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Social media platform Twitter today announced that it will let users buy, sell, and display NFTs directly through tweets in partnership with four marketplaces. Decrypt reports: The integration, called NFT Tweet Tiles, displays the artwork of an NFT in a dedicated panel within a tweet, and includes a button to let users click through to a marketplace listing. The integration -- which is still in testing -- currently works with marketplaces from four specific partners: Solana-centric marketplace Magic Eden, multi-platform NFT marketplace protocol Rarible, Flow blockchain creator Dapper Labs, and sports-centric platform Jump.trade. Collectively, those marketplaces span several blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Solana, Flow, Polygon, Tezos, and Immutable X. A Twitter representative confirmed to Decrypt that the feature is blockchain-agnostic, so all networks are supported so long as the links are from a partnered marketplace. The representative added that the "feature is currently being tested with select Twitter users across iOS and web," and that those users will see the NFT Tweet Tile integration if they're in the test group. A Twitter Blue premium subscription is not required to use the feature.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Cartridges and discs used to be how you got the latest games, but that's been changing as downloads have become more convenient and reliable. But some people prefer the sure thing: a physical copy, so they can play offline or with a bad connection. To them, Activision says "qq": the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II disc is basically just a link to a 150-gigabyte download. Now, to be fair, games that size don't fit neatly on even high capacity Blu-ray discs, which for distribution purposes max out at around 50 gigs. Not that we haven't seen multi-disc games before (I never finished Final Fantasy VIII because the final disc was scratched someday, Edea), but clearly Activision decided it wasn't worth the bother in this case. [...] Far from having the full game on it, the disc is almost completely empty. This 72-megabyte app is basically just an authenticator and shell that initiates the enormous download process. I'd be willing to bet that most of those 72 megabytes are 4K video files of logos. There's even a pre-order steelbook bonus (that's a metal case for the disc and anything else it comes with). Players may be disappointed to find that this fancy reinforced packaging protects nothing of value. Obviously there is great waste entailed in the production of perhaps millions of discs (though the numbers are likely much lower than they used to) for no reason. But waste is endemic in consumerism. The bait and switch of it is the galling thing -- that Activision is taking the worst of both worlds. There's literally no point in even providing a physical version of the software if none of the reasons for doing so are fulfilled by it. It's the equivalent of the next season of Stranger Things coming on a disc that just loads up Netflix and starts streaming. Why bother? It's worth asking whether Activision could have built a version of the game that fit on a disc at all. Considering how proudly they've been advertising the realism of the graphics, probably not. A single 4K texture unit, say for a building front or character model, may be scores of megabytes, and any AAA game will have countless such textures. Meanwhile the audio and video assets also have to fit on there, and they can only be compressed so far before they degrade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"On October 8th, PayPal updated its terms of service agreement to include a clause enabling it to withdraw $2,500 from users' bank accounts simply for posting anything the company deems as misinformation or offensive," reports Grit Daily. "Unsurprisingly, the backlash was instant and massive," causing the company to backtrack on the policy and claim the update was sent out "in error." Now, after the criticism on social media died down, several media outlets are reporting that the company quietly reinstated the questionable misinformation fine -- even though that itself may be a bit of misinformation. From a report: Apparently, they believed that everyone would just accept their claim and immediately forget about the incident. So the clause that was a mistake and was never intended to be included in PayPal's terms of service magically ended up back in there once the criticism died back down. That sounds plausible, right? And as for what constitutes a "violation" of the company's terms of service, the language is so vaguely worded that it could encompass literally anything. The term "other forms of intolerance" is so broad that it legally gives the company grounds to claim that anyone not fully supporting any particular position is engaging in "intolerance" because the definition of the word is the unwillingness to accept views, beliefs, or behavior that differ from one's own. So essentially, this clause gives PayPal the perceived right to withdraw $2,500 from users accounts for voicing opinions that PayPal disagrees with. As news of PayPal's most recent revision spreads, I anticipate that the company's PR disaster will grow, and with numerous competing payment platforms available today, this could deliver a devastating and well deserved blow to the company. UPDATE: According to The Deep Dive, citing Twitter user Kelley K, PayPal "never removed the $2,500 fine. It's been there for over a year. All they removed earlier this month was a new section that mentioned misinformation." She goes on to highlight the following:1.) [T]he $2,500 fine has been there since September 2021.2.) PayPal did remove what was originally item number 5 of the Prohibited Activities annex, the portion that contained the questionable "promoting misinformation" clause that the company claims was an "error."3.) [T]he other portion, item 2.f. which includes "other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory," which some have pointed out may also be dangerous as the language is vague, has always been there since the policy was updated, and not recently added. PayPal's user agreement can be read here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mexico's Senate approved a bill Wednesday to eliminate daylight saving time, putting an end to the practice of changing clocks twice a year. The Associated Press reports: Some cities and towns along the U.S. border can retain daylight saving time, presumably because they are so linked to U.S. cities. The Senate approved the measure on a 59-25 vote, with 12 abstentions. Those who opposed the measure said that less daylight in the afternoon could affect opportunities for children and adults to get exercise. The bill already passed the lower house of Congress and now goes President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to be signed into law. The law would go into effect Sunday, when Mexico is scheduled to turn clocks back for the last time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Samsung Electronics officially has a new executive chairman. The heir to the Samsung empire, Lee Jae-yong (aka Jay Y. Lee), ascended to the throne of the world's biggest chipmaker on Thursday. Samsung announced the move alongside its Q3 2022 earnings report, which it probably hopes will distract from the 23 percent drop in profits compared to the previous quarter. Lee has been the de-facto leader of Samsung for several years now, so his appointment is mostly a formality. The former Samsung chairman and Lee's father, Lee Kun-hee, died in 2020, but before that he was incapacitated for years following a 2014 heart attack. Lee's ascension to chairman has always been expected, but it has been delayed due to Lee's numerous legal issues. [...] The new chairman's legal troubles are not necessarily over. Lee is still facing yet another trial for stock price manipulation and accounting fraud.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week, the Competition Commission of India published a damning report, alleging that Google was preventing major TV manufacturers from adopting Amazon's Fire TV operating system. This Thursday, Amazon announced that TCL, one of the manufacturers at the center of the dispute, is releasing two TV sets running its Fire TV software in Europe this fall. The unveiling of the two TV models is the direct result of a deal Google and Amazon struck in recent months, Protocol has learned from a source close to one of the parties involved in the agreement. As a result of that deal, Amazon has been able to work with a number of consumer electronics companies -- including not only TCL, but also Xiaomi and Hisense -- to vastly expand the number of available smart TVs running Fire TV OS. All of these companies were previously barred from doing so under licensing terms imposed by Google.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Google regulatory filing appears to have confirmed rumors in recent months that the European Union's competition division is looking into how it operates its smartphone app store, the Play Store. From a report: However TechCrunch understands that no formal EU investigation into the Play Store has been opened at this stage. The SEC Form 10-Q, filed by Google's parent Alphabet, does make mention of "formal" investigations being opened into Google Play's "business practices" back in May 2022 -- by both the European Commission and the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Thing is, the Commission's procedure on opening a formal competition investigation is to make a public announcement -- so the lack of that standard piece of regulatory disclosure suggests any EU investigation is at a more preliminary stage than Google's citation might imply. The U.K. antitrust regulator's probe of Google Play is undoubtedly a formal investigation -- having been publicly communicated by the CMA back in June -- when it said it would probe Google's rules governing apps' access to listing on its Play Store, looking at conditions it sets for how users can make in-app payments for certain digital products. While, back in August, Politico reported that the Commission had sent questionnaires probing Play Store billing terms and developer fees -- citing two people close to the matter. And potentially suggesting an investigation was underway.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From Tokyo to San Francisco, mobile game studios have sparred for years to captivate a fickle audience, fostering an overlooked problem -- the average title has become so huge that players can no longer fit more than a few on their phones. From a report: Japanese games publisher Gree expects an impending reckoning over escalating costs and ballooning file sizes, as developers pack their games with increasingly intricate graphics, voice acting and larger storylines, all to get players spending. That's creating a winner-takes-all situation that could winnow out smaller studios in coming years, Gree Senior Vice President Yuta Maeda said in an interview. The situation will only get worse as console veteran Sony -- no stranger to space-hogging hits -- prepares to invade the mobile arena. "Production of mobile games can't avoid becoming more complex, time-consuming and larger-scale, which will inevitably result in bigger app sizes," Maeda said. "Companies that survive in the market will only be the ones that can keep up with that trend." The spending poured into today's A-list mobile titles -- MiHoYo's Genshin Impact, for instance, started with a $100 million budget -- rivals Hollywood blockbusters and is yielding better production values than ever, but also an outsized footprint. That game can occupy upwards of 20 gigabytes of storage, which is a huge chunk of what most people have available on their phones. With memory upgrades not keeping pace, the result is fewer games can vie for attention. Sony, one of the giants of console gaming, has laid out plans to bring its high-profile PlayStation franchises to mobile platforms. Rival Microsoft is also building an Xbox mobile gaming store. All of that piles pressure on the entrenched free-to-play business model followed by Gree and others. These publishers rely on monetizing in-game items and upgrades, regularly adding more content players can buy and play with. The most common workaround from game studios is to put only a basic installer in app stores, which then downloads further game assets once the player starts. Gree uses it with Heaven Burns Red, which is an initial 1GB and grows beyond 10GB for players who want the full experience.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Do you have a laptop that's either "pretty old" or "weird in some other way"? Did it ship without Windows from the factory, or did you flash its firmware with coreboot? You could help the Linux kernel move its backlight code forward without abandoning quirky gear like yours. ArsTechnica: Hans de Goede, a longtime Linux developer and principal engineer at Red Hat, writes on his Livejournal about the need to test "a special group of laptops" to prevent their backlight controls from disappearing in Linux kernel 6.1. Old laptop tests are needed because de Goede is initiating some major changes to user-space backlight controls, something he has been working on since 2014. As detailed at Linux blog Phoronix, there are multiple issues with how Linux tries to address the wide variety of backlight schemes in displays, which de Goede laid out at the recent Linux Plumbers Conference. There can be multiple backlight devices operating a single display, leaving high-level controls to "guess which one will work." Brightness control requires root permissions at the moment. And "0" passed along as a backlight value remains a conundrum, as the engineer pointed out in 2014: Is that entirely off, or as low as the display can be lit?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TechCrunch: Google has acquired Alter, an artificial intelligence (AI) avatar startup that helps creators and brands express their virtual identity, for about $100 million, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, in a push to boost its content game and better compete with TikTok.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Europe has more natural gas than it knows what to do with. So much, in fact, that spot prices briefly went negative earlier this week. From a report: For months, officials have warned of an energy crisis this winter as Russia -- once the region's biggest supplier of natural gas -- slashed supplies in retaliation for sanctions Europe imposed over its invasion of Ukraine. Now, EU gas storage facilities are close to full, tankers carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) are lining up at ports, unable to unload their cargoes, and prices are tumbling. The price of benchmark European natural gas futures has dropped 20% since last Thursday, and by more than 70% since hitting a record high in late August. On Monday, Dutch gas spot prices for delivery within an hour -- which reflect real time European market conditions -- dipped below 0 Euro, according to data from the Intercontinental Exchange. Prices turned negative because of an "oversupplied grid," Tomas Marzec-Manser, head of gas analytics at the Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS), told CNN Business. It is a hugely surprising turn of events for Europe, where households and businesses have been clobbered by eye-watering rises in the price of one of its most important energy sources over the past year. Massimo Di Odoardo, vice president of gas and LNG research at Wood Mackenzie, says unseasonably mild weather is largely responsible for the dramatic change in fortune. "In countries like Italy, Spain, France, we're seeing temperatures and [gas] consumption closer to August and early September [levels]," he told CNN Business. "Even in countries in the Nordics, the UK and Germany, consumption is way below the average for this time of the year," he added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An update for Spotify's iOS app released Thursday had a big change for its audiobooks vertical -- and not for the better. The app no longer indicates how you can buy any of the audiobooks in its store, posing a major roadblock for its new business. Now when you go to make a purchase, the app displays a mostly empty screen saying, "Want to listen? You can't buy audiobooks in the app. We know, it's not ideal." There's no indication of where you might be able to buy the book. From a report: The update follows a statement from Spotify on Tuesday in which the audio streamer accused Apple of "choking competition" with its app rules for audiobook purchasing. It is worth noting that Apple also sells individual audiobooks through its Books app, which can be purchased in-app. When Spotify's audiobooks feature launched a month ago, users could not buy titles directly in the app, but they could tap a button that would email them a link to purchase the book on the web. Once the purchase was made, the title would become available for listening in the app. Now, users have to go to Spotify's audiobooks hub in a web browser or through the desktop app in order to make a purchase.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is still struggling to learn what exactly it takes to be a successful Android manufactuer. The company's first self-branded Android phones, the dual-screened Surface Duo and Surface Duo 2, have tried to resurrect Microsoft's mobile ambitions after the death of Windows Phone. They leave a lot to be desired, though, and the first version went through some embarrassing fire sales. An ongoing knock against the devices has also been Microsoft's very slow OS updates. Unlike, say, Windows and Windows Update, Google's expensive and labor-intensive Android update process puts the responsibility for updates on the hardware seller, and a big part of being a good Android OEM is how quickly you can navigate this complicated process. Microsoft is proving to not be good at this. This week, Microsoft announced the Surface Duo and Surface Duo 2 are finally getting Android 12L, an OS update that came out in March. That puts that company at a more than seven-month update time, which is worst-in-class for a flagship device, especially for one costing the $1,499 Microsoft is charging for the Duo 2. The company took a prolonged 14 months to ship Android 11 to the Surface Duo, so at least it's improving!Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There is "no credible pathway" to keep the rise in global temperatures below the key threshold of 1.5C, according to a bleak new UN assessment. From a report: Scientists believe that going beyond 1.5C would see dangerous impacts for people all over the world. The report says that since COP26 last year, governments carbon cutting plans have been "woefully inadequate." Only an urgent transformation of society will avoid disaster, the study says. There's just over a week until the next major climate conference, known as COP27, starts in Egypt. Mindful of the fact that the world's attention has been elsewhere since climate diplomats met in Glasgow last year, this week has seen a flurry of reports underlining the fact that climate change hasn't gone away.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has "paused ads related to gambling and a few other categories on App Store product pages" after developers and commentators criticized the types of advertisements showing up in the iPhone's App Store, according to a statement from spokesperson Trevor Kincaid. From a report: On Tuesday, Apple announced that companies could advertise their apps on the store pages for other apps, putting their icon in the "you might also like" section. Almost immediately, developers started showing examples of ads for gambling apps being recommended under their apps. Twitter is also full of screenshots of very inappropriate ad placements: one Twitter user shows a slot machine app being advertised alongside gambling addiction recovery apps, and there are examples of other betting apps being advertised on pages for apps aimed towards children, adult video chat apps showing up on the Apple Books page, and dating apps being placed under apps designed to improve existing relationships.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thomson Reuters, a multinational media conglomerate, left an open database with sensitive customer and corporate data, including third-party server passwords in plaintext format. Attackers could use the details for a supply-chain attack. Cybernews: The Cybernews research team found that Thomson Reuters left at least three of its databases accessible for anyone to look at. One of the open instances, the 3TB public-facing ElasticSearch database, contains a trove of sensitive, up-to-date information from across the company's platforms. The company recognized the issue and fixed it immediately. Thomson Reuters provides customers with products such as the business-to-business media tool Reuters Connect, legal research service and database Westlaw, the tax automation system ONESOURCE, online research suite of editorial and source materials Checkpoint, and other tools. The size of the open database the team discovered corresponds with the company using ElasticSearch, a data storage favored by enterprises dealing with extensive, constantly updated volumes of data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shares of Meta plunged 24% Thursday morning as investors and analysts digested the company's third-quarter earnings miss and a weak fourth-quarter outlook. Shares were trading under $100 at market open, the lowest price since 2016. From a report: The parent company of Facebook reported quarterly revenue of $27.7 billion Wednesday, a decline of more than 4% year over year and its second straight quarterly decline. Its profit plummeted 52% to $4.4 billion. Meta warned the fourth quarter would be more of the same, issuing a weaker-than-expected outlook. It's expecting revenue for the fourth quarter to be $30 billion to $32.5 billion. Analysts were expecting sales of $32.2 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated his commitment to spending billions of dollars developing the metaverse. Meta's Reality Labs unit, which is responsible for developing the virtual reality and related augmented reality technology that underpins its plans for the metaverse, has lost $9.4 billion so far this year. Morgan Stanley downgraded the stock Thursday, citing higher spending. Analyst Brian Nowak slashed his price target to $105 from $205. He expects the company's issues to persist as Meta continues to increase spending to build out its AI capabilities. Further reading: Facebook's worth less than Home Depot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Scientists with the University of Chicago have discovered a way to create a material that can be made like a plastic, but conducts electricity more like a metal. The research, published Oct. 26 in Nature, shows how to make a kind of material in which the molecular fragments are jumbled and disordered, but can still conduct electricity extremely well. "In principle, this opens up the design of a whole new class of materials that conduct electricity, are easy to shape, and are very robust in everyday conditions," said John Anderson, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago and the senior author on the study. "Essentially, it suggests new possibilities for an extremely important technological group of materials," said Jiaze Xie (Ph.D. '22, now at Princeton), the first author on the paper. [...] Xie began experimenting with some materials discovered years ago, but largely ignored. He strung nickel atoms like pearls into a string of of molecular beads made of carbon and sulfur, and began testing. To the scientists' astonishment, the material easily and strongly conducted electricity. What's more, it was very stable. "We heated it, chilled it, exposed it to air and humidity, and even dripped acid and base on it, and nothing happened," said Xie. That is enormously helpful for a device that has to function in the real world. But to the scientists, the most striking thing was that the molecular structure of the material was disordered. "From a fundamental picture, that should not be able to be a metal," said Anderson. "There isn't a solid theory to explain this." Xie, Anderson, and their lab worked with other scientists around the university to try to understand how the material can conduct electricity. After tests, simulations, and theoretical work, they think that the material forms layers, like sheets in a lasagna. Even if the sheets rotate sideways, no longer forming a neat lasagna stack, electrons can still move horizontally or vertically -- as long as the pieces touch. The end result is unprecedented for a conductive material. "It's almost like conductive Play-Doh -- you can smush it into place and it conducts electricity," Anderson said. The scientists are excited because the discovery suggests a fundamentally new design principle for electronics technology. Conductors are so important that virtually any new development opens up new lines for technology, they explained. The report says the new material "can be made at room temperatures" and "can also be used where the need for a device or pieces of the device to withstand heat, acid or alkalinity, or humidity has previously limited engineers' options to develop new technology." Xie added: "We think we can make it 2D or 3D, make it porous, or even introduce other functions by adding different linkers or nodes."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting with macOS Ventura, released this week, the built-in Preview app on Mac no longer supports PostScript (.ps) and Encapsulated PostScript (.eps) files, according to a new Apple support document. MacRumors reports: Preview can still be used to open these files on macOS Monterey and earlier. Apple did not provide a reason for the change. Apple recommends using other third-party Mac apps that can view or convert PostScript files. It also remains possible to print .ps and .eps files by dragging them into a Mac's printer queue [...]. Developed by Adobe in the 1980s, the .ps and .eps file formats were once widely used for desktop publishing/printing purposes. PostScript was the basis of rendering on the NeXT operating system, and was mostly replaced by the PDF format in Mac OS X.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of Earth's toughest microbes could survive on Mars, lying dormant beneath the surface, for 280 million years, new research has shown. The findings increase the probability that microbial life could still exist on the Red Planet. Space.com reports: Deinococcus radiodurans, nicknamed "Conan the Bacterium," is one of the world's toughest microbes, capable of surviving in radiation strong enough to kill any other known life-form. Experiments have now shown that if Conan the Bacterium or a similar microbe existed on Mars, it could survive 33 feet (10 meters) beneath the surface, frozen and dried out, for 280 million years. In a study led by Michael Daly, who is a professor of pathology at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland and a member of the National Academies' Committee on Planetary Protection, scientists tested half a dozen microbes and fungi -- all "extremophiles" able to live in environments where other organisms die -- to see how long they could survive in an environment that simulated the mid-latitudes of Mars. During the experiments, organisms faced temperatures as low as minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 63 degrees Celsius) and exposure to ultraviolet light, gamma rays and high-energy protons mimicking the constant bombardment of Mars by solar ultraviolet light and cosmic radiation sleeting down from space. After the bacteria and fungi had been exposed to various radiation levels in the experiment, Daly's team measured how much manganese antioxidants had accumulated in the cells of the microbes. Manganese antioxidants form as a result of radiation exposure, and the more that form, the more radiation the microbes can resist. Conan the Bacterium was the clear winner. The researchers found that Conan the Bacterium could absorb as much as 28,000 times more radiation than what a human can survive. This measurement allowed Daly's team to estimate how long the microbe could survive at different depths on Mars. Previous experiments, in which Conan the Bacterium had been suspended in liquid water and subjected to radiation like that found on Mars, had indicated that the microbe could survive below the surface of Mars for 1.2 million years. However, the new tests, in which the microbe was frozen and dried out to mimic the cold and dry conditions on Mars, suggested that Conan the Bacterium would be able to survive 280 million years on Mars if buried at a depth of 33 feet. This lifespan is reduced to 1.5 million years if buried just 4 inches (10 centimeters) below the surface, and just a few hours on the surface, which is bathed in ultraviolet light. [...] The research also determined why Conan the Bacterium is so resistant to radiation. The scientists found that chromosomes and plasmids, which carry genetic information, in the microbe's cells are linked together, which keeps these structures aligned and prevents irradiated cells from breaking down until they can be repaired. "Although Deinococcus radiodurans buried in the Martian subsurface could not survive dormant for the estimated 2 to 2.5 billion years since flowing water disappeared on Mars, such Martian environments are regularly altered and melted by meteorite impacts," he said in a statement. "We suggest that periodic melting could allow intermittent repopulation and dispersal." The findings were detailed in the journal Astrobiology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Low-code and no-code development is often seen as the realm of citizen developers, but the segment of the enterprise where low-code and no-code has gained significant traction is among professional developers themselves. And, importantly, it's making their jobs better in two ways: providing tools for faster software development and deployment, as well as elevating their roles in enterprises to that of teachers and facilitators for potential citizen developers. A recent survey of 860 developers by OutSystems finds a majority of low-code users -- most of whom also use traditional coding languages alongside low-code -- report that they are "very satisfied" with their team productivity (59%), compared to 41% of traditional developers. Most low-coders, 57%, are also very satisfied with the quality of tools at their disposal to complete their work, compared to 36% of their traditional coding counterparts. In addition, 71% of low-code users said they were able to stick to the typical 40-hour work week, compared to only 44% of traditional developers. Additionally, 63% of low-code developers indicate they are happy with their salary and benefits compared to 40% of traditional developers. Not only is low-code and no-code making things easier, it is also elevating the roles of technology professionals within their enterprises, to facilitator, educators, and consultants. Industry observers agree. "The professional's role is now to customize and connect the low-code solution to the organization's resources," relates Moses Guttmann, CEO and co-founder of ClearML. Their roles "shift towards mainly automation and orchestration, taking a low-code process and helping the low-code infrastructure gain access to different resources within the organization. Think of it as abstracting the databases and providing access to the orchestration -- such as cloud infrastructure to execute the low-code application." This can only mean more Agile development for the next generation of applications, with business-savvy developers and tech-savvy business users working side by side. "Citizen developers are typically growth-minded, innovative problem solvers with an active understanding of the business' overarching goals," says Aaron White, CTO and co-founder of Vendr. "In tandem with overseeing the work completed in a low-code or no-code environment, professional developers -- especially those leading teams -- should strive to recognize these employees' talents, actively enabling them to contribute to the development process." "It takes away a lot of the day-to-day implementation-related tasks and allows developers to focus on more architectural and strategic concerns," says Om Vyas, co-founder and chief product officer for oak9. "It puts them in a position to have a greater business impact. But also, with low-code and no-code approaches, when the one-size-fits-all pattern does not work for you, it will create work for these professionals to amend or customize to add their own implementations." In many cases, "a low-code/no-code approach may operate as a complete solution. That said, IT and engineering may need to step in from time to time, to fine-tune the details," White adds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Live Science: Swarming bees produce so much electricity that they may affect local weather, new research suggests. The finding, which researchers made by measuring the electrical fields around honeybee (apis mellifera) hives, reveals that bees can produce as much atmospheric electricity as a thunderstorm. This can play an important role in steering dust to shape unpredictable weather patterns; and their impact may even need to be included in future climate models. Insects' tiny bodies can pick up positive charge while they forage -- either from the friction of air molecules against their rapidly beating wings (honeybees can flap their wings more than 230 times a second) or from landing onto electrically charged surfaces. But the effects of these tiny charges were previously assumed to be on a small scale. Now, a new study, published Oct. 24 in the journal iScience, shows that insects can generate a shocking amount of electricity. To test whether honeybees produce sizable changes in the electric field of our atmosphere, the researchers placed an electric field monitor and a camera near the site of several honeybee colonies. In the 3 minutes that the insects flooded into the air, the researchers found that the potential gradient above the hives increased to 100 volts per meter. In other swarming events, the scientists measured the effect as high as 1,000 volts per meter, making the charge density of a large honeybee swarm roughly six times greater than electrified dust storms and eight times greater than a stormcloud. The scientists also found that denser insect clouds meant bigger electrical fields -- an observation that enabled them to model other swarming insects such as locusts and butterflies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The social networking company, which is trying to shift into the so-called metaverse, posted falling sales and said it was "making significant changes" to operate more efficiently. The New York Times reports: This year, Meta's earnings have been hit hard by its spending on the metaverse and its slowing growth in social networking and digital advertising. In July, the Silicon Valley company posted its first sales decline as a public company. Its stock has plunged more than 60 percent this year. On Wednesday, Meta continued that trajectory and indicated that the decline would not end anytime soon. It said it would be "making significant changes across the board to operate more efficiently," including by shrinking some teams and by hiring only in its areas of highest priority. The company reported a 4 percent drop in revenue for its third quarter -- to $27.7 billion, down from $29 billion a year earlier. Net income was $4.4 billion, down 52 percent from a year earlier. Spending soared by 19 percent from a year earlier. The company's metaverse investments remained troubled. Meta said its Reality Labs division, which is responsible for the virtual reality and augmented reality efforts that are central to the metaverse, had lost $3.7 billion compared with $2.6 billion a year earlier. It said operating losses for the division would grow "significantly" next year. For the current quarter, Meta forecast revenue of between $30 billion and $32.5 billion, which would be down from a year ago. The company's shares fell more than 11 percent in after-hours trading. In a statement, Mr. Zuckerberg, Meta's founder and chief executive, acknowledged "near-term challenges on revenue." But he added that "the fundamentals are there for a return to stronger revenue growth" and that he was "approaching 2023 with a focus on prioritization and efficiency."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One year after its record-breaking launch, the world's first exchange traded fund tracking the price of bitcoin has lost more of investors' dollars than any other ETF debut. The Financial Times reports: Asset manager ProShares launched its Bitcoin Strategy fund in October 2021, and it immediately became the most successful new ETF in history, amassing more than $1bn in its first week of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Bitcoin enthusiasts proclaimed the launch as the moment when crypto joined the world's biggest equities market and became enmeshed in mainstream investment strategies for retail and institutional buyers alike. But one year into its existence, the fund has lost money on an unprecedented scale, according to data from Morningstar Direct for the Financial Times. Its 70 percent share price drop also makes this the sixth-worst performing debut ETF of its kind of all time, in a test for investors during what has become known as the "crypto winter." The ETF, known as BITO, has attracted inflows consistently through its life, with only light withdrawals. But even with net inflows of $1.8 billion in its debut year, its assets now stand at $624 million. Taking together the timing of inflows and the 70 per cent drop in the fund's equity price, Morningstar calculates that BITO has lost $1.2 billion of investors' money, making this by far the biggest debut loser. Buyers "remained extremely loyal to the long-term thesis for bitcoin," said Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at consultancy VettaFi. "The fund has not seen the outflows one would expect given its performance. The pendulum has swung away from certain investment theses this year. Historically it can swing back in favor, but the challenge is whether the asset manager has the confidence to keep the product afloat."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's parent company Alphabet released its Q3 2022 earnings yesterday and "they show a 27 percent drop in profits compared to last year, with weaker-than-expected earnings and revenue," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Revenue was up 6 percent year over year to $69.1 billion, a sharp growth decline from 2021 Q3, which saw 41 percent growth. Profits were at $13.9 billion, down from $18.9 billion in Q3 2021. As usual, Alphabet earnings are mostly about Google ad revenue and click-through rates, with the company citing reduced spending from the "insurance, loan, mortgage, and crypto subcategories" in particular. Worries about the economy and inflation are causing many Google customers to cut their ad budgets. Alphabet doesn't break down the non-ads business in much detail, but the two biggest money losers on Alphabet's reports are the "Other Bets" section and Google Cloud. Other Bets lost $1.6 billion, more than the $1.29 billion loss a year ago. "Other Bets" is the "non-Google" part of Alphabet and includes long-term R&D projects like Waymo self-driving cars and the "Wing" drone delivery project. Google says the only significant revenue generators for Other Bets are the "health technology" projects -- that would be Verily and/or Calico -- and "Internet services," aka Google Fiber. The other big loser is Google Cloud, which lost $699 million this quarter, up from $644 million in Q3 2021. "Google Cloud" on the earnings report combines the Amazon Web Services-fighting infrastructure business and Google Workspace's suite of productivity apps like Gmail and Google Docs. Workspace definitely earns money by showing ads to its 3 billion users, charging for user storage, and charging businesses for Gmail accounts with custom domains. The infrastructure business -- Google Cloud Platform -- is growing, but it's still struggling as the No. 3 cloud provider behind Amazon and Microsoft. Google is taking a "longer-term path to profitability" with Cloud Platform.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung is starting to roll out a "Maintenance Mode" feature for its phones that's designed to keep your messages, photos, info, and accounts safe when you're getting your phone repaired. The Verge reports: According to Samsung's press release, Maintenance Mode basically creates a separate user account that will let someone access "core functions" of the phone without being able to see any of your data. That means a repair tech will still be able to test your phone, but you won't have to worry about them seeing anything they shouldn't. Once you get your phone back, you can unlock it to turn off Maintenance Mode, which will also undo anything that was done while the phone was being repaired (e.g., test photos will be erased, new apps will be uninstalled, and settings changes will be reversed). Samsung says the feature will be "gradually rolling out over the next few months" to select phones running the Android 13-based One UI 5 -- if you want an idea of when your phone might be getting that update, check out this article. It'll also roll out to "more Galaxy devices" throughout next year. The company does warn, however, that the "timing of availability may vary by market, model and network provider," as updates can take a while to filter through carriers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader Tablizer shares a report from CNN: The hunt for planets that could harbor life may have just narrowed dramatically. Scientists had long hoped and theorized that the most common type of star in our universe -- called an M dwarf -- could host nearby planets with atmospheres, potentially rich with carbon and perfect for the creation of life. But in a new study of a world orbiting an M dwarf 66 light-years from Earth, researchers found no indication such a planet could hold onto an atmosphere at all. Without a carbon-rich atmosphere, it's unlikely a planet would be hospitable to living things. Carbon molecules are, after all, considered the building blocks of life. And the findings don't bode well for other types of planets orbiting M dwarfs, said study coauthor Michelle Hill, a planetary scientist and a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside. "The pressure from the star's radiation is immense, enough to blow a planet's atmosphere away," Hill said in a post on the university's website. M dwarf stars are known to be volatile, sputtering out solar flares and raining radiation on nearby celestial bodies. But for years, the hope had been that fairly large planets orbiting near M dwarfs could be in a Goldilocks environment, close enough to their small star to keep warm and large enough to cling onto its atmosphere. The nearby M dwarf, however, could be too intense to keep the atmosphere intact, according to the new study, which was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. A similar phenomenon happens in our solar system: Earth's atmosphere also deteriorates because of outbursts from its nearby star, the sun. The difference is that Earth has enough volcanic activity and other gas-emitting activity to replace the atmospheric loss and make it barely detectable, according to the research. However, the M dwarf planet examined in the study, GJ 1252b, "could have 700 times more carbon than Earth has, and it still wouldn't have an atmosphere. It would build up initially, but then taper off and erode away," said study coauthor and UC Riverside astrophysicist Stephen Kane, in a news release.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: A group of New Zealand Uber drivers have won a landmark case against the global ridesharing company, forcing it to treat them as employees, not contractors, and entitling them to a suite of worker rights and protections. New Zealand's employment court ruled on Tuesday that the drivers were employees, not independent contractors. While the ruling applies specifically to the case of four drivers, the court noted that it may have wider implications for drivers across the country. The court "does not have jurisdiction to make broader declarations of employment status" so all Uber drivers "do not, as a result of this judgment, instantly become employees," chief judge Christina Inglis wrote. She continued, however: "It may well have broader impact, particularly where, as here, there is apparent uniformity in the way in which the companies operate, and the framework under which drivers are engaged." Employment status is the bedrock on which most of New Zealand's minimum employment rights rest. It is "the gate through which a worker must pass" before they can access legal minimum entitlements including the minimum wage, six minimum hours of work, rest and meal breaks, holidays, parental leave, domestic violence leave, bereavement leave, ability to pursue a personal grievance, and access to union membership and collective bargaining. A spokesperson for Uber said the company was "disappointed" and would be appealing against the decision. They said it was "too soon to speculate" on whether New Zealand's drivers having employee status would affect the company's operations in the country more broadly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) wants the U.S. telecommunications regulatory agency to ensure a delay in some 5G C-Band transmissions from smaller operators. Reuters reports: Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen said the agency wants the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to mandate voluntary mitigations that AT&T and Verizon agreed to earlier this year mandated for 19 smaller telecoms and other spectrum holders. In a previously unreported letter dated Friday, Nolen cited industry data established "aviation safety would be compromised if the U.S. government does not codify certain additional operating limits in the 5G C-Band environment." Concerns that the 5G service could interfere with airplane altimeters, which give data on a plane's height above the ground and are crucial for bad-weather landing, led to disruptions at some U.S. airports earlier this year. Nolen's letter warns that without the FCC mandating the mitigations "the FAA would be forced to take immediate steps to ensure the safety of the traveling public, raising the likelihood of flight disruptions across the United States."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Nvidia's $1,599 GeForce RTX 4090 is an incredibly powerful graphics card, but its performance comes at the cost of high power draw. Like a few of the RTX 3000-series cards, Nvidia uses a new kind of 16-pin 12VHPWR power connector to supply all that power to the card -- you can plug up to four 8-pin GPU power cables into the 12VHPWR adapter, which then plugs into the connector on the GPU, saving some board space. But at least two RT 4090 users are now reporting that their 12VHPWR connectors have overheated and melted during use. These complaints are sourced from Reddit (via Tom's Hardware), so take them with a grain of salt -- we don't know the exact configuration of either user's PC setup. The specific model of graphics card (a Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC for one user, an Asus RTX 4090 TUF Gaming OC Edition for the other), the power supply, and any number of other factors could have contributed to the connectors overheating.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gizmodo points out that the United Kingdom's next prime minister, Rishi Sunak, "is a certified Crypto Bro who once requested that the Royal Mint issue an NFT." From the report: During his tenure as finance minister under former PM Boris Johnson, Sunak was in charge of advancing a number of crypto-related initiatives that sought to normalize digital currencies and integrate them into the British economy. By all accounts, he is the first crypto enthusiast to serve in the UK's top office. He's also the first person of color and the youngest PM -- 42 years old -- that Britain's had in 200 years. To be fair, Sunak's efforts at crypto promotion have at least trended towards regulation and taxation as opposed to total laissez faire deregulated madness -- though those efforts could, ultimately, simply normalize a phenomenon that critics say is redundant at best and a privacy hazard at worst. In April, Sunak announced a series of programs to turn the UK into what he called a "global cryptoasset technology hub." Among the initiatives announced at the time was a plan to integrate stablecoins into the national payment system, thus "paving their way for use in the UK as a recognized form of payment." Considered to be the least volatile form of cryptocurrency, stablecoins have seen more interest by governments than other forms of crypto -- though projects like Terra and Tether have shown the potential danger in putting too much faith in the assets' stability. Sunak's plans also suggested creating additional regulations that would've helped further incorporate crypto into the UK's economic and legal framework, thus spurring greater investment in the space. "The measures we've outlined today will help to ensure firms can invest, innovate and scale up in this country," Sunak wrote in a press release published at the time. Another ambitious initiative pushed by Sunak was the Financial Services and Markets Bill, a piece of legislation that would give local governments in Britain broad discretion to regulate cryptocurrencies, thus further assimilating them into the nation's economy. The bill, which has not yet passed, is currently being looked at by Parliament. At the same time, Sunak also recently backed a study to look at the potential benefits of creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC), or "Britcoin" as he dubbed it. Proponents of CBDCs argue that they could have benefits for spenders, making payments "faster, cheaper, and more secure," as one op-ed puts it. However, critics argue that they are unnecessary and could ultimately spell huge privacy troubles, given the trackable nature of crypto and digital currencies. Despite his crypto track record, analysts have suggested that is is unlikely Sunak will have time to focus much on any web3-related initiatives in the near term. Given Britain's current economic dumpster fire, any work on "Britcoin" might have to take a backseat.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Montgomery County Public Schools, one of the largest school districts in the US, has deployed the single largest electric school bus fleet in the country. Last school year, the school district saw the delivery of its first 25 electric buses and installed electric infrastructure at one of its transportation depots. It's now added 61 more electric buses to its fleet, for a total of 86. Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) will replace 326 diesel school buses with electric school buses by 2025, and it will have an entirely electric school bus fleet in 10 years. Superintendent Dr. Monifa B. McKnight said at yesterday's launch that, when procurement of the 326 electric buses is complete, "we are going to be saving upwards of 6,500 gallons of diesel fuel per day, and immediately, this is going to cut costs by 50%." Electrek notes that under Maryland's Climate Solutions Now Act of 2022 (PDF), all new school bus purchases and contracts must be electric by 2025.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Palmer Luckey is not a fan of what Mark Zuckerberg has so far produced for the metaverse, although he does think it could eventually succeed. Insider reports: The Oculus founder, speaking Monday during The Wall Street Journal conference Tech Live, said of Horizon Worlds, Facebook's core metaverse product: "I don't think it's a good product." "It's not good, it's not fun," Luckey said of Horizon. "Most people on the team would agree it's not a good product." "Mark Zuckerberg is the number one virtual reality fan in the world," Luckey said. "He's put in more money and time to it than anyone ever in history." He said the amount of money Zuckerberg is putting behind the project alone means there's a chance Horizon Worlds will get better and the metaverse will be a success. "It is terrible today, but it could be amazing in the future," he said. "Zuckerberg will put the money in to do it. They're in the best position of anyone to win in the long run." It will take time and involve mistakes, he added, comparing it to a "project car," a fancy automobile that the owner spends a lot of money on as a hobby. "You hack at it and maybe no one else sees the value," Luckey said. "Will they stumble? Yeah sure. Will they waste money? Will they add things to their project car that they later hack off? Yes." The report notes that Facebook lost $10 billion last year on its metaverse projects, and is expected by to lose more than $10 billion again this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chrome will no longer support Windows 7 nor Windows 8.1 upon the release of Chrome 110, currently scheduled to hit stable on February 7, 2023. From that point on, you'll need to be running at least Windows 10 to maintain access to new builds. Android Police reports: While Google won't be doing anything to stop users of older platforms from continuing to install and run earlier releases of Chrome, they'd be missing out on the latest critical security and usability enhancements.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Generically, passkeys refer to various schemes for storing authenticating information in hardware, a concept that has existed for more than a decade. What's different now is that Microsoft, Apple, Google, and a consortium of other companies have unified around a single passkey standard shepherded by the FIDO Alliance. Not only are passkeys easier for most people to use than passwords; they are also completely resistant to credential phishing, credential stuffing, and similar account takeover attacks. On Monday, PayPal said US-based users would soon have the option of logging in using FIDO-based passkeys, joining Kayak, eBay, Best Buy, CardPointers, and WordPress as online services that will offer the password alternative. In recent months, Microsoft, Apple, and Google have all updated their operating systems and apps to enable passkeys. Passkey support is still spotty. Passkeys stored on iOS or macOS will work on Windows, for instance, but the reverse isn't yet available. In the coming months, all of that should be ironed out, though. Passkeys work almost identically to the FIDO authenticators that allow us to use our phones, laptops, computers, and Yubico or Feitian security keys for multi-factor authentication. Just like the FIDO authenticators stored on these MFA devices, passkeys are invisible and integrate with Face ID, Windows Hello, or other biometric readers offered by device makers. There's no way to retrieve the cryptographic secrets stored in the authenticators short of physically dismantling the device or subjecting it to a jailbreak or rooting attack. Even if an adversary was able to extract the cryptographic secret, they still would have to supply the fingerprint, facial scan, or -- in the absence of biometric capabilities -- the PIN that's associated with the token. What's more, hardware tokens use FIDO's Cross-Device Authentication flow, or CTAP, which relies on Bluetooth Low Energy to verify the authenticating device is in close physical proximity to the device trying to log in. "Users no longer need to enroll each device for each service, which has long been the case for FIDO (and for any public key cryptography)," said Andrew Shikiar, FIDO's executive director and chief marketing officer. "By enabling the private key to be securely synced across an OS cloud, the user needs to only enroll once for a service, and then is essentially pre-enrolled for that service on all of their other devices. This brings better usability for the end-user and -- very significantly -- allows the service provider to start retiring passwords as a means of account recovery and re-enrollment." In other words: "Passkeys just trade WebAuthn cryptographic keys with the website directly," says Ars Review Editor Ron Amadeo. "There's no need for a human to tell a password manager to generate, store, and recall a secret -- that will all happen automatically, with way better secrets than what the old text box supported, and with uniqueness enforced." If you're eager to give passkeys a try, you can use this demo site created by security company Hanko.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While many people in California felt a moderate earthquake Tuesday, some smartphone users actually got a heads-up before it happened thanks to technology developed at the University of California, Berkeley. Axios reports: Researchers at Berkeley released an app called MyShake that can offer a brief earthquake warning by detecting the signals of an earthquake just before they are felt. Think of it like how you can see lightning before you hear thunder. The app works on both iPhone and Android, but Google announced in 2020 it would implement Berkeley's technology directly into Android, allowing far more people to benefit. As often happens after an earthquake, people turned to Twitter after the Magnitude 5.1 quake. But some reported getting the alert first. "Got the earthquake alert on my Android phone a few seconds before I felt it," Google's Dieter Bohn said in a tweet.Google CEO Sundar Pichai also tweeted about getting the alert.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Singapore cut its forecast for its carbon dioxide emissions in 2030 and will achieve a peak in emissions earlier than that as the city-state strives to achieve net zero by 2050, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said on Tuesday. From a report: Singapore plans to reduce its carbon emissions target for 2030 to 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), Wong said at the Singapore International Energy Week conference. The country previously aimed for emissions to peak at 65 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2030. "We will now aim to peak our emissions earlier, and reduce our emissions to around 60 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2030," Wong said. "This 5 million tonne improvement is significant as it is equivalent to reducing our current transport emissions by two thirds." Wong did not specify in his speech what year Singapore's carbon emissions would peak. A spokesperson for Singapore's National Climate Change Secretariat said that the exact peak emissions level and year would depend on the country's decarbonisation efforts, which will be affected by the technology used and the contributions of citizens and businesses. As part of its decarbonisation plans, Wong launched the country's hydrogen strategy on Tuesday, saying the fuel could supply up to half of Singapore's power needs by 2050.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Digital simulations of Elon Musk, Tom Cruise, Leo DiCaprio and others have shown up in ads, as the image-melding technology grows more popular and presents the marketing industry with new legal and ethical questions. From a report: Celebrity deepfakes are coming to advertising. Among the recent entries: Last year, Russian telecommunications company MegaFon released a commercial in which a simulacrum of Hollywood legend Bruce Willis helps defuse a bomb. Just last week, Elon Musk seemed to star in a marketing video from real-estate investment startup reAlpha Tech. And last month a promotional video for machine-learning firm Paperspace showed talking semblances of the actors Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio. None of these celebrities ever spent a moment filming these campaigns. In the cases of Messrs. Musk, Cruise and DiCaprio, they never even agreed to endorse the companies in question. All the videos of digital simulations were created with so-called deepfake technology, which uses computer-generated renditions to make the Hollywood and business notables say and do things they never actually said or did. Some of the ads are broad parodies, and the meshing of the digital to the analog in the best of cases might not fool an alert viewer. Even so, the growing adoption of deepfake software could eventually shape the industry in profound ways while creating new legal and ethical questions, experts said. Authorized deepfakes could allow marketers to feature huge stars in ads without requiring them to actually appear on-set or before cameras, bringing down costs and opening new creative possibilities. But unauthorized, they create a legal gray area: Celebrities could struggle to contain a proliferation of unauthorized digital reproductions of themselves and the manipulation of their brand and reputation, experts said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Health-threatening fungi are spreading in geographic range due to climate change, while some fungal diseases spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to authors of a newly released World Health Organization report. From a report: On Tuesday the WHO published its first ever list of fungal priority pathogens, cataloguing 19 organisms that experts identified as being of the greatest threat to public health. "Currently, fungal infections receive less than 1.5% of all infectious disease research funding," the report found, suggesting the true health burden of fungi is unknown, while "most treatment guidelines are informed by limited evidence and expert opinion." The WHO's assistant director general of antimicrobial resistance, Dr Hanan Balkhy, said in a statement: "Emerging from the shadows of the bacterial antimicrobial resistance pandemic, invasive fungal diseases are growing ever more resistant to treatments, becoming an ever more pressing public health concern worldwide." Dr Justin Beardsley, of the University of Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute, who led a group commissioned by the WHO, said historical research underspending was out of step with the "huge burden of disease" of fungal infections. "They're causing as many deaths as tuberculosis, and more than malaria," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lawmakers in the U.K. voted in favor of recognizing crypto assets as regulated financial instruments and products in the country on Tuesday. From a report: The House of Commons, the Parliament's lower house, met on Tuesday for a line-by-line reading of the proposed Financial Services and Markets Bill, which broadly covers the U.K.'s post-Brexit economic strategy. The lawmakers considered a list of proposed amendments to the bill, including one put forward by parliamentarian Andrew Griffith to include crypto assets in the scope of regulated financial services in the country. The draft bill already included measures to extend existing regulations to payments-focused stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of other assets like the U.S. dollar or gold. "The substance here is to treat them [crypto] like other forms of financial assets and not to prefer them, but also to bring them within the scope of regulation for the first time," Griffith, the financial services and city minister, said during the parliamentary meeting before lawmakers voted largely in favor of keeping the amendment in the legislative package.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Pew Research Center has released the latest iteration of its surveys of Americans' views of science and scientists. From a report: On the most basic level, they see a drop in the public's opinion of scientists since the height of the pandemic in 2020. But, as always, the situation is more complex when the numbers are examined closely. In general, there was a drop in trust of almost every occupation during that time period, and in the case of scientists, this largely represents a return to pre-pandemic popularity. The exception is that nearly everyone is less likely to say that scientists should get involved in policy decisions, with Republicans feeling especially strong in this regard.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple snuck a nice little surprise in its round of Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV updates yesterday with the addition of support for Nintendo's updated classic game controllers. From a report: As spotted by developer Steve Troughton-Smith and confirmed by MacStories, Nintendo's modern SNES and N64 controllers now work with updated Apple devices with macOS 13, iOS 16, and tvOS 16 and up, whether using a wired or Bluetooth connection. While neither MacStories nor Troughton-Smith was able to test whether the Sega Genesis and NES controllers work with Apple's devices, we're assuming Apple added the same functionality.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India's antitrust watchdog has hit Google with $113 million fine for abusing the dominant position of its Google Play Store and ordered the firm to allow app developers to use third-party payments processing service for in-app purchases or for purchasing apps, the second such penalty on the Android-maker in just as many weeks in its largest market by users. From a report: The Competition Commission of India, which opened the probe into Google in late 2020, said mandating developers to use Google's own billing system for paid apps and in-app purchases through Play Store "constitutes an imposition of unfair condition" and thus violates provisions of the nation's competition act. The regulator -- which interviewed several industry players including Paytm, Zomato, Info Edge, Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi, Microsoft and Realme as part of the investigation -- said that Google not using its billing system for its own apps such as YouTube amounts to "imposition of discriminatory conditions."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan has stepped up its push to catch up on digitization by telling a reluctant public they have to sign up for digital IDs or possibly lose access to their public health insurance. From a report: As the naming implies, the initiative is about assigning numbers to people, similar to Social Security numbers in the U.S. Many Japanese worry the information might be misused or that their personal information might be stolen. Some view the My Number effort as a violation of their right to privacy. So the system that kicked off in 2016 has never fully caught on. Fax machines are still commonplace, and many Japanese conduct much of their business in person, with cash. Some bureaucratic procedures can be done online, but many Japanese offices still require "inkan," or seals for stamping, for identification, and insist on people bringing paper forms to offices. Now the government is asking people to apply for plastic My Number cards equipped with microchips and photos, to be linked to drivers licenses and the public health insurance plans. Health insurance cards now in use, which lack photos, will be discontinued in late 2024. People will be required to use My Number cards instead. That has drawn a backlash, with an online petition demanding a continuation of the current health cards drawing more than 100,000 signatures in a few days.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said that recently imposed U.S. restrictions on semiconductor-industry exports to China were inevitable as America seeks to maintain technological leadership in competition with China. From a report: Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's annual Tech Live conference, Mr. Gelsinger said the restrictions, which require chip companies to obtain a license to export certain advanced artificial-intelligence and supercomputing chips as well as equipment used in advanced manufacturing, are part of a necessary shift of chip supply chains. "I viewed this geopolitically as inevitable," Mr. Gelsinger said. "And that's why the rebalancing of supply chains is so critical." His comments Monday followed high-profile public lobbying of Congress to pass the bipartisan Chips and Science Act, which extends nearly $53 billion in subsidies for research and development and to build or expand fabs in the U.S., in July. Mr. Gelsinger was a leading advocate for the legislation. Mr. Gelsinger has embarked on a massive expansion of chip plants, referred to as fabs. The company has announced plans to erect new facilities in Ohio, Germany and elsewhere since Mr. Gelsinger took over last year at a combined cost potentially topping $100 billion. "Where the oil reserves are defined geopolitics for the last five decades. Where the fabs are for the next five decades is more important," Mr. Gelsinger said Monday. Mr. Gelsinger said the ambition for efforts to boost domestic chip manufacturing in Western countries was to shift from about 80% in Asia to about 50% by the end of the decade, with the U.S. taking 30% and Europe the remaining 20%. "We would all feel so good" if that were to happen, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On a recent afternoon, an unusual group of visitors peered through a window at Purdue University students tinkering in a lab: two dozen executives from the world's biggest semiconductor companies. The tech leaders had traveled to the small-town campus on the Wabash River to fix one of the biggest problems that they -- and the U.S. economy -- face: a desperate shortage of engineers. Leading the visitors on a tour of the high-tech lab, Engineering Professor Zhihong Chen mentioned that Purdue could really use some donated chip-making equipment as it scrambles to expand semiconductor education. "Okay, done. We can do that," Intel manufacturing chief Keyvan Esfarjani quickly replied. Just weeks before, his company broke ground on two massive chip factories in Ohio that aim to employ 3,000 people. Computer chips are the brains that power all modern electronics, from smartphones to fighter jets. The United States used to build a lot of them but now largely depends on Asian manufacturers, a reliance that the Biden administration sees as a major economic and national security risk. Hefty new government subsidies aimed at reshoring manufacturing are sparking a construction boom of new chip factories, but a dire shortage of engineers threatens the ambitious project. By some estimates, the United States needs at least 50,000 new semiconductor engineers over the next five years to staff all of the new factories and research labs that companies have said they plan to build with subsidies from the Chips and Science Act, a number far exceeding current graduation rates nationwide, according to Purdue. Additionally, legions of engineers in other specialties will be needed to deliver on other White House priorities, including the retooling of auto manufacturing for electric vehicles and the production of technology aimed at reducing U.S. dependence on fossil fuels.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Will AI image generators kill the stock image industry? It's a question asked by many following the rise of text-to-image AI models in recent years. The answer from the industry's incumbents, though, is "no" -- not if we can start selling AI-generated content first. From a report: Today, stock image giant Shutterstock has announced an extended partnership with OpenAI, which will see the AI lab's text-to-image model DALL-E 2 directly integrated into Shutterstock "in the coming months." In addition, Shutterstock is launching a "Contributor Fund" that will reimburse creators when the company sells work to train text-to-image AI models. This follows widespread criticism from artists whose output has been scraped from the web without their consent to create these systems. Notably, Shutterstock is also banning the sale of AI-generated art on its site that is not made using its DALL-E integration.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: As part of its larger commitment to combat "cyberflashing," the dating app Bumble is open sourcing its AI tool that detects unsolicited lewd images. First debuted in 2019, Private Detector (let's take a moment to let that name sink in) blurs out nudes that are sent through the Bumble app, giving the user on the receiving end the choice of whether to open the image. "Even though the number of users sending lewd images on our apps is luckily a negligible minority -- just 0.1% -- our scale allows us to collect a best-in-the-industry dataset of both lewd and non-lewd images, tailored to achieve the best possible performances on the task," the company wrote in a press release. Now available on GitHub, a refined version of the AI is available for commercial use, distribution and modification. Though it's not exactly cutting-edge technology to develop a model that detects nude images, it's something that smaller companies probably don't have the time to develop themselves. So, other dating apps (or any product where people might send dick pics, AKA the entire internet?) could feasibly integrate this technology into their own products, helping shield users from undesired lewd content. When Bumble first introduced this AI, the company claimed it had 98% accuracy. "There's a need to address this issue beyond Bumble's product ecosystem and engage in a larger conversation about how to address the issue of unsolicited lewd photos -- also known as cyberflashing -- to make the internet a safer and kinder place for everyone," Bumble added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Memtest86+ just got its first update after 9 years. The program has reportedly been rewritten from scratch and is back in active development. The new version, 6.0, features a plethora of updates to bring the application up to date, and support the latest system hardware from Intel and AMD. Tom's Hardware reports: For the uninitiated, MemTest86 was originally created back in the mid 1990s, and was one of the earliest DDR memory testing applications for personal computers. But development stopped in 2013 once Memtest86 was split into Memtest86 and Memtest86", with the former being bought by PassMark. Officially, we don't know why development stopped. But compared to the now modern Memtest86, Memtest86+ is the open-source variant. Needless to say, version 6.00 features a lot of updates, which were required to bring it up to modern standards compared to the 2013 version. The new version includes completely rewritten code for UEFI-based motherboards, the modern version of a BIOS, for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the application. Furthermore, the application features added support for x64 long mode paging, support for up to 256 cores, added detection for DDR4 and DDR5 memory -- since DDR3 was the latest memory standard in 2013 -- and adds support for XMP version 3.0. CPU support has been significantly enhanced, addingdetection for all pre-Zen and AMD Zen-based processors ranging from the Ryzen 1000 series to 7000 series, and any older parts that were made after 2013. Intel support has also been added for chips up to 13th gen Raptor Lake. Finally, the last patch notes indicate version 6.0 adds support for older Nvidia and AMD chipsets - probably pre-2010 since it mentions Nvidia nForce chipsets, along with numerous bug fixes, optimizations and enhancements.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA's independent study to delve into the mysteries surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena kicked off today. CNN reports: The group will include experts across numerous disciplines -- including astrobiology, data science, oceanography, genetics, policy and planetary science -- as well as retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, a former fighter pilot and test pilot and retired US Navy captain. The space agency, which first announced it was forming the group in June, previously revealed that the team would be led by astrophysicist David Spergel, who is president of the Simons Foundation in New York City. The new group won't necessarily seek to determine exactly what the UAPs, which have been seen moving through restricted military airspace over the past several decades, are. Rather, the team will look to hash out exactly how it's best for NASA to approach further study of the phenomenon. The space agency has already noted that the limited number of observations of UAPs has made it difficult to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of such events. "Without access to an extensive set of data, it is nearly impossible to verify or explain any observation, thus the focus of the study is to inform NASA what possible data could be collected in the future to scientifically discern the nature of UAP," according to a NASA news release. This study, expected to last about nine months, will also be entirely unclassified and within the public domain. "Exploring the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the heart of who we are at NASA," Zurbuchen said in a Friday statement. "Understanding the data we have surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what is happening in our skies. Data is the language of scientists and makes the unexplainable, explainable." Specifically, the team will look for data on "events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena -- from a scientific perspective," the agency said. Unidentified aerial phenomena are of interest, NASA said, from a security and safety perspective. There was no evidence UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin, NASA emphasized during the initial announcement in June.Read more of this story at Slashdot.