why did this experiment work when previous attempts to measure the properties of molecules in liquid helium failed? The researchers suggest their success is mostly due to the fact that they were essentially measuring an odd form of helium in a pool of helium. In the other cases, researchers measured a molecule that was dissolved in the helium, producing very different behavior. (One suggestion is that the helium forms a cage around any molecules dissolved in it, and the cage is large enough to allow the molecule to move around freely.) The researchers are excited about the idea that this process could be used more generally to get these sorts of measurements. Technically, any moderately sized, negatively charged particle could be put in orbit around a helium nucleus, provided it can be slowed down enough -- the researchers specifically mention "negatively charged mesons and hyperons that include strange quarks." The authors suggest that helium with an unusual nuclear composition would also work.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The UK is looking at a 20-year extension of the Sizewell B nuclear power plant on England's east coast to 2055 as Boris Johnson aims to bolster domestic energy supplies following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. From a report: The extension is one of several options under consideration as the prime minister draws up a new "energy supply strategy," which will be published next week against the backdrop of highly volatile international gas prices and an escalating cost-of-living crisis. Johnson's new approach will not see him cut Britain's carbon targets, including the plan to reach net zero by 2050, and will see an increase in targets for various renewable energy sources, according to officials. However, it will also seek to improve security of supply of hydrocarbons by increasing North Sea oil and gas production and potentially keeping some of Britain's few remaining coal-fired power plants open slightly longer than expected -- rather than relying on imports.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Former astronaut Scott Kelly said he is ending his feud with the head of Russia's space program after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration asked former astronauts to dial down criticism of their Russian counterparts. From a report: The dustup began when Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin and other Russian government entities published a series of social-media posts, including one video showing Russian cosmonauts abandoning the International Space Station and leaving behind U.S. astronaut Mark Vande Hei. Mr. Kelly, who spent nearly a year in 2015 and 2016 aboard the ISS, got into a heated exchange on Twitter last week with the Russian space chief over the series of posts. Now Mr. Kelly said he is ending the spat with Mr. Rogozin after NASA sent an email to former astronauts asking them to stop criticizing their Russian partners because it was hurting the mission aboard the ISS, an orbiting lab where American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts work side by side. "I respect their position. They have a tough job. I believe in NASA and what they do. I want to help them. I respect the person that sent it greatly," Mr. Kelly said in an interview. "I would say that if I was in their position, I would have done the same exact thing."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Long-term exposure to air pollution can increase the risk of autoimmune disease, research has found. From a report: Exposure to particulates has already been linked to strokes, brain cancer, miscarriage and mental health problems. A global review, published in 2019, concluded that almost every cell in the body could be affected by dirty air. Now researchers at the University of Verona have found that long-term exposure to high levels of air pollution was associated with an approximately 40% higher risk of rheumatoid arthritis, a 20% higher risk of inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, and a 15% higher risk of connective tissue diseases, such as lupus. The study, published in the journal RMD Open, took comprehensive medical information about 81,363 men and women on an Italian database monitoring risk of fractures between June 2016 and November 2020. About 12% were diagnosed with an autoimmune disease during this period.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Netflix will soon launch a test letting primary account holders pay an additional fee for users outside their households -- a new attempt by the company to address illicit password-sharing. From a report: According to the Netflix terms of service, a customer's account "may not be shared with individuals beyond your household." After years of turning a blind eye to password-sharing behavior that falls outside that requirement, the company last year ran a limited test prompting users to enter their account credentials as a way to nudge freeloaders into paying for their own accounts. Now, in an upcoming test launching in three countries -- Chile, Costa Rica and Peru -- Netflix will let members who share their accounts with people outside their household do so "easily and securely, while also paying a bit more," according to Chengyi Long, director of product innovation at Netflix. The new options will roll out in the next few weeks in the three countries (and may or may not expand beyond those markets).Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Pamela Burdman, the executive director of Just Equations, a policy institute focused on the role of math in education equity, writes in an op-ed for Scientific American: All routes to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) degrees run through calculus classes. Each year, hundreds of thousands of college students take introductory calculus. But only a fraction ultimately complete a STEM degree, and research about why students abandon such degrees suggests that traditional calculus courses are one of the reasons. With scientific understanding and innovation increasingly central to solving 21st-century problems, this loss of talent is something society can ill afford. Math departments alone are unlikely to solve this dilemma. Several of the promising calculus reforms highlighted in our report Charting a New Course: Investigating Barriers on the Calculus Pathway to STEM , published with the California Education Learning Lab, were spearheaded by professors outside of math departments. It's time for STEM faculty to prioritize collaboration across disciplines to transform math classes from weed-out mechanisms to fertile terrain for cultivating a diverse generation of STEM researchers and professionals. This is not uncharted territory. In 2013, life sciences faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles, developed a two-course sequence that covers classic calculus topics such as the derivative and the integral, but emphasizes their application in a biological context. The professors used modeling of complex systems such as biological and physiological processes as a framework for teaching linear algebra and a starting point for teaching the basics of computer programming to support students' use of systems of differential equations. Creating this course, Mathematics for Life Scientists, wasn't easy. The life sciences faculty involved, none of whom had a joint appointment with the math department, said they resorted to designing the course themselves after math faculty rebuffed their overture. The math faculty feared creating a "watered-down" course with no textbook (though after the course was developed, one math instructor taught some sections of the class). Besides math, the life sciences faculty said they experienced "significant pushback" from the chemistry and physics departments over concerns that the course wouldn't adequately prepare students for required courses in those disciplines. But the UCLA course seems to be successful, and a textbook based on it now exists. According to recently published research led by UCLA education researchers, students in the new classes ended up with "significantly higher grades" in subsequent physics, chemistry and life sciences courses than students in the traditional calculus course, even when controlling for factors such as demographics, prior preparation and math grades. Students' interest in the subject doubled, according to surveys.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
PowerPoint presentations may change in the next few months, as Microsoft integrates live and pre-recorded video into presentations you view and create. From a report: Microsoft's engineering teams are always hard at work launching features, and today marks Microsoft's spring 2022 update of sorts, on a variety of different subjects. Microsoft announced a new Surface Hub-specific webcam, updated features to Teams and other productivity apps, and some specific improvements to how Microsoft deals with workers who are returning to the office. For that matter, Microsoft also released a survey noting that many workers aren't all that interested in returning to work, either preferring to work remotely or as a hybrid of at-home and in-person work. PowerPoint touches many different lives and careers (even holiday parties) so it's not surprising that two of the most important announcements involve it. Specifically, Microsoft is merging PowerPoint Cameo with its Recording Studio function, so you'll have more ways to deliver video as part of presentations. PowerPoint Cameo takes an idea that has appeared in mmhmm and other solutions: It captures a small live feed of you talking through your slides, and integrates that with the presentation. All Recording Studio does is simply add the capability to pre-record that video, so you'll have the option of presenting live or pre-recording the video so others can review it on their own time -- as we've seen already happen with the ability to record Teams calls, for example.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Rockstar's anarchic masterpiece has been freshened up for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X nine years after it was originally released. From a report: And so the boys are back in town. Michael, Trevor and Franklin, the sociopathic trio that lit up the gaming scene nine years ago, have been made over for the 2020s with this crisp new reworking of Grand Theft Auto V for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The game's violent narrative of shifting loyalties and doomed machismo felt wild and edgy back in 2013, so how does it fare in the modern era? The good news is, the overhauled visuals definitely give the game new zest and freshness. You can play in either 4K at 30 frames-per-second or in a performance mode that lowers the resolution but bumps up the frame rate to 60, giving wonderful fluidity to car chases, swooping helicopter rides and mass shootouts. The DualSense controller features on PlayStation 5 are very good too: improved driving feedback via the analogue triggers makes the game's cumbersome handling a little easier to, well, handle. It's been quite a joy to rediscover this alternate-reality California; to see the sun drop behind the downtown skyscrapers, or to hit Senora as dawn splashes orange-yellow light across the burning desert. What the vast upshift in resolution can't hide is the fact that GTA V is a game originally designed for consoles that are now two generations out of date. The character models and facial details look positively archaic compared with, say, Horizon Forbidden West, and the building architecture too seems almost quaint in its stylised blockiness. Compare it with 2018's Red Dead Redemption 2 and you can see just how far Rockstar has come in its building of intricate next-gen worlds. In many ways, however, the design of the world itself has not been been bettered in the decade since it arrived. The size of San Andreas, the sheer variety of landscapes and the diversity of actions and activities is still incredible -- Cyberpunk 2077 may look better, but it doesn't let you play golf or tennis, or go on day trips on a bike, or set up incredibly complex car or helicopter stunts. Los Santos is a vast playground, a gangster Fortnite -- a factor underlined by the massive community that still gathers in GTA Online (which is where we find this new version's only totally new content -- Hao's Special Works, which lets you unlock faster cars and new tasks).Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Several tombs and a leaden sarcophagus likely dating from the 14th century have been uncovered by archaeologists at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris as work continues on the building's reconstruction after its devastating 2019 fire. From a report: The burial sites "of remarkable scientific quality" were unearthed during preparatory work for rebuilding the ancient church's spire at the central spot where the transept crosses the nave, France's culture ministry announced late Monday. Among the tombs was a "completely preserved, human-shaped sarcophagus made of lead." It is thought the coffin was made for a senior dignitary in the 1300s -- the century after the cathedral's construction. As well as the tombs, elements of painted sculptures were found just beneath the current floor level of the cathedral, identified as parts of the original 13th-century rood screen -- an architectural element separating the altar area from the nave.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Worldcoin -- the billion-dollar startup that wants to give cryptocurrency to every living human by imaging their eyes -- has recently halted operations in at least seven countries due to a host of logistical hurdles that have prompted it to redraw its launch plans. From a report: Co-founded in 2020 by former Y Combinator chief Sam Altman, Worldcoin aims to photograph the irises of everyone on earth in order to identify them so it can distribute its new digital money fairly. So far, the company has collected images of the eyes of hundreds of thousands of people in about 20 countries. But the process has been bedeviled by problems such as uneven smartphone access, confused users and fraud attempts. Worldcoin has suspended its work in multiple countries after local contractors departed or regulations made doing business impossible. After technical challenges, it also instituted a new requirement that anyone signing up must have a smartphone -- limiting its reach in developing nations, which have been key to the company's vision. Worldcoin has also repeatedly delayed its target launch date, which is now set for later this year. Worldcoin co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Alex Blania said in an interview last week that these setbacks are the natural result of "very aggressive testing" for a young startup. The company has grown from 10 employees to 100 in the last year, Blania said, and it's still experimenting as it hones its operations. "You're still talking to a Series A company, not an Uber," he said. "Things are not perfect."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Love them or hate them, NFTs will soon be coming to Instagram. From a report: Speaking at SXSW, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that digital collectibles would be arriving on Instagram "in the near term." "We're working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term," he said. He didn't detail exactly how that would take shape, but suggested people would be able to show off their existing NFTs and potentially mint new ones. "I'm not ready to kind of announce exactly what that's going to be today. But over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Our universe is connected by a cosmic web made of giant threads of dark matter and gas that stretch across millions of light years and intersect at "nodes" populated by dense clusters of galaxies. This vast network shapes the distribution and evolution of galaxies in fundamental ways that scientists are trying to unravel with ever-sharper observations and advanced simulations. Now, a team led by Callum Donnan, a postgraduate student in astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, have identified a key correlation between the chemical makeup of galaxies and their location within the cosmic web. Using both real-life observations and computer simulations, the team found that "galaxies closer to nodes [display] higher chemical enrichment than those farther away," a discovery that reveals some of the mysterious dynamics that link the universe, according to a study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy. To home in on this question, Donnan and his colleagues examined galaxies within about a billion light years of the Milky Way observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in New Mexico, which covers a huge area of the sky. The team studied the elemental makeup of gasses in the interstellar spaces within these real-life galaxies, a property that is known as gas-phase metallicity. The results revealed that galaxies close to the nodes of the cosmic web were richer in "metals," which in astronomy refers to any element heavier than helium. A weaker correlation was also observed with proximity to the web's filaments, which are the threads that stretch across the universe and link nodes together. The team ran sophisticated cosmological simulations using the IllustrisTNG platform, which supported the observational findings. Significantly, the approach revealed that a galaxy's position in the cosmic web modulates its chemical content even when other factors, such as the density of a particular region in the universe, are taken into account. Naturally, that raises the question of why galaxies located near nodes are enriched with more metals compared to those distributed along filaments or in empty "voids" within the cosmic web. Donnan's team isolated two major drivers of this relationship: The absorption of gas from outside of galaxies and the evolution of stars and dark matter inside of them. Galaxies feed on gasses that are strewn across space in the intergalactic medium, but those that are further from nodes consume much more of this outside material than those close to nodes. Since intergalactic gas is metal-poor, it dilutes the enriched gas of far-flung galaxies, lowering their overall gas-phase metallicities. Galaxies near nodes don't consume as much of this metal-poor material, which helps to keep them chemically enriched with higher concentrations of heavier elements. In addition, galaxies close to nodes seem to have matured earlier than those located at a distance. These galaxies had a head-start in birthing new stars and collecting dark matter, which is a mysterious substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Longtime Slashdot reader Mike Bouma writes: Retro Recipes LLC has previewed prototype serial #01 of the "A500 mini" Amiga retro console on YouTube. The console comes with 25 preinstalled games including Worms: The Director's Cut, Simon the Sorcerer, The Chaos Engine, Super Cars 2 and Speedball 2. Additional games can be played in WHDLoad (.lha archived) format through a USB stick. The device comes included with a gamepad and mouse that can also be bought separately. The A500 mini has a HDMI video output and is scheduled for release on April 8th 2022.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sophos threat researcher Nick Gregory discovered a hole in Linux's netfilter firewall program that's "exploitable to achieve kernel code execution (via ROP [return-oriented programming]), giving full local privilege escalation, container escape, whatever you want." ZDNet reports: Behind almost all Linux firewalls tools such as iptables; its newer version, nftables; firewalld; and ufw, is netfilter, which controls access to and from Linux's network stack. It's an essential Linux security program, so when a security hole is found in it, it's a big deal. [...] This problem exists because netfilter doesn't handle its hardware offload feature correctly. A local, unprivileged attacker can use this to cause a denial-of-service (DoS), execute arbitrary code, and cause general mayhem. Adding insult to injury, this works even if the hardware being attacked doesn't have offload functionality! That's because, as Gregory wrote to a security list, "Despite being in code dealing with hardware offload, this is reachable when targeting network devices that don't have offload functionality (e.g. lo) as the bug is triggered before the rule creation fails." This vulnerability is present in the Linux kernel versions 5.4 through 5.6.10. It's listed as Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE-2022-25636), and with a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 7.8), this is a real badie. How bad? In its advisory, Red Hat said, "This flaw allows a local attacker with a user account on the system to gain access to out-of-bounds memory, leading to a system crash or a privilege escalation threat." So, yes, this is bad. Worse still, it affects recent major distribution releases such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.x; Debian Bullseye; Ubuntu Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 15.3. While the Linux kernel netfilter patch has been made, the patch isn't available yet in all distribution releases.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: Google had plenty of news about Stadia, the consumer-facing aspect of its cloud gaming products, at its Google for Games Developer Summit. On the flip side of that is the white-label platform Google's been working on: a way for other companies to license the game streaming tech that powers Stadia. Previously, that B2B offering was believed to be known as Google Stream. Google has now confirmed more details about the offering, including its name. It's now called Immersive Stream for Games (which doesn't exactly roll off the tongue as smoothly as Google Stream). The Stadia team built it with the help of the folks at Google Cloud. The company says the service will allow companies to run their own game trials, let users play full games, offer subscription bundles or have full storefronts. In other words, publishers might be able to run their own versions of Stadia with their own libraries of games, branding and custom user interface. We've seen a version of Immersive Stream for Games in action. Last year, Google teamed up with AT&T to offer people a way to play Batman: Arkham Knight for free via the cloud. Thousands of folks took advantage of the offer. AT&T plans to offer its customers access to another game soon with the help of Immersive Stream for Games. While that version of Batman: Arkham Knight was only available on desktop and laptop web browsers, the next game will run on mobile devices too. If all goes well, it could be a decent way for AT&T to show off what its 5G network can do. Immersive Stream for Games will include other features Google revealed for Stadia today, including a way to offer free trials of full games and a project aimed at making it easier to port games so they run on Stadia tech, as well as analytics. Developers and publishers can send Google an inquiry for more details.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a report: While US health experts closely monitor upticks of COVID-19 cases in Europe as well as the global rise of the omicron subvariant BA.2, Pfizer is renewing calls for fourth doses of COVID-19 vaccine. In an interview Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said that a fourth dose -- aka a second booster -- is "necessary." "The protection what we are getting from the third [doses], it is good enough -- actually, quite good for hospitalizations and deaths," Dr. Bourla said. But, "it's not that good against infections" with omicron, and "it doesn't last very long." He reported that Pfizer is "working very diligently" to come up with a new dose that will protect against all variants and provide longer-lasting protection.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Chip designer and licensor to the stars, Arm, has reportedly dropped around 1,000 workers onto unemployment queues. The Register reports: An email to staff from Arm CEO Rene Haas, seen and reported by the UK's Daily Telegraph, states: "To stay competitive, we need to remove duplication of work now that we are one Arm; stop work that is no longer critical to our future success; and think about how we get work done." Haas, who has been in the chief exec's chair for about a month, added Arm needs "to be more disciplined about our costs and where we're investing." "I write this knowing that although it is the right thing to do for Arm's future, this is not going to be easy," he added. Between 12 and 15 per cent of staff will be let go as a result globally. The biz employs 6,400 worldwide. The job cuts come just a month after the collapse of the company's $40 billion sale to Nvidia. ARM is now pursuing a potential IPO, according to Bloomberg.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Fueled by manic demand during the early days of Covid, Peloton spent the next two years chasing a dream of fitness dominance. From a report: If Peloton's story thus far were a Peloton class, it would be a high-intensity one, perhaps even a Tabata ride. Everyone would pedal as fast as they could, recover for not long enough, then do it again, as a charismatic figure on the screen urged them on with promises of transformational personal growth and of the massiveness of the total addressable market of subscription fitness. Midway through, the instructor would announce that the 20-minute class would actually go for an hour. Here and there, riders would injure themselves. There would be technical issues with the machines. At the end, right after recommending a five-minute post-ride stretching class and intoning his mantra -- "We're not a stationary bike company, we're not a treadmill company, we are an innovation company that is at the nexus of fitness, technology, and media!" -- the instructor would announce his transition to a new role at the company. It would be exhilarating and entertaining, but perhaps not a ride you'd want to do every day. [...] The bring-your-own-bike model holds evident appeal for Barry McCarthy (new CEO), who's less interested in the physical machines than in his company's content. "The magic happens in the tablet," he says. He muses that perhaps the Peloton screen should be an open platform where third-party programmers can place apps. Or maybe the company could try the inkjet printer business model, offering machines for cheap and making money through higher monthly subscription fees. At the moment, you can ride your bike even if you're not paying for classes. McCarthy plans to experiment with making those payments mandatory. (On March 10, the company announced such a test, saying it would create a monthly subscription that combines the price of its hardware and content and lacks an upfront hardware payment.) In all of this, McCarthy says he'll let the data be his instructor. It's a familiar narrative: Startup founder gives way to the bean counters and market researchers. Peloton, more than perhaps any other company, trades on charisma -- of its instructors, of its corporate leadership, of its hardcore users cheerfully touting the brand. But even cults need accountants.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
juul_advocate shares a report from iTWire: A developer who had more than two decades of service in the Debian GNU/Linux project was stripped of his status in December leading to him deciding to leave the project. Norbert Preining told iTWire in response to a query he decided that having been graded down to Debian maintainer was not something he wanted after all these years. He has now joined the Arch Linux project. Preining said what basically happened was that the [Debian account manager (DAM) team] thought he was bullying members of the project. "I guess they are referring to my run-in with Martina Ferrari where she called me out in very strange and unfounded ways, which started a long lasting disagreement between her and me, and the blog post about Lars [Wirzenius, a project member] which was nothing more than a selection of quotes from Lars' own blogs," he added. "Anyway, these were all old things, but DAM still prefers to paint me in the light of 'You have been bullying members of the project for years' (quote from Enrico Zini on the debian-private mailing list) and that I cannot communicate with the Community Team, which back then included Martina, and which has again hit me in the back by allowing other members in Debian (I refrain from naming them here, but will do in my blog post) to bully me, even in unrelated forums and on IRC. The bottom line is that Martina, Lars, and those others are close friends of DAM and CT [community team] and the 'leading circle' in Debian, and thus it seems that they are exempted from adhering to the same community standards." Preining said the situation that led to his demotion was "more or less" about political correctness, adding that he'll explain more about the events in a blog post later on.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Seven long, long years ago, Google started offering users a way to buy a domain without having to deal with a host provider. Now, Google Domains is at last out of beta as a full-fledged product. Engadget: Google says, to date, millions of people have used the service to manage a domain. It has added more features and tools to Domains over the years. Folks in 26 countries can now use the full version of the service. [...] To mark the occasion of Domains becoming a fully formed entity, Google's offering new and returning users a discount until April 15th.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: The Senate passed a measure that would make Daylight Savings Time permanent across the U.S. The bill -- the Sunshine Protection Act co-sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) -- was passed by unanimous consent. It would make Daylight Savings time permanent in 2023. If the legislation clears the House and is signed into law by President Biden, it will mean Americans will no longer have to change their clocks twice a year. Health groups have called for an end to the seasonal shifting of clocks, a ritual first adopted in the U.S. more than a century ago. At a house hearing last week, health experts cited sleep deprivation and health problems as negative effects associated with changing clocks. Nearly two-thirds of Americans want to stop changing their clocks, according to a 2021 Economist/YouGov poll. Axios has learned that Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) "will be leading a letter to Speaker Pelosi calling for immediate House passage of his bill." By making DST permanent, legislators are prioritizing more daylight in the evening, which could improve our health and allow for more sunshine during the most productive hours of the day. According to a new study published yesterday, sleeping in the dark may reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes. "The results from this study demonstrate that just a single night of exposure to moderate room lighting during sleep can impair glucose and cardiovascular regulation, which are risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome," said study author Dr Phyllis Zee.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Democratic lawmakers are entering a crypto collision course. Politico reports: Questions around how to police digital currency and whether to support its adoption are driving a rift not just between the party's liberal and centrist wings but also among progressives who often see eye-to-eye on financial regulation. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts -- who has long led the left's charge to crack down on banks and Wall Street -- has emerged as one of the party's most vocal cryptocurrency critics, warning that it exposes consumers to danger, is ripe for financial crimes and is an environmental threat because of its electricity usage. But a new generation of progressives -- and a number of other senior Democrats -- are embracing the startup industry. They're arguing against regulations that could stifle what proponents say is a new avenue for financial inclusion and a breakthrough alternative to traditional banks. "The project of radically decentralizing the internet and finance strikes me as a profoundly progressive cause," Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) said in an interview. "You should never define any technology by its worst uses. ... There's more to crypto than ransomware, just like there's more to money than money laundering." The simmering conflict is set to intensify in the coming months. President Joe Biden last week asked federal agencies to start solidifying the federal government's approach to crypto, framing the step as supportive of innovation rather than an industry crackdown. The price of Bitcoin surged on the news. Separately, Democratic lawmakers have started to draft a host of crypto regulation bills that are also exposing a wide range of views on the government's role in the $1.7 trillion market for digital assets. The lack of consensus among Democrats means it's unlikely Congress will act anytime soon to pass major legislation laying out the direction of regulation of the new market. Some Democrats and lobbyists had expected initial votes early this year, but that timeline has slipped.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The US astronaut Mark Vande Hei has made it through nearly a year in space, but now faces what could be his trickiest assignment: riding a Russian capsule back to Earth in the midst of deepening tension between the two countries. From a report: Nasa insists Vande Hei's homecoming at the end of the month remains unchanged, even as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has resulted in canceled launches, broken contracts and an escalating war of words from the leader of the Russian Space Agency. Many worry Dmitry Rogozin is putting decades of peaceful partnership at risk, most notably at the International Space Station (ISS). Vande Hei, who on Tuesday will break the US single spaceflight record of 340 days, is due to leave with two Russians aboard a Soyuz capsule for touchdown in Kazakhstan on 30 March. He will have logged 355 days in space. The world record of 438 days belongs to Russia. The retired Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly, America's record-holder until Tuesday, is among those sparring with Rogozin, a longtime ally of Vladimir Putin. Kelly has returned a medal to the Russian embassy in Washington but believes the two sides "can hold it together" in space. "We need an example set that two countries that historically have not been on the most friendly of terms, can still work somewhere peacefully. And that somewhere is the International Space Station. That's why we need to fight to keep it," Kelly said. Nasa wants to keep the space station running until 2030, as do the European, Japanese and Canadian space agencies. The Russians have not committed beyond the original end date of 2024 or so.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
DigitalOcean, in a blog post: I am excited to announce that DigitalOcean has acquired the CSS-Tricks website, a learning site with 6,500 articles, videos, guides and other content focused on frontend development. CSS-Tricks will broaden and complement our existing library of content, furthering DigitalOcean's reach with both frontend and full-stack developers, and supports our community strategy, a key differentiator for DigitalOcean in the cloud computing space. CSS-Tricks will continue operating as a standalone site supported by DigitalOcean, and CSS-Tricks founder Chris Coyier will support CSS-Tricks in an advisory capacity. At DigitalOcean we take great pride in our commitment to the developer and startup communities. We truly believe that our community is bigger than just us, and we have demonstrated this through our creation of more than 6,000 high-quality developer tutorials and approximately 30,000 community-generated questions & answers, hosting of community-focused events such as deploy, and support of the open source community through Hacktoberfest and other initiatives.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft has finally released its DirectStorage API to game developers. This means one of the most promising features of the Xbox Series X is coming to the PC. From a report: DirectStorage promises to bring faster loading times thanks to optimized NVMe SSD accesses. Previously, a game could only perform one in/out access at a time. This didn't present any issues in the days of hard drives, but now that most gaming PC's have SSDs that can transfer gigabytes per second with hundreds of thousands of in out operations per second (IOPS) it's clear that a better method was needed. Enter DirectStorage. DirectStorage lets an NVMe SSD to reach its full performance potential by allowing multiple I/O operations concurrently. It allows assets to be transferred directly to the GPU, leading to better efficiency.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon has worried for years that it tricks customers into signing up for Prime subscriptions. A previously undisclosed inquiry from the Federal Trade Commission has put more pressure on the company to fix it. Business Insider: Internal documents obtained by Insider show the company has been concerned since at least 2017 that user interface designs on Amazon.com have led customers to feel manipulated into signing up for Prime. These design decisions, commonly known as "dark patterns," push customers into acting unintentionally often through misleading imagery or intentionally vague offers. For example, a single click on the "Get FREE Two-Day Delivery with Prime" tab at check out -- with no additional confirmation step -- gets shoppers automatically enrolled into a 30-day free trial of Amazon's Prime program, which later converts to a paid membership unless the user cancels it. For cancellations, users have to jump through a number of pages to end the subscription. Amazon was aware of these complaints for years but did not take serious action, according to these previously unreported internal documents and six current and former employees who spoke to Insider. In several cases, fixes for these issues were proposed and considered, but resulted in lower subscription growth when tested, and were shelved by executives, the documents show.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft won a contract worth up to $22 billion to build HoloLens-like goggles for the US military. The contract has had delays and quality problems amid strategic confusion in its mixed reality unit. Microsoft is expecting a negative reception due to ongoing problems with the device's reliability and its performance in low light environments, adding uncertainty ahead of the planned operational tests in May, according to the email. "We (Microsoft) are going into the event expecting negative feedback from the customer," a Microsoft employee wrote on Thursday in a memo to members of the company's military contract team, including AI and mixed reality general manager David Marra. "We expect soldier sentiment to continue to be negative as reliability improvements have been minimal from previous events."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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