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Uber is launching a dedicated advertising arm in a push to cash in on a captive audience and tap the higher-margin revenue stream. From a report: The new division encompasses ad offerings on Uber's ride-hailing and food-delivery apps. On Uber Eats, for example, brands will be able to pay for sponsored listings, prominent placing on the homepage or checkout, and featured menu items. Uber also rolled out Journey Ads, a new service that runs advertisements for ride-share users while they wait for their driver and during their trip. More than 40 brands have partnered with Uber to run Journey Ads, including NBCUniversal and Heineken NV, Uber said in a statement on Wednesday. The move expands Uber's prior efforts to monetize an audience of 122 million monthly active users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: We've said it before, and we'll say it again: USB-C is confusing. A USB-C port or cable can support a range of speeds, power capabilities, and other features, depending on the specification used. Today, USB-C can support various data transfer rates, from 0.48Gbps (USB 2.0) all the way to 40Gbps (USB4, Thunderbolt 3, and Thunderbolt 4). Things are only about to intensify, as today the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) published the USB4 Version 2.0 spec. It adds optional support for 80Gbps bidirectional bandwidth as well as theoptional ability to send or receive data at up to 120Gbps. The USB-IF first gave us word of USB4 Version 2.0 in September, saying it would support a data transfer rate of up to 80Gbps in either direction (40Gbps per lane, four lanes total), thanks to a new physical layer architecture (PHY) based on PAM-3 signal encoding. For what it's worth, Intel also demoed Thunderbolt at 80Gbps but hasn't released an official spec yet. USB4 Version 2.0 offers a nice potential bump over the original USB4 spec, which introduced optional support for 40Gbps operation. You just have to be sure to check the spec sheets to know what sort of performance you're getting. Once USB4 Version 2.0 products come out, you'll be able to hit 80Gbps with USB-C passive cables that currently operate at 40Gbps, but you'll have to buy a new cable if you want a longer, active 80Gbps.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Inside Netflix's movie studio, top executives lobbied Ted Sarandos, the company's co-chief executive, for much of this year to experiment with releasing more Netflix original movies broadly in theaters WSJ is reporting. From the report: They outlined their case in a memo shared in June on the company network. Some argued that Netflix is leaving hundreds of millions in box-office receipts on the table with its current strategy of showing only select movies in a few hundred theaters for at most a few weeks before streaming them, according to people familiar with the matter. Other executives thought showing movies in more theaters would create valuable buzz for the streaming service. Soon after, in an internal meeting, Mr. Sarandos told Netflix studio leaders that he had doubts, and still felt that streaming is the future of entertainment, movies included. Instead, he suggested that studio chief Scott Stuber and other executives meet with their counterparts at Sony Pictures Entertainment to see if they would agree to let Netflix stream Sony's movies just four to six weeks after they came out in theaters, instead of after six to eight months, as spelled out in a partnership the two studios reached last year. If a new deal could be struck, some executives said, it would help Netflix understand how the company might benefit from streaming a movie shortly after it had been shown on thousands of big screens across the country. The debate inside Netflix over how best to distribute its films -- details of which haven't been previously reported -- is one that is playing out across an entertainment industry that has been rapidly upended by the rise of streaming video. Every major company in Hollywood is facing some version of the same question: What is the best way to release a movie? Is it in a cinema, with stadium seating, popcorn and digital surround sound? Or is it at home, streamed on a flat-screen TV or a laptop? Should movies go to theaters first, then to streaming, or should they be released at the same time? How long should a studio wait between theatrical and streaming release? How many theaters should show a film? Should all movies go to the big screen, or just splashy action thrillers?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan plans to further loosen cryptocurrency rules by making it easier to list virtual coins, potentially burnishing the country's allure for Binance and rival foreign digital-asset exchanges. From a report: The body that governs crypto exchanges plans to allow them to list coins without going through its lengthy screening process, unless the tokens are new to Japan's market, according to documents seen by Bloomberg News. The relaxed rule could take effect as early as December, helping startups compete with established players by smoothing the process of listing tokens and lowering the bar for market entry. The documents outlining the changes were distributed to member firms recently. By March 2024, the Japan Virtual and Crypto assets Exchange Association could also scrap pre-screenings for coins new to the nation, as well as for tokens issued through initial coin or exchange offerings, Vice Chairman Genki Oda said in comments he described as personal views.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In July, Reddit jumped on the NFT train, launching an NFT-based marketplace that allows users to purchase blockchain-based profile pictures for a fixed rate. Given the general sentiment around NFTs today, you might assume -- like me -- that the experiment ended poorly. But the opposite's the case apparently . Today during a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt, Reddit chief product officer Pali Bhat revealed that over three million Redditors have used Reddit's Vault blockchain wallet to create over three million crypto wallets to date. Most of those -- 2.5 million -- were created to purchase NFT avatars that can be used as profile pics on the platform, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Whon Namkoong, the co-chief executive of Kakao, has resigned in a remarkable demonstration of corporate accountability after a fire incident at an SK C&C data center in the south of Seoul caused a mass outage over the weekend and disrupted Kakao's several services, including messenger, ride-hailing, payment, banking and gaming. TechCrunch reports: Namkoong, who joined Kakao in 2015, was elevated to the co-CEO role this March. At a press conference on Wednesday, co-CEOs of Kakao apologized for the mass outage "for such an extended period." Namkoong said that he feels "the heavy burden of responsibility" over the incident, adding that the company will do its best to restore the faith of users. Euntaek Hong, co-CEO of Kakao, who led the firm alongside Namkoong and is currently leading Kakao's emergency taskforce team, will remain the firm as the sole head of Kakao, per a company filing. Kakao said today morning it had restored additional services like Kakaomail and TalkChannel. Most of its services are in almost full operation, with some remaining partially down. Kakao's slow recovery process was caused by the company's lack of owned server infrastructure and "high dependence" on the SK C&C data center, which caught fire, analysts at Bernstein said in a report this week. Kakao also didn't have a well-distributed backup system, they added. Hong said at a press conference today that the company plans to invest 460 billion KRW (~$325 million) to build its own data center from next year, aiming to complete it in the following year. According to a report in August, the company said its Kakao Talk messenger app has more than 47 million active users in South Korea and 53 million globally.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today, tech archivist Jason Scott announced a new website called Discmaster that lets anyone search through 91.7 million vintage computer files pulled from CD-ROM releases and floppy disks. The files include images, text documents, music, games, shareware, videos, and much more. The files on Discmaster come from the Internet Archive, uploaded by thousands of people over the years. The new site pulls them together behind a search engine with the ability to perform detailed searches by file type, format, source, file size, file date, and many other options. Discmaster is the work of a group of anonymous history-loving programmers who approached Scott to host it for them. Scott says that Discmaster is "99.999 percent" the work of that anonymous group, right down to the vintage gray theme that is compatible with web browsers for older machines. Scott says he slapped a name on it and volunteered to host it on his site. And while Scott is an employee of the Internet Archive, he says that Discmaster is "100 percent unaffiliated" with that organization. One of the highlights of Discmaster is that it has already done a lot of file format conversion on the back end, making the vintage files more accessible. For example, you can search for vintage music files -- such as MIDI or even digitized Amiga sounds -- and listen to them directly in your browser without any extra tools necessary. The same thing goes for early-90s low-resolution video files, images in obscure formats, and various types of documents. "It's got all the conversion to enable you to preview things immediately," says Scott. "So there's no additional external installation. That, to me, is the fundamental power of what we're dealing with here." "The value proposition is the value proposition of any freely accessible research database," Scott told Ars Technica. "People are enabled to do deep dives into more history, reference their findings, and encourage others to look in the same place." "[Discmaster] is probably, to me, one of the most important computer history research project opportunities that we've had in 10 years," says Scott. "It's not done. They've analyzed 7,000 and some-odd CD-ROMs. And they're about to do another 8,000."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix wants to extend its nascent gaming efforts to PCs and TVs, and it's looking to launch its own cloud gaming service to do so, VP of game development Mike Verdu confirmed at TechCrunch Disrupt on Tuesday. Protocol reports: "We're very seriously exploring a cloud gaming offering," Verdu said. "We'll approach this the same way as we did with mobile -- start small, be humble, be thoughtful -- but it is a step we think we should take," Verdu added. "The extension into the cloud is really about reaching the other devices where people experience Netflix." Verdu didn't share many additional details, but suggested the company was looking to launch more than just casual games on TVs. He declined to say whether Netflix would build its own game controllers like Google has done for its failed Stadia service, but he said the titles wouldn't rely on TV remotes for input. [...] Verdu called Netflix's expansion into gaming a pivotal moment for the company, but admitted that it was a slow and deliberate multiyear effort. However, the company may already be seeing some rewards from those efforts. "We're seeing some encouraging signs of gameplay leading to higher retention," the company wrote in its letter to investors Tuesday. The report notes that Netflix has released a total of 35 games for mobile devices thus far, with an additional 55 games in its pipeline. "Fourteen of those games are being built by Netflix's own studios, Verdu said, adding that the company was going to launch an additional studio in Southern California soon." Further reading: Netflix Password-Sharing Crackdown Will Roll Out Globally In 'Early 2023'Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At least five hours sleep a night may cut the over-50s' chances of multiple chronic health problems, researchers say. The BBC reports: The PLoS Medicine study tracked the health and sleep of UK civil servants. All of the about 8,000 participants were asked: How many hours of sleep do you have on an average weeknight?" Some also wore a wrist-watch sleep tracker. And they were checked for chronic conditions, including diabetes, cancer and heart disease, over two decades of follow-up: - Those who slept five hours or less around the age of 50 had a 30% greater risk of multiple ailments than those who slept seven hours- Shorter sleep at 50 was also associated with a higher risk of death during the study period, mainly linked to the increased risk of chronic diseaseRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: With a few notable exceptions -- such as during the 1918 influenza pandemic, World War II and the HIV crisis -- life expectancy in the U.S. has had gradual upward trajectory over the past century. But that progress has steeply reversed in the past two years as COVID and other tragedies have cut millions of lives short. U.S. life expectancy fell by a total of 2.7 years (PDF) between 2019 and 2021 to 76.1 years -- the lowest it has been since 1996, according to provisional data recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The drop was 3.1 years for male individuals and 2.3 years for female ones. Non-Hispanic Native American and Alaska Native peoples saw the biggest decline -- a staggering 6.6 years. But every racial and ethnic group suffered: life expectancy decreased by 4.2 years in the Hispanic population, by four years in the non-Hispanic Black population, by 2.4 years in the non-Hispanic white population and by 2.1 years in the non-Hispanic Asian population. "Basically, all the gains between 1996 and 2019 are as if they never happened," says Elizabeth Arias, director of the U.S. life table program at the NCHS and co-author of a report on the new data. COVID deaths drove much of the decline as the country grappled with the world's worst pandemic in a century. But unintentional injuries -- largely driven by drug overdoses -- also played a significant role, the data show. Increases in deaths from heart disease, chronic liver disease and suicide also contributed. "This isn't supposed to happen," says Philip Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, who studies demographic trends and inequality. "I think it's a wake-up call for us ... that we can't put public health on autopilot; that we don't have this invisible hand of development just raising living standards over time." The drop in life expectancy would have been even more stark if it had not been partially offset by declines in influenza and pneumonia deaths, which were likely reduced by pandemic-related precautions such as masking and social distancing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The failure rate of semiconductors shipped from China to Russia has increased by 1,900 percent in recent months, according to Russian national business daily Kommersant. The Register reports: Quoting an anonymous source, Kommersant states that before Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine the defect rate in imported silicon was two percent. Since that war commenced, Russian manufacturers have apparently faced 40 percent failure rates. Even a two percent defect rate is sub-optimal, because products made of many components can therefore experience considerable quality problems. Forty percent failure rates mean supplies are perilously close to being unfit for purpose. According to Kommersant, Russian electronics manufacturers are not enjoying life at all because, on top of high failure rates, gray market gear doesn't flow with the same speed as legit kit and supply chains are currently very kinked indeed inside Russia. The newspaper lays the blame on economic sanctions that have seen many major businesses quit Russia. Gray market distributors and other opportunistic operators have been left as the only entities willing to deal with Russian businesses. Gray market folks are not renowned for their sterling customer service nor their commitment to quality. They get away with it because buyers of products with -- ahem -- unconventional origins self-incriminate if they complain to authorities. Perhaps they're even dumping dud product on Russian buyers, knowing that they can't easily access alternatives.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Everyone visiting Qatar for the World Cup needs to install spyware on their phone," writes security researcher Bruce Schneier. His comments are in response to an article from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), reporting: Everyone traveling to Qatar during the football World Cup will be asked to download two apps called Ehteraz and Hayya. Briefly, Ehteraz is an covid-19 tracking app, while Hayya is an official World Cup app used to keep track of match tickets and to access the free Metro in Qatar. In particular, the covid-19 app Ehteraz asks for access to several rights on your mobile., like access to read, delete or change all content on the phone, as well as access to connect to WiFi and Bluetooth, override other apps and prevent the phone from switching off to sleep mode. The Ehteraz app, which everyone over 18 coming to Qatar must download, also gets a number of other accesses such as an overview of your exact location, the ability to make direct calls via your phone and the ability to disable your screen lock. The Hayya app does not ask for as much, but also has a number of critical aspects. Among other things, the app asks for access to share your personal information with almost no restrictions. In addition, the Hayya app provides access to determine the phone's exact location, prevent the device from going into sleep mode, and view the phone's network connections. It remains to be seen whether Qatar will strictly enforce the installation of these apps. "I know people who visited Saudi Arabia when that country had a similarly sketchy app requirement," says Schneier. "Some of them just didn't bother downloading the apps, and were never asked about it at the border."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Germany's cybersecurity chief has been fired after allegations of being excessively close to Russia through an association he helped set up. The BBC reports: Arne Schonbohm had led the Federal Cyber Security Authority (BSI) -- charged with protecting government communications -- since 2016. German media have accused him of having had links with people involved with Russian intelligence services. The interior ministry is investigating allegations made against him. But it confirmed he had been fired with immediate effect. Mr Schonbohm had come under scrutiny after his potential links to a Russian company through a previous role were highlighted by Jan Bohmermann, the host of one of Germany's most popular late-night TV shows. Before leading the BSI, Mr Schonbohm had helped set up and run the Cyber Security Council Germany, a private association which advises business and policymakers on cybersecurity issues. He is said to have maintained close ties to the association and attended their 10th anniversary celebrations in September. One of the association's members was a cybersecurity company called Protelion, which was a subsidiary of a Russian firm reportedly established by a former member of the KGB honored by President Vladimir Putin. Protelion was ejected from the association last weekend, and Cyber Security Council Germany says the allegations of links to Russian intelligence are untrue.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from STAT: Research at Boston University that involved testing a lab-made hybrid version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is garnering heated headlines alleging the scientists involved could have unleashed a new pathogen. There is no evidence the work, performed under biosecurity level 3 precautions in BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, was conducted improperly or unsafely. In fact, it was approved by an internal biosafety review committee and Boston's Public Health Commission, the university said Monday night. But it has become apparent that the research team did not clear the work with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was one of the funders of the project. The agency indicated it is going to be looking for some answers as to why it first learned of the work through media reports. Emily Erbelding, director of NIAID's division of microbiology and infectious diseases, said the BU team's original grant applications did not specify that the scientists wanted to do this precise work. Nor did the group make clear that it was doing experiments that might involve enhancing a pathogen of pandemic potential in the progress reports it provided to NIAID. "I think we're going to have conversations over upcoming days," Erbelding told STAT in an interview. Asked if the research team should have informed NIAID of its intention to do the work, Erbelding said: "We wish that they would have, yes." The research has been posted online as a preprint (PDF), meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed. The senior author is Mohsan Saeed, from BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. STAT reached out to Saeed on Monday but had not received a response by the time this article was published. In the paper Saeed and colleagues reported on research they conducted that involved creating a hybrid or chimeric virus -- in which the spike protein of an Omicron version of SARS-2 was fused to a virus of the Wuhan strain, the original version that emerged from China in 2020. Omicron viruses first emerged in late 2021 and have since splintered into multiple different sub variants. The goal of the research was to determine if the mutations in the Omicron spike protein were responsible for this variant's increased ability to evade the immunity to SARS-2 that humans have built up, and whether the changes led to Omicron's lower rate of severity. The testing actually showed, though, that the chimeric virus was more lethal to a type of lab mice than Omicron itself, killing 80% of the mice infected. Importantly, the original Wuhan strain killed 100% of mice it was tested in. The conclusion of the study is that mutations in the spike protein of the Omicron variant are responsible for the strain's ability to evade immunity people have built up via vaccination, infections, or both, but they are not responsible for the apparent decrease in severity of the Omicron viruses. The university disputed the claims made by some media outlets that the work had created a more dangerous virus, saying: "In fact, this research made the virus [replication] less dangerous." They noted that other research groups have conducted similar work. "That 80% kill rate, that headline doesn't tell the whole story," Erbelding said. "Because Wuhan" -- the original strain -- "killed all the mice." The fatality rate seen in this strain of mice when they were infected with these viruses raises questions about how good a model they are for what happens when people are infected with SARS-2. The Wuhan strain killed less than 1% of people who were infected.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The new, 10th-generation iPad only supports the first-generation Apple Pencil, meaning that it requires an adapter to charge separately via a wired connection since the device has moved to USB-C. MacRumors reports: The new iPad has no magnetic wireless charger on the side to connect to the second-generation Apple Pencil. Only the first-generation Apple Pencil is supported by the device, which normally needs to be plugged into a Lightning port to charge. The iPad now has a USB-C port, meaning that the Apple Pencil can no longer be charged directly via the iPad. Entry-level iPad users who want to use the Apple Pencil will need to charge the accessory using a USB-C cable and a separate adapter. The first-generation Apple Pencil came with a female to female Lightning adapter allowing it to be charged separately, but now Apple is offering a new variant of the accessory called the "USB-C to Apple Pencil Adapter" that enables Apple Pencil users to charge. The adapter is available separately at a price of $9 for existing Apple Pencil users, while new Apple Pencil units include the adapter in the box. For those interested in a more powerful tablet, Apple announced the new sixth-generation iPad Pro, featuring the M2 chip that first debuted in the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro earlier this year and support for Wi-Fi 6E.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Flights into the Dallas area are being forced to take older, cumbersome routes and a runway at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was temporarily closed after aviation authorities said GPS signals there aren't reliable. The Federal Aviation Administration said in an emailed statement Tuesday it's investigating the possible jamming of the global-positioning system that aircraft increasingly use to guide them on more efficient routes and to runways. So far, the agency has found "no evidence of intentional interference," it said. American Airlines, the primary carrier at DFW, said the GPS issue is not affecting its operations. Southwest Airlines, which flies from nearby Love Field, said it also isn't experiencing any disruptions. The FAA reopened the closed runway earlier on Tuesday. The GPS problem -- despite the lack of impact -- highlights the risk of widespread reliance on the weak GPS radio signals from space used for everything from timing stock trades to guiding jetliners. The FAA occasionally warns pilots in advance of military testing that may degrade the GPS signals and pilots sometimes report short-lived problems, but the interference in Dallas is atypical, said Dan Streufert, founder of the flight-tracking website ADSBexchange.com. "In the US, it's very unusual to see this without a prior notice," Streufert said in an interview. ADSBExchange.com monitors aircraft data streams that indicate the accuracy of the GPS signals they are receiving and the website began seeing problems around Dallas on Monday, he said. The military has told the FAA it isn't conducting any operations that would interfere with GPS in that area, said a person familiar with the situation who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about it. The primary way FAA's air-traffic system tracks planes is based on GPS, but older radars and radio-direction beacons have remained in place as backups.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As part of Netflix's earning results today, which says the company reversed customer losses, Netflix plans to crack down on password sharing beginning in 2023. The Verge reports: After giving users the ability to transfer their profiles to new accounts last week, the streamer says it will start letting subscribers create sub-accounts starting next year in line with its plans to "monetize account sharing" more widely. [...] Earlier this year, Netflix reported losing subscribers for the first time in over 10 years, with the company's subscriber count dipping by another 1.3 million in the US and Canada and 1 million worldwide last quarter. To remedy this, Netflix has also been slowly nudging subscribers away from password sharing. The company conducted tests that prompted users in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru to pay extra for a sub-account if Netflix detected someone was using the owner's subscription outside of their household. It also tried out a way for users in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic to buy additional "homes" for accounts located outside of the subscriber's primary household. More recently, Netflix widely introduced a Profile Transfer tool that lets users easily transfer their personalized recommendations, viewing history, My List, saved games, and other settings to a new account after testing it in other countries. Last month, a report from Rest of World revealed frustration from users subject to the tests in Latin America. The earnings report (PDF) projects that the company's new ad-supported streaming service, which starts at $6.99 per month and launches in November, will help attract 4.5 million subscribers by year's end. This quarter it added 2.4 million subscribers and grew by 104,000 paid subscribers in the U.S. and Canada over the last three months, up from 73,000 in the same period last year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new report from The Information details more changes Google CEO Sundar Pichai's budget cuts are having across the company, with some divisions surviving and others getting ominous resource cuts. From a report: First, we have news that the hardware division, other than losing laptops, seems mostly safe. Google's biggest Android partner, Samsung, is in decline in many established markets, and Apple is hitting an all-time high in US market share last quarter. The report says Google views Apple as more of a problem than it has in the past, thanks to worries that regulators might shut down the usual multi-billion-dollar Google/Apple agreement to put Google Search on iPhones. If iPhones stop showing Google ads, the rise of Apple and fall of Samsung is one of the few things that could actually be a major problem for Google's revenue. According to the report, Google views itself as the solution to this problem. As a hedge against what the report calls the "further decline" of Samsung, Google is "doubling down" on its investment in Pixel hardware. Google is apparently doing this by "moving product development and software engineering staff working on features for non-Google hardware to work on Google-branded devices." The goal here is to not spend more money, so Google is apparently sacrificing partner devices to focus on the Pixel division. So what projects are seeing cuts? Google TV is one, with the report saying: "Executives also have discussed moving some product managers working on Google TV software for television sets" to Wear OS and the Pixel Tablet. This is the only OS called out as specifically receiving less OS development. A lot of this report seems to focus on cuts to Google Assistant's support for specific form factors, which is strange since Google Assistant is more or less the same on every platform. The whole point of the Assistant is one reliable, predictable voice assistant that lives everywhere, and it's not clear what platform-specific support needs to be done other than whipping up an app that can receive audio and read back results.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

News outlet The Wire is investigating its own reporting amid an explosive dispute with Meta. From a report: Last week, The Wire, a small but gutsy Indian news outlet, seemed to land one explosive punch after another on Meta, the social media giant that owns Instagram and Facebook. The California company had given an influential official from India's ruling party the extraordinary power to censor Instagram posts that he didn't like, The Wire reported, citing a document leaked by a Meta insider. A day later, The Wire reported that Meta executives were scrambling to find the mole who leaked the story, citing a new internal email the publication had obtained. Finally, after Meta executives denied both reports on social media -- and, in an unusual move, insisted that The Wire's documents appeared fabricated -- The Wire released a lengthy rebuttal on Saturday that the outlet said would lay to rest any doubts about its reporting. It did not. Instead, The Wire is now investigating itself. The publication said Tuesday it launched an internal review of its stories about Meta, adding a new twist to a sensational dispute between a reputed Indian news organization and a powerful Silicon Valley company -- a clash that has captivated the technology and media industries in both India and the United States.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon churns through workers at an astonishing rate, well above industry averages. From a report: According to a tranche of documents marked "Amazon Confidential" provided to Engadget and not previously reported on, that staggering attrition now has an associated cost. "[Worldwide] Consumer Field Operations is experiencing high levels of attrition (regretted and unregretted) across all levels, totaling an estimated $8 billion annually for Amazon and its shareholders," one of the documents, authored earlier this year, states. For a sense of scale, the company's net profit for its 2021 fiscal year was $33.36 billion. The documents, which include several internal research papers, slide decks and spreadsheets, paint a bleak picture of Amazon's ability to retain employees, and how the current strategy may be financially harmful to the organization as a whole. They also broadly condemn Amazon for not adequately using or tracking data in its efforts to train and promote employees, an ironic shortcoming for a company which has a reputation for obsessively harvesting consumer information. These documents were provided to Engadget by a source who believes these gaps in accounting represent a lack of internal controls. "Regretted attrition" -- that is, workers choosing to leave the company -- "occurs twice as often as unregretted attrition" -- people being laid off or fired -- "across all levels and businesses," according to this research. The paper, published in January of 2022, states that the prior year's data "indicates regretted attrition [represents] a low of 69.5% to a high of 81.3% across all levels (Tier 1 through Level 10 employees) suggesting a distinct retention issue." By way of explanation, Tier 1 would include entry-level roles like the company's thousands of warehouse associates, while a vice president would be positioned at Level 10. It also notes that "only one out of three new hires in 2021" stay with the company for 90 or more days.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joey Sneddon, reporting at OMG! Ubuntu: In September I tweeted a screenshot of something unexpected that has started to show up in the terminal when I ran system updates. It didn't enrage me at the time (and it kinda still doesn't) but I did find it a little ... Off. Now, if you're suitably tuned-in to the Linux newswire and/or an avid attendee of social media you'll probably heard about the drama in question. If you haven't, then allow me to... Yes, the furore is over an "ad" for Ubuntu Pro, Canonical's revamped support offering that replaces/augments Ubuntu Advantage (which has been around for many years) that appears in the terminal when managing system updates. Other people are calling it an "ad" (hence quote marks). I prefer the term plug (which, it turns out, some people aren't familiar with; it means to mention something in order to promote it). For although this sentence is technically advertising something, in this case Ubuntu Pro, the offering itself is free for regular users (on up-to five devices). Thus, it's not like this is an "ad" that generates Canonical revenue. It's more akin to a public service announcement to raise awareness.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced this week that it's thinking about updating its energy labeling rules to require manufacturers to provide people with repair instructions. From a report: According to the press release on the FTC website, the commission wants to revise its energy-saving Energy Guide Rules, and is looking for public comment. "We look forward to hearing from the public on our initiative to reduce energy costs, promote competition, and strengthen repairability," Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the press release. "As prices rise, the Commission will continue to take aggressive action to protect consumers' pocketbooks and strengthen their right to repair their own products." You've probably seen the yellow label on some appliances like your water heater or the back of your refrigerator. The FTC run program tells consumers how much energy the product uses in a year and what that might cost you. The proposed expansion would also make manufacturers share repair instructions with its customers. "Repairing a product instead of replacing it is one of the best ways to cut down the environmental impact of our appliances. Including repair requirements as part of the Energy Guide program is the right thing for the planet and important for consumers," Nathan Proctor, PIRG's Senior Right to Repair Campaign Director, said in a press release after the announcement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has restored Russian social network VKontatke and webmail provider Mail.Ru to the App Store, three weeks after removing them both for sanctions violations. From a report: The two services, home-grown versions of Facebook and Gmail with domestic market share to match, were removed from Apple's platforms in late September, following a wave of British sanctions that targeted the financial organisations that own them. At the time of removal, Apple had said it was complying with the sanctions issued by the UK government.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Playing sounds while you slumber might help to strengthen some memories while weakening others, research suggests, with experts noting the approach might one day help people living with traumatic recollections. From a report: Previous work has shown that when a sound is played as a person learns an association between two words, the memory of that word association is boosted if the same sound is played while the individual sleeps. Now researchers have found fresh evidence the approach could also be used to weaken such memories. "We can an actually induce forgetting of specific material whilst people are asleep," said Dr Aidan Horner, co-author of the study from the University of York. Writing in the journal Learning & Memory, Horner and colleagues report how 29 participants were shown pairs of words on a computer screen, one of which was an object word, such as bicycle, while the other was either a place word, such as office, or a person, such as David Beckham. The process was repeated for 60 different object words, and in the course of the process both possible pairings were shown, resulting in 120 associations. As the pairs flashed up, participants heard the object word being spoken out loud. The team tested the participants on a subset of the associations, presenting them with one of the words and asking them to select a paired word from a list of six options. Participants then spent a night in the team's sleep laboratory. Once they had entered a particular sleep state -- as judged by electrodes placed on their heads -- they were played audio of 30 of the object words. The team tested participants on the word associations the next day. The results reveal participants' ability to recall the first word they had learned to pair with an object word was boosted if audio of the latter was played as they slept, compared with if it was not played. However, their ability to recall the second word they learned to associate with the same object decreased relative to the audio-free scenario. "Just looking at the actual raw scores, the performance goes down from about 50% to just over 40%," said Horner. However, the team found the effects were only present when the pairings had not been tested pre-sleep -- suggesting other instances of recall are also important.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The next versions of macOS and iPadOS will be released to the general public on October 24, Apple announced today. From a report: The iPadOS 16 update runs on all iPad Pros, the 5th-generation iPad and later, the fifth-generation iPad mini and later, and the 3rd-generation iPad Air and later, dropping support for the venerable iPad Air 2 and a handful of other models (it will also ship on all the new iPads Apple announced today). The macOS Ventura update generally requires a Mac released in 2017 or later, dropping support for various models released between 2013 and 2016. Both updates will enable some iOS 16 features on iPads and Macs, including editing and deletion of iMessages, better search in Mail, passkey support in Safari, and a new large-screened Weather app and redesigned Home app, improved gamepad support, and more. Both also include a version of the Stage Manager window management feature, and Ventura includes a redesigned System Settings app.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft announced layoffs across multiple divisions on Monday. From a report: Microsoft declined to say how many jobs had been cut, but a source said the layoffs numbered under 1000. The cuts occurred across a variety of levels, teams and parts of the world. Multiple laid-off workers turned to Twitter and Blind, among other online forums, to share that their job had been cut.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has just announced the new sixth-generation iPad Pro. The company's latest flagship tablet is powered by the M2 chip that first debuted in the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro earlier this year. From a report: It'll be available in the same two screen sizes as before: you can choose between 12.9-inch and 11-inch sizes. Preorders open today and it'll be in stores on October 26th starting at $799 for the 11-inch and $1,099 for the 12.9-inch model. As with the 2021 refresh, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro features Mini LED display technology for improved black levels, better contrast, and more impactful HDR performance, while the smaller model sticks with a more basic screen. Both support Apple's ProMotion feature for refresh rates up to 120Hz. The new iPad Pro has a new "hover" feature that detects the Apple Pencil when positioned slightly above the screen. Apple says this lets users "see a preview of their mark before they make it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DuckDuckGo is rolling out its web browsing app for Mac users as an open beta test. Designed for privacy, the app was announced back in April as a closed beta, but is now available for all Mac users to try before its official public launch. From a report: The desktop browser includes the same built-in protections we've seen already featured in DuckDuckGo's mobile apps, combining DuckDuckGo's search engine, defenses against third-party tracking, cookie pop-up protection, and its popular one-click data clearing 'Fire Button.' Some additional features have been added to the browser (version 0.30) since its original announcement. Now users can try Duck Player, a feature that protects users from targeted ads and cookies while watching YouTube content. Ads viewed within the Duck Player will not be personalized, which DuckDuckGo claims actually removed most YouTube ads as a result during testing. YouTube will still register your views, but content watched through Duck Player won't contribute to your YouTube advertising profile. Pinned tabs and a new bookmarks bar have been included to address feedback from early beta testing, as well as a way to view your locally stored browsing history. DuckDuckGo's Cookie Consent Pop-Up Manager is also available which works on about 50 percent of sites (with more to come) to automatically choose the most private option and spare users from the annoying pop-up messages. The app also lets you activate DuckDuckGo Email Protection on the desktop to better protect your inbox with email tracker blocking.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta has been ordered to sell gif platform Giphy for the second time by the UK competition regulator, bringing an end to the $315mn deal following a two-year antitrust battle. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority said on Tuesday that Meta's purchase of New York-based Giphy -- the biggest provider of animated images known as gifs to social networks -- would "limit choice for UK social media users and reduce innovation in UK display advertising." The CMA first told Meta to unwind the deal last November, but was forced by the Competition Appeal Tribunal in July to reconsider its conclusion after it upheld one of the social media company's grounds of appeal. The CMA's final decision underlines the pressure on Silicon Valley's biggest technology companies from the UK regulator, which has broad powers to intervene in tie-ups touching British consumers even when the parties are based overseas. The Giphy deal marked the first time the regulator had moved to dismantle a completed Big Tech deal. Meta on Tuesday said it was "disappointed by the CMA's decision" but accepted the ruling as "the final word on the matter."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Over 45,000 VMware ESXi servers inventoried by Lansweeper just reached end-of-life (EOL), with VMware no longer providing software and security updates unless companies purchase an extended support contract. Lansweeper develops asset management and discovery software that allows customers to track what hardware and software they are running on their network. As of October 15, 2022, VMware ESXi 6.5 and VMware ESXi 6.7 reached end-of-life and will only receive technical support but no security updates, putting the software at risk of vulnerabilities. The company analyzed data from 6,000 customers and found 79,000 installed VMware ESXi servers. Of those servers, 36.5% (28,835) run version 6.7.0, released in April 2018, and 21.3% (16,830) are on version 6.5.0, released in November 2016. In total, there are 45,654 VMware ESXi servers reaching End of Life as of today. The findings of Lansweeper are alarming because apart from the 57% that enter a period of elevated risk, there are also another 15.8% installations that run even older versions, ranging from 3.5.0 to 5.5.0, which reached EOL quite some time ago. In summary, right now, only about one out of four ESXi servers (26.4%) inventoried by Lansweeper are still supported and will continue to receive regular security updates until April 02, 2025. However, in reality, the number of VMware servers reaching EOL today, is likely far greater, as this report is based only on Lansweeper's customers. The technical guidance for ESXi 6.5 and 6.7 will carry on until November 15, 2023, but this concerns implementation issues, not including security risk mitigation. The only way to ensure you can continue to use older versions securely is to apply for the two-year extended support, which needs to be purchased separately. However, this does not include updates for third-party software packages. For more details about EOL dates on all VMware software products, check out this webpage.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last Friday, Google announced the release of KataOS, a security-minded operating system focused on embedded devices running ambient machine learning workloads. As Phoronix notes, it uses the Rust programming language and is "built atop the seL4 microkernel as its foundatin." From Google's Open-Source Blog: As the foundation for this new operating system, we chose seL4 as the microkernel because it puts security front and center; it is mathematically proven secure, with guaranteed confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Through the seL4 CAmkES framework, we're also able to provide statically-defined and analyzable system components. KataOS provides a verifiably-secure platform that protects the user's privacy because it is logically impossible for applications to breach the kernel's hardware security protections and the system components are verifiably secure. KataOS is also implemented almost entirely in Rust, which provides a strong starting point for software security, since it eliminates entire classes of bugs, such as off-by-one errors and buffer overflows. The current GitHub release includes most of the KataOS core pieces, including the frameworks we use for Rust (such as the sel4-sys crate, which provides seL4 syscall APIs), an alternate rootserver written in Rust (needed for dynamic system-wide memory management), and the kernel modifications to seL4 that can reclaim the memory used by the rootserver. KataOS code is being worked on via GitHub under the AmbiML umbrella.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has asked the economy, environment and finance ministries to lay the legal framework to keep the country's three nuclear power plants operational until as late as April 15, 2023, a letter seen by Reuters showed on Monday. Reuters reports: Germany had planned to complete a phase-out of nuclear power by the end of this year, but a collapse in energy supplies from Russia because of the war in Ukraine has prompted the government to keep two plants on standby. Lengthy disagreements within the ruling coalition government over the merits and drawbacks of nuclear energy delayed the implementation of a draft law to put the two plants on reserve beyond their planned phase-out at the end of this year. As well as the Isar II and Neckarwestheim II plants already included in the draft law, Finance Minister Christian Lindner has been pushing to keep a third plant, Emsland, operational, which Economy Minister Robert Habeck -- whose Green Party is historically anti-nuclear -- agreed to. The three plants have 4,300 megawatts (MW) of power capacity, contributing 6% to Germany's electricity production this year. Scholz also requested that the ministries present an "ambitious" law to increase energy efficiency, and put into law an agreement to phase out coal by 2030.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Twenty countries most vulnerable to climate change are considering halting their repayment of $685 billion in collective debt, loans that they say are an "injustice," Mohamad Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives, said on Friday. When the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund conclude their annual meetings in Washington on Sunday, Mr. Nasheed said he would tell officials that the nations were weighing whether to stop payments on their debts. The finance ministers are calling instead for a debt-for-nature swap, in which part of a nation's debt is forgiven and invested in conservation. "We are living not just on borrowed money but on borrowed time," said Mr. Nasheed, who brought global attention to his sinking archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean by holding an underwater cabinet meeting in 2009. "We are under threat, and we should collectively find a way out of it." Mr. Nasheed said poor nations were locked in a Sisyphean trap: they must borrow money to ward off rising seas and storms -- only to see disasters made worse by climate change destroy the improvements they make. But the debt remains, and often countries are left to borrow once again. The debt discussions at the I.M.F. and World Bank meetings come as diplomats from nearly 200 countries prepared for global climate change negotiations in November. That United Nations conference, which will take place in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, will focus heavily on whether wealthy nations most responsible for the carbon dioxide emissions driving climate change should compensate poor countries that are suffering the worst impacts. Many developing countries and low-lying island nations are pressing for the creation of an international fund that would compensate them for losses and damage caused by climate change. The United States, Europe and other wealthy countries that have historically emitted the bulk of greenhouse gases have opposed the creation of such a fund, in part because they fear being held legally liable for skyrocketing disaster costs. Mr. Nasheed said he believed focusing on a debt swap could bypass contentious debates over creating a new international fund for reparations. He also noted that many funds that have been created have gone unfilled, he said. If debts owed by countries were shaved by 30 percent and that money was instead invested in projects such as improving water systems or preserving mangrove forests that protect shorelines from hurricanes, "it would have a huge impact," Mr. Nasheed said. Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the I.M.F., said last year that such debt swaps could help developing countries address climate change and pledged to work with the World Bank to "advance that option" at the United Nations climate meeting in Egypt. According to the World Bank, 58 percent of the world's poorest countries are at risk or are in "debt distress." At the same time, the loss and damage needs for vulnerable countries are projected in one study at $290 billion to $580 billion annually by 2030. David Theis, a spokesman for the World Bank Group, said in a statement the banks were "committed to comprehensive debt solutions that bring real benefits to people in poor countries, particularly countries with high debt vulnerabilities that lack the financial resources to deal with the challenges they face."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux kernel boss Linus Torvalds has released the first release candidate for version 6.1 of the project and added an appeal for developers to make his life easier by adding code earlier in the development cycle. The Register reports: "Let me just say that after I got my machine sorted out and caught up with the merge window, I was somewhat frustrated with various late pull requests. I've mentioned this before, but it's _really_ quite annoying to get quite a few pull requests in the last few days of the merge window." He then offered further guidance on how kernel devs can do it right. "Yes, the merge window is two weeks, but that's very much to allow me time to look things over, not 'two weeks to hurriedly put together a branch that you send Linus on Friday of the second week'," he wrote. "The whole 'do an all-nighter to get the paper in the day before the deadline' is something that should have gone out the window after high school. Not for kernel development." His next line was: "You know who you are." "Anyway, it's not the first time I've said this, I doubt it will be the last. But maybe more people could take it to heart, ok?" he added, before concluding his post with a slightly non-traditional call for testers to visit Linux's git tree because "The merge window may not be the biggest ever, but it's certainly big enough that the shortlog is much too big to post, and below is just my usual merge log." "For all the gory details, please refer to the git tree."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Following increased U.S. export controls against working with Chinese companies, Apple has halted plans to use YMTC chips in the iPhone. AppleInsider reports: According to Nikkei Asia, YMTC flash memory is at least 20% cheaper than that of rivals, and the company's 128-layer 3D NAND chips are the most advanced by a Chinese company. They remain reportedly one or two generations behind the chips made by Micron and Samsung, both of which are known to be working with Apple. Nikkei Asia claims that Apple had completed is months-long testing and verification. Political pressure and criticism from US policymakers made it abandon the plan. "The products have been verified, but they did not go into the production lines when mass production of the new iPhone began," an unspecified source told Nikkei Asia. Reportedly, the intention had been to initially use YMTC chips only for iPhones being sold in China. Another unnamed source, though, claimed that Apple was considering ultimately buying 40% of all its worldwide iPhone NAND flash memory from the company. "YMTC is government-subsidized so they can really outprice competitors," said another source.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Clearing House, a banking association and payments company owned by the largest commercial banks in the U.S., has joined the Open Invention Network (OIN) -- the world's largest patent nonaggression consortium. ZDNet reports: The OIN has long protected Linux and Linux-related software from patent aggression by rival companies. With the increase in patent troll attacks, the OIN is also defending companies from these assaults. You may not think financial companies and banks are subject to such attacks. I mean, TCH's roots go all the way back to 1853. Think again. As Keith Bergelt, CEO of OIN, said in June, "The most sophisticated and compelling global banking and fintech companies have essentially become technology companies that employ open-source software to deliver their services at scale." Further, patent trolls "appear to be targeting them for this reason, along with the fact that financial services companies have not historically been active patent filers." That's because, historically, they've purchased most of their tech from third-party vendors. That was then. This is now. Today, financial institutions generate more tech in-house, so they're more concerned about being granted patents, building patent portfolios, and related patent issues. Indeed, these days fintech businesses have their own Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS), the financial sector branch of the Linux Foundation. So, Bergelt said in a release Wednesday, "Advancements in financial services and fintech increasingly rely on open-source technologies. As the most experienced payment company in the US, and a keystone for the financial services industry, we are pleased that The Clearing House is committed to patent nonaggression in core Linux and adjacent open-source technologies."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A former Wall Street Journal reporter is accusing a major U.S. law firm of having used mercenary hackers to oust him from his job and ruin his reputation. In a lawsuit filed late Friday, Jay Solomon, the Journal's former chief foreign correspondent, said Philadelphia-based Dechert LLP worked with hackers from India to steal emails between him and one of his key sources, Iranian American aviation executive Farhad Azima. Solomon said the messages, which showed Azima floating the idea of the two of them going into business together, were put into a dossier and circulated in a successful effort to get him fired. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, said Dechert "wrongfully disclosed this dossier first to Mr. Solomon's employer, the Wall Street Journal, at its Washington DC bureau, and then to other media outlets in an attempt to malign and discredit him." It said the campaign "effectively caused Mr. Solomon to be blackballed by the journalistic and publishing community." Dechert said in an email that it disputed the claim and would fight it in court. The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions related to hired hackers operating out of India, notes Reuters. "In June, Reuters reported on the activities of several hack-for-hire shops, including Delhi area-companies BellTroX and CyberRoot, that were involved in a decade-long series of espionage campaigns targeting thousands of people, including more than 1,000 lawyers at 108 different law firms." Solomon said in a statement Saturday that the hack-and-leak he suffered was an example of "a trend that's becoming a great threat to journalism and media, as digital surveillance and hacking technologies become more sophisticated and pervasive. This is a major threat to the freedom of the press."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It took more than an hour to mine a block of bitcoin (BTC) on Monday, leaving thousands of transactions stuck in an unconfirmed state. CoinDesk reports: According to on-chain data from several block explorers, the interval between the two latest blocks mined by Foundry USA and Luxor was 85 minutes. According to Mempool, over 13,000 transactions were pending before the latest block was mined. Last week Bitcoin underwent a difficulty adjustment to ensure block confirmations kept taking place every 10 minutes. With mining difficulty surging to 35.6 trillion it becomes more expensive to mine bitcoin, which heaps pressure on a mining industry that is dealing with soaring energy prices and a crypto bear market. Tadge Dryja, founder of the Lightning Network, tweeted that an 85-minute interval between blocks can be expected to happen once every 34 days, not taking into account difficulty changes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

South Korea's two largest domestic internet companies, Naver and Kakao, have experienced significant service interruptions after the datacenter that hosts much of their infrastructure was shut down by a Sunday fire. The Register reports: The datacenter in question is operated by SK C&C, one of the many arms of South Korean conglomerate SK. SK C&C offers a range of cloud and tech infrastructure services, bills itself as a "total digital transformation partner" and operates three datacenters, in which it happily houses client systems. The one in Pangyo, just south of South Korea's capital Seoul, was built in 2014, covers 66,942 square meters, and boasts what SK C&C describes as "Latest/eco-friendly technology". And it caught fire on the weekend. The company has not said what cause the facility to catch fire, nor the extent of the blaze. But many services from Kakao and Naver were unavailable for many hours at a time, starting from Saturday afternoon. Impact of the outages was wide. The tweet below is an example of one business's reaction. Kakao has acknowledged the outage in a blog post that apologizes for the service interruption and slow restoration, and admits that disaster recovery efforts were delayed. The company has created an Emergency Response Committee and three sub-committees -- one to probe the cause of the incident, another to develop disaster countermeasures, and a third to arrange compensation for stakeholders. Naver's announcement admits that "some functions such as search, news, shopping, cafe, blog, open talk, and smart store center had errors." The company says all services have now been restored.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Bernard Arnault, the CEO of luxury brand LVMH -- known for expensive labels like Louis Vuitton -- is the world's second-richest man according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. He currently clocks in at a net worth of $133 billion, beating out Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' paltry $130 billion. He's also been harangued on Twitter for his consistent use of private jets. French accounts that use planes' transponder signals and publicly accessible information have tracked Arnault's and other rich folks' use of private jets to reveal just how much wasteful flying time is used by the world's wealthiest. In September, the Twitter account laviodebernard (Bernard's Plane) wrote that Arnault's plane had been de-registered in France. The account wrote "The LVMH private jet has not been registered in France since September 1, 2022. Still no word from Bernard Arnault or LVMH on the subject of private jets. So Bernard, are we hiding?" Apparently, that's just what Arnault has been doing. On the LVMH-owned podcast released Monday, Arnault admitted that the LVMH group "had a plane, and we sold it." He added: "The result now is that no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes." Antoine Arnault, the second scion of the world's second richest man, a LVMH board member and director of communications for Louis Vuitton, also said during the podcast that other people knowing where their company jet is could give competitors an edge. He also told French news channel 5's a Vous last week "This plane is a work tool." As translated by Bloomberg, the younger Arnault added that the company sold the plane over the summer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For a long time it has been known that diets dominated by ultra-processed food (UPF) are more likely to lead to obesity. But recent research suggests that high UPF consumption also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia and, according to a recent American study involving 50,000 health professionals, of developing colon cancer. From a report: On a more general note, last month a study in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology found that people born after 1990 are more likely to develop cancer before they're 50 than people born before 1970. It's suspected that UPF might be a contributing factor to this development. As the UK is estimated to draw more than 50% of its calorie intake from UPF, this is no passing health scare but an issue that goes to the very heart of our culinary lifestyle. But before looking deeper into the issue there is an obvious question: what is a UPF? NOVA (not an acronym) is a widely used food classification system that separates foods into four categories based upon their level of processing. Almost all foods, aside from fresh fruit and raw vegetables, undergo some degree of process. Cooking is a process, and it usually involves added ingredients such as oil and salt. In NOVA's first category, Group 1 is unprocessed or minimally processed foods (fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk). Group 2 is made up of processed culinary ingredients such as sugars, oils and butter. Group 3 is processed foods (canned vegetables and fish, bread, jam). Group 4 is ultra-high processed foods, which are mostly low in protein and fibre, and high in salt, sugar and fat, and have undergone industrial interventions such as extrusion, moulding and milling.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Xi Jinping's call for China to "win the battle" in core technologies could signal an overhaul in Beijing's approach to advancing its tech industry, with more state-led spending and intervention to counter U.S. pressures, analysts say. From a report: Achieving self-reliance in technology featured prominently in Xi's full work report to kick off the once-every-five-years Communist Party Congress, with four mentions versus none in 2017. The term "technology" was referred to 40 times, up from 17 times in the report from the 2017 congress. While the report did not mention any other countries or specific sectors for that goal, it comes days after Washington imposed sweeping new regulations aimed at undermining China's efforts to develop its own chip industry. HSBC analysts said their takeaway was that increased spending in China, particular in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) fields, and policy support was likely. Iris Pang, chief economist for Greater China at ING, said Xi's remarks addressed "the urgent need for talent and promoting self-sufficiency in technological advancement." "We believe that this echoes to the U.S.'s CHIPS Act," Pang said, referring to the U.S. regulations. "As such research spending on semiconductor technology should increase. Typically, policies are released after such important events in China." In his speech, Xi listed a slew of industries where he described China as having achieved breakthroughs over the past decade, including large aircraft, space flight, satellite navigation - all of which rely on copious state support. No mention was made of semiconductors, an area where China has funnelled billions of dollars in government funds but was also seen to have been given more lee-way in using market-led approaches versus other sectors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chip delivery times shrank by four days in September, the biggest drop in years, in a sign that the industry's supply crunch is easing. From a report: Lead times -- the gap between when a chip is ordered and when it is delivered -- averaged 26.3 weeks in the period, according to research by Susquehanna Financial Group. That compares with nearly 27 weeks the prior month. Wait times contracted for all key product categories, with power-management and analog chips seeing the biggest declines, Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland said in a research note. A global chip shortage bedeviled a wide range of industries in the past year, with automakers and other manufacturers struggling to get enough semiconductors. Pockets of supply constraints remain, but now many chipmakers are concerned about the opposite problem: chip inventory getting too high.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Drew DeVault, prolific FOSS blogger and hacker behind SourceHut, Sway, wlroots, and many other projects, writes in a blog post: I have relied on ffmpeg for many tasks and for many years. It has always been there to handle any little multimedia-related task I might put it to for personal use -- re-encoding audio files so they fit on my phone, taking clips from videos to share, muxing fonts into mkv files, capturing video from my webcam, live streaming hacking sessions on my own platform, or anything else I can imagine. It formed the foundation of MediaCrush back in the day, where we used it to optimize multimedia files for efficient viewing on the web, back when that was more difficult than "just transcode it to a webm." ffmpeg is notable for being one of the first large-scale FOSS projects to completely eradicate proprietary software in its niche. Virtually all multimedia-related companies rely on ffmpeg to do their heavy lifting. It took a complex problem and solved it, with free software. The book is now closed on multimedia: ffmpeg is the solution to almost all of your problems. And if it's not, you're more likely to patch ffmpeg than to develop something new. The code is accessible and the community are experts in your problem domain. ffmpeg is one of the foremost pillars of achievement in free software. It has touched the lives of every reader, whether they know it or not. If you've ever watched TV, or gone to a movie, or watched videos online, or listened to a podcast, odds are that ffmpeg was involved in making it possible. It is one of the most well-executed and important software projects of all time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UK government officials held detailed discussions with some of the biggest data center operators about ways to keep those businesses running through any potential power shortages in coming months, Bloomberg News reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. From a report: The talks focused on allocating diesel for backup generators if Britain's energy infrastructure operator, National Grid, needed to cut power, the people said, asking not to be named because the discussions are private. The sides also discussed whether data centers should be considered critical national infrastructure. There are between 400 and 600 commercial data centers in Britain, and they account for about 2.5% of the country's electricity demand, according to the National Grid. Operators often have their own backup generators that can run for as many as 72 hours, but businesses and officials have discussed the security of supplies in scenarios where disruptions worsen. Slough, west of London, is one of Europe's biggest hubs for server farms and would need more fuel for backup than other areas.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Visa and Mastercard's security tokens restrict debit-card routing competition on online payments, WSJ reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The FTC for the past few years has already been probing whether Visa and Mastercard block merchants from routing payments over other debit-card networks. The networks acknowledged an FTC probe in regulatory filings in recent years. In recent months, the FTC expanded its focus to routing challenges that stem from the networks' security tokens, the people familiar with the matter said. It isn't clear if the investigation is a new probe or part of the previous one. Visa and Mastercard are by far the two biggest card networks in the U.S., building and maintaining the plumbing that allows Americans to use credit and debit cards at stores and online. Their lion's share of that market has drawn increasing scrutiny from regulators and fueled tension with merchants, which pay fees set by the networks when a customer pays via card. A Justice Department investigation on whether Visa has unlawfully maintained a dominant market share in debit cards is ongoing, according to people familiar with the matter. Federal law requires that merchants have the ability to choose from at least two unaffiliated debit-card networks to route transactions. That is supposed to give merchants the option to send debit-card payments over the network that sets lower fees. In most cases, when a person stores a card in a digital wallet such as Apple Pay, the 16-digit card number gets replaced by a "security token" -- essentially a line of random numbers. The token is typically provided by the network listed on the card -- often Visa or Mastercard.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The courier company FedEx is abandoning a project to develop last-mile delivery robots. In 2019, FedEx partnered with New Hampshire-based DEKA Research and Development Corp, founded by Segway inventor Dean Kamen, to develop a wheeled robot called Roxo for last-mile deliveries. From a report: But FedEx decided to end the project in early October, according to a report in Robotics 24/7. FedEx employees were told of the decision via an email from the company's chief transformation officer, Sriram Krishnasamy, who explained a new corporate strategy called "DRIVE." "Although robotics and automation are key pillars of our innovation strategy, Roxo did not meet necessary near-term value requirements for DRIVE. Although we are ending the research and development efforts, Roxo served a valuable purpose: to rapidly advance our understanding and use of robotic technology," Krishnasamy wrote. Roxo is a 62-inch-tall (1,575-mm) package bot; it weighs 450 lbs (204 kg) and has a cargo capacity of up to 100 lbs (45 kg). It was designed to navigate around sidewalks and roadsides and between pedestrians and parked cars to deliver its cargo to a customer's door. It combines a 360-degree lidar sensor with 360-degree long-range cameras above its rounded shell. There are 180-degree stereo cameras and a 360-degree radar sensor around the base, and a display that can deliver messages is set into the front of the bot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Zuckerberg, writing in a Facebook post: WhatsApp is far more private and secure than iMessage, with end-to-end encryption that works across both iPhones and Android, including group chats. With WhatsApp you can also set all new chats to disappear with the tap of a button. And last year we introduced end-to-end encrypted backups too. All of which iMessage still doesn't have.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A crackdown by authorities in Zimbabwe to support the local currency and fight inflation has increased the use of US dollars in the economy, according to the country's oldest brokerage. From a report: "Ironically the authorities' clampdown on Zimbabwe dollar payments created such a squeeze that it has had the unintended consequence of driving dollarization at a faster pace," Imara Asset Management Chief Executive Officer John Legat said in the Harare-based company's latest quarterly investment notes to clients. Banks are now offering US dollar loans and listed companies carry out more transactions in the greenback, as they reel from a shortage of Zimbabwe dollars. "Even government is increasingly using US dollars for their own payments," he said. Authorities adopted a series of measures since May including raising the benchmark interest rate to 200%, introducing gold coins, imposing taxes on capital markets and halting payments to government contractors and suppliers to try reduce money supply. Those actions dried up excess liquidity and succeeded in bringing the official local currency rate in line with the parallel rate. The government of the southern African nation has struggled to successfully reintroduce its own currency into the economy after abandoning its unit for more than a decade because of hyperinflation in the late 2010s.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Europe is aiming to launch a technology demonstration satellite for secure, quantum-encrypted communications in 2024," reports Space.com, "with a view to developing a larger constellation."The satellite, Eagle-1, will be the first space-based quantum key distribution (QKD) system for the European Union and could lead to an ultrasecure communications network for Europe, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA). Eagle-1 will spend three years in orbit testing the technologies needed for a new generation of secure communications. The satellite will demonstrate the "feasibility of quantum key distribution technology — which uses the principles of quantum mechanics to distribute encryption keys in such a way that any attempt to eavesdrop is immediately detected — within the EU using a satellite-based system," according to ESA... "European security and sovereignty in a future world of quantum computing is critical to the success of Europe and its Member States," Steve Collar, CEO of SES, said in the statement. He added that the goal is "to advance quantum communications and develop the Eagle-1 system to support secure and sovereign European networks of the future." SES will be leading a consortium of more than 20 European countries, according to the ESA's statement:Eagle-1 will demonstrate the feasibility of quantum key distribution technology — which uses the principles of quantum mechanics to distribute encryption keys in such a way that any attempt to eavesdrop is immediately detected — within the EU using a satellite-based system. To do so, the system will build on key technologies developed under ESA's Scylight programme, with the aim of validating vital components supplied within the EU.... It will allow the EU to prepare for a sovereign, autonomous cross-border quantum secure communications network. The system will initially use an upgraded optical ground terminal from the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) alongside a new optical ground terminal to be developed by a team from the Netherlands. The Eagle-1 platform satellite from Italian company Sitael will carry a quantum-key payload built by Tesat Spacecom of Germany and will be operated by Luxembourg-headquartered SES.Read more of this story at Slashdot.