Recruiters in tech are desperate for workers. But candidates are the ones who hold all the power. From a report: [...] Recruiters working in technology these days do not receive candy, flowers or thank-yous. The recruiter is lucky if she can get someone on the phone -- if she receives so much as an email in response. Technology workers need court no one: Along with microchips, toilet paper and Covid tests, tech workers will be recalled as one of the great, pressing shortages of this pandemic. Estimates of the unemployment rates for tech workers are about 1.7 percent, compared with roughly 4 percent in the general economy; for those with expertise in cybersecurity, it's more like 0.2 percent. Tech employees today tire of the attention from recruiters, the friendly hellos on LinkedIn, the cold calls (which Dyba does not make). "They think we're like used-car salesmen," Dyba said of her quarry. To be a recruiter in tech is to be an in-demand commodity for those companies doing the hiring but to feel like something of a nuisance -- like an essential gear that emits a loud, irritating noise.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon will accept Visa credit cards across all of its sites after the two businesses reached a global agreement. From a report: The online retail giant had last year threatened to stop the use of Visa credit cards in the UK due to the fees Visa charged to process payments. Amazon customers in Singapore and Australia also had to pay a surcharge if they used a Visa credit card to purchase goods. However, Amazon and Visa said they have now struck a deal. The Visa surcharge on Amazon's Singapore and Australia websites will be removed from Thursday, 17 February. Amazon had already postponed the ban on using Visa credit cards in the UK while negotiations continued.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
As both the Chrome and Firefox browsers approach their 100th versions, what should be a reason for the developers to celebrate could turn into a bit of a mess. From a report: It turns out that much like the Y2K bug, the triple-digit release numbers coded in the browsers' User-Agents (UAs) could cause issues with a small number of sites, Bleeping Computer reported. Mozilla launched an experiment last year to see if version number 100 would affect sites, and it just released a blogpost with the results. It did affect a small number of sites (some very big ones, though) that couldn't parse a user-agent string containing a three-digit number. Notable ones still affected included HBO Go, Bethesda and Yahoo, according to a tracking site. The bugs include "browser not supported" messages, site rendering issues, parsing failures, 403 errors and so on.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Mark Zuckerberg showed off a cartoon version of himself in a virtual world at an event in October as he outlined the company's new focus for the next decade. Zuckerberg demonstrated a bunch of things his virtual avatar could do. But one thing that is still far beyond the capabilities of Meta's current virtual reality is rendering and handling legs or feet. CNN: Meta has been considering for years how to make avatars more realistic. In an Instagram AMA (Ask Me Anything) session earlier last week, Andrew Bosworth, Meta's VP of Reality Labs and incoming CTO, acknowledged the difficulty of the task while saying the company is considering how to solve it. "Tracking your own legs accurately is super hard and basically not workable just from a physics standpoint with existing headsets," Bosworth said. Companies can track a person's upper body reasonably well with a headset and controllers, but actual leg tracking is practically non-existent in virtual reality right now -- at least when it comes to the kind of VR you're likely to use in your living room. Some apps, such as VRChat, do let people have full-body avatars, but they tend to use software to approximate lower-body motions; it can be silly-looking at best and disconcerting (or even sickening) at worst. Despite all the progress made in perfecting the technology behind VR headsets in recent years, it's still tricky to perfectly track your legs in real life and recreate the same movements in VR without setting up an array of sensors on or around your body. Still, several VR experts told CNN Business they think it's important to bring legs into virtual spaces.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Investment banking giant JPMorgan Chase has set up shop in the Metajuku mall. The bank's lounge features a spiral staircase, a live tiger, and an illuminated portrait of CEO Jamie Dimon. The catch? JPMorgan's newest digs aren't located in the real world, but in Decentraland -- one of the world's most popular metaverse platforms. The bank's metaverse launch coincided with the release of a paper by Onyx, JPMorgan's blockchain arm launched in 2020, which explores the opportunities offered by the metaverse. And JPMorgan is bullish: The bank predicts that the metaverse will become a $1 trillion market opportunity in yearly revenues, given that its virtual worlds will "infiltrate every sector in some way in the coming years," says the report. JPMorgan is the first bank to set up a metaverse office. But it follows on the now well-trodden path of big brands, businesses, and influencers entering the metaverse. [...] The development of the metaverse economy has created jobs both online and offline. Companies, from apparel to tech firms, are on a metaverse hiring spree. JPMorgan predicts that some individuals will become the "gig workers" of the metaverse -- earning income by providing services in the virtual world. JPMorgan has been undertaking efforts to build out its blockchain and crypto expertise and infrastructure. In a Bloomberg interview, Onyx's global head, Christine Moy, said that its unit is now focused on "providing infrastructure" like blockchain and payments tech to clients, which include game publishers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a rule Tuesday to allow adaptive driving beam headlights, or smart headlights, in the U.S. Axios reports: The technology, which relies on sensors and LED light, will help prevent crashes by allowing better illumination of pedestrians, animals and objects without impairing the visibility of drivers in other vehicles, NHTSA said. Adaptive driving beam headlight systems, which are commonplace in Europe and Canada, automatically focus beams on darker, unoccupied areas while reducing the intensity of illumination in times of oncoming traffic. Research released in 2019 by the American Automobile Association found that European vehicles with adaptive headlight systems increase roadway lighting by as much as 86% when compared to U.S. low beam headlights. "NHTSA prioritizes the safety of everyone on our nation's roads, whether they are inside or outside a vehicle. New technologies can help advance that mission," said Steven Cliff, NHTSA's deputy administrator, in a statement. "NHTSA is issuing this final rule to help improve safety and protect vulnerable road users."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Senators Jim Risch, Bob Menendez, and Bill Cassidy's Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act would require a State Department report on mitigating risks to the U.S. financial system from El Salvador's adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender. CoinDesk reports: "El Salvador recognizing Bitcoin (BTC) as official currency opens the door for money laundering cartels and undermines U.S. interests," said Bill Cassidy (R-La.). "If the United States wishes to combat money laundering and preserve the role of the dollar as a reserve currency of the world, we must tackle this issue head on."If passed, the bill would require the State Department to report on a laundry list of subjects with respect to El Salvador and Bitcoin, including the flow of remittances from the U.S. to El Salvador, bilateral and international efforts to combat transnational illicit activities, and the potential for reduced use by El Salvador of the greenback. The move quickly drew a partly comic, partly angry response from El Salvador President Nayib Bukele: "OK boomers ... You have zero jurisdiction on a sovereign and independent nation. We are not your colony, your back yard or your front yard. Stay out of our internal affairs. Don't try to control something you can't control."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In an all-hands meeting at Meta "explaining the company's updated values," Mark Zuckerberg says employees are not supposed to "nice ourselves to death," adding that they are now to be known as "Metamates." According to the Daily Beast, citing long-time executive Andrew Bosworth, "the term was coined by the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter and is a play on the naval-inspired slogan used at Instagram: 'ship, shipmates, self.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Virgin Galactic announced that it's opening ticket sales to the general public for its spaceflight system, "letting you become an astronaut if you're willing to pay $450,000 and put down a $150,000 deposit," reports Engadget. From the report: For that $450K, you'll get a 90-minute ride to the edge of space including the "signature air launch and Mach-3 boost to space," the company said. Passengers will enjoy several minutes of weightlessness and spectacular views of Earth from the 17 windows, as it showed in a new video (below). The ticket also includes several days of astronaut training, a fitted Under Armour spacesuit, and membership in the Future Astronaut community. All flights launch from Spaceport America in New Mexico. "We plan to have our first 1,000 customers on board at the start of commercial service later this year, providing an incredibly strong foundation as we begin regular operations and scale our fleet," said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier in a statement. As of late last year, the company had sold 100 tickets to space at the updated $450,000 ticket price. Around 700 people, including Elon Musk, have made reservations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A U.S. patient with leukemia has become the first woman and the third person to date to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS, researchers reported on Tuesday. The case of a middle-aged woman of mixed race, presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, is also the first involving umbilical cord blood, a newer approach that may make the treatment available to more people. Since receiving the cord blood to treat her acute myeloid leukemia -- a cancer that starts in blood-forming cells in the bone marrow -- the woman has been in remission and free of the virus for 14 months, without the need for potent HIV treatments known as antiretroviral therapy. The two prior cases occurred in males -- one white and one Latino -- who had received adult stem cells, which are more frequently used in bone marrow transplants. "This is now the third report of a cure in this setting, and the first in a woman living with HIV," Sharon Lewin, President-Elect of the International AIDS Society, said in a statement. The case is part of a larger U.S.-backed study led by Dr. Yvonne Bryson of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. It aims to follow 25 people with HIV who undergo a transplant with stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood for the treatment of cancer and other serious conditions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In an AWS blog post, Amazon announced that its Elastic File Systems (Amazon EFS) "now provide average latency as low as 600 microseconds for the majority of read operations on data and metadata. "We seem to be approaching the speed of light, even when taking into account IOPS, throughput, and all other external factors," writes Slashdot reader segaboy81. Neowin reports: Amazon is announcing an enormous increase in read speeds. According to an AWS blog post, EFS read operations have typically hovered in the low 1ms range, but after they "flipped the switch," read operations are now halved. Users can now expect read speeds as low as 600 micro-seconds. I'm not a scientist, but online calculators seem to indicate light can travel roughly 113 miles every 600 microseconds. This begs the question; how close will you need to be to a data center to get this performance benefit? Either way, it's worth noting that this is not a new performance tier. Users of EFS will see this benefit at no extra cost.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"Akamai, which announced quarterly earnings today, also announced that they plan to acquire longtime Linux VPS host Linode for $900 million," writes Slashdot reader virtig01. From a press release announcing the acquisition: Akamai Technologies, the world's most trusted solution to power and protect digital experiences, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Linode, one of the easiest-to-use and most trusted infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform providers. [...] Under terms of the agreement, Akamai has agreed to acquire all of the outstanding equity of Linode Limited Liability Company for approximately $900 million, after customary purchase price adjustments. As a result of structuring the transaction as an asset purchase, Akamai expects to achieve cash income tax savings over the next 15 years that have an estimated net present value of approximately $120 million. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022 and is subject to customary closing conditions. Christopher Aker, founder and chief executive officer, Linode, added, "We started Linode 19 years ago to make the power of the cloud easier and more accessible. Along the way, we built a cloud computing platform trusted by developers and businesses around the world. Today, those customers face new challenges as cloud services become all-encompassing, including compute, storage, security and delivery from core to edge. Solving those challenges requires tremendous integration and scale which Akamai and Linode plan to bring together under one roof. This marks an exciting new chapter for Linode and a major step forward for our current and future customers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple and Google face a potential class action lawsuit in the Netherlands over app store charges, after a foundation headed by Dutch entrepreneur Alexander Klopping began gathering claimants. Reuters reports: Klopping is a co-founder of Blendle, a digital platform that enables users to buy individual news articles, which he sold in 2020. He told Reuters his determination to pursue the tech giants grew out of his experience at Blendle. "The reason it's getting so much attention right now is that everyone feels in their gut that there's this imbalance of power when it comes to big tech companies." He said while developers have complained most about app store practices, costs are ultimately passed on to consumers. Klopping's App Store Claims Foundation is being represented by law firm Hausfeld, with funding from Fortress Investment Group. Klopping's App Store Claims Foundation is being represented by law firm Hausfeld, with funding from Fortress Investment Group. Hausfeld lawyer Rob Okhuijsen said the next step will be submitting evidence to the Amsterdam District Court in April. If a judge agrees, the court would then begin weighing the merits of the complaint.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New analysis suggests that 74% of all money made through ransomware attacks in 2021 went to Russia-linked hackers. The BBC reports: Researchers say more than $400 million worth of crypto-currency payments went to groups "highly likely to be affiliated with Russia." Russia has denied accusations that it is harboring cyber-criminals. Researchers also claim "a huge amount of crypto-currency-based money laundering" goes through Russian crypto-companies. Chainalysis, which carried out the research, said it was able to follow the flow of money to and from the digital wallets of known hacking groups using public blockchain transaction records. In the Chainalysis report, it's highlighted that 9.9% of all known ransomware revenue is going to Evil Corp - an alleged cyber-crime group which the US has issued sanctions and indictments against, but who are operating in Russia with apparent impunity. A BBC investigation in November found that Igor Turashev, one of the accused leaders of Evil Corp, is operating several businesses out of Moscow City's Federation Tower. The tower is one of Russia's most prestigious addresses, home to prominent businesses and with apartments going for millions of dollars. Chainalysis claims several crypto-currency companies based in the tower were used by hackers to launder illicit funds, turning crypto-currency from digital wallet addresses to mainstream money. "In any given quarter, the illicit and risky addresses account for between 29% and 48% of all funds received by Moscow City crypto-currency businesses," researchers allege.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The San Francisco Police Department's crime lab has been checking DNA collected from sexual assault victims to determine whether any of the victims committed a crime, according to District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who called for an immediate end to the alleged practice. "The crime lab attempts to identify crime suspects by searching a database of DNA evidence that contains DNA collected from rape and sexual assault victims," Boudin's office said in a press release yesterday. Boudin's release denounced the alleged "practice of using rape and sexual assault victims' DNA to attempt to subsequently incriminate them." "Boudin said his office was made aware of the purported practice last week, after a woman's DNA collected years ago as part of a rape exam was used to link her to a recent property crime," the San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday. The woman "was recently arrested on suspicion of a felony property crime, with police identifying her based on the rape-kit evidence she gave as a victim, Boudin said." That was the only example provided, and Boudin gave few details about the case to protect the woman's privacy. But the database may include "thousands of victims' DNA profiles, with entries over 'many, many years,' Boudin said," according to the Chronicle. "We should encourage survivors to come forward -- not collect evidence to use against them in the future. This practice treats victims like evidence, not human beings. This is legally and ethically wrong," Boudin said. San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said the department will investigate and that he is "committed to ending the practice" if Boudin's allegation is accurate. But Scott also said the suspect cited by Boudin may have been identified from a different DNA database. "We will immediately begin reviewing our DNA collection practices and policies... Although I am informed of the possibility that the suspect in this case may have been identified through a DNA hit in a non-victim DNA database, I think the questions raised by our district attorney today are sufficiently concerning that I have asked my assistant chief for operations to work with our Investigations Bureau to thoroughly review the matter and report back to me and to our DA's office partners," Scott said in a statement published by KRON 4. Scott also said, "I am informed that our existing DNA collection policies have been legally vetted and conform with state and national forensic standards," but he noted that "there are many important principles for which the San Francisco Police Department stands that go beyond state and national standards." "We must never create disincentives for crime victims to cooperate with police, and if it's true that DNA collected from a rape or sexual assault victim has been used by SFPD to identify and apprehend that person as a suspect in another crime, I'm committed to ending the practice," Scott said. Even though the alleged practice may already be illegal under California's Victims' Bill of Rights, State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen are planning legislation to stop the alleged misuse of DNA. Wiener said that "if survivors believe their DNA may end up being used against them in the future, they'll have one more reason not to participate in the rape kit process. That's why I'm working with the DA's office to address this problem through state legislation, if needed."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Ukraine's Ministry of Defense website suffered from what appeared to be a distributed denial of service attack Tuesday, according to the government's Facebook account. CNET reports: The military's website remained unavailable as of 12 p.m. PT Tuesday, with the Ukrainian military's Facebook account saying work is currently underway to restore regular functioning to the online portal. The nation's largest commercial bank, PrivatBank, has also been subjected to a "massive DDoS attack" for the past few hours, according to the Ukraine Center for Strategic Communications. There's no threat to customer funds stored at the bank, it said, though the attack is preventing customers from accessing the Privat24 application and viewing their balances. Online banking with Oschadbank is also down, the Center for Strategic Communications said, as reported earlier by Vice. Nobody has yet to be blamed for the attack, but as CNET notes, "it comes after Russia is believed to have mounted multiple cyberattacks on Ukraine as part of efforts that security experts say are designed to destabilize the country's government and economy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google has announced a new version of Chrome OS called Chrome OS Flex, which is designed to run on old PCs and Macs. The Verge reports: The operating system can be installed "within minutes," according to Google's blog post. Google told me that Chrome OS Flex will look and feel identical to Chrome OS on a Chromebook -- it's built from the same code base and follows the same "release cadence." It did caveat that some features may be dependent on the hardware of the PC you're using. In fact, it said this for every specific feature I asked about, including always-on Google Assistant and Android phone syncing. So, if you're going to try this, keep an eye out. If you want to try out Chrome OS Flex yourself, you can learn more on the Chrome Enterprise website. Note that the OS is still in early access mode, so you may encounter bugs -- you can boot it directly from a USB drive if you'd rather poke around before installing it on your machine.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The newest entrant in the fight for EV market share is going back to the future with an all-electric DeLorean. The infamous gull-winged car is being resurrected in Texas by a group of executives who most recently spent time at China-backed EV startup Karma Automotive. They're working with Stephen Wynne, who acquired the DeLorean branding rights in the 1990s and supplies parts for the 6,000 or so remaining vehicles. [...] The new company is called DeLorean Motors Reimagined LLC and its chief executive officer is Joost de Vries, Texas business records and LinkedIn postings show. The firm will set up a headquarters and an engineering outfit in San Antonio, with potential to bring 450 jobs, the city's development arm said in a statement. It's not the first time the idea of a DeLorean redux has surfaced -- web searches turn up stories every few years about how Wynne has tried to revive the brand or produce low-volume models -- but using an electric powertrain is a new twist on the idea. The original car gained notoriety in the early 1980s both for its quality problems and for the legal woes of its creator, the late John DeLorean, before the "Back to the Future" film franchise turned it into a pop-culture icon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google is continuing to give its document editing suite a more modern makeover. The latest update to Google Docs makes pageless documents available to all users after the company announced the feature last May. It also adds new features such as AI-generated document summaries, inline Google Maps previews, and the ability to draft emails with other users before transferring them over to Gmail. Most of those features are launching today, while email drafting will roll out in the "coming weeks." From a report: The update may be seen as part of a broader effort to compete with startups such as Notion and Coda, which are reimagining document editing around free-flowing, dynamic pages. Those products have also caught the attention of Microsoft, which announced an entirely new document editing app called Loop last November. While Google isn't fundamentally reinventing Docs in response, it's leaning on its ecosystem of other apps and services to make documents feel more dynamic and less like the printed page. For most Google Docs users, the most striking change will be the new pageless format, which extends whitespace to both edges of the screen and dispenses with the page markers used for printing purposes. It also allows for a fully-responsive design, in which documents reflow when users adjust the size of their browser window. (Pagination will still be the default, but users can switch to pageless formatting under File > Setup.) Other changes won't be as immediately noticeable, but speak to where Google Docs -- and the Workspace suite as a whole -- are headed. Document summaries created using AI technology, for instance, will appear in a sidebar view where users can accept them or modify their text. When users hover over links to another document that includes a summary, it'll appear inside a pop-up preview window. [...] Google's also adding a way to draft Gmail messages inside Docs, so users can collaborate on messaging before passing the contents off to Gmail proper. And a recently-added Meeting Notes feature lets users pull in contacts, action items, and other details from Google Calendar events.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Financial institutions channeled more than $1.5 trillion into the coal industry in loans and underwriting from January 2019 to November 2021, even though many have made net-zero pledges, a report by a group of 28 non-government organizations showed. From a report: Reducing coal use is a key part of global efforts to slash climate-warming greenhouse gases and bring emissions down to "net zero" by the middle of the century, and governments, firms and financial institutions across the world have pledged to take action. But banks continue to fund 1,032 firms involved in the mining, trading, transportation and utilization of coal, the research showed. "Banks like to argue that they want to help their coal clients transition, but the reality is that almost none of these companies are transitioning," said Katrin Ganswind, head of financial research at German environmental group Urgewald, which led the research. "And they have little incentive to do so as long as bankers continue writing them blank checks." The study said banks from six countries - China, the United States, Japan, India, Britain and Canada - were responsible for 86% of global coal financing over the period. Direct loans amounted to $373 billion, with Japanese banks Mizuho Financial, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial -- both members of the Net Zero Banking Alliance -- identified as the two biggest lenders. Neither firm responded immediately to requests for comment.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
NASA, in a blog post: Coastal flooding will increase significantly over the next 30 years because of sea level rise, according to a new report by an interagency sea level rise task force that includes NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and other federal agencies. Titled Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States, the Feb. 15 report concludes that sea level along U.S. coastlines will rise between 10 to 12 inches (25 to 30 centimeters) on average above today's levels by 2050. The report -- an update to a 2017 report -- forecasts sea level to the year 2150 and, for the first time, offers near-term projections for the next 30 years. Agencies at the federal, state, and local levels use these reports to inform their plans on anticipating and coping with the effects of sea level rise. "This report supports previous studies and confirms what we have long known: Sea levels are continuing to rise at an alarming rate, endangering communities around the world. Science is indisputable and urgent action is required to mitigate a climate crisis that is well underway," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. "NASA is steadfast in our commitment to protecting our home planet by expanding our monitoring capabilities and continuing to ensure our climate data is not only accessible but understandable." The task force developed their near-term sea level rise projections by drawing on an improved understanding of how the processes that contribute to rising seas -- such as melting glaciers and ice sheets as well as complex interactions between ocean, land, and ice -- will affect ocean height. "That understanding has really advanced since the 2017 report, which gave us more certainty over how much sea level rise we'll get in the coming decades," said Ben Hamlington, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and one of the update's lead authors. NASA's Sea Level Change Team, led by Hamlington, has also developed an online mapping tool to visualize the report's state-of-the-art sea level rise projections on a localized level across the U.S. "The hope is that the online tool will help make the information as widely accessible as possible," Hamlington said. The Interagency Sea Level Rise Task Force projects an uptick in the frequency and intensity of high-tide coastal flooding, otherwise known as nuisance flooding, because of higher sea level. It also notes that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, global temperatures will become even greater, leading to a greater likelihood that sea level rise by the end of the century will exceed the projections in the 2022 update.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
segaboy81 writes: Amazon is announcing an enormous increase in read speeds for its new and existing Elastic file systems. According to an AWS blog post, EFS read operations have typically hovered in the low 1ms range, but after they "flipped the switch," read operations are now halved. Users can now expect read speeds as low as 600 micro-seconds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Newegg has apologised for dealing poorly with returns and open-box product sales, in the wake of a recent video from Gamers Nexus documenting its own terrible returns experience. From a report: The online retailer has now said it has now put in place new policies to ensure a hassle-free return experience on open-box products for motherboards and CPUs, though is light on the details. There's no doubt that the statement tweeted out by the company comes as a response to Gamers Nexus' recent videos outlining the channel's return experience for a Gigabyte Aorus Xtreme Z490 motherboard, which when combined total nearly two million views. It goes something like this: The hardware YouTube channel bought a motherboard via Newegg for testing, though shortly thereafter decided it was no longer required. It then sought to return the motherboard under Newegg's returns policy and shipped the product back to the retailer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google's Inbox experiment was a glorious thing while it lasted. Launched as an invitation-only service in 2014, it was the company's next-gen email client. Because it was so good, it's no surprise Google shut it down in 2019. Thankfully, though, a group of ex-Google/Firebase employees is now resurrecting the Inbox experience -- with a bit of the Slack user experience mixed in, too. As Lee told me, the team took two important inspirations from Inbox. "One is the idea that you should work with your email in groups," he said, referring to Inbox's ability to bundle emails by topic. "As the volume of email grows in your inbox, it becomes impractical just to page through every single email. Even if you have all the keyboard shortcuts and your app is super optimized, just scanning through all that stuff takes a long time." While you want to know about automated emails like calendar notifications for example, chances are you've already accepted those invites in your calendar, for example, so marking all those as read or snooze them for later with a couple of clicks saves a lot of time. In addition, the team also built Shortwave with the idea that your inbox, whether you like it or not, is a to-do list.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft is releasing its first big update to Windows 11 today, and it includes a lot of new additions. From a report: A public preview of Android apps on Windows 11 will be available today in the US, alongside redesigned Notepad and Media Player apps. The first big Windows 11 update will also include a bunch of improvements to the taskbar. The public preview of Android apps on Windows 11 will allow users to install apps from Amazon's Appstore. The Verge points to workarounds to get Google Play Store running on Windows 11 unofficially. Back to more changes: The biggest changes in this Windows 11 update are related to the taskbar. The time and date will finally be available on multiple monitors in Windows 11, something that was missing at launch. The weather widget also returns to the taskbar in this update, and a new mute / unmute feature in the taskbar will be available for Microsoft Teams calls. You'll also be able to quickly screen share a specific app or window from the taskbar directly into a Microsoft Teams call. Microsoft has also redesigned the Media Player and Notepad apps for Windows 11. Notepad now includes multi-step undo, an improved search interface, and dark mode support. The new Media Player app is designed to replace Groove Music and Windows Media Player and includes support for both audio and video and a design that better matches Windows 11's UI improvements.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday accused a conservative financial news website with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda and alleged five media outlets targeting Ukrainians have taken direction from Russian spies. From a report: The officials said Zero Hedge, which has 1.2 million Twitter followers, published articles created by Moscow-controlled media that were then shared by outlets and people unaware of their nexus to Russian intelligence. The officials did not say whether they thought Zero Hedge knew of any links to spy agencies and did not allege direct links between the website and Russia. Zero Hedge denied the claims and said it tries to "publish a wide spectrum of views that cover both sides of a given story." In a response posted online Tuesday morning, the website said it has "has never worked, collaborated or cooperated with Russia, nor are there any links to spy agencies."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New Yorkers who live in areas where controversial stop-and-frisk searches happen most frequently are also more likely to be surveilled by facial recognition technology, according to research by Amnesty International and other researchers. From a report: Research also showed that in the Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens boroughs of the city there was a direct correlation between the proportion of non-white residents and the concentration of controversial facial recognition technology. "Our analysis shows that the NYPD's use of facial recognition technology helps to reinforce discriminatory policing against minority communities in New York City," said Matt Mahmoudi, artificial intelligence and human rights researcher at Amnesty International. The research is a part of the global anti-facial recognition technology campaign, Ban the Scan, investigating increasing use of surveillance initiatives in the New York police department (NYPD). Using thousands of digital volunteers through the Decode NYC Surveillance project, more than 25,500 CCTV cameras were mapped across New York City. Data scientists and researchers from Amnesty International compared the data on the camera placement with statistics on police stop-and-frisk. "We have long known that stop-and-frisk in New York is a racist policing tactic. We now know that the communities most targeted with stop-and-frisk are also at greater risk of discriminatory policing through invasive surveillance," said Mahmoudi.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
As Masayoshi Son tried to persuade investors of the wisdom of purchasing one of the most successful chip companies in the world in 2016, the SoftBank chief had one clear message: "For the era of the 'Internet of things,' I think the champion will be Arm." But the concept of connecting billions of everyday and industrial devices to the Internet has been much slower than anticipated to materialize. From a report: Son's drive to capture the chip design market for the Internet of things (IoT) was the first bet he made on Arm that has not paid off. The second was a $66 billion sale of the company to Nvidia that unraveled last week. Arm remains the dominant player in designing chips for smartphones, still the most ubiquitous form of computing but a source of much slower growth in recent years. Ahead of an initial public offering that could come as soon as this year, the company is racing to solidify its position in new markets that it has underexploited to date, while trying to drive up profits to appeal to a new set of investors. Rene Haas, Arm's incoming chief executive, told the Financial Times that its products were now "far more competitive" in data centers and cars than when SoftBank bought the Cambridge-based company. "Making trade-offs about where to invest, where not to invest...âthose are the trade-offs that public companies and even private companies have to do every day," he said. "The company is in great shape." When Son spearheaded the $31 billion purchase of Arm, he saw it as a wager on the future of the entire technology industry, which was crystallizing at that time around the IoT concept. He proceeded to push the executive team firmly on the course to designing chips for this future of machine connectivity. Five-and-a-half years later, it has become increasingly clear that the IoT gamble was a costly misadventure. Moreover, it distracted Arm from attacking Intel's dominance in the much larger data center market. As Son's vision collided with reality, SoftBank quietly revised its market calculations. A presentation from 2018 forecast that by 2026, the IoT controller market would be worth $24 billion, and the server market $22 billion. But, a similar presentation from 2020 predicted that by 2029, the IoT chip market would reach only $16 billion, while the server market -- of which Arm had so far only captured a 5 percent share -- would reach $32 billion. The Japanese technology group also revised down its estimate of the value of the IoT market, from $7 billion in 2017 to $4 billion in 2019.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
NSO Group's controversial Pegasus spyware should be banned in the European Union, the bloc's in-house privacy watchdog warned on Tuesday. From a report: "The ban on the development and the deployment of spyware with the capability of Pegasus in the EU would be the most effective option to protect our fundamental rights and freedoms," the European Data Protection Supervisor said in a statement on Tuesday. The warning comes amid increasing scrutiny of abuses of surveillance technologies meant to help intelligence and law enforcement agencies fight serious crime and terrorism. While the EU regulator doesn't make decisions for member countries, its influence at the top echelons of the bloc's institutions may encourage other authorities to crack down on surveillance software.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A distant white dwarf is surrounded by space rocks marching in perfect time. This observation offers hints of what may be the first planet we have detected in the habitable zone of one of these stellar corpses, suggesting that they might be just as good for life as bigger, younger stars. From a report: "A lot of people think of a white dwarf as a dead system or a dead end, but this tells us that there is a lot of stuff going on around white dwarfs," says Jay Farihi at University College London. He and his colleagues spotted these hints while observing a star called WD 1054-226, which lies about 118 light years away, using several powerful telescopes. They found that something appeared to be regularly passing in front of the star, causing dips in its light. The biggest dip happened every 23.1 minutes, in a pattern that repeated every 25 hours.The measurements indicate, the report says, that the star is surrounded by a ring of 65 comet-sized or moon-sized objects, remarkably evenly spaced in their orbits.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: France is planning to build up to 14 nuclear reactors in an attempt to shore up the country's aging nuclear fleet while also reducing the country's carbon emissions. And while the first reactors won't open for years, the announcement could serve to undercut Russia's attempts to keep Europe dependent on natural gas. President Emmanuel Macron announced the decision last week, saying that state-backed Electricite de France, also known as EDF, will build six new plants starting in 2028, with the option to build another eight by 2050. EDF estimates that six next-generation pressurized water reactors will cost around $57 billion. The first could be commissioned as early as 2035. The move is a sharp reversal of Macron's earlier pledge to close several reactors over the next decade or so. National politics almost certainly play a role -- the nuclear power sector in France employs around 220,000 people, according to one estimate. "What our country needs is the rebirth of France's nuclear industry," Macron said at a nuclear turbine factory that EDF had just purchased from GE. "The time has come for a nuclear renaissance," he said. Macron also said that EDF will build a prototype small modular reactor, or SMR, by 2030. SMRs are fission reactors that are designed to be built in a factory and transported to their final destination. They generally produce less than 1 MW of power and are intended to be more economical than traditional reactors, which are constructed on-site. EDF will face stiff competition from numerous companies, from heavyweights like Westinghouse to startups like NuScale and Chinese firms like China Huaneng Group, which are pushing to commercialize SMRs. France's new plans were announced less than two weeks after the EU announced that nuclear power would be considered "sustainable," a decision that was subject to intense lobbying by the French government. It also comes at a time of heightened tensions with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. Russia has flooded the EU with cheap natural gas, leaving the bloc dependent on the country for much of its energy. In 2020, the EU received more than 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which could double Russian exports to the region, appears likely to increase the bloc's dependence. Macron's announcement, while possibly coincidental, could signal that France is interested in taking over as Europe's power center.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"When Brent Whitehead and Matt Lohstroh were sophomores at Texas A&M University, they decided to get into the business of mining bitcoin on the oil fields of East Texas," reports CNBC:Whitehead, an engineer hailing from a family with a long history in oil and gas production, and Lohstroh, a finance major with a bitcoin obsession, ignored the skeptics, and sunk all the cash they had earned from their high school side gigs in lawn care and landscaping into Giga Energy Solutions, a company that mints bitcoin from stranded natural gas. For years, oil and gas companies have struggled with the problem of what to do when they accidentally hit a natural gas formation while drilling for oil. Whereas oil can easily be trucked out to a remote destination, gas delivery requires a pipeline. If a drilling site is right next door to a pipeline, they chuck the gas in and take whatever cash the buyer on the other end is willing to pay that day. But if it's 20 miles from a pipeline, drillers often burn it off, or flare it. That is why you will typically see flames rising from oil fields. Beyond the environmental implications of flare gas, drillers are also, in effect, burning cash. To these two 23-year-old Aggie alums, it was a big problem with an obvious solution. Giga places a shipping container full of thousands of bitcoin miners on an oil well, then diverts the natural gas into generators, which convert the gas into electricity that is then used to power the miners. The process reduces CO2-equivalent emissions by about 63% compared to continued flaring, according to research from Denver-based Crusoe Energy Systems. "Growing up, I always saw flares, just being in the oil and gas industry. I knew how wasteful it was," Whitehead told CNBC on the sidelines of the North American Prospect Expo summit in Houston, a flagship event for the industry. "It's a new way to not only lower emissions but to monetize gas." Whitehead tells CNBC they have signed deals with more than 20 oil and gas companies, four of which are publicly traded. Giga also says they're also in talks with sovereign wealth funds, and they are expanding, fast. Giga's 11-person team is adding another six employees this month.... Giga tells CNBC that its revenue was more than $4 million in 2021, and it's on track to earn more than $20 million by the end of 2022. Whitehead says that some of their mining sites have helped to revitalize the local economy by creating jobs, such as field technicians and bitcoin pumpers, who go out to check the sites. In the small communities where they've set up a bitcoin mine, they are sometimes the largest source of revenue. "An area that was just a ghost town has now found ways to take their stranded energy that they were wasting and monetize it, and that's what gets me excited, because like that's what is helping the community overall," said Whitehead.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"Sports fans who tuned in to watch the Beijing Winter Olympics on YouTube are instead being served propaganda videos," reports Wired:An analysis of YouTube search results by WIRED found that people who typed "Beijing," "Beijing 2022," "Olympics," or "Olympics 2022" were shown pro-China and anti-China propaganda videos in the top results. Five of the most prominent propaganda videos, which often appear above actual Olympics highlights, have amassed almost 900,000 views. Two anti-China videos showing up in search results were published by a group called The BL (The Beauty of Life), which Facebook previously linked to the Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual movement that was banned by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999 and has protested against the regime ever since. They jostled for views with pro-China videos posted by Western YouTubers whose work has previously been promoted by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Similar search results were visible in the US, Canada, and the UK. WIRED also found signs that viewing numbers for pro-China videos are being artificially boosted through the use of fake news websites.... YouTube did not respond to a request to comment on why content used as propaganda to promote or deride China was being pushed to the top of Olympics search results, nor did the company say if those behind the videos had violated its terms of service by using fake websites to inflate their views. The problem was first spotted by John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the University of Toronto's research laboratory, Citizen Lab. He tells Wired that after watching skating and curling videos, YouTube's autoplay kicked in and "I found myself on a slippery slide from skating and curling into increasingly targeted propaganda." While the videos he saw are no longer being autoplayed, Wired still argues that "the way similar videos still dominate YouTube search results suggests the platform is at risk of letting such campaigns hijack the Olympics."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
ZDNet reports:Cyber criminals are increasingly targeting Linux servers and cloud infrastructure to launch ransomware campaigns, cryptojacking attacks and other illicit activity — and many organisations are leaving themselves open to attacks because Linux infrastructure is misconfigured or poorly managed. Analysis from cybersecurity researchers at VMware warns that malware targeting Linux-based systems is increasing in volume and complexity, while there's also a lack of focus on managing and detecting threats against them. This comes after an increase in the use of enterprises relying on cloud-based services because of the rise of hybrid working, with Linux the most common operating system in these environments. That rise has opened new avenues that cyber criminals can exploit to compromise enterprise networks, as detailed by the research paper, including ransomware and cryptojacking attacks tailored to target Linux servers in environments that might not be as strictly monitored as those running Windows. These attacks are designed for maximum impact, as the cyber criminals look to compromise as much as the network as possible before triggering the encryption process and ultimately demanding a ransom for the decryption key. The report warns that ransomware has evolved to target Linux host images used to spin up workloads in virtualised environments, enabling the attackers to simultaneously encrypt vast swathes of the network and make incident response more difficult. The attacks on cloud environments also result in attackers stealing information from servers, which they threaten to publish if they're not paid a ransom.... Cryptojacking and other malware attacks are also increasingly targeting Linux servers. Cryptojacking malware steals processing power from CPUs and servers in order to mine for cryptocurrency.... Many of the cyberattacks targeting Linux environments are still relatively unsophisticated when compared with equivalent attacks targeting Windows systems — that means that with the correct approach to monitoring and securing Linux-based systems, many of these attacks can be prevented. That includes cybersecurity hygiene procedures such as ensuring default passwords aren't in use and avoiding sharing one account across multiple users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"It may be that today's large neural networks are slightly conscious," OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever tweeted Wednesday. Futurism says that after republishing that remark, "the responses came rolling in, with some representing the expected handwringing about sentient artificial intelligence, but many others calling bull.""Every time such speculative comments get an airing, it takes months of effort to get the conversation back to the more realistic opportunities and threats posed by AI," UNSW Sidney AI researcher Toby Walsh chimed in.... Independent sociotechnologist Jürgen Geuter, who goes by the pseudonym "tante" online, quipped in response to Sutskever's tweet that "it may also be that this take has no basis in reality and is just a sales pitch to claim magical tech capabilities for a startup that runs very simple statistics, just a lot of them...." Leon Dercynski, an associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, ran with the same idea. "It may be that there's a teapot orbiting the Sun somewhere between Earth and Mars," he bantered. "This seems more reasonable than Ilya's musing, in fact, because the apparatus for orbit exists, and we have good definitions of teapots...." These critics, it should be noted, are not wrong to point out the outlandishness of Sutskever's claim — it was not only a departure for OpenAI and its chief scientist, but also a pretty unusual comment to make, given that up to this point, most who work in and study AI believe that we're many years away from creating conscious AI, if indeed we ever do. Sutskever, for his part, seems unbothered by the controversy. "Ego is (mostly) the enemy," he said Friday morning.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Reuters reports that a popular NFT trading platform "has halted most transactions because people were selling tokens of content that did not belong to them, its founder said, calling this a 'fundamental problem' in the fast-growing digital assets market...."The U.S.-based Cent executed one of the first known million-dollar NFT sales when it sold the former Twitter CEO's [first] tweet as an NFT last March. But as of February 6, it has stopped allowing buying and selling, CEO and co-founder Cameron Hejazi told Reuters.... Hejazi highlighted three main problems: people selling unauthorised copies of other NFTs, people making NFTs of content which does not belong to them, and people selling sets of NFTs which resemble a security. He said these issues were "rampant", with users "minting and minting and minting counterfeit digital assets". "It kept happening. We would ban offending accounts but it was like we're playing a game of whack-a-mole... Every time we would ban one, another one would come up, or three more would come up...." Hejazi said his company was keen on protecting content-creators, and may introduce centralised controls as a short-term measure in order to re-open the marketplace, before exploring decentralised solutions. Engadget reports that Cent "continues to operate its Valuables marketplace, the place where people can purchase non-fungible tokens of tweets, but that's about it." See also: More Than 80% of NFTs Created For Free On OpenSea Are Fraud Or Spam, Company Says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Linux 5.18 kernel is adding support this spring for the Intel Hardware Feedback Interface to make better decisions about where to place given work among available CPU cores/threads, reports Phoronix. This is significant because Intel's Alder Lake CPUs "are the first x86-64 processors to embrace a hybrid paradigm with two separate CPU architectures on the same die," explains Hot Hardware:These two separate CPU architectures have different strengths and capabilities. The Golden Cove "performance cores" (or P-cores) feature Intel's latest high-performance desktop CPU architecture, and they are blisteringly fast. Meanwhile, the Gracemont "efficiency cores" (or E-cores) are so small that four of them, along with 2MB of shared L2 cache, can nearly fit in the same space as a single Golden Cove core. They're slower than the Golden Cove cores, but also much more efficient, at least in theory. The idea is that background tasks and light workloads can be run on the E-cores, saving power, while latency-sensitive and compute-intensive tasks can be run on the faster P-cores. The benefits of this may not have been exactly as clear as Intel would have liked on Windows, but they were even less visible on Linux. That's because Linux isn't aware of the unusual configuration of Alder Lake CPUs. Well, that's changing in Linux 5.18, slated for release this spring. Linux 5.18 is bringing support for the Intel Enhanced Hardware Feedback Interface, or EHFI... This is essentially the crux of Intel's "Thread Director," which is an intelligent, low-latency hardware-assisted scheduler.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Remember when more than 100,000 Social Security numbers of Missouri teachers were revealed in the HTML code of a state web site? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch's reporter informed the state government and delayed publishings his findings until they'd fixed the hole — but the state's governor then demanded the reporter's prosecution, labelling him "a hacker." In the months that followed, throughout a probe — which for some reason was run by the state's Highway Patrol — the governor had continued to suggest that prosecution of that reporter was imminent. But it's not. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:A St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist will not be charged after pointing out a weakness in a state computer database, the prosecuting attorney for Cole County said Friday. Prosecutor Locke Thompson issued a statement to television station KRCG Friday, saying he appreciated Gov. Mike Parson for forwarding his concerns but would not be filing charges.... Parson, who had suggested prosecution was imminent throughout the probe, issued a statement saying Thompson's office believed the decision "was properly addressed...." Post-Dispatch Publisher Ian Caso said in a statement Friday: "We are pleased the prosecutor recognized there was no legitimate basis for any charges against the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or our reporter. While an investigation of how the state allowed this information to be accessible was appropriate, the accusations against our reporter were unfounded and made to deflect embarrassment for the state's failures and for political purposes...." There is no authorization required to examine public websites, but some researchers say overly broad hacking laws in many jurisdictions let embarrassed institutions lob hacking allegations against good Samaritans who try to flag vulnerabilities before they're exploited.... A political action committee supporting Parson ran an ad attacking the newspaper over the computer incident, saying the governor was "standing up to the fake news media." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool for submitting the story.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
America's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) "says that American companies should be extra wary about potential hacking attempts from Russia as tensions with the country rise," reports PC Magazine:Even if Russia doesn't invade Ukraine, it has often targeted the country with what Wired has characterized as "many of the most costly cyberattacks in history." Those attacks might not always be confined to Ukraine, however, which is where CISA's new Shields Up campaign comes in.... CISA says that it "recommends all organizations — regardless of size — adopt a heightened posture when it comes to cybersecurity and protecting their most critical assets." It also says that it's collaborated with its "critical infrastructure partners" to raise awareness of these risks. The agency wants everyone to "reduce the likelihood of a damaging cyber intrusion," "take steps to quickly detect a potential intrusion," "ensure that the organization is prepared to respond if an intrusion occurs," and "maximize the organization's resilience to a destructive cyber incident." CISA offers advice related to each of those focus areas on its website. Earlier this week CISA also added 15 "known exploited" vulnerabilities to its catalog, ZDNet reports, in products from Apache, Apple, Jenkins, and Microsoft:The list includes a Microsoft Windows SAM local privilege escalation vulnerability with a remediation date set for February 24. Vulcan Cyber engineer Mike Parkin said the vulnerability — CVE-2021-36934 — was patched in August 2021 shortly after it was disclosed. "It is a local vulnerability, which reduces the risk of attack and gives more time to deploy the patch. CISA set the due date for Federal organizations who take direction from them, and that date is based on their own risk criteria," Parkin said. "With Microsoft releasing the fix 5 months ago, and given the relative threat, it is reasonable for them to set late February as the deadline."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, is making a $200 million strategic investment in Forbes, the 104-year-old magazine and digital publisher, CNBC has learned. The funds will help Forbes execute on its plan to merge with a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in the first quarter, according to people with knowledge of the deal. Binance will replace half of the $400 million in commitments from institutional investors announced by Forbes in August, said the people. That would make Binance one of the top two biggest owners of Forbes, which will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker FRBS, the people said. The crypto company will also get two directors out of nine total board seats, they said. The move shows the increasing real-world influence of the crypto sector, which has seen surging valuations and minted a new class of billionaires amid global interest in digital assets. While crypto companies have gone public, affixed their names to sports arenas and flooded airwaves with celebrity endorsements, this is the sector's first big investment in a traditional U.S. media property. The investment by Binance, founded barely five years ago, is an indication that Zhao believes content generation will be a growth area for Web 3.0 development. Web 3.0 refers to a more decentralized version of the internet that uses the blockchain, which also underpins cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. [...] The company approached Forbes, which had been weighing options including an outright sale, after identifying three media and content platforms for potential investment, said the people. Crypto insiders say they expect a deluge of deals this year as companies deploy the enormous sums of money raised in recent fundraising rounds. Further reading: An Incomplete History of Forbes as a Platform for Scams, Grift and Bad JournalismRead more of this story at Slashdot.
Engineers at Drexel University have made a breakthrough they say takes [lithium-sulfur batteries] closer to commercial use, by leveraging a rare chemical phase of sulfur to prevent damaging chemical reactions. New Atlas reports: [T]here is one problem that scientists keep running into, which is the formation of chemical compounds called polysulfides. As the battery operates, these make their way into the electrolyte -- the solution that carries the charge back and forth between the anode and cathode -- where they trigger chemical reactions that compromise the battery's capacity and lifespan. Scientists have had some success swapping out the carbonate electrolyte for an ether electrolyte, which doesn't react with the polysulfides. But this poses other problems, as the ether electrolyte itself is highly volatile and contains components with low boiling points, meaning the battery could quickly fail or meltdown if warmed above room temperature. The chemical engineers at Drexel University have been working on another solution and it starts with the design of a new cathode, which can work with the carbonate electrolytes already in commercial use. This cathode is made from carbon nanofibers and had already been shown to slow the movement of polysulfides in an ether electrolyte. But making it work with a carbonate electrolyte involved some experimentation. The scientists attempted to confine the sulfur in the carbon nanofiber mesh to prevent the dangerous chemical reactions using a technique called vapor disposition. This didn't quite have the desired effect, but as it turned out, actually crystallized the sulfur in an unexpected way and turned it into something called monoclinic gamma-phase sulfur, a slightly altered form of the element. This chemical phase of sulfur had only been produced at high temperatures in the lab or observed in oil wells in nature. Conveniently for the scientists, it is not reactive with the carbonate electrolyte, thereby removing the risk of polysulfide formation. The cathode remained stable across a year of testing and 4,000 charge-discharge cycles, which the scientists say is equivalent to 10 years of regular use. The prototype battery the team made featuring this cathode offered triple the capacity of a standard lithium-ion battery, paving the way for more environmentally friendly batteries that allow electric vehicles to travel much farther on each charge. The research was published in the journal Communications Chemistry.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The first images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have been released, according to Space.com. Slashdot readers g01d4 and fahrbot-bot first shared the news. From the report: The main photo, which doesn't even hint at the power Webb will bring to the universe once it's fully operational, shows a star called HD 84406 and is only a portion of the mosaic taken over 25 hours beginning on Feb. 2, during the ongoing process to align the observatory's segmented mirror. "The entire Webb team is ecstatic at how well the first steps of taking images and aligning the telescope are proceeding," Marcia Rieke, principal investigator of the instrument that Webb relies on for the alignment procedure and an astronomer at the University of Arizona, said in a NASA statement. JWST is now 48 days out from its Christmas Day launch and in the midst of a commissioning process expected to last about six months. The telescope spent the first month unfolding from its launch configuration and trekking out nearly 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth. During the bulk of the remaining time, scientists are focusing on waking and calibrating the observatory's instruments and making the minute adjustments to the telescope's 18 golden mirror segments that are necessary for crisp, clear images of the deep universe. The process is going well, according to NASA. Still, the telescope has a long way to go, as today's image of HD 84406 shows. [...] HD 84406 is in the constellation Ursa Major, or Big Bear, but is not visible from Earth without a telescope. But it was a perfect early target for Webb because its brightness is steady and the observatory can always spot it, so launch or deployment delays wouldn't affect the plan. Oddly, JWST won't be able to observe HD 84406 later in its tenure; once the telescope is focused, this star will be too bright to look at. Previously, JWST personnel have said that the telescope will be seeing fairly sharply by late April. In addition to the image of HD 84406, NASA also shared a "selfie" image, which Gizmodo and CNN decided to focus on in their reports.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US Army released (PDF) its climate change strategy this week, and it's a lengthy document that shows how the largest and oldest branch of the military will not only prepare for climate change but will also zero out emissions from most of its operations and activities. The Army says that the goal isn't just to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions -- though that's a key outcome -- but also to make the force more resilient by "adapting infrastructure and natural environments to climate change risks." The strategy takes a multipronged approach toward addressing the climate threat, including overhauling the Army's installations and its acquisitions and logistics practices. On just the facilities side, the Army buys more than $740 million of electricity every year, producing over 4.1 million metric tons of carbon pollution. To bring those numbers down while also improving its ability to operate when the grid goes down, the Army says it will install microgrids at each of its more than 130 installations by 2035. Already, 25 microgrids are "scoped and planned" through 2024. Microgrids are usually connected to the wider grid, though they can be easily cut off without losing power, allowing operations to continue if the connection is severed or the grid goes down. Currently, the Army is looking into solar, wind, and batteries to power microgrids. On bases, myriad vehicles support day-to-day operations, and the new plan calls for the nontactical vehicle fleet to be all-electric by 2035. That includes everything from light trucks like Chevrolet Tahoes and Ford F-150s to massive prime movers like the "Dragon Wagon" and the HEMTT. Light-duty vehicles like the Tahoe are scheduled to be all-electric by 2027. Tactical vehicles, though, will take a bit longer. The Army hopes to hybridize them by 2035 before moving to all-electric in 2050. The plan doesn't spell out what it considers to be tactical vehicles, though the designation likely includes things like Humvees and MRAPs. Currently, there's no concrete plan for all-electric tanks and self-propelled artillery. The Army's plan is also requiring it to "proactively train its people and prepare a force that is ready to operate in a climate-altered world," the document says. Furthermore, a "Climate 101" course has been rolled out "to introduce fundamentals of climate science to base architects and garrison commanders, and it says it will update all of its training modules, exercises, and simulations to consider the impacts of climate change by 2028," adds Ars Technica. "The goal is to prepare the entire force for whatever conditions climate change presents, from severe weather to a thawing Arctic."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
At least some nuclear power plants in the US contain counterfeit parts that could pose significant risks, an investigation by the inspector general's office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has found. Those parts "present nuclear safety and security concerns that could have serious consequences," says the resulting report (PDF) published on February 9th. The Verge reports: The investigation was conducted after unnamed individuals alleged that "most, if not all," nuclear plants in the US have fake or faulty parts. The inspector general's office uncovered problems with counterfeit parts at a few different plants as part of its investigation. The report also says that the DOE had separately flagged 100 "incidents" involving counterfeit parts just last year. It's a problem that the US will have to crack down on if it moves forward with plans to include nuclear power in its transition to clean energy. Without greater oversight at the NRC, the report warns, the risk of counterfeit parts going unnoticed in the nation's nuclear power plants could rise. As part of its inquiry, the inspector general's office looked for parts that are illegally altered to look like legitimate products, parts that are "intentionally misrepresented to deceive," and parts that don't meet product specifications. It sampled four power plants across the US and found evidence of counterfeit parts at one of those plants in the midwest. It also points to nuclear power plants in the Northeast, separate from those it sampled, where a "well-placed NRC principal" found that counterfeit parts were involved in two separate component failures. The NRC might be underestimating the prevalence of counterfeit parts, the report warns, because the regulatory agency doesn't have a robust system in place for tracking problematic parts. It only requires plants to report counterfeits in extraordinary circumstances, like if they lead to an emergency shutdown of a reactor. The report also notes that the NRC hasn't thoroughly investigated all counterfeit allegations. There were 55 nuclear power plants operating in the US as of September 2021, and the inspector general's office sampled just four for its report. NRC Public Affairs Officer Scott Burnell told The Verge in an email that "nothing in the report suggests an immediate safety concern. The NRC's office of the Executive Director for Operations is thoroughly reviewing the report and will direct the agency's program offices to take appropriate action."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Network gear maker Cisco Systems has made a takeover offer worth more than $20 billion for software maker Splunk, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Reuters reports: The offer was made recently and the companies are not in active talks, the newspaper said, citing some of the sources. In November last year, San Francisco-based Splunk announced Doug Merritt has stepped down as its chief executive officer (CEO) and that the company's chair, Graham Smith, would be the interim CEO. Founded in 2003, the software solutions provider has a market capitalisation of $18.2 billion, according to Refinitiv Eikon data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Popular video conferencing platform Zoom this week released an important update to its macOS app following user reports about the microphone not being disabled after ending a conference. Luckily, according to the company, this was just a bug that has now been fixed. 9to5Mac reports: Since December last year, a number of users have been complaining about this bug in the Zoom Community (via The Register). According to them, the Mac's microphone stayed active even after ending a Zoom conference -- which certainly raised privacy concerns. Zoom has confirmed that there was a bug in its macOS app that could cause the orange microphone-in-use indicator to appear even after leaving a call. According to a company representative, the latest version of the app no longer has this problem: "We experienced a bug relating to the Zoom client for macOS, which could show the orange indicator light continue to appear after having left a meeting, call, or webinar. This bug was addressed in the Zoom client for macOS version 5.9.3 and we recommend you update to version 5.9.3 to apply the fix."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times, written by journalist Kashmir Hill: In mid-January, my husband and I were having an argument. Our 1-year-old had just tested positive for Covid-19 and was occasionally grunting between breaths. I called urgent care and was told we should take her to the emergency room. But, because I had been up all night with her, I was too exhausted to drive. "I'm worried," I told my husband. "I want you to take her to the hospital." "Doctors always tell us to take the baby to the E.R. whenever we call about anything," he replied, exasperated. (This was true.) "She is fine. She is eating and playing and happy. This is not an emergency." He eventually caved and set out for the hospital a half-hour away. Knowing he was already annoyed by me, I did not want to pepper him with questions about how it was going. Instead, I turned to the location-monitoring devices that I had secretly stashed in our car a week earlier. I put a quarter-sized Apple AirTag in a seat pocket; a flat, credit card-shaped Bluetooth tracker made by Tile in a dashboard pocket; and a hockey-puck-like GPS tracker from a company called LandAirSea in the glove compartment.I realize I sound like the worst wife ever, so let me explain. It was for journalism. [...] I shared the feed from the LandAirSea GPS tracker with the photographer Todd Heisler so he could follow my husband around New York City. When my colleague and I reported on this, experts we spoke with were of two minds about Apple's attempts to prevent nefarious use, with some saying the alerts were inadequate and others praising the company for unearthing a larger problem: widespread surreptitious tracking, usually done with devices that don't notify a person of their presence. I decided to examine both claims by planting three AirTags, three Tiles, and a GPS tracker on my husband and his belongings to see how precisely they revealed his movements and which ones he discovered. [...] Thirty minutes after my husband and youngest departed for the hospital, I opened an app linked to the most precise tracker in my arsenal, the $30 LandAirSea device. To activate it costs extra, because it needs a cellular plan to relay where global positioning satellites have placed it. I chose the cheapest plan, $19.95 monthly, to get location updates every three minutes; the most expensive plan, for updates every three seconds, was $49.95. The app has an "InstaFence" feature that can alert me when the car moves, and a "Playback" option to show where the car has been, so I could see the exact route on windy roads my husband had taken. I saw that he parked at 4:55 p.m., so I wasn't surprised when I got a text from him 12 minutes later reporting that they were in the waiting room. The other trackers in the car -- the $34.99 Tile and $29 AirTag -- didn't work as well in real time out in the sparsely populated area where we live. The AirTag, designed to find keys left behind "at the beach," took an hour or so to reveal that the car was in the hospital parking lot. The Tile, intended to "find misplaced things nearby and far away," never realized it had moved from our garage. That's because these devices rely on Bluetooth technology. Hill went on to say that she hid an AirTag in her husband's backpack, which became her most powerful tracker, "outperforming the GPS device, and allowing me to tell a photographer exactly where he was at all times." "Within two hours of my putting all the trackers in our car, my husband, who has an iPhone, got an alert about the AirTag, after running an errand," adds Hill. "The problem was that he couldn't find it. [...] The one time his iPhone connected to the AirTag in the car, so he could play the noise, it was so hard to tell where it was coming from that he gave up looking for it after five minutes." In response to the surreptitious tracking, Hill's husband said: "For all the bad press the AirTags have gotten, and as flaky as the detection mechanisms were, at least I was consistently getting notifications they were following me. The privacy dangers of the other trackers were way worse."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Playboy has plans to reboot its brand in the digital world through NFTs, digital subscriptions and a new mansion in the metaverse. CNBC reports: The company has dropped thousands of Playboy NFTs featuring bunny avatars, launched a digital social platform called Centerfold and has plans to build a new Playboy Mansion in the metaverse. These plans are unfolding while an A&E documentary focuses on the company's unflattering past. "Secrets of Playboy" is a 10-part series making headlines by featuring former employees, playmates and past girlfriends of the company's founder, Hugh Hefner, alleging Playboy had a dark side. Even before the series' debuted in late January, company leadership posted an open letter to its website noting, "today's Playboy is not Hugh Hefner's Playboy." The futuristic moves come almost five years after Hefner's death and two years since the last legacy print magazine hit the newsstands. Staging its digital reinvention for the next wave of internet innovation, which technologists call Web3, is the next big challenge. "The magazine was one product of the company. But it was really that rabbit head that's worth billions and billions of dollars and not replicable," Playboy CEO Ben Kohn told CNBC in a recent interview. While the brand drives billions in consumer spending worldwide, much of it through licensed products sold overseas, Kohn said that business model is broken and that the company needs to make changes. The CEO's fixes rely heavily on that not-so-secret weapon: the world famous bowtie-wearing rabbit. [...] The company is focused on trying to leverage that "inherent value" in the digital world. For example, a Playboy SEC filing last year shows the company paid $12 million to purchase a Bombardier Global Express BD-700 so Kohn could unleash that priceless bunny logo across not just the sky, but also on the internet. The plane is an homage to the black-painted DC-9, known as the Big Bunny, flown by Hugh Hefner in the '70s. The Global Express, which started off white, was gut-renovated before re-emerging five month's later with a sleek all-black body emblazoned with bunny logos and the same tail number used on its predecessor that whisked Hefner, celebrities and an entourage of Playboy bunnies around the world...Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In the early 2000s, the U.S. Army released America's Army, a video game meant as a recruitment tool. "The free-to-play tactical shooter was wildly successful, reaching 20 million players," reports Fast Company. "But come May 5, the servers will be shut down -- and America's Army will surrender to the forces of time." From the report: To date, no industry has embraced games as warmly as the military, though. America's Army, for example, started with an initial budget of $7 million of your tax dollars at play -- and quickly grew from there. Recognizing that players know a quality title when they see one (and ignore and ridicule poor-quality efforts), it assembled a team of proven developers and bought a license for the Unreal Engine, which was (and remains) one of the premier game engines on the market. America's Army was only supposed to be a seven-year project, but its success encouraged the Defense Department to stay with the game, with the Pentagon spending more than $3 million a year to evolve and promote it -- a drop in the bucket compared to the overall $8 billion recruiting budget. How well did it work? A 2008 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that "30% of all Americans ages 16 to 24 had a more positive impression of the Army because of the game and, even more amazingly, the game had more impact on recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined." The end of America's Army is hardly the end of the military's use of games as recruiting tools. The Army has its own Twitch channel (with more than 23,000 followers) and has an e-sports team that competes at tournaments -- with recruiters in tow.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Dan Goodin: About 500 e-commerce websites were recently found to be compromised by hackers who installed a credit card skimmer that surreptitiously stole sensitive data when visitors attempted to make a purchase. A report published on Tuesday is only the latest one involving Magecart, an umbrella term given to competing crime groups that infect e-commerce sites with skimmers. Over the past few years, thousands of sites have been hit by exploits that cause them to run malicious code. When visitors enter payment card details during purchase, the code sends that information to attacker-controlled servers. Sansec, the security firm that discovered the latest batch of infections, said the compromised sites were all loading malicious scripts hosted at the domain naturalfreshmall[.]com. "The Natural Fresh skimmer shows a fake payment popup, defeating the security of a (PCI compliant) hosted payment form," firm researchers wrote on Twitter. "Payments are sent to https://naturalfreshmall.com/p...." The hackers then modified existing files or planted new files that provided no fewer than 19 backdoors that the hackers could use to retain control over the sites in the event the malicious script was detected and removed and the vulnerable software was updated. The only way to fully disinfect the site is to identify and remove the backdoors before updating the vulnerable CMS that allowed the site to be hacked in the first place. Sansec worked with the admins of hacked sites to determine the common entry point used by the attackers. The researchers eventually determined that the attackers combined a SQL injection exploit with a PHP object injection attack in a Magento plugin known as Quickview. [...] It's not hard to find sites that remain infected more than a week after Sansec first reported the campaign on Twitter. At the time this post was going live, Bedexpress[.]com continued to contain this HTML attribute, which pulls JavaScript from the rogue naturalfreshmall[.]com domain. The hacked sites were running Magento 1, a version of the e-commerce platform that was retired in June 2020. The safer bet for any site still using this deprecated package is to upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Commerce. Another option is to install open source patches available for Magento 1 using either DIY software from the OpenMage project or with commercial support from Mage-One.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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