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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Ukraine's airspace has been busy this year -- that's the nature of war. But scientists in the country are looking to the skies and seeing something they didn't expect: An inordinate number of UFOs, according to a new preprint paper published (PDF) by Kyiv's Main Astronomical Observatory in coordination with the country's National Academy of Science. The paper does not specifically address the war, but in the United States, the Pentagon has long hinted, speculated, and warned that some UFOs could be advanced technology from foreign militaries, specifically China and Russia (though it hasn't really given any evidence this is actually the case). The Ukraine paper is particularly notable because it not only shows that science has continued to occur during the war, but also explains that there have been a lot of sightings. "We see them everywhere," the research said. "We observe a significant number of objects whose nature is not clear." The paper is titled Unidentified aerial phenomena I. Observations of events come from observations made at NAS' Main Astronomical Observatory in Kyiv and a village south of Kyiv called Vinarivka. According to the paper's authors, the observatories took on the job of hunting for UFO's as an independent project because of the enthusiasm around the subject. It describes a specific type of UFO the researchers call "phantoms" that is an "object [that] is a completely black body that does not emit and absorbs all the radiation falling on it." The researchers also observed that the UFOs it's seeing are so fast that it's hard to take pictures of them. "The eye does not fix phenomena lasting less than one-tenth of a second," the paper said. "It takes four-tenths of a second to recognize an event. Ordinary photo and video recordings will also not capture the [unidentified aerial phenomenon]. To detect UAP, you need to fine-tune the equipment: shutter speed, frame rate, and dynamic range." So the researchers did just that using two meteor monitoring stations in Kyiv and Vinarivka. "We have developed a special observation technique, taking into account the high speeds of the observed objects," the paper said. "The exposure time was chosen so that the image of the object did not shift significantly during exposure. The frame rate was chosen to take into account the speed of the object and the field of view of the camera. In practice, the exposure time was less than 1 ms, and the frame rate was no less than 50 Hz." The scientists divided the phenomenon they observed into two different categories: cosmics and phantoms. "We note that Cosmics are luminous objects, brighter than the background of the sky. We call these ships names of birds (swift, falcon, eagle)," the paper said. "Phantoms are dark objects, with contrast from several to about 50 percent." Using the cameras, stationed roughly 75 miles apart, allowed the scientists to make repeated observations of strange objects moving in the sky. The paper didn't speculate on what the objects were, merely noted the observations and mentioned the objects' incredible speeds. "Flights of single, group and squadrons of the ships were detected, moving at speeds from 3 to 15 degrees per second," the research said. "Phantoms are observed in the troposphere at distances up to 10 -- 12 km. We estimate their size from 3 to 12 meters and speeds up to 15 km/s." The easy explanation would be that these are missiles, or rockets, or something else associated with the war. But the scientists insist that their nature "is not clear."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

hackingbear shares a report from Gizmodo: China claims that America's National Security Agency used sophisticated cyber tools to hack into an elite research university on Chinese soil. The attack allegedly targeted the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an (not to be confused with a California school of the same name), which is highly ranked in the global university index for its science and engineering programs. The U.S. Justice Department has referred to the school as a "Chinese military university that is heavily involved in military research and works closely with the People's Liberation Army," painting it as a reasonable target for digital infiltration from an American perspective. China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) recently published a report attributing the hack to the Tailored Access Operations group (TAO) -- an elite team of NSA hackers which first became publicly known via the Snowden Leaks back in 2013, helps the U.S. government break into networks all over the world for the purposes of intelligence gathering and data collection. [CVERC identified 41 TAO tools involved in the case.] One such tool, dubbed 'Suctionchar,' is said to have helped infiltrate the school's network by stealing account credentials from remote management and file transfer applications to hijack logins on targeted servers. The report also mentions the exploitation of Bvp47, a backdoor in Linux that has been used in previous hacking missions by the Equation Group -- another elite NSA hacking team. According to CVERC, traces of Suctionchar have been found in many other Chinese networks besides Northwestern's, and the agency has accused the NSA of launching more than 10,000 cyberattacks on China over the past several years. On Sunday, the allegations against the NSA were escalated to a diplomatic complaint. Yang Tao, the director-general of American affairs at China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, published a statement affirming the CVERC report and claiming that the NSA had "seriously violated the technical secrets of relevant Chinese institutions and seriously endangered the security of China's critical infrastructure, institutions and personal information, and must be stopped immediately."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adobe thinks it has the answer to Netflix's "password sharing" problem that involves up to 46 million people, according to a 2020 study. TorrentFreak reports: Adobe believes that since every user is different, any actions taken against an account should form part of a data-driven strategy designed to "measure, manage and monetize" password sharing. The company's vision is for platforms like Netflix to deploy machine learning models to extract behavioral patterns associated with an account, to determine how the account is being used. These insights can determine which measures should be taken against an account, and how success or otherwise can be determined by monitoring an account in the following weeks or months. Ignoring the obviously creepy factors for a moment, Adobe's approach does seem more sophisticated, even if the accompanying slide gives off a file-sharing-style "graduated response" vibe. That leads to the question of how much customer information Adobe would need to ensure that the right accounts are targeted, with the right actions, at the right time. Adobe's Account IQ is powered by Adobe Sensei, which in turn acts as the intelligence layer for Adobe Experience Platform. In theory, Adobe will know more about a streaming account than those using it, so the company should be able to predict the most effective course of action to reduce password sharing and/or monetize it, without annoying the account holder. But of course, if you're monitoring customer accounts in such close detail, grabbing all available information is the obvious next step. Adobe envisions collecting data on how many devices are in use, how many individuals are active, and geographical locations -- including distinct locations and span. This will then lead to a "sharing probability" conclusion, along with a usage pattern classification that should identify travelers, commuters, close family and friends, even the existence of a second home. Given that excessive sharing is likely to concern platforms like Netflix, Adobe's plan envisions a period of mass account monitoring followed by an on-screen "Excessive Sharing" warning in its dashboard. From there, legal streaming services can identify the accounts most responsible and begin preparing their "graduated response" towards changing behaviors. After monetizing those who can be monetized, those who refuse to pay can be identified and dumped. Or as Adobe puts it: "Return free-loaders to available market." Finally, Adobe also suggests that its system can be used to identify customers who display good behavior. These users can be rewarded by eliminating authentication requirements, concurrent stream limits, and device registrations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Electronics Arts (EA) is launching a new kernel-level anti-cheat system that's been developed in-house to protect its games from tampering and cheaters. It'll debut first in FIFA 23 but not all of its games will implement the system. The Verge reports: Kernel-level anti-cheat systems have drawn criticism from privacy and security advocates, as the drivers these systems use are complex and run at such a high level that if there are security issues, then developers have to be very quick to address them. EA says kernel-level protection is "absolutely vital" for competitive games like FIFA 23, as existing cheats operate in the kernel space, so games running in regular user mode can't detect that tampering or cheating is occurring. "Unfortunately, the last few years have seen a large increase in cheats and cheat techniques operating in kernel-mode, so the only reliable way to detect and block these is to have our anti-cheat operate there as well," explains [Elise Murphy, senior director of game security and anti-cheat at EA]. EA's anti-cheat system will run at the kernel level and only runs when a game with EAAC protection is running. EA says its anti-cheat processes shut down once a game does and that the anti-cheat will be limited to what data it collects on a system. "EAAC does not gather any information about your browsing history, applications that are not connected to EA games, or anything that is not directly related to anti-cheat protection," says Murphy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: US farm machinery giant John Deere has estimated software fees will make up 10 percent of the company's revenues by the end of the decade. Chief executive John May offered the projection in a Wall Street Journal report on how Deere has plowed billions into developing self-driving tractors and crop sprayers that can tell the difference between weeds and produce. Though farmers are already struggling with operating costs -- including fertilizer and fuel -- Deere wants to sell software subscriptions for operating its ever smarter vehicles. Bernstein analysts estimate that the average gross margin for farming software is 85 percent, compared with 25 percent for equipment sales. All Deere's tractors and harvesters have an autopilot feature included as standard following decades of ushering farmers into more technology-driven agriculture. However, the company now plans to have 1.5 million machines and half a billion acres of land connected to the John Deere Operations Center within a matter of years. This cloud service "will collect and store crop data, including millions of images of weeds that can be targeted by herbicide." Deere also acquired California startup Bear Flag Robotics for $250 million last year to turn old tractors into autonomous vehicles through software. For a company that has the heavy machinery market cornered, the shift is unlikely to be popular with farmers. The report goes on to note that a number of farm and repair advocacy groups have filed a complaint with the FTC, "claiming that Deere has unlawfully refused to provide the software and technical data necessary to repair its machinery in violation of the Sherman Act and statutes covering unfair and deceptive trade practices."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is facing two legal cases which could result in the tech giant paying out damages of up to ~$25 billion (19.5 billion pounds) over its digital advertising practices. The BBC reports: The company is accused of anti-competitive conduct, and of abusing its dominant place in the ad tech market. Separate legal cases, in the UK and in the Netherlands, are being filed in the coming weeks on behalf of publishers seeking "compensation" from Google. [...] The European Commission and its UK equivalent are investigating whether Google's dominance in the ad tech business gives it an unfair advantage over rivals and advertisers. The French competition watchdog imposed a 220 million euro fine on the company last year. Johnny Ryan, from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, told the BBC: "Google is under pressure on two big issues - one is anti-trust and the other is data protection." Mr Ryan said more cases were coming to light as competition enforcers around the world "increasingly put demands on Google." But he added "the fines we have seen so far from competition authorities have had absolutely no consequence whatsoever." Damien Geradin, of the Belgian law firm Geradin Partners -- which is involved in the Dutch case -- said, "Publishers, including local and national news media, who play a vital role in our society, have long been harmed by Google's anti-competitive conduct. It is time that Google owns up to its responsibilities and pays back the damages it has caused to this important industry. That is why today we are announcing these actions across two jurisdictions to obtain compensation for EU and UK publishers." The British claim, at the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal, will seek to recover compensation for all owners of websites carrying banner advertising. If successful, this would mean a wide and diverse group could get compensation - from major media sites down to small and medium-sized businesses who produce their own online content. Businesses which do not which to be included in the legal action can opt out. [...] The UK competition watchdog is also investigating Google's power in the digital advertising technology market. The Dutch case is open to European publishers affected by Google's actions. Geradin Partners has teamed up with Dutch law firm Stek to bring the collective claim.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The McDonald's McFlurry is a delicious treat that people have a hard time finding because the machine breaks down all the time. Thanks to a third-party device made by an independent company called Kytch, the machines can be made to be easier to maintain and break down less. Taylor, the company that makes the McFlurry machine, has been engaged in a long-running legal dispute about whether Taylor could prevent Kytch devices from being used on the machines. Kytch just won an important victory in that long-running legal battle. Before Kytch came along, Taylor had a repair monopoly on the McFlurry machine. When the thing broke down or hadn't been cleaned, the machine would shut down, and only a certified Taylor technician could get it going again. That's why it can be so hard to find McFlurries: the machines often break down and a tech has to be dispatched to get them running again. Kytch invented a device that allows McDonald's franchise owners to do basic repairs on the machines and get them running again. Taylor didn't like that and, according to a lawsuit filed by Kytch, started telling its franchise partners that Kytch devices could cause "serious human injury." In July 2021, Kytch filed a restraining order against Taylor claiming that the company had stolen Kytch's trade secrets. Taylor had begun selling a device similar to Kytch's and Kytch has alleged that Taylor stole one of their devices and reverse-engineered it. Taylor pushed back on these allegations and the lawsuit, filing what's called a demurrer, a formalized objection to Kytch's request for a restraining order. In a court document filed on August 26, 2022, a judge allowed Kytch's restraining order to proceed. In its original filing, Kytch alleged 10 different claims against Taylor, including that it had falsely advertised its product and engaged in unfair competition. The judge agreed with Kytch on seven of these points. "The court will sustain Taylor's demurrer as to the second (tortious interference), sixth (intentional interference with business expectancy), and seventh (negligent interference with business expectancy) causes of action," the filing said. "The court rejects Taylor's other arguments and will overrule its demurrer on those grounds."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just before shareholders voted to approve a $44 billion deal with Elon Musk to buy the company, Twitter whistleblower Pieter Zatko was in Washington testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about alleged security flaws. NPR highlights the main takeaways from the hearing: Twitter executives put profits ahead of security, leaving the door open to infiltration by foreign agents and hackers, the company's former head of security told Congress on Tuesday. "Twitter leadership is misleading the public, lawmakers, regulators and even its own board of directors," Peiter Zatko testified during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. "The company's cybersecurity failures make it vulnerable to exploitation, causing real harm to real people." [...] In Tuesday's hearing, which ran for more than two hours, Zatko painted a portrait of a company plagued by widespread security issues and unable to control the data it collects. Calm and measured, he stuck closely to his expertise, unpacking technical details of Twitter's systems with real-world examples of how information held by the company could be misused. "It's not far-fetched to say that an employee inside the company could take over the accounts of all of the senators in this room," he warned. Zatko alleged the company is highly vulnerable to abuse by foreign intelligence agents -- but is unable or unwilling to root them out. A week before his firing in January, he testified, the FBI told Twitter's security team that at least one agent from China's Ministry of State Security was on the company's payroll. [...] Zatko also alleged that the Indian government had placed an agent inside Twitter. He testified that Twitter struggled to identify potential infiltration by foreign agents and typically was only able to do so when notified by outside agencies. Zatko placed the blame for Twitter's vulnerabilities squarely on a leadership team that he described as reactive, incompetent, and motivated by profit over safety. Executives, he alleged, ignored warnings from him and other employees over Twitter's security flaws because they "lacked the competency to understand the scope of the problem." Zatko described a company culture that avoided negativity and alleged executives presented selectively favorable information to the board. He accused leadership of prioritizing business over security, quoting writer Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get someone to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding something." When Zatko joined Twitter, he said, he was struck that the company kept having recurring security lapses -- "the same amount, year after year." The root cause, he told senators, is that Twitter doesn't understand how much data it collects, why it collects it, and how it's supposed to be used. That includes users' phone numbers, IP addresses, emails, the devices they use, their locations and other identifying information. What's more, he said, around half the employees at Twitter have access to that data. "It doesn't matter who has keys if you don't have any locks on the doors," he said. "The concern there is anybody with access inside Twitter...could go rooting through and find this information and use it for their own purposes." Zatko said that also raised red flags that Twitter may not be complying with its 2011 agreement with the FTC over misuse of email addresses that it told users it was collecting for security reasons, but then used for marketing. (In May, the FTC fined Twitter $150 million for violating that agreement.) "How come we keep making these same mistakes?" Zatko said. "What is it that we are telling the FTC as Twitter that is incorrect?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Commerce Department said it reached a cooperative research and development agreement with Alphabet's Google to produce chips that researchers can use to develop new nanotechnology and semiconductor devices. From a report: The deal was signed between the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Google. The chips will be manufactured by semiconductor company SkyWater Technology at its Bloomington, Minnesota, semiconductor foundry, the department said on Tuesday. Google will pay the initial cost of setting up production and will subsidize the first production run, according to the agreement. NIST, with university research partners, will design the circuitry for the chips.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A London-based artist named Matt DesLauriers has developed a tool to generate color palettes from any text prompt, allowing someone to type in "beautiful sunset" and get a series of colors that matches a typical sunset scene, for example. ArsTechnica: Or you could get more abstract, finding colors that match "a sad and rainy Tuesday." To achieve the effect, DesLauriers uses Stable Diffusion, an open source image synthesis model, to generate an image that matches the text prompt. Next, a JavaScript GIF encoder named gifenc extracts the palette information by analyzing the image and quantizing the colors down to a certain set. DesLauriers has posted his code on GitHub; it requires a local Stable Diffusion installation and Node.JS. It's a bleeding-edge prototype at the moment that requires some technical skill to set up, but it's also a noteworthy example of the unexpected graphical innovations that can come from open source releases of powerful image synthesis models. Stable Diffusion, which went open source on August 22, generates images from a neural network that has been trained on tens of millions of images pulled from the Internet. Its ability to draw from a wide range of visual influences translates well to extracting color palette information. Other palette examples DesLauriers provided include "Tokyo neon," which suggests colors from a vibrant Japanese cityscape, "living coral," which echoes a coral reef with deep pinks and blues, and "green garden, blue sky," which suggests a saturated pastoral scene. In a tweet earlier today, DesLauriers demonstrated how different quantization methods (reducing the vast number of colors in an image down to just a handful that represent the image) could produce different color palettes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nintendo announced the title for the next highly anticipated game in one of its bestselling franchises -- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It will be available May 12. From a report: The Zelda series, originally created by Nintendo former general manager Shigeru Miyamoto, has long been iconic among gaming fans worldwide and in the US, the Japanese company's largest market. The last title in the series, Breath of the Wild, was released in tandem with the Switch's debut in March 2017. The game helped drive the gadget's launch sales and so far has sold more than 27 million copies. Earlier this year Nintendo delayed the release of the next installment in the Zelda series to 2023, sending its shares tumbling. The news was the highlight of a 45-minute video presentation to tease Nintendo's upcoming titles this fall and into next year. Other announcements included Fire Emblem: Engage, Octopath Traveler 2 and Pikmin 4, which will be released in 2023. The Super Mario Bros. movie, starring Chris Pratt as the voice of the iconic Italian plumber, will be coming in the Spring, Miyamoto announced.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Several years after Facebook-owner Meta acquired WhatsApp and Instagram, the Federal Trade Commission launched an antitrust lawsuit that claimed that through these acquisitions, Meta had become a monopoly. A titan wielding enormous fortune over smaller companies, the FTC said Meta began buying or burying competitors in efforts that allegedly blocked rivals from offering better-quality products to consumers. In this outsize role, Meta stopped evolving consumer preferences for features like greater privacy options and stronger data protection from becoming the norm, the FTC claimed. The only solution the FTC could see? Ask a federal court to help them break up Meta and undo the damage the FTC did not foresee when it approved Meta's acquisitions initially. To investigate whether Meta truly possesses monopoly power, both Meta and the FTC have subpoenaed more than 100 Meta competitors each. Both hope to clearly define in court how much Meta dominates the market and just how negatively that impacts its competitors. Through 132 subpoenas so far, Meta is on a mission to defend itself, claiming it needs to gather confidential trade secrets from its biggest competitors -- not to leverage such knowledge and increase its market share, but to demonstrate in court that other companies are able to compete with Meta. According to court documents, Meta's so hungry for this background on its competitors, it says it plans to subpoena more than 100 additional rivals, if needed, to overcome the FTC's claims. Meta is asking its competitors for a wide range of insights, from their best-performing features to names of their biggest advertisers. It wants to see all business receipts, which to its competitors is seemingly turning the antitrust litigation into a business opportunity for Meta to find out precisely how other companies attract users, scale products, and gauge success. Among rivals already subpoenaed are Twitter, TikTok owner ByteDance, Reddit, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snap. More requests could be made in the coming years, though, before the discovery for both sides concludes on January 5, 2024.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Goldman's credit card business, anchored by the Apple Card since 2019, has arguably been the company's biggest success yet in terms of gaining retail lending scale. It's the largest contributor to the division's 14 million customers and $16 billion in loan balances, a figure that Goldman said would nearly double to $30 billion by 2024. But rising losses threaten to mar that picture. CNBC: Lenders deem bad loans "charge-offs" after a customer misses payments for six months; Goldman's 2.93% net charge-off rate is double the 1.47% rate at JPMorgan's card business and higher than Bank of America's 1.60%, despite being a fraction of those issuers' size. Goldman's losses are also higher than that of Capital One, the largest subprime player among big banks, which had a 2.26% charge-off rate. "If there's one thing Goldman is supposed to be good at, its risk management," said Jason Mikula, a former Goldman employee who now consults for the industry. "So how do they have charge-off rates comparable to a subprime portfolio?" The biggest reason is because Goldman's customers have been with the bank for less than two years on average, according to people with knowledge of the business who weren't authorized to speak to the press. Charge-off rates tend to be highest during the first few years a user has a card; as Goldman's pool of customers ages and struggling users drop out, those losses should calm down, the people said. The bank leans on third-party data providers to compare metrics with similar cards of the same vintage and is comfortable with its performance, the people said. Other banks also tend to be more aggressive in seeking to recover debt, which improves competitors' net charge-off figures, the people said. But another factor is that Goldman's biggest credit product, the Apple Card, is aimed at a broad swath of the country, including those with lower credit scores. Early in its rollout, some users were stunned to learn they had been approved for the card despite checkered credit histories. "Goldman has to play in a broader credit spectrum than other banks, that's part of the issue," said a person who once worked at the New York-based bank, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly about his former employer. "They have no direct-to-consumer offering yet, and when you have the Apple Card and the GM card, you are looking at Americana."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nikola founder Trevor Milton became a billionaire by lying to investors about the most important aspects of his low-emission vehicle company, a prosecutor told jurors as Milton's fraud trial began on Tuesday. Reuters: Prosecutors have said Milton sought to deceive investors about the electric- and hydrogen-powered truck maker's technology starting in November 2019. He left the company in September 2020 after a report by short seller Hindenburg Research called the company a "fraud." "He lied to dupe innocent investors into buying his company's stock," Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos said in U.S. District Court in New York. "On the backs of those innocent investors taken in by his lies, he became a billionaire virtually overnight." Milton, 40, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud. Milton's attorney Marc Mukasey on Tuesday called the case "prosecution by distortion" and said the entrepreneur sought to express a vision about the future of trucking, not mislead investors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The world's chances of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown are diminishing rapidly, as we enter "uncharted territory of destruction" through our failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions and take the actions needed to stave off catastrophe, leading scientists have said. From a report: Despite intensifying warnings in recent years, governments and businesses have not been changing fast enough, according to the United in Science report published on Tuesday. The consequences are already being seen in increasingly extreme weather around the world, and we are in danger of provoking "tipping points" in the climate system that will mean more rapid and in some cases irreversible shifts. Recent flooding in Pakistan, which the country's climate minister claimed had covered a third of the country in water, is the latest example of extreme weather that is devastating swathes of the globe. The heatwave across Europe including the UK this summer, prolonged drought in China, a megadrought in the US and near-famine conditions in parts of Africa also reflect increasingly prevalent extremes of weather. The secretary general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, said: "There is nothing natural about the new scale of these disasters. They are the price of humanity's fossil fuel addiction. This year's United in Science report shows climate impacts heading into uncharted territory of destruction."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SWIFT, the messaging system used by financial institutions globally to convey instructions on tens of millions of transactions each day, is testing out blockchain. From a report: The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT for short, is piloting a project with fintech company Symbiont, according to a post seen by Bloomberg. The collaboration, which includes Citigroup, Vanguard and Northern Trust, is aimed at driving "efficiencies in communicating significant corporate events," like dividend payments and mergers, SWIFT said in its post. As a global financial artery, SWIFT delivers secure messages among 11,000 companies in over 200 countries and territories, directing trillions of dollars in transactions. The operation gained much attention earlier this year as war broke out in Ukraine following Russia's invasion. The US and Europe cut a number of Russian banks from SWIFT, hurting their efforts to move money and operate globally.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon unveiled enhanced versions of its Kindle and Kindle Kids e-readers on Tuesday, the first time the tech giant has upgraded its flagship e-reader in nearly three years. From a report: The upgraded Kindle will now include a battery life of up to six weeks, USB-C charging and 16GB of storage. The Kindle Kids version will also come with a one-year subscription to Amazon Kids+. The Kindle will cost $99.99, up from the previous price of $89.99. The Kindle Kids model will cost $119.99, up from $109.99.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US consumer prices were resurgent last month, dashing hopes of a nascent slowdown and likely assuring another historically large interest-rate hike from the Federal Reserve. From a report: The consumer price index increased 0.1% from July, after no change in the prior month, Labor Department data showed Tuesday. From a year earlier, prices climbed 8.3%, a slight deceleration, largely due to recent declines in gasoline prices. So-called core CPI, which strips out the more volatile food and energy components, advanced 0.6% from July and 6.3% from a year ago, the first acceleration in six months on an annual basis. All measures came in above forecasts. Shelter, food and medical care were among the largest contributors to price growth. The acceleration in inflation points to a stubbornly high cost of living for Americans, despite some relief at the gas pump. Price pressures are still historically elevated and widespread, pointing to a long road ahead toward the Fed's inflation target. Chair Jerome Powell said last week that the central bank will act "forthrightly" to achieve price stability, and some policy makers voiced support for another 75 basis-point rate hike. Officials have said their decision next week will be based on the "totality" of the economic data they have on hand, which also illustrates a strong labor market and weakening consumer spending. Treasury yields surged, the S&P 500 index opened lower and the dollar rose. Traders boosted bets that the Fed will raise interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, now seeing such an outcome as locked in.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Succession," HBO's portrait of a dysfunctional media dynasty, won best drama at the 74th Emmy Awards on Monday night, the second time the series has taken the prize. The New York Times: Jesse Armstrong, the show's creator, also took home the Emmy for best writing, the third time he's won in that category. And Matthew Macfadyen won best supporting actor in a drama for the first time for his performance on the show. It was the sixth time in eight years that HBO has taken the television industry's biggest prize for a recurring series, making it yet another triumphant night for the cable network. HBO, as well as its streaming service, HBO Max, won more Emmys (38) than any other outlet, besting its chief rival, Netflix (26). "The White Lotus," the cable network's beloved upstairs-downstairs dramedy that took place at a Hawaiian resort, won best limited series, and tore through several other categories. The show won 10 Emmys altogether, more than any other series. Mike White, the show's creator and director, won a pair of Emmys for best directing and writing. And performers from the show, Murray Bartlett and Jennifer Coolidge, both received acting Emmys. "Mike White, my God, thank you for giving me one of the best experiences of my life," Bartlett, who played an off-the-wagon hotel manager, said from the Emmys stage. But HBO's chronicles of the rich were not the only winners on Monday night. "Ted Lasso," the Apple TV+ sports series, won best comedy for a second consecutive year, as the tech giant continues on an awards show tear. Apple TV+, which had its debut in November 2019, won best picture at the Oscars ("CODA") earlier this year. And Jason Sudeikis repeated as best actor in a comedy as the fish-out-of-water soccer coach in "Ted Lasso." There were other big moments in the comedy awards. Quinta Brunson, the creator of the good-natured ABC workplace sitcom, "Abbott Elementary," about a group of elementary schoolteachers at an underfunded Philadelphia public school, won for best writing in a comedy. It was only the second time a Black woman won the award (Lena Waithe was the first, in 2017, for "Master of None").Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Linux Foundation has announced plans for a new collaborative initiative designed to support interoperability across digital wallets, built on an open source bedrock. From a report: The OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), as the new effort is called, is the brainchild of Daniel Goldscheider, CEO of open banking startup Yes.com, though today's announcement reveals a broad gamut of buy-ins from multiple industry players including Okta, Ping Identity, Accenture, CVS Health, OpenID Foundation, among several other public and private bodies. With the Linux Foundation serving as the project's host, this gives OWF sizeable clout as it strives to enable what Goldscheider calls a "plurarity of wallets based on a common core," according to a press release. The news also comes as regulatory bodies across the globe are moving to support competition through enforcing interoperability across systems, including Europe which is currently trying to make messaging interoperability a thing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: As Motherboard and The Verge note, YouTuber Yannic Kilcher trained an AI language model using three years of content from 4chan's Politically Incorrect (/pol/) board, a place infamous for its racism and other forms of bigotry. After implementing the model in ten bots, Kilcher set the AI loose on the board -- and it unsurprisingly created a wave of hate. In the space of 24 hours, the bots wrote 15,000 posts that frequently included or interacted with racist content. They represented more than 10 percent of posts on /pol/ that day, Kilcher claimed. Nicknamed GPT-4chan (after OpenAI's GPT-3), the model learned to not only pick up the words used in /pol/ posts, but an overall tone that Kilcher said blended "offensiveness, nihilism, trolling and deep distrust." The video creator took care to dodge 4chan's defenses against proxies and VPNs, and even used a VPN to make it look like the bot posts originated from the Seychelles. The AI made a few mistakes, such as blank posts, but was convincing enough that it took roughly two days for many users to realize something was amiss. Many forum members only noticed one of the bots, according to Kilcher, and the model created enough wariness that people accused each other of being bots days after Kilcher deactivated them. "It's a reminder that trained AI is only as good as its source material," concludes the report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Extreme heat in California has left Twitter without one of its key data centers, and a company executive warned in an internal memo obtained by CNN that another outage elsewhere could result in the service going dark for some of its users. CNN reports: "On September 5th, Twitter experienced the loss of its Sacramento (SMF) datacenter region due to extreme weather. The unprecedented event resulted in the total shutdown of physical equipment in SMF," Carrie Fernandez, the company's vice president of engineering, said in an internal message to Twitter engineers on Friday. Major tech companies usually have multiple data centers, in part to ensure their service can stay online if one center fails; this is known as redundancy. As a result of the outage in Sacramento, Twitter is in a "non-redundant state," according to Fernandez's Friday memo. She explained that Twitter's data centers in Atlanta and Portland are still operational but warned, "If we lose one of those remaining datacenters, we may not be able to serve traffic to all Twitter's users." The memo goes on to prohibit non-critical updates to Twitter's product until the company can fully restore its Sacramento data center services. "All production changes, including deployments and releases to mobile platforms, are blocked with the exception of those changes required to address service continuity or other urgent operational needs," Fernandez wrote. In a statement about the Sacramento outage, a Twitter spokesperson told CNN, "There have been no disruptions impacting the ability for people to access and use Twitter at this time. Our teams remain equipped with the tools and resources they need to ship updates and will continue working to provide a seamless Twitter experience."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ben Nowack, a 26-year old inventor and CEO of Tons of Mirrors, is trying to use satellite-mounted reflective surfaces to redirect sunlight to earthbound solar panels at night. In an interview with Motherboard, Nowack explains what inspired this idea and how he can turn his concept into reality. Here's an excerpt from the report: What was the initial idea? I had an interesting way to solve the real issue with solar power. It's this unstoppable force. Everybody's installing so many solar panels everywhere. It's really a great candidate to power humanity. But sunlight turns off, it's called nighttime. If you solve that fundamental problem, you fix solar everywhere. Where did the idea come from?I was watching a YouTube video called The Problem with Solar Energy in Africa. It was basically saying that you need three times as many solar panels in Germany as you do in the Sahara Desert and you can't get the power from the Sahara to Germany in an easy way. I thought, what if you could beam the sunlight and then reflect it with mirrors, and put that light into laser beam vacuum tubes that zigzag around the curvature of the Earth. It could be this beam that comes in just like power companies, this tube full of infinite light. That was the initial idea. But the approach was completely economically unworkable. I was like, this is not going to compete with solar in 10 years. I should just completely give up and do something else. Then I was on a run two days later and thought what if I put that thing that turns sunlight into a beam in orbit then you don't have to build a vacuum tube anymore. And it's so much more valuable because you can shine sunlight on solar farms that already exist. Then I developed several more technologies which I know for a fact no one else is working on. That made the model even more economical. Are these just like regular household mirrors, but fixed to a satellite?If you did that, the light would go to too many places. The sun is a certain size. It's not a point, it has a distance across. The light from one side of the sun would bounce off your mirror, and the light from the other side would also bounces off your mirror. If you used a perfectly flat mirror, every single microscopic piece would have this angle of diverging light coming from it. By the time the reflection hit Earth, you'd get a 3.6 kilometer diameter spot, which is gigantic. There are only 10 solar farms that big. So I did the math, and figured out that if I could hit a 500-meter spot instead of a 3,600-meter spot, then I'd be able to hit 44 times more solar sites per orbit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: To state the obvious: This has been an unorthodox Atlantic hurricane season. Everyone from the US agency devoted to studying weather, oceans, and the atmosphere -- the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration -- to the most highly regarded hurricane professionals (PDF) predicted a season with above-normal to well above-normal activity. For example, NOAA's outlook for the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30, predicted a 65 percent chance of an above-normal season, a 25 percent chance of a near-normal season, and a 10 percent chance of a below-normal season. The primary factor behind these predictions was an expectation that La Nina would persist in the Pacific Ocean, leading to atmospheric conditions in the tropical Atlantic more favorable to storm formation and intensification. La Nina has persisted, but the storms still have not come in bunches. To date the Atlantic has had five named storms, which is not all that far off "normal" activity, as measured by climatological averages from 1991 to 2020. Normally, by now, the Atlantic would have recorded eight tropical storms and hurricanes that were given names by the National Hurricane Center. The disparity is more significant when we look at a metric for the duration and intensity of storms, known as Accumulated Cyclone Energy. By this more telling measurement, the 2022 season has a value of 29.6, which is less than half of the normal value through Saturday, 60.3. Perhaps what is most striking about this season is that we are now at the absolute peak of hurricane season, and there is simply nothing happening. Although the Atlantic season begins on June 1, it starts slowly, with maybe a storm here or there in June, and often a quiet July before the deep tropics get rolling in August. Typically about half of all activity occurs in the 14 weeks prior to September 10, and then in a mad, headlong rush the vast majority of the remaining storms spin up before the end of October. While it is still entirely possible that the Atlantic basin -- which includes the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea -- produces a madcap finish, we're just not seeing any signs of it right now. There are no active systems at the moment, and the National Hurricane Center is tracking just one tropical wave that will move off the African coast into the Atlantic Ocean in the coming days. It has a relatively low chance of development, and none of the global models anticipate much from the system. Our best global models show about a 20 to 30 percent chance of a tropical depression developing anywhere in the Atlantic during the next 10 days. This is the exact opposite of what we normally see this time of year, when the tropics are typically lit up like a Christmas tree. The reason for this is because September offers a window where the Atlantic is still warm from the summertime months, and we typically see some of the lowest wind-shear values in storm-forming regions. We'll have to wait until after the season to get a detailed analysis as to why it's been so quiet in the Atlantic, but the report suggests dust could be to blame. "[W]e've seen a lot of dust in the atmosphere, which has choked off the formation of storms," reports Ars. "Additionally, upper-level winds in the atmosphere have generally been hostile to storm formation -- basically shearing off the top of any developing tropical systems."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nikhil Wahi, brother of former Coinbase product manager Ishan Wahi, pleaded guilty in a Monday hearing to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with an alleged insider trading scheme. Decrypt reports: "Less than two months after he was charged, Nikhil Wahi admitted in court today that he traded in crypto assets based on Coinbase's confidential business information to which he was not entitled," said Damien Williams of the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York in a statement. "For the first time ever, a defendant has admitted his guilt in an insider trading case involving the cryptocurrency markets," Williams continued. "Today's guilty plea should serve as a reminder to those who participate in the cryptocurrency markets that the Southern District of New York will continue to steadfastly police frauds of all stripes and will adapt as technology evolves." Nikhil now awaits sentencing in December, which could mean up to 20 years in prison. He has also been ordered to give back the money earned as a result of the illicit Coinbase trading, Williams said. Back in July, the Justice Department charged Ishan, Nikhil, and their friend Sameer Ramani with wire fraud conspiracy and wire fraud as it relates to cryptocurrency insider trading. The Securities and Exchange Commission also filed charges against the trio. While he was working at Coinbase, Ishan allegedly shared his insider knowledge of upcoming Coinbase listing announcements with Nikhil and Sameer to then profit from the listings by purchasing the tokens before they went live on Coinbase. In August, Ishan pled not guilty to the DOJ's charges. Now that his brother has pleaded guilty, it's unclear how Ishan's case will proceed and whether he will continue to fight the insider trading case. According to the DOJ's statement released Monday, Nikhil implicated his brother Ishan and admitted to receiving tips from him. Nikhil then reportedly used numerous different crypto wallets in others' names to anonymize his insider trading. Concerns of insider trading at cryptocurrency exchanges extend beyond just this case, which is considered the first of its kind and is likely to set a precedent. Three Australian finance academics have posited that up to 25% of Coinbase listings in the past four years may have involved some insider trading.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In an update coming to iOS 16 later this year, Apple plans to add a new "Clean Energy Charging" option in the United States. MacRumors reports: The information was shared in Apple's iOS 16 press release, and it says that clean energy charging will optimize charging times for when the grid is using cleaner energy sources. With Clean Energy Charging, Apple is aiming to decrease the carbon footprint of the iPhone. This is the first we've heard of clean energy charging, and it's not a feature that Apple has previously highlighted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Autonomous tech developer Nuro is teaming up with Uber Eats in a long-awaited partnership that will see the company's latest robot take over the delivery of food to app users. Autoweek reports: The two companies signed a 10-year contract just a few days ago, paving the way for a wider rollout of Nuro's driverless delivery robots, which have been operating on a limited scale in several cities. The partnership will kick off slowly, with Nuro deploying its robots to Houston and Mountain View, California, as a start, before the service makes a wider debut in the Bay Area. Perhaps more importantly, Nuro's delivery robots will allow Uber Eats to not have to pay a human driver, which is something that company has been working toward for years as part of its primary business as well. However, the lagging development of Level 4 and Level 5 autonomy, once widely expected to arrive around 2020, had stalled ambitions for Uber, which has struggled with profitability through normal operations with independent contractor drivers. Nuro delivery robots enjoyed renewed interest from business partners in the early months of the pandemic, but the company's technology is now being viewed as a cost saver for operators rather than a method of more sanitary delivery. Of course, a limited rollout in two cities plus plans to launch in the Bay Area won't transform Uber Eats' business model overnight. This could take years even with an unlimited supply of Nuro delivery robots -- with regulatory approval still being the major impediment. That's because commercial driverless permits are granted on a state-by-state basis, in addition to city and county approvals, which were hard enough for Nuro to obtain in the Bay Area, where Level 4 robotaxis are being tested. Nuro will need to focus its efforts in those areas where traffic is suitable for its robots.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Peloton Executive Chairman and co-founder John Foley is stepping down from the fitness company as part of a leadership shake-up, extending the turbulence at a business trying to pull out of a deep slump. Foley, who helped start Peloton in 2012 and served as chief executive officer for 10 years, is resigning effective Monday, the company said in a statement. Foley took the executive chairman role in February when he handed the reins to CEO Barry McCarthy, a veteran of Spotify and Netflix. Chief Legal Officer Hisao Kushi, another co-founder, is also headed for the exits. He'll be replaced in that role by Tammy Albarran, who Peloton recruited from Uber Technologies Inc. The chairman role, meanwhile, will be filled by Karen Boone, a former Restoration Hardware executive who currently serves as lead independent director. Peloton investors initially applauded the changes, sending the shares up as much as 5.3% to $11.64 in extended trading on Monday. But the rally soon evaporated, with the stock declining more than 2%. The reshuffling extends a year of upheaval at New York-based Peloton, which thrived in the early days of the pandemic but is now suffering from declining sales and mounting losses. Its shares are down about 90% over the past year, and the company has struggled to work through a glut of inventory. Separately, Chief Commercial Officer Kevin Cornils is also leaving Peloton and won't be replaced. Some of Cornils's responsibilities will be assumed by Dion Sanders as he takes the role of chief emerging business officer, according to an internal memo from McCarthy reviewed by Bloomberg. Chief Content Officer Jen Cotter will assume control of apparel and accessories, showing that the company remains committed to that market. Albarran will take over Peloton's legal operations on Oct. 3. She helped oversee a corporate makeover at Uber, which set out to change its image in 2017 after its hard-charging style led to scandals and a strained relationship with drivers. Peloton looks to draw on the experience of Albarran and Boone to "help move the company forward into our next chapter of growth," McCarthy said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

VMware engineers have tested the Linux kernel's fix for the Retbleed speculative execution bug, and report it can impact compute performance by a whopping 70 percent. The Register reports: In a post to the Linux Kernel Mailing List titled "Performance Regression in Linux Kernel 5.19", VMware performance engineering staffer Manikandan Jagatheesan reports the virtualization giant's internal testing found that running Linux VMs on the ESXi hypervisor using version 5.19 of the Linux kernel saw compute performance dip by up to 70 percent when using single vCPU, networking fall by 30 percent and storage performance dip by up to 13 percent. Jagatheesan said VMware's testers turned off the Retbleed remediation in version 5.19 of the kernel and ESXi performance returned to levels experienced under version 5.18. Because speculative execution exists to speed processing, it is no surprise that disabling it impacts performance. A 70 percent decrease in computing performance will, however, have a major impact on application performance that could lead to unacceptable delays for some business processes. VMware's tests were run on Intel Skylake CPUs -- silicon released between 2015 and 2017 that will still be present in many server fleets. Subsequent CPUs addressed the underlying issues that allowed Retbleed and other Spectre-like attacks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Inside Google, a team of techies has been working behind the scenes on software for high-speed communications networks that extend from land to space. Codenamed "Minkowski" within Google, the secret project is being unveiled to the public on Monday as a new spinout called Aalyria. CNBC reports: While Google declined to offer details about Aalyria, such as how long it's been working on the technology and how many employees are joining the startup, Aalyria said in a news release that its mission is to manage "hyper fast, ultra-secure, and highly complex communications networks that span land, sea, air, near space, and deep space." The company says it has a laser communications technology "on an exponentially greater scale and speed than anything that exists today." Aalyria's software platform has been used in multiple aerospace networking projects for Google. Aalyria (pronounced ah-Leer-eeh-ah) said it has an $8.7 million commercial contract with the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit. The company will be led by CEO Chris Taylor, a national security expert who has led other companies that have worked with the government. Taylor's LinkedIn profile says he's the CEO of a company in stealth mode that he founded in November. Aalyria's board of advisors includes several previous Google employees and executives as well as Vint Cerf, Google's chief internet evangelist who's known as one of the fathers of the web. Google will retain a minority stake in Aalyria but declined to say how much it owns and how much outside funding the company has raised. Google said that earlier this year it transferred nearly a decade's worth of intellectual property, patents and physical assets, including office space, to Aalyria. Aalyria's light laser technology, which it calls "Tightbeam," claims to keep data "intact through the atmosphere and weather and offers connectivity where no supporting infrastructure exists." "Tightbeam radically improves satellite communications, Wi-Fi on planes and ships, and cellular connectivity everywhere," the company said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rising paper prices are forcing publishers to change. Economist: Publishing can, then, find the paper for the things it wants to print, even in times of scarcity. The industry is currently experiencing another period of shortage, and war is once again a cause (along with the pandemic). In the past 12 months the cost of paper used by British book publishers has risen by 70%. Supplies are erratic as well as expensive: paper mills have taken to switching off on days when electricity is too pricey. The card used in hardback covers has at times been all but unobtainable. The entire trade is in trouble. Not every author is affected: a new thriller by Robert Galbraith, better known as J.K. Rowling, is a 1,024-page whopper -- and this week reached the top of the bestseller lists in Britain. But other books are having to change a bit. Pick up a new release in a bookshop and if it is from a smaller publisher (for they are more affected by price rises) you may find yourself holding a product that, as wartime books did, bears the mark of its time. Blow on its pages and they might lift and fall differently: cheaper, lighter paper is being used in some books. Peer closely at its print and you might notice that the letters jostle more closely together: some cost-conscious publishers are starting to shrink the white space between characters. The text might run closer to the edges of pages, too: the margins of publishing are shrinking, in every sense. Changes of this sort can cause anguish to publishers. A book is not merely words on a page, says Ivan O'Brien, head of The O'Brien Press in Ireland, but should appeal "to every single sense." The pleasure of a book that feels right in the hand -- not too light or too heavy; pages creamy; fonts beetle-black -- is something that publishers strive to preserve. [...] For at the heart of the publishing industry lies an unsayable truth: most people can't write and most books are very bad. Readers who struggle with a volume often assume that the fault is theirs. Reviewers, who read many more books, know it is not.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Netflix has teamed up with Ubisoft (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), one of Europe's biggest video game companies, as the streaming giant seeks to bolster its fledgling gaming business. The California-based streaming service will launch three new mobile games next year based on Ubisoft's games, including its most successful title Assassin's Creed. The move comes as Netflix attempts to accelerate growth of its new gaming arm amid a slowdown in the company's streaming business. The streaming group has lost more than half of its market value since April when it revealed its decade-long subscriber growth had ended. The partnership will entail the French gaming group developing the mobile games for Netflix. This will also include a game based on Ubisoft's Mighty Quest, a castle-building and monster-looting game, and the historical puzzle adventure game called Valiant Hearts. The games will be made available exclusively to Netflix subscribers, with no ads or in-app purchases, allowing Ubisoft to tap into new audiences and experiment with fresh formats for existing titles. No details of the deal value have been announced. "Netflix has launched 28 games and acquired three gaming studios, including Night School Studio, which makes the supernatural adventure game Oxenfree, and Texas-based Boss Fight Entertainment," notes the report. "The streaming giant plans to have a total of 50 games on its roster by the end of the year."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Biden administration plans next month to broaden curbs on U.S shipments to China of semiconductors used for artificial intelligence and chipmaking tools, Reuters reported Monday, citing several people familiar with the matter. From the report: The Commerce Department intends to publish new regulations based on restrictions communicated in letters earlier this year to three U.S. companies -- KLA, Lam Research and Applied Materials, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The plan for new rules has not been previously reported. The letters, which the companies publicly acknowledged, forbade them from exporting chipmaking equipment to Chinese factories that produce advanced semiconductors with sub-14 nanometer processes unless the sellers obtain Commerce Department licenses. The rules would also codify restrictions in Commerce Department letters sent to Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices last month instructing them to halt shipments of several artificial intelligence computing chips to China unless they obtain licenses. Further reading: Banned US AI Chips in High Demand at Chinese State Institutes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A rocket crashed back to Earth shortly after liftoff Monday in the first launch accident for Jeff Bezos' space travel company, but the capsule carrying experiments managed to parachute to safety. From a report: No one was aboard the Blue Origin flight, which used the same kind of rocket as the one that sends paying customers to the edge of space. The rockets are now grounded pending the outcome of an investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The New Shepard rocket was barely a minute into its flight from West Texas when bright yellow flames shot out from around the single engine at the bottom. The capsule's emergency launch abort system immediately kicked in, lifting the craft off the top. Several minutes later, the capsule parachuted onto the remote desert floor. The rocket came crashing down, with no injuries or damage reported, said the FAA, which is in charge of public safety during commercial space launches and landings. Blue Origin's launch commentary went silent when the capsule catapulted off the rocket Monday morning, eventually announcing: "It appears we've experienced an anomaly with today's flight. This wasn't planned."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Doctors have told health services to prepare for a new era of cancer screening after a study found a simple blood test could spot multiple cancer types in patients before they develop clear symptoms. From a report: The Pathfinder study offered the blood test to more than 6,600 adults aged 50 and over, and detected dozens of new cases of disease. Many cancers were at an early stage and nearly three-quarters were forms not routinely screened for. It is the first time results from the Galleri test, which looks for cancer DNA in the blood, have been returned to patients and their doctors, to guide cancer investigations and any necessary treatment. The Galleri test has been described as a potential "gamechanger" by NHS England, which is due to report results from a major trial involving 165,000 people next year. Doctors hope the test will save lives by detecting cancer early enough for surgery and treatment to be more effective, but the technology is still in development. "I think what's exciting about this new paradigm and concept is that many of these were cancers for which we do not have any standard screening," Dr Deb Schrag, a senior researcher on the study at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, told the European Society for Medical Oncology meeting in Paris on Sunday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has canceled the next version of its Pixelbook laptop and dissolved the team responsible for building it. The device was far along in development and expected to debut next year, The Verge reported Monday, citing a person familiar with the matter, but the project was cut as part of recent cost-cutting measures inside of Google. Members of the team have been transferred elsewhere inside the company. The Verge: As recently as a few months ago, Google was planning to keep the Pixelbook going. Ahead of its annual I/O developer conference, Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh told The Verge that "we are going to do Pixelbooks in the future." But he also acknowledged that the Chromebook market has changed since 2017 when the original (and best) Pixelbook launched. "What's nice about the category is that it has matured," Osterloh said. "You can expect them to last a long time." One way Google might be thinking about the ChromeOS market is that it simply doesn't need Google the way it once did. Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, has been saying for months that he intends to slow down hiring and cut some projects across the company. "In some cases, that means consolidating where investments overlap and streamlining processes," he wrote in a July memo. "In other cases, that means pausing development and re-deploying resources to higher priority areas." The Pixelbook team and the Pixelbook itself were casualties of that consolidation and redeployment.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Zealand will no longer require people to wear masks in indoor public spaces or to be vaccinated to work in certain roles, as the country winds down its pandemic battle and learns to live with Covid-19. From a report: From midnight, face coverings won't need to be worn anywhere except in health settings like hospitals and aged-care facilities, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told a news conference Monday in Wellington. The framework used to specify the level of risk to the community from Covid-19 and corresponding restrictions will be scrapped, she said. "It's time to safely turn the page on our Covid-19 management, and live without the extraordinary measures we have previously used," Ardern said. "Finally, rather than feeling that Covid dictates what happens to us, our lives, and our futures, we take back control." The move brings the curtain down on New Zealand's pandemic response some two and a half years after measures were first implemented. While the nation's tough lockdowns and closed border initially kept Covid-19 at bay, the virus has spread rapidly this year and many people have already stopped adhering to mask-wearing rules. With case numbers and hospitalizations falling as winter comes to an end, and a high level of vaccination in the population, Ardern said the country is in a position to jettison its remaining restrictions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is betting the social-media giant's near-term future on Instagram Reels, the short-video feature he is touting as the company's answer to TikTok. The company's internal research shows that Meta has a lot of catching up to do. From a report: Instagram users cumulatively are spending 17.6 million hours a day watching Reels, less than one-tenth of the 197.8 million hours TikTok users spend each day on that platform, according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that summarizes internal Meta research. The document, titled "Creators x Reels State of the Union 2022," was published internally in August. It said that Reels engagement had been falling -- down 13.6% over the previous four weeks -- and that "most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever." One reason is that Instagram has struggled to recruit people to make content. Roughly 11 million creators are on the platform in the U.S., but only about 2.3 million of them, or 20.7%, post on that platform each month, the document said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 writes: Imperial College will shut down two major research centres sponsored by Chinese aerospace and defence companies amid a crackdown on academic collaborations with China, the Guardian has learned. The Avic Centre for Structural Design and Manufacturing is a long-running partnership with China's leading civilian and military aviation supplier, which has provided more than $6m to research cutting-edge aerospace materials. The second centre is run jointly with Biam, a subsidiary of another state-owned aerospace and defence company, which has contributed $4.5m for projects on high-performance batteries, jet engine components and impact-resistant aircraft windshields. The centres' stated goals are to advance civilian aerospace technologies, but critics have repeatedly warned that the research could also advance China's military ambitions. Now Imperial has confirmed the two centres will be shut by the end of the year after the rejection of two licence applications to the government's Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU), which oversees the sharing of sensitive research with international partners. The closures follow a warning in July by the heads of MI5 and the FBI of the espionage threat posed by China to UK universities, and highlight the government's hardening attitude on the issue. "You can say with a high degree of confidence that this decision has been taken because the government is of the view that continuing licensing would enable the military development in China, which is viewed as a threat to security," said Sam Armstrong, director of communications at the Henry Jackson Society thinktank. "The government has made it clear to universities that there is an overall shift in the weather such that these collaborations are no longer possible."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hammeh writes: PyTorch, the open source AI framework led by Meta researchers, is to become a project governed under the Linux Foundation. It moves governance of the project to a neutral home, with the promise of greater trust to act as a catalyst for more rapid development.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The global obesity epidemic is getting worse, especially among children, with rates of obesity rising over the past decade and shifting to earlier ages. In the US, roughly 40% of today's high school students were overweight by the time they started high school. Globally, the incidence of obesity has tripled since the 1970s, with fully one billion people expected to be obese by 2030. The consequences are grave, as obesity correlates closely with high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and other serious health problems. Despite the magnitude of the problem, there is still no consensus on the cause, although scientists do recognize many contributing factors, including genetics, stress, viruses and changes in sleeping habits. Of course, the popularity of heavily processed foods -- high in sugar, salt and fat -- has also played a role, especially in Western nations, where people on average consume more calories per day now than 50 years ago. Even so, recent reviews of the science conclude that much of the huge rise in obesity globally over the past four decades remains unexplained. An emerging view among scientists is that one major overlooked component in obesity is almost certainly our environment -- in particular, the pervasive presence within it of chemicals which, even at very low doses, act to disturb the normal functioning of human metabolism, upsetting the body's ability to regulate its intake and expenditure of energy. Some of these chemicals, known as "obesogens," directly boost the production of specific cell types and fatty tissues associated with obesity. Unfortunately, these chemicals are used in many of the most basic products of modern life including plastic packaging, clothes and furniture, cosmetics, food additives, herbicides and pesticides. Ten years ago the idea of chemically induced obesity was something of a fringe hypothesis, but not anymore.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tom's Hardware reports: We're here in Israel for Intel's Technology Tour 2022, where the company is sharing new information about its latest products, much of it under embargo until a later date. However, the company did share a slide touting that Raptor Lake is capable of operating at 6GHz at stock settings and that it has set a world overclocking record at 8GHz - obviously with liquid nitrogen (here's our deep dive on the 13th-Gen Intel processors). Intel also shared impressive performance projections for single- and multi-thread performance. Notably, the peak of 6 GHz is 300 MHz faster than the 5.7 GHz for AMD's Ryzen 7000 processors, but Intel hasn't announced which product will hit that peak speed. We also aren't sure if a 6GHz chip will arrive with the first wave of chips or be a special edition 'KS' model. Intel also claimed that Raptor Lake will have a 15% gain in single-threaded performance and a 41% gain in multi-threaded, as measured by SPECintrate_2017 and compared to Alder Lake, and an overall '40% performance scaling.'Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Images and, later, a video of a "Meta Quest Pro" virtual reality (VR) headset surfaced online, posted on Facebook by Ramiro Cardenas, who claims the device was left in a hotel room. From a report: The device shown resembles the Project Cambria headset Meta has been publicly teasing since late last year and looks like the one spotted in leaked setup videos. The video shows Cardenas removing the device from its packaging, revealing a black headset and controller with what looks like an updated design. While the headset has three cameras on its front, the controllers feature a design that drops the hollowed-out loop design that houses the sensors for something more solid. The packaging has the "Meta Quest Pro" label stamped in the top-left corner and a graphic showing the VR headset and controllers. Cardenas also provided a closeup of the label stuck to the box, which says "Not for resale - engineering sample," and told The Verge that the person who stayed in the room has since claimed the headsets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Climate change confronted African farmers with back-to-back seasons of drought. The director of agricultural development at the Gates Foundation says that's one reason they've fallen short of their goals of helping the continent achieve a "green revolution". But while the foundation contributed much of $1 billion spent to date on the effort, "Money doesn't necessarily produce results," notes the Seattle Times:As an annual African farming summit takes place this week in Rwanda, activists, farmers and faith leaders from Seattle to Nairobi are calling on the Gates Foundation and other funders to stop supporting an effort they say has failed to deliver on promises to radically reduce hunger and increase farmer productivity and income. Worse, critics say the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, founded in 2006 with money from the Gates and Rockefeller foundations, has promoted an industrial model of agriculture that poisons soils with chemicals and encourages farmers to go into debt by buying expensive seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. As a result of that debt, some farmers have had to sell their land or household goods like stoves and TVs, said Celestine Otieno and Anne Maina, both active with organizations in Kenya advocating for ecologically friendly practices. "I think it's the second phase of colonization," Otieno said. A donor-funded evaluation last December offered gentler criticism, concluding the alliance had achieved mixed success over the past five years, with increased corn yields in half the countries it examined. Most notably, though, it found "AGRA did not meet its headline goal of increased incomes and food security." Peter Little, director of the global development program at Emory University, puts it another way: "I don't think it's come close to what it promised to do...." [C]ritics claim the real drivers are multinational corporations selling fertilizers, pesticides and seeds that farmers have to buy every year. AGRA's grants go to dealers of seeds and various agricultural products, as well as African governments, research institutions, farmers' groups and other organizations deemed capable of implementing a "transformative agenda." The solution to Africa's hunger problem, some say, is redirecting money to millions of small-scale farmers on the continent and using methods that are both effective and ecologically friendly, like fertilizing with manure.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNBC reports that former Tesla CFO Deepak Ahuja (now at Alphabet's Verily Life Sciences) will join the leadership team at Zipline, a Silicon Valley-based company providing drone deliveries:It initially focused on medical supplies, but is expanding into e-commerce and food delivery. The company has previously partnered with the Rwandan government to deliver medical supplies and handled Covid-19 vaccine distribution in Ghana, and has expanded operations from three to seven countries over the last two years, according to a release.... "Rarely do I see this level of disruption and impact paired with the world-class technology that Zipline's team is building," Ahuja said in a release. "It's an exciting time for Zipline, and I'm thrilled to join the team as we keep building to offer these solutions at a massive scale." The move comes "as the drone delivery and logistics startup accelerates its global expansion in Africa, the United States and other regions," reports TechCrunch, noting that Ahuja will be the company's first chief business and financial officer:Zipline also operates in Japan and in the United States, including Arkansas and North Carolina. The company is expanding to Utah later this year through a partnership with Intermountain Health and announced plans to begin operations with Multicare Health System in Washington starting in 2024. Ahuja will focus on building Zipline's business in the United States and other regions globally, the company told TechCrunch.... His appointment signals Zipline's growing aspirations fueled by partnerships and $250 million in venture capital it raised last year. (The company has raised $486 million to date.) The company, founded in 2014, has developed the entire ecosystem from the drones and logistics software to launch and landing system.... It also recently received FAA Part 135 approval for its long-range drone delivery service in the United States.... Zipline has partnerships with Toyota Group and UPS, it delivers medical equipment and personal protective gear for Novant Health in North Carolina and health and wellness products for Walmart.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Where did the internet come from? When students are asked that by an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, some mention ARPANET or Silicon Valley — and "no fewer than four students have simply written, 'Bill Gates....'" But even beyond that, "The best-known histories describe an internet that hasn't existed since 1994..." argues Kevin Driscoll "the intersection of hundreds of regional, national, commercial, and cooperative networks." So in an excerpt from his new book, Driscoll describes exactly how "a mixture of commercial online services, university networks, and local community networks mutated into something bigger, more commercial, and more accessible to the general public..." And what's often left out is the pre-web "modem world":Whereas ARPANET was created by professional researchers in university and government labs, the modem world was driven by community-oriented amateurs and entrepreneurs — hobby radio groups, computer clubs, software pirates, and activist organizations. Despite their shared interest in computer networking, these were, with rare exception, distinct spheres of social and technical activity. The predominant form of PC networking was the bulletin board system, or BBS.... The ARPANET family of networks ran on a fundamentally different infrastructure from consumer-oriented BBS networks, and relatively few people were expert users of both. BBSs were not so much ignored by institutions of power as they were overlooked.... Between 1994 and 1995, the World Wide Web — and not the BBS — became the public face of cyberspace. On television and in print, journalists touted graphical browsers like NCSA Mosaic and Netscape Navigator as the internet's future. As hype mounted, investment capital flooded the data communications industry. But instead of BBSs, the money and attention flowed to firms linked to the nascent Web. Finally, when a moral panic over "cyberporn" threatened to burst the dot-com bubble, BBSs provided a convenient scapegoat. BBSs were old and dirty; the Web was new, clean, and safe for commerce. To avoid the stigma, enterprising BBS operators quietly rebranded. Seemingly overnight, thousands of dial-up BBSs vanished, replaced by brand-new "internet service providers." In the United States, the term BBS fell out of use. The people who built the modem world in the 1980s laid the groundwork for millions of others who would bring their lives online in the 1990s and beyond. Along with writing code and running up their phone bills, BBS operators developed novel forms of community moderation, governance, and commercialization. When internet access finally came to the public, former BBS users carried the experience of grassroots networking into the social Web. Over time, countless social media platforms have reproduced the social and technical innovations of the BBS community. Forgetting has high stakes. As the internet becomes the compulsory infrastructure of everyday life, the stories we tell about its origins are more important than ever. Recovering the history of the modem world helps us to imagine a world beyond — or perhaps after — commercial social media, mass surveillance, and platform monopolies. Endlessly modifiable, each BBS represented an idiosyncratic dream of what cyberspace could be, a glimpse of the future written in code and accessible from your local telephone jack. Immersing ourselves in this period of experimentation and play makes the internet seem strange again. By changing how we remember the internet's past, we can change our expectations for its future.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Comcast says it's "evolving its entire network architecture" (along with its equipment and customer devices) -- and it's not just a multi-gig network. They're calling it America's fastest -- and its largest. It's being rolled out "immediately" to millions of homes and business, "combined with up to 5x-to-10x faster upload speeds." "Comcast plans on bringing multi-gig internet speeds to 34 cities across the U.S. by the end of this year," reports the Verge, "and will later expand its reach to more than 50 million households by the end of 2025."According to a press release, the company has already started rolling out 2-gig speeds over its broadband network in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Augusta, Georgia; Panama City Beach, Florida; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Customers in these cities will also get to take advantage of upload speeds that Comcast says are five to 10 times faster than what it currently offers. The upload speeds appear to max out at 200Mbps, even with the new Gigabit x2 plan, but Comcast intends to change that. It's launching multi-gig symmetrical speeds next year, which will enable multi-gig speeds for both downloads and uploads. "As part of this initiative, Comcast is accelerating the transformation of its network to a virtualized cloud-based architecture that is fully prepared for 10G and DOCSIS 4.0..." explains the press release, "which will deliver multi-gig symmetrical speeds over the connections already installed in tens of millions of homes and businesses." The big advantage of digital network technology is "rather than maintaining, updating, and replacing traditional analog network appliances by hand -- which can take days or even weeks -- Comcast engineers can reliably maintain, troubleshoot, and upgrade core network components almost instantly, with a few keystrokes on a laptop or mobile app. This also makes the network much more energy efficient and is an important element of Comcast's plan to become carbon neutral by 2035." Editor's note: An earlier version of the story said Comcast was offering 2-gigabyte download speeds when it should have said 2-gigabit. We regret the error.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Comcast says it's "evolving its entire network architecture" (along with its equipment and customer devices) — and it's not just a multi-gig network. They're calling it America's fastest — and its largest. It's being rolled out "immediately" to millions of homes and business, "combined with up to 5x-to-10x faster upload speeds." "Comcast plans on bringing multi-gig internet speeds to 34 cities across the U.S. by the end of this year," reports the Verge, "and will later expand its reach to more than 50 million households by the end of 2025."According to a press release, the company has already started rolling out 2-gig speeds over its broadband network in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Augusta, Georgia; Panama City Beach, Florida; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Customers in these cities will also get to take advantage of upload speeds that Comcast says are five to 10 times faster than what it currently offers. The upload speeds appear to max out at 200Mbps, even with the new Gigabit x2 plan, but Comcast intends to change that. It's launching multi-gig symmetrical speeds next year, which will enable multi-gig speeds for both downloads and uploads. "As part of this initiative, Comcast is accelerating the transformation of its network to a virtualized cloud-based architecture that is fully prepared for 10G and DOCSIS 4.0..." explains the press release, "which will deliver multi-gig symmetrical speeds over the connections already installed in tens of millions of homes and businesses." The big advantage of digital network technology is "rather than maintaining, updating, and replacing traditional analog network appliances by hand — which can take days or even weeks — Comcast engineers can reliably maintain, troubleshoot, and upgrade core network components almost instantly, with a few keystrokes on a laptop or mobile app. This also makes the network much more energy efficient and is an important element of Comcast's plan to become carbon neutral by 2035."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Scientists have uncovered how air pollution causes lung cancer," reports the Guardian, "in groundbreaking research that promises to rewrite our understanding of the disease." The BBC is calling it "a discovery that completely transforms our understanding of how tumours arise."The team at the Francis Crick Institute in London showed that rather than causing damage, air pollution was waking up old damaged cells. One of the world's leading experts, Prof Charles Swanton, said the breakthrough marked a "new era". And it may now be possible to develop drugs that stop cancers forming. The findings could explain how hundreds of cancer-causing substances act on the body. The classical view of cancer starts with a healthy cell. It acquires more and more mutations in its genetic code, or DNA, until it reaches a tipping point. Then it becomes a cancer and grows uncontrollably.... The researchers have produced evidence of a different idea. The damage is already there in our cell's DNA, picked up as we grow and age, but something needs to pull the trigger that actually makes it cancerous.... Around one in every 600,000 cells in the lungs of a 50-year-old already contains potentially cancerous mutations. These are acquired as we age but appear completely healthy until they are activated by the chemical alarm and become cancerous. Crucially, the researchers were able to stop cancers forming in mice exposed to air pollution by using a drug that blocks the alarm signal. The results are a double breakthrough, both for understanding the impact of air pollution and the fundamentals of how we get cancer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes:A new study on the Impact of Programming on Primary Mathematics Learning (abstract only, full article $24.95 on ScienceDirect) is generating some buzz on Twitter amongst K-12 CS educator types. It concluded that: 1. Programming did not benefit mathematics learning compared to traditional activities2. There's a negative though small effect of programming on mathematics learning3. Mindful "high-road transfer" from programming to mathematics is not self-evident4. Visual programming languages might distract students from mathematics activities From the Abstract: "The aim of this study is to investigate whether a programming activity might serve as a learning vehicle for mathematics acquisition in grades four and five.... Classes were randomly assigned to the programming (with Scratch) and control conditions. Multilevel analyses indicate negative effects (effect size range 0.16 to 0.21) of the programming condition for the three mathematical notions. "A potential explanation of these results is the difficulties in the transfer of learning from programming to mathematics." The findings of the new study come 4+ years after preliminary results were released from the $1.5M 2015-2019 NSF-funded study Time4CS, a "partnership between Broward County Public Schools (FL), researchers at the University of Chicago, and [tech-bankrolled] Code.org," which explored whether learning CS using Code.org's CS Fundamentals curriculum may be linked to improved learning in math at the grade 3-5 level. Time4CS researchers concluded that the "quasi-experimental" study showed that "No significant differences in Florida State Assessment mathematics scores resulted between treatment and comparison groups."Read more of this story at Slashdot.