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While listening to a podcast about the Go programming language, backend architect Aviv Carmi heard some loose talk about forking the language to keep its original design while also allowing the evolution of an "extended flavor." If such a fork takes place, Carmi writes on Medium, he hopes the two languages could interact and share the same runtime environment, libraries, and ecosystem — citing lessons learned from the popularity of other language forks:There are well-known, hugely successful precedents for such a move. Unarguably, the JVM ecosystem will last longer and keep on gaining popularity thanks to Scala and Kotlin (a decrease in Java's popularity is overtaken by an increase in Scala's, during the previous decade, and in Kotlin's, during this one). All three languages contribute to a stronger, single community and gain stronger libraries and integrations. JavaScript has undoubtedly become stronger thanks to Typescript, which quickly became one of the world's most popular languages itself. I also believe this is the right move for us Gophers... Carmi applauds Go's readability-over-writability culture, its consistent concurrency model (with lightweight threading), and its broad ecosystem of tools. But in a second essay Carmi lists his complaints — about Go's lack of keyword-based visibility modifiers (like "public" and "private"), how any symbol declared in a file "is automatically visible to the entire package," and Go's abundance of global built-in symbols (which complicate the choice of possible variable names, but which can still be overriden, since they aren't actually keywords). After a longer wishlist — including null-pointer safety features and improvements to error handling — Carmi introduces a third article with "A Proposition for a Better Future."I would have loved to see a compile time environment that mostly looks like Go, but allows developers to be a bit more expressive to gain maintainability and runtime safety. But at the same time, allow the Go language itself to largely remain the same and not evolve into something new, as a lot of us Gophers fear. As Gophers, why not have two tools in our tool set? The essay proposes a new extended flavor of Go called Goat — a "new compile-time environment that will produce standard, compatible, and performant Go files that are fully compatible with any other Go project. This means they can import regular Go files but also be safely imported from any other Go file." "Goat implementation will most likely be delivered as a code generation tool or as a transpiler producing regular go files," explains a page created for the project on GitHub. "However, full implementation details should be designed once the specification provided in this document is finalized." Carmi's essay concludes, "I want to ignite a thorough discussion around the design and specification of Goat.... This project will allow Go to remain simple and efficient while allowing the community to experiment with an extended flavor. Goat spec should be driven by the community and so it needs the opinion and contribution of any Gopher and non-Gopher out there." "Come join the discussion, we need your input." Related link: Go principal engineer Russ Cox gave a talk at GopherCon 2022 that was all about compatibility and "the strategies Go uses to continue to evolve without breaking your programs."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The mission of NASA's robotic lander InSight "is nearing an end as dust obscures its solar panels," reports CNN. "In a matter of weeks, the lander won't be able to send a beep to show it's OK anymore." "Before it bids farewell, though, the spacecraft still has some surprises in store." When Mars rumbled beneath InSight's feet on December 24, NASA scientists thought it was just another marsquake. The magnitude 4 quake was actually caused by a space rock slamming into the Martian surface a couple thousand miles away. The meteoroid left quite a crater on the red planet, and it revealed glimmering chunks of ice in an entirely unexpected place — near the warm Martian equator. The chunks of ice — the size of boulders — "were found buried closer to the warm Martian equator than any ice that has ever been detected on the planet," CNN explained earlier this week. The article also adds that ice below the surface of Mars "could be used for drinking water, rocket propellant and even growing crops and plants by future astronauts. And the fact that the ice was found so near the equator, the warmest region on Mars, might make it an ideal place to land crewed missions to the red planet."Interestingly, they note that scientists only realized it was a meteoroid strike (and not an earthquake) when "Before and after photos captured from above by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling Mars since 2006, spotted a new crater this past February." A crater that was 492 feet (150 meters) across and 70 feet (21 meters) deep...When scientists connected the dots from both missions, they realized it was one of the largest meteoroid strikes on Mars since NASA began studying the red planet.... The journal Science published two new studies describing the impact and its effects on Thursday.... "The image of the impact was unlike any I had seen before, with the massive crater, the exposed ice, and the dramatic blast zone preserved in the Martian dust," said Liliya Posiolova, orbital science operations lead for the orbiter at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, in a statement.... Researchers estimated the meteoroid, the name for a space rock before it hits the ground, was about 16 to 39 feet (5 to 12 meters). While this would have been small enough to burn up in Earth's atmosphere, the same can't be said for Mars, which has a thin atmosphere only 1% as dense as Earth's.... Some of the material blasted out of the crater landed as far as 23 miles (37 kilometers) away. Teams at NASA also captured sound from the impact, so you can listen to what it sounds like when a space rock hits Mars. The images captured by the orbiter, along with seismic data recorded by InSight, make the impact one of the largest craters in our solar system ever observed as it was created.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader Soul_Predator writes: Vanilla OS is Ubuntu on stock GNOME, with on-demand immutability and package selection freedom. It is currently a beta project, with a stable release planned for the next month. "The first-time setup process is a breeze to experience," writes It's FOSS News, applauding how it lets uses choose and enable Flatpak/Snap/AppImage. Overall, a package manager that installs applications utilizing a container, getting the ability to choose your package managers, on-demand immutability, and vanilla GNOME make it seem like a good deal to keep an eye on... I'd say it is a project that I believe a lot of users will appreciate. You can download the ISO by joining its Discord channel for now. The ISO is not yet publicly available to all. Take a look at its documentation if you are curious. However, as per the roadmap, they plan to have a release candidate soon enough.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The animated series "Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi" premiered this week on Disney+, witih all six 15-minute episodes released on Wednesday. CNN calls it a slick and well-produced "kind of super-service for the Star Wars faithful, rekindling old flames, and comfortably submerging them in the past." But they also add that animation "has also become a vehicle for greater experimentation, as witnessed in the Star Wars: Visions anime shorts that premiered last year."It's hardly a surprise that this latest addition to the mythology comes courtesy of producer Dave Filoni, who oversaw such series as The Clone Wars and Rebels before throwing his fertile mind for all things Star Wars into The Mandalorian and other live-action fare. Filoni wrote five of the six shorts, which are split between Ahsoka Tano (again voiced by Ashley Eckstein), soon to be featured in her own live-action spinoff; and Count Dooku (played in the movies by Christopher Lee, and voiced by Corey Burton). Beyond a glimpse of a baby Ahsoka (just in time for holiday gift-giving, kids), in an episode that illustrates her home planet and its warrior streak, the episodes leap around in time. That includes additional insights into Dooku and his abandonment of the Jedi order to embrace the dark side and Darth Sidious (Ian McDiarmid). The anthology format creates the opportunity to drop in at different inflection points scattered across the "Star Wars" timeline. "Fans will likely be particularly intrigued by some of the gradations surrounding Ahsoka, her relationship to Anakin Skywalker and the aftermath of the Clone Wars," the article teases...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2008, the United States embassy in Beijing installed an air-quality monitor and started tweeting out its findings every hour. Since then, these monitors have popped up in more than 50 embassies in countries and cities around the globe. Something unexpected happened in each of the cities in which the monitors appeared. Researchers found that, overall, air quality improved in the cities where embassies were tweeting out air-quality data. "We were surprised," Akshaya Jha, assistant professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the paper's authors, told Ars. According to the World Health Organization, in 2019, more than 90 percent of the world's population lived in areas with dangerous levels of air pollution. Further, according to Jha's paper, this phenomenon tends to be worse in low- and middle-income countries. However, air-quality monitoring in those countries is quite rare. Work on this research began around a year ago. Jha's team wanted to look at something completely different: the impacts that improvements in air pollution had on hazard pay among embassy workers. However, when the team began studying the literature, they couldn't find good information on reductions in air pollution relative to when embassies started their monitoring in many locations. As such, they began looking into it themselves. To study this, they used satellite data to look at air pollution in 466 cities in 136 countries, of which 50 cities across 36 countries received the air-quality monitors by 2020. They looked at the air pollution in all of these cities in the years before and after the monitors were installed, using the years prior to installation and the cities that did not receive monitors as controls. The research found that the cities that had a US embassy that set up one of these monitors and tweeted out air-quality data saw a decrease of PM2.5 particulates to the tune of 2 to 4 micrograms per cubic meter -- compared to their air quality before getting the monitor and to other similar cities that do not have a monitor.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Lego Group announced this week that it will discontinue its Mindstorms-branded products at the end of 2022. From a report: In an official statement, the company said it will redirect its internal Mindstorms team into "different areas of the business" and that its Mindstorms Robot Inventor App digital platforms will remain live until the end of 2024. Lego Mindstorms debuted on September 1, 1998, as a breakthrough educational tool -- originally developed at MIT -- that allowed kids and adults alike to craft robotic systems using standard Lego parts and a computerized control brick. The set gained a key part of its appeal by allowing owners to program the control brick easily on a personal computer using a drag-and-drop visual programming language, making sophisticated robots possible with a relatively simple set of parts. Over the years, hobbyists and researchers took the Mindstorms series in unexpected new directions while Lego itself iterated the product line with increasingly sophisticated offerings.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Government officials believe that surveillance operations by foreign powers and weather balloons or other airborne clutter explain most recent incidents of unidentified aerial phenomenon -- government-speak for U.F.O.s -- as well as many episodes in past years. From a report: The sightings have puzzled the Pentagon and intelligence agencies for years, fueling theories about visiting space aliens and spying by a hostile nation using advanced technology. But government officials say many of the incidents have far more ordinary explanations. Intelligence agencies are set to deliver a classified document to Congress by Monday updating a report made public last year that said nearly all of the incidents remain unexplained. The original document looked at 144 incidents between 2004 and 2021 that were reported by U.S. government sources, mostly American military personnel. This article is based on interviews with American officials familiar with the findings of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies' examination of the incidents. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified work. Some of the incidents have been formally attributed to Chinese surveillance -- with relatively ordinary drone technology -- and others are also thought to be connected to Beijing. China, which has stolen plans for advanced fighter planes, wants to learn more about how the United States trains its military pilots, according to American officials.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chicago is betting on quantum -- a technology that could ensure everything from emails to online shopping is 100% secure -- to fuel future economic growth. But there's still much work to do before the city realizes its dream of becoming the nation's capital for the promising technology. From a report: Best known for traditional industries including food, agriculture and manufacturing, the Windy City has been trying to lure investments from companies such as Google and Amazon.com as it shifts its focus to quantum, which promises to make Internet communication unhackable. Illinois already gets 40% of all the federal dollars for the technology and has four of the nation's 10 quantum centers, the most of any state. But being at the forefront of quantum developments requires the city to focus on translating science into companies and jobs, said Brad Henderson, chief executive officer at P33, a non-profit founded by former Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker. "We have a top five science setting and we're not even in the top 10 at translating science into commerce," he said. "We're targeting tens of billions of dollars in annual GDP that we expect to have in 10 years. That's our goal. And tens of billion dollars actually translates into thousands of jobs."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Surging US tuition costs have more American parents sending their children to college in Europe as they look to save money on higher education. What once was a niche opportunity for wealthy families looking to add some flair to their kids' resumes is now becoming increasingly common as tuition and fees climb in the US, stretching budgets that are already getting hit by inflation and rising housing costs. In France, the number of American students surged 50% in the 2021-22 school year compared to the previous year; there was a 16% gain in the Netherlands, while the UK saw a 28% surge in applicants this year compared to 2020. Google searches for "College in Europe" hit a three-year high in August and have remained elevated as college application season ramps up. Living abroad comes with its own expenses and hassles, but parents have many reasons for sending their kids to school overseas. Some mention the less stressful application process, access to different cultures and the ability to travel. But money is perhaps the biggest factor. The average cost for college tuition has more doubled in the past two decades, hitting $35,551 in 2022, according to the Education Data Initiative. Top schools, including in the Ivy League, charge far more. While President Joe Biden's loan forgiveness program will offer graduates some reprieve, crippling student debt is fueling a backlash against the prices of higher education. Tuition for international students in Europe, meanwhile, is free at most German universities, costs $2,778 a year in France and as much as 15,000 euros in the Netherlands. In the UK, an undergraduate will pay about $40,516 a year to study English at Oxford, while the University of St Andrews runs more than 26,000 pounds. But students in Europe typically get their degrees in three years, not four. "Besides the less stressful application process, Americans' chances abroad are also a lot better," adds Bloomberg. "While top US schools like Harvard and Stanford have acceptance rates in the low single digits, about 14% of students get into Oxford and 41% get into the University of Saint Andrews, two of the most popular options for Americans."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pioneering Sega developer Rieko Kodama has passed away at the age of 58. Eurogamer reports: A memorial message for her was spotted in the credits of the Mega Drive Mini 2 and later confirmed by Sega producer Yosuke Oskunari. Sega subsequently confirmed Kodama passed back in May, but was unable to share details in respect to her family, as reported by IGN. "We pray that the deceased will rest in peace, and we offer our gratitude for her enormous contributions to Sega," said Sega of Japan. Kodama worked on some of Sega's most celebrated games, including Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Skies of Arcadia, and Alex Kidd. She's perhaps best known as one of the creative leads on the Phantasy Star series, directing Phantasy Star 4. In 2019 she won the Pioneer Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards for her 35-year career in an industry dominated by men.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA obligated $2.04 billion to SpaceX in fiscal year 2022, which ended last month, according to new federal procurement data. For the first time, the amount paid by the space agency to SpaceX exceeds that paid to Boeing, which has long been the leading hardware provider to NASA. Boeing received $1.72 billion during the most recent fiscal year, based on data first reported by Aviation Week's Irene Klotz. Ars Technica reports: The California Institute of Technology, which manages the Jet Propulsion Laboratory field center for NASA, remains the agency's No. 1 contractor, with $2.68 billion in funding. The academic institution is responsible for operating the California-based NASA field center and distributing funding for myriad robotic spacecraft missions such as Mars Perseverance and the Europa Clipper. On the one hand, the ascension of SpaceX to the No. 2 spot on NASA's contractor list represents a major shakeup in the order of things. For a long time, NASA's human spaceflight and exploration programs were dominated by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Aerojet, Northrop Grumman, and a handful of other traditional defense aerospace contractors. However, it should come as no surprise that a company that has recently delivered the most services -- and, arguably, value -- to NASA should start to receive a large share of its contract awards. This has been most notable with SpaceX's performance on Commercial Crew, NASA's program to buy transportation services from private companies to bring its astronauts to and from the International Space Station. NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX in 2014 to develop their spacecraft, paying Boeing about 60 percent more. At the time, it was widely believed that the traditional contractor, with this additional money, would deliver services sooner. But it was SpaceX that first flew crew to the space station in May 2020, and the company has since launched five operational missions to the orbiting laboratory. [...] Much of the funding increase for SpaceX in 2022, an increase of about $400 million over the previous year, appears to be driven by contracts for the Human Landing System as part of the Artemis Moon Program and the purchase of additional Crew Dragon missions to the space station. (Individual contracts can be found within the Federal Procurement Data System).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Core Scientific, one of the world's largest miners of Bitcoin, warned that it may run out of cash by the end of the year and could seek relief through bankruptcy protection. Bloomberg reports: Operating performance and liquidity have been severely impacted by the prolonged drop in the price of Bitcoin, a rise in electricity costs, increased competition and litigation with bankrupt Celsius Networks LLC, the Austin, Texas-based company said in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Thursday. Shares of Core Scientific dropped 78% on Thursday, its worst trading day since going public earlier this year through a merger. Bitcoin mining companies such as Core Scientific had recently been increasingly opting to sell equity, resorting to one of their least attractive options to raise money as profits dry up and higher interest rates makes borrowing more expensive. The company entered into a $100 million common stock purchase agreement with B. Riley Principal Capital II in July. Bitcoin has slumped almost 70% since reaching a record high in November 2021. "We could see similar filings within the sector," said Brian Dobson, an analyst at Chardan Capital, who had a 'buy' rating on the shares. "This is going to weigh on all of the publicly traded crypto miners." Should Core Scientific file for bankruptcy, it would likely be the first large publicly traded Bitcoin miner to do so, Dobson said. Core Scientific said it won't make payments coming due in late October and early November with respect to several of equipment and other financings, including two bridge promissory notes. The company is exploring alternatives, including hiring strategic advisers, raising additional capital or restructuring its existing capital structure. Core Scientific held 24 Bitcoins and approximately $26.6 million in cash as of Thursday. That's compared with 1,051 Bitcoins and about $29.5 million in cash as of September, the company said in the filing. The shares, which traded as much as $14.32 late last year, closed at 22 cents. they've tumbled 98% since the start of the year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Everyone depends on OpenSSL. You may not know it, but OpenSSL is what makes it possible to use secure Transport Layer Security (TLS) on Linux, Unix, Windows, and many other operating systems. It's also what is used to lock down pretty much every secure communications and networking application and device out there. So we should all be concerned that Mark Cox, a Red Hat Distinguished Software Engineer and the Apache Software Foundation (ASF)'s VP of Security, this week tweeted, "OpenSSL 3.0.7 update to fix Critical CVE out next Tuesday 1300-1700UTC." How bad is "Critical"? According to OpenSSL, an issue of critical severity affects common configurations and is also likely exploitable. It's likely to be abused to disclose server memory contents, and potentially reveal user details, and could be easily exploited remotely to compromise server private keys or execute code execute remotely. In other words, pretty much everything you don't want happening on your production systems. The last time OpenSSL had a kick in its security teeth like this one was in 2016. That vulnerability could be used to crash and take over systems. Even years after it arrived, security company Check Point estimated it affected over 42% of organizations. This one could be worse. We can only hope it's not as bad as that all-time champion of OpenSSL's security holes, 2014's HeartBleed. [...] There is another little silver lining in this dark cloud. This new hole only affects OpenSSL versions 3.0.0 through 3.0.6. So, older operating systems and devices are likely to avoid these problems. For example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.x and earlier and Ubuntu 20.04 won't be smacked by it. RHEL 9.x and Ubuntu 22.04, however, are a different story. They do use OpenSSL 3.x. [...] But, if you're using anything with OpenSSL 3.x in -- anything -- get ready to patch on Tuesday. This is likely to be a bad security hole, and exploits will soon follow. You'll want to make your systems safe as soon as possible.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tech giant Google said Thursday it will be launching a cloud-based node engine for Ethereum projects. CoinDesk reports: The company said its Google Cloud Blockchain Node Engine will be a "fully managed node-hosting service that can minimize the need for node operations," meaning that Google will be responsible for monitoring node activity and restarting them during outages. A node is a type of computer that runs a blockchain's software to validate and store the history of transactions on a blockchain's network. At the time of launch, Google will be supporting only Ethereum nodes. Google's announcement signifies the growing attention that technology giants are giving toward blockchain, crypto and Web3 projects. "Blockchain is changing the way the world stores and moves its information," Google said in its announcement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elon Musk has "added [Twitter] to his business empire after months of legal skirmishes," writes The Verge's Elizabeth Lopatto, citing reports from CNBC, The Washington Post and Insider. From the report: Musk's first move on Thursday was to oust Parag Agrawal, who was Twitter's last CEO as a public company. Chief financial officer Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, the company's policy chief whom Musk had publicly criticized have also reportedly left the building. Sean Edgett, the general counsel, is also gone, The New York Times reports, adding that at least one of these executives was walked out by security. Chief customer officer Sarah Personette was also fired, Insider reports. The execs received handsome payouts for their trouble, Insider reports: Agrawal got $38.7 million, Segal got $25.4 million, Gadde got $12.5 million, and Personette, who tweeted yesterday about how excited she was for Musk's takeover, got $11.2 million Questions still remain about what Musk plans to do with Twitter now that he owns it, though he's made a number of public comments. The Washington Post reported that Musk planned to cull 75 percent of Twitter's employees, citing estimates given to prospective Twitter investors. Musk told Twitter staffers that the 75 percent figure was inaccurate, Bloomberg reported. In Musk's text messages, provided during discovery to Twitter's lawyers, he and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, a friend of his, discussed cutting staff by requiring a return to office. "Day zero," Calacanis texted Musk. "Sharpen your blades boys." Requiring Twitter employees to return to offices would mean 20 percent of the staff would leave voluntarily, Calacanis wrote. Also, Calacanis told Musk, "Twitter CEO is my dream job." Twitter also faces challenges to its free speech stance in court, as the Supreme Court agreed to take up two cases that will determine its liability for illegal content. Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has suggested he'll change the way Twitter's moderation works, potentially relaxing the kinds of policies that saw former President Donald Trump permanently banned from the platform. Although Musk has said that his Twitter acquisition is "not a way to make money," he's reportedly raised ideas for cost cutting and increasing revenue. Governments and corporations could be charged a "slight cost" to use Twitter, and there could be job cuts on the table to improve the company's bottom line. Some of Twitter's current employees have criticized Musk's plans for the platform as "incoherent" and lacking in detail. More broadly, Musk has talked about using Twitter to create "X, the everything app." This is a reference to China's WeChat app, which started life as a messaging platform, but has since grown to encompass multiple businesses, from shopping to payments to gaming. "You basically live on WeChat in China," Musk told Twitter employees in June. "If we can recreate that with Twitter, we'll be a great success."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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.