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China remains the world's largest lithium processor, reports Reuters. But Tesla "is considering setting up a lithium refinery on the gulf coast of Texas, as it looks to secure supply of the key component used in batteries amid surging demand for electric vehicles."The potential battery-grade lithium hydroxide refining facility, which Tesla touted as the first of its kind in North America, will process "raw ore material into a usable state for battery production", the company said in an application filed with the Texas Comptroller's Office. A decision to invest in Texas will also be based on the ability to obtain relief on local property taxes, Tesla said. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has previously said that Tesla may have to enter the mining and refining industry directly at scale as lithium prices surge. Musk has also been vocal about the need for more players in the lithium refining industry.... Securing a steady supply of battery components is seen critical for Tesla as it faces fierce competition in the fast-growing market for electric cars. If approved, construction could begin in the fourth quarter of 2022 and would reach commercial production by the end of 2024, Tesla said in the application dated Aug. 22.... If Tesla's plan goes ahead, the carmaker could become the first in the sector to invest directly in lithium refining as automakers scramble to stitch up deals with miners and refiners. In addition, the article points out, Tesla "also said it would use less hazardous reagents and create usable byproducts, compared with the conventional process."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Europe's largest nuclear plant has been reconnected to Ukraine's electricity grid," the Associated Press just reported. But that only means that engineers can now "shut down its last operational reactor in an attempt to avoid a radiation disaster as fighting rages in the area."The six-reactor Zaporizhzhia plant lost its outside source of power a week ago after all its power lines were disconnected as a result of shelling. It was operating in "island mode" for several days, generating electricity for crucial cooling systems from its only remaining operational reactor. Nuclear operator Energoatom said one of those power lines was restored "to its operational capacity" late Saturday, making it possible to run the plant's safety and other systems on electricity from the power system of Ukraine. "Therefore, a decision was made to shut down power unit No. 6 and transfer it to the safest state — cold shutdown," the company said in a statement. Energoatom said the risk remains high that outside power is cut again, in which case the plant would have to fire up emergency diesel generators to keep the reactors cool and prevent a nuclear meltdown. The company's chief told The Associated Press on Thursday that the plant only has diesel fuel for 10 days. Today NPR reminded readers that nuclear reactors "are more like charcoal grills than gas stoves. Even after they're shut off, they remain hot for a long period of time. Water must still circulate in the cores to prevent a meltdown." Here's a chart showing exactly how "released thermal power" drops quickly — but does not stop. And it also notes that "Cooling failures after an emergency shutdown of a reactor were the first cause of serious accidents... evidenced by the accidents at Three Mile Island in 1986 and at Fukushima in 2011." "The first led to the loss of one reactor, the second to the loss of 3 reactors and releases of radioactivity into the environment."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"19-year-old chess grandmaster Hans Niemann was banned by massive online chess platform Chess.com," reports Motherboard, "just a few days after being accused of cheating in real life against five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen." Chess.com said in a statement that "We have shared detailed evidence with him concerning our decision, including information that contradicts his statements regarding the amount and seriousness of his cheating on Chess.com."Niemann admitted to cheating on Chess.com in the past, but claimed that the two times he did were involving trivial, non-over-the-board games, and that he was only a child as he was 12 and 16 when it happened. "I just wanted to get higher-rated so I could play stronger players, so I cheated in random games on Chess.com," he said [in an online interview with St. Louis Chess Club].... " I have never cheated in an over-the-board game" [meaning a game that takes place on a real-world chess board]. Chess.com released its own statement Thursday countering his claims, which said: "At this time, we have reached out to Hans Niemann to explain our decision to privately remove him from Chess.com and our events. We have shared detailed evidence with him concerning our decision, including information that contradicts his statements regarding the amount and seriousness of his cheating on Chess.com...." So far, there has not been any concrete evidence that points to Niemann cheating.... There are still many people who have been publicly supporting Niemann as the underdog. Russian chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, told TASS, "Of course we can't say with certainty that Niemann didn't cheat, but Carlsen surprisingly played the opening so badly with white that he automatically got into a worse position." Chess.com's statement says they've "invited Hans to provide an explanation and response with the hope of finding a resolution where Hans can again participate on Chess.com." The Guardian points out that Niemann has now also been uninvited from Chess.com's Global Championship, a $1m event with online qualifiers and an eight-player final in Toronto. But they also explore whether Neimann was really cheating...The Californian teenager, who does not have a coach but whose rating has jumped 250 points in three years, had already beaten the world champion a month earlier in an online tournament in Miami, when he made headlines for a one-sentence victory interview where he said: "Chess speaks for itself," before walking off.... [In his match this week against Carlsen] the position out of the opening was almost level, a minimal 0.3 plus for Black, but the world champion seemed to try too hard, with sub-optimal choices at moves 22, 40 and 42. Niemann also made inaccuracies, so the game lacked the tell-tale signs of computer aid.... It would appear that the central issue is whether Carlsen believes his pre-game analysis of his intended surprise 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 g3 was leaked, either by a mole within his camp or by a computer hack. An alternative explanation of the "leak" could be quite innocent. The relevant pawn structure, with plausible transpositions into Carlsen v Niemann, had already occurred in a previous well-known Carlsen game against England's Michael Adams in 2006. Niemann said he asked himself what ideas Carlsen might produce to divert him from his planned Catalan with ... Bb4+ and decided to check 5 Nc3, a rare transposition to the Nimzo-Indian. There was also Niemann's own very recent game against Le Quang Liem at Miami, where 5 g3 (instead of 5 e3 d5 as played) d5 6 a3 could easily transpose into Carlsen v Niemann.... [I]t is easy to understand why the world champion was so upset. Carlsen's tournament score will be cancelled, but his games will be rated and the defeat by Niemann will cost him seven rating points, a large setback in the context of trying to get from 2865 to 2900. His dream of a record rating has just become more distant.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNET reveals some Star Wars news shared at Disney's three-day "D23 Expo."Fans were probably most thrilled by the reveal of a new Mandalorian trailer for the upcoming third season of the hit show that brought us Baby Yoda in all his cuteness... Lucasfilm also dropped a final trailer for upcoming Disney Plus series Andor. Diego Luna plays Cassian Andor as he's recruited into the rebellion against the Empire. The show takes place five years before the events of Rogue One. And the studio presented a trailer for Tales of the Jedi, which offers six original shorts about Ahsoka and Dooku, and arrives October 26. Fans also got a glimpse, though not a trailer, showing Jude Law, who's starring in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, a story about a group of younglings lost in space. Also revealed was a "developer update" trailer for the upcoming mobile game Avatar: Reckoning, as part of the news about other franchises:James Cameron called in to the event from New Zealand to discuss Avatar: The Way of Water, and the crowd was given 3D glasses to watch some breathtaking footage [from] Cameron's long-awaited sequel... ahead of its December 16 release. An exclusive clip from The Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania featured Kang holding Cassie Lang hostage and trying to force Scott to steal something for him. Also featured: Bill Murray! Samuel L. Jackson returns as Nick Fury in a new Disney Plus show called Secret Invasion, where Fury and friends (Oscar-winner Olivia Colman among them!) takes on shape-changing Skrulls. The trailer looks intense."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Since January 1, 2009, Jonathan Mann has written an original song every day and shared it online. Starting as an unemployed 26-year-old, Mann remembers in an online video that "I made my living entering video contests — I'd submit to 12 of them in 12 days, win one or two, and that was my income for the month." But Mann released that video after song #4,000, reflecting that "A bunch of videos went viral. I released eight albums. In 2016 I got the Guinness World Record for most consecutive days writing a song. And I've carved out this living delivering keynotes at conferences all over the world — as well as watching all the other talks then getting up at the end to sing a song that recaps everything." And now 13 years, 8 months, and 9 days after he first began, "I have officially written 5000 songs in 5000 days," Mann announced Friday on Twitter — sharing a special 5,000th song including singing appearances from 112 of his listeners. Mann still shares his videos free online — but for four years, Mann has also been auctioning the songs as NFTs living on the Ethereum blockchain. (By Friday night someone had bid 5 ETH -- about $1,700 -- for song #5,000. And the NFTs also confer membership status for the decentralized autonomous organization, SongADAO). Mann also writes songs on commission on a "pay-what-you-feel" basis, and has even written songs for companies like SquareSpace and OKCupid. ("Most businesses pay between $2000 and $5000 for a song and a video.") Once Steve Jobs even opened Apple's press conference about its iPhone antennas dropping phone calls by playing one of Mann's satirical songs. "I saw that on YouTube this morning, and couldn't help but want to share it," Steve Jobs said, according to this 2017 summation of Mann's other wacky career highlights:On day #202, he won a $500 American Express gift card in a jingle contest held by Microsoft for the launch of their Bing search engine. When TechCrunch quipped that Bing had succeeded "in finding the worst jingle ever," Mann responded with a second song — setting TechCrunch's article to music (along with a speculative interior monologue which Mann acknowledges is "completely made up.") Mann later admitted that his jingle was the worst song he'd recorded that July. ("I wrote it in 10 minutes ...") And his worst song that October was a related song that he'd written when "I received an email from Microsoft of a video showing middle-school kids in Pennsylvania singing and dancing to my Bing song." "I was horrified. Don't get me wrong, the kids were adorable, but Bing? What had I created!?" But he was honored when the kids told him they'd enjoyed dancing to his song, and when they asked for one about their own school, Mann obliged. When Steve Wozniak turned 60, Mann was ready with a musical tribute — Song #588, "That's Just Woz...." And in January of 2011, as the world learned Jobs had taken an indefinite medical leave of absence, Mann released song #753: Get Better, Steve Jobs... Mann's duet with Siri earned over 1,609,675 views.... On Day #810 Mann convinced his girlfriend Ivory to sing the other half of a duet called "Vegan Myths Debunked." They'd apparently been dating for a year before he started his song-a-day project. But after four more years, on Day #1,435, Mann and his girlfriend Ivory decided to break up — and released a music video about it.... And in 2014, on day 1,951, Mann's wife gave birth to his son Jupiter.... Day #2000, in June of 2014, Mann answered questions from Reddit users, answering every question with a song.... At a speaking engagement, he offered his own perspective on time: "100 days went by, a year went by, a thousand days went by. At a certain point, it just becomes a part of my life. And so that's how I stand before you now having written 2,082 songs in as many days." As the audience applauds, he segues into his larger message, "I'm happiest when I'm making." The article closes by quoting the song Mann wrote on Day #2001 — for a video which included part of every one of the 1,999 previous videos, in a spectacular montage called "2000 Songs in 2000 Days...." "And I will sing until I'm all out of breath. And the color of the sun is a dark, dark red. And the governments will fall. And we'll sing until it hurts. And we'll ring forever through the universe." The video ends with a personal message from Mann himself. "Make something every day," it urges in big letters. "Just start. I believe in you."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SiFive is the first company to produce a chip implementing the RISC-V ISA. They've now been selected to provide the core CPU for NASA's next generation High-Performance Spaceflight Computing processor (or HSPC).HPSC is expected to be used in virtually every future space mission, from planetary exploration to lunar and Mars surface missions. HPSC will utilize an 8-core, SiFive® Intelligenceâ X280 RISC-V vector core, as well as four additional SiFive RISC-V cores, to deliver 100x the computational capability of today's space computers. This massive increase in computing performance will help usher in new possibilities for a variety of mission elements such as autonomous rovers, vision processing, space flight, guidance systems, communications, and other applications.... The SiFive X280 is a multi-core capable RISC-V processor with vector extensions and SiFive Intelligence Extensions and is optimized for AI/ML compute at the edge. The X280 is ideal for applications requiring high-throughput, single-thread performance while under significant power constraints. The X280 has demonstrated a 100x increase in compute capabilities compared to today's space computers.. In scientific and space workloads, the X280 provides several orders of magnitude improvement compared to competitive CPU solutions. A business development executive at SiFive says their X280 core "demonstrates orders of magnitude performance gains over competing processor technology," adding that the company's IP "allows NASA to take advantage of the support, flexibility, and long-term viability of the fast-growing global RISC-V ecosystem. "We've always said that with SiFive the future has no limits, and we're excited to see the impact of our innovations extend well beyond our planet." And their announcement stresses that open hardware is a win for everybody:The open and collaborative nature of RISC-V will allow the broad academic and scientific software development community to contribute and develop scientific applications and algorithms, as well optimizing the many math functions, filters, transforms, neural net libraries, and other software libraries, as part of a robust and long-term software ecosystem.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader storagedude writes: Nearly a quarter of healthcare organizations hit by ransomware attacks experienced an increase in patient mortality, according to a new study from Ponemon Institute and Proofpoint. The report, "Cyber Insecurity in Healthcare: The Cost and Impact on Patient Safety and Care," surveyed 641 healthcare IT and security practitioners and found that the most common consequences of cyberattacks are delayed procedures and tests, resulting in poor patient outcomes for 57% of the healthcare providers, followed by increased complications from medical procedures. The type of attack most likely to have a negative impact on patient care is ransomware, leading to procedure or test delays in 64% of the organizations and longer patient stays for 59% of them. The Ponemon report depends on the accuracy of self-reporting and thus doesn't have the weight of, say, an epidemiological study that looks at hospital mortality baseline data before and after an attack, but the data is similar to what Ponemon has found in the past and there have been a number of reports of patient deaths and other complications from ransomware attacks. The new report found that 89% of the surveyed organizations have experienced an average of 43 attacks in the past year. The most common types of attacks were cloud compromise, ransomware, supply chain, and business email compromise (BEC)/spoofing/phishing. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a top concern for survey participants. Healthcare organizations have an average of more than 26,000 network-connected devices, yet only 51% of the surveyed organizations include them in their cybersecurity strategy. Healthcare organizations are better at cloud security, with 63% taking steps to prepare for and respond to cloud compromise attacks, and 62% have taken steps to prevent and respond to ransomware — but that still leaves nearly 40% of healthcare organizations more vulnerable than they should be. Preparedness is even worse for supply chain attacks and BEC, with only 44% and 48% having a documented response to those attacks, respectively. The high costs of healthcare cyberattacks — an average of $4.4 million — mean that healthcare cybersecurity tools likely have a high ROI, even though roughly half of the survey respondents say they lack sufficient staffing and in-house expertise.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's Department of Agriculture and NASA recently announced the Artemis Moon Trees Program. After the first launch of its SLS super-heavy-lift launch vehicle, "the seeds carried on Artemis I will be grown into seedlings by the Forest Service and distributed to locations across the U.S." But it's just part of a larger initiative. The U.S. government announced Friday that it's working with "a new coalition of space companies that will focus on increasing the space industry's capacity to meet the rising demand for the skilled technical workforce" — partly by inspiring and educating the next generation. This coalition includes Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Blue Origin, Jacobs, L3Harris, Planet Labs PBC, Rocket Lab, Sierra Space, Space X and Virgin Orbit. Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes:Yesterday at the second convening of America's National Space Council, Vice President Kamala Harris announced "new commitments from the U.S. government, private sector companies, education and training providers, and philanthropic organizations to support space-related STEM initiatives to inspire, prepare, and employ the next generation of the space workforce..." according to a statement from the White House, "to address the challenges of today and prepare for the discoveries of tomorrow...." Among those anchoring the Administration's efforts to increase the space industry's capacity to meet the rising demand for the skilled technical workforce is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' space tourism company Blue Origin, which will be joined by industry partner Amazon to inspire youth to pursue space STEM careers. "Blue Origin's Club for the Future," the White House explains, "is launching Space Days to engage millions of students, teachers and school administrators in the excitement of space and space careers." Club for the Future, as reported earlier on Slashdot, is the Blue Origin founded-and-funded tax-exempt foundation that received the $28 million proceeds of a single auctioned ticket to accompany Bezos on Blue Origin's maiden 11-minute space tourism flight in June 2021. The nonprofit's mission is "to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM and to help invent the future of life in space." The White House also announced that Amazon and Bezos-funded nonprofit Code.org "will highlight connections between computer science and space exploration in the 2022 Hour of Code. Students will have the opportunity to explore and develop coding skills through engaging, space-themed tutorials and create shareable projects. Through a collaboration with NASA, the U.S. Space Force, America's Department of Energy, and the U.S. Geological Survey, students will also learn about different careers and pathways for space careers in these agencies. Code.org reaches approximately 15 million students annually." Amazon reported in 2018 on its efforts to accelerate K-12 CS education in the U.S. with Code.org to "support the much-needed pipeline for workers who are well versed in computer science." The coalition's other efforts include three pilot programs collaborating with community colleges, unions and others "to demonstrate a replicable and scalable approach to attracting, training and creating employment opportunities." Federal agencies and the Smithsonian Institute also launched a new web site with free space-related resources for K-12 educators which also promotes career awareness. And NASA also released an educator resources hub that includes a LEGO Build to Launch Series — plus $4 million in educational grants.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A vital offsite electricity supply to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been destroyed by shelling," the Guardian reported Friday, "and there is little likelihood a reliable supply will be re-established, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog chief has said."Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said shelling had destroyed the switchyard of a nearby thermal power plant. The plant has supplied power to the nuclear facility each time its normal supply lines had been cut over the past three weeks. The thermal plant was also supplying the surrounding area, which was plunged into darkness. Local Ukrainian officials said work was under way to restore the connection, which has been cut multiple times this week.... When the thermal supply has been cut the plant has relied on its only remaining operating reactor for the power needed for cooling and other safety functions. This method is designed to provide power only for a few hours at a time. Diesel generators are used as a last resort. The constant destruction of thermal power supply has led Ukraine to consider shutting down the remaining operating reactor, said Grossi. Ukraine "no longer [has] confidence in the restoration of offsite power", he said. Grossi said that if Ukraine decided not to restore the offsite supply the entire power plant would be reliant on emergency diesel generators to ensure supplies for the nuclear safety and security functions. "As a consequence, the operator would not be able to restart the reactors unless offsite power was reliably re-established," he said. NPR provides some context:Normally, the plant holds a 10-day reserve of diesel fuel, the agency says, and currently has approximately 2,250 tonnes of fuel available. If that fuel is depleted, or the generators are damaged in further fighting, it could trigger a meltdown. But Steven Nesbit, a nuclear engineer and member of the American Nuclear Society's rapid response taskforce, which is tracking the current crisis, says that doesn't necessarily mean there would be a Chernobyl-like catastrophe. The meltdown at Chernobyl was due to a unique mix of design flaws and operator error that would be essentially impossible to replicate at Zaporizhzhia. And unlike the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, some of the reactors at Zaporizhzhia have already been shut down for a while, allowing the nuclear fuel to cool somewhat, Nesbit says. Even in the worst case scenario, the reactors at Zaporizhzhia are a modern design surrounded by a heavy "containment" building, Nesbit says. "It's reinforced concrete, typically about three to four feet of that; it's designed to withstand very high internal pressures." That could allow it to hold in any radioactive material. But the world's nuclear agency doesn't want to test any of this. Meanwhile, the French international news agency AFP reports on what's been happening at the plant since it was captured by Russian troops in March:Russian forces controlling Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant have killed two staff at the facility and detained and abused dozens of others, the head of Ukraine's nuclear energy agency told AFP on Friday. "We do not know where about ten people are now," Petro Kotin said. "They were taken (by the Russians) and after that we have no information about their whereabouts," Kotin said, adding about 200 people had been detained. He described the current situation at the plant as "very difficult," citing "torture" of staff and "beatings" of personnel. "The Russians look for pro-Ukrainian people and persecute them. People are psychologically broken," he said in an interview with AFP reporters in his office in Kyiv... "Two people on the territory of the plant were wounded during shelling — a woman and a man — on separate occasions," Kotin, clad in a military-style jacket, said. "But people understand that the nuclear safety of the plant depends on them, so the employees return to Energodar and continue working at the facility," he added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Attention, people giving money to strangers from the Internet. The Krebs on Security blog knows a way to make it safer. "Nearly all U.S. states now have designated safe trading stations — mostly at local police departments — which ensure that all transactions are handled in plain view of both the authorities and security cameras."These safe trading places exist is because sometimes in-person transactions from the Internet don't end well for one or more parties involved. The website Craigslistkillers has catalogued news links for at least 132 murders linked to Craigslist transactions since 2015. Many of these killings involved high-priced items like automobiles and consumer electronics, where the prospective buyer apparently intended all along to kill the owner and steal the item offered for sale. Others were motivated simply by a desire to hurt people. This is not to say that using Craigslist is uniquely risky or dangerous; I'm sure the vast majority of transactions generated by the site end amicably and without physical violence. And that probably holds true for all of Craigslist's competitors. Still, the risk of a deal going badly when one meets total strangers from the Internet is not zero, and so it's only sensible to take a few simple precautions. For example, choosing to transact at a designated safe place such as a police station dramatically reduces the likelihood that anyone wishing you harm would even show up. Krebs points out there's a list maintained at SafeTradeStations.com, adding that "many police departments (but not all) are willing to check the serial number of an item for sale to make sure it's not known to be stolen property." The site also advises meeting in well-lit and public places, during daylight hours — and bringing a friend.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week as America celebrated Labor Day, the Washington Post told the story of how 4,000 cafeteria workers at Google quietly unionized during the pandemic:Google is famous for its cafeterias, which serve its legions of programmers and product managers everything from vegan poke to gourmet tacos — free. But the cooks and servers behind those meals are generally contractors who work for other companies, and do not get the generous perks and benefits reserved for Google employees. So over the past few years, thousands of them have unionized, securing higher wages, retirement benefits and free platinum health care coverage. Unite Here, a 300,000-member union of hotel and food service workers, has been steadily working to unionize Silicon Valley cafeteria workers since 2018, experiencing the most success at Google. Employed by the contract companies Compass and Guckenheimer, those unionized now make up about 90 percent of total food services workers at Google, according to the union. Workers have unionized at 23 Google offices nationwide, including in Seattle and San Jose. Now, the union is tackling new territory: the South.... Google workers in Atlanta employed by a different cafeteria company — Sodexo — presented their manager with a list of demands and said they plan to unionize.... [Last week] Sodexo and the union reached an agreement: Should a majority of workers choose to unionize, Sodexo would not try to block it. The article notes that more than 230 Starbucks locations have also voted to unionize since last year. But Google offers a case study in the difference it can make, according to the Post's summary of observations from D. Taylor, the president of Unite Here. "The average unionized worker at a Google cafeteria makes $24 an hour, pays little to nothing for health insurance and has access to a pension plan. At Sodexo-run Google cafeterias, workers make $15 an hour and pay premiums in the hundreds of dollars, Taylor said."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Perl's major version number hasn't changed since 1994, notes a new blog post at Stack Overflow by Perl book author Dave Cross. Yet the programming language has still undergone "massive changes" between version 5.6 (summer of 2000) and version 5.36 (released this May). But because the Perl development strives for backwards compatibility, "many new Perl features are hidden away behind feature guards and aren't available unless you explicitly turn them on...."You're no doubt familiar with using print() to display data on the console or to write it to a file. Perl 5.10 introduced the say() command which does the same thing but automatically adds a newline character to the output. It sounds like a small thing, but it's surprisingly useful. How many times do you print a line of data to a file and have to remember to explicitly add the newline? This just makes your life a little bit easier.... Some of the improvements were needed because in places Perl's Unix/C heritage shows through a little more than we'd like it to in the 21st century. One good example of this is bareword filehandles... It is a variable. And, worst than that, itâ(TM)s a package variable (which is the closest thing that Perl has to a global variable)... [But] for a long time (back to at least Perl 5.6), it has been possible to open filehandles and store them in lexical variables... For a long time, Perl's standard functions for dealing with dates and times were also very tied to its Unix roots. You may have seen code like this: my @datetime = localtime(); The localtime() function returns a list of values that represent the various parts of the current local time... Since Perl 5.10, the standard library has included a module called Time::Piece. When you use Time::Piece in your code, it overrides localtime() and replaces it with a function that returns an object that contains details of the current time and date. That object has a strftime() method... And it also has several other methods for accessing information about the time and date [including a method called is_leap_year]... Using Time::Piece will almost certainly make your date and time handling code easier to write and (more importantly) easier to read and understand.... In most languages you'd have a list of variable names after the subroutine name and the parameters would be passed directly into those. Well, as of version 5.36 (which was released earlier this summer) Perl has that too. You turn the feature on with use feature 'signatures'.... Subroutine signatures have many other features. You can, for example, declare default values for parameters. And new features possibly coming soon incude a new object-oriented programming framework named Corinna being written into the Perl core. "Beyond that, the Perl development team have their eye on a major version number bump." And to avoid confusion with Raku — the offshoot programming language formerly known as Perl 6 — the next major version of Perl will be Perl 7.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post reports:A large glacier in Antarctica that could raise sea levels several feet is disintegrating faster than last predicted, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience. The Thwaites Glacier — dubbed the "doomsday glacier" because scientists estimate that without it and its supporting ice shelves, sea levels could rise more than 3 to 10 feet — lies in the western part of the continent. After recently mapping it in high-resolution, a group of international researchers found that the glacial expanse experienced a phase of "rapid retreat" sometime in the past two centuries — over a duration of less than six months. NBC News puts this in context:"About 100 years ago, it retreated faster than it is currently retreating... you could say that's good news because it's not so bad now compared to what it was in the past," Anna WÃ¥hlin, a co-author of the study and a professor of physical oceanography at Sweden's Gothenburg University, told NBC News. "But you can also say that it's bad news, because it could happen again." But the Washington Post adds this about where we are now:According to a news release accompanying the study, researchers concluded that the glacier had "lost contact with a seabed ridge" and is now retreating at a speed of 1.3 miles per year — a rate double what they predicted between 2011 and 2019. Unlike some other glaciers that are connected to dry land, Thwaites is grounded in the seabed, making it more vulnerable to warming waters as a result of human-induced climate change. One of the study's co-authors warns that once the glacier retreats beyond a shallow ridge in its bed, "we should expect to see big changes over small time scales in the future — even from one year to the next." The article also notes that Thwaites already accounts for about 4% of the current annual rise in sea levels...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A group of independent movie companies has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against AT&T. The Internet provider, which has over 80 million subscribers in the US, faces far-reaching demands. In addition to millions in damages, the filmmakers want the ISP to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers and block access to sites such as The Pirate Bay and YTS. [...] In a complaint (PDF) filed at a federal court in Texas, Voltage Pictures and its affiliates, known for films such as "After We Collided," "Dallas Buyers Club," "Room 203," and "The Bird Catcher", accuse the ISP of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. "For years, AT&T has knowingly allowed AT&T users to engage in online piracy, the illegal distribution and downloading of copyrighted materials, including films. AT&T provides the IP addresses used for piracy, makes the connections needed to share and download pirated films, and transmits the pirated films," they write. The ISP allegedly turned a blind eye to pirating subscribers, facilitating mass online piracy. The filmmakers say they sent tens of thousands of notices to the company, reporting alleged copyright infringements. In some cases, hundreds of notices were sent for a single IP address without any visible response from the Internet provider. In the United States, the law requires Internet providers to adopt a policy that provides for the termination of accounts of repeat infringers, under appropriate circumstances. AT&T references this in its terms but according to the filmmakers' complaint, this policy is not sufficient. The lawsuit specifically claims that AT&T willingly keeps repeat infringers on board because that adds tens of millions of dollars to AT&T's bottom line. [...] To compensate for all piracy-related losses, the plaintiffs request actual or statutory damages, which can run into millions of dollars. In addition, they also want AT&T to terminate repeat infringers under appropriate circumstances. Finally, and of particular interest, the movie companies also want the Internet provider to block foreign pirate sites. They include YTS, The Pirate Bay, RARBG, 1337x, and others that have been called out in the US Trade Representative's annual overview of notorious markets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When they examined decades-old blood samples from 14 NASA astronauts who flew Space Shuttle missions between 1998 and 2001, researchers found that samples from all 14 astronauts showed mutations in their DNA. Futurism reports: While these mutations are likely low enough not to represent a serious threat to the astronauts' long term health, the research underlines the importance of regular health screenings for astronauts, especially as they embark on longer missions to the Moon and beyond in coming years. The specific mutations, as identified in a new study published in the journal Nature Communications Biology, were marked by a high proportion of blood cells that came from a single clone, a phenomenon called clonal hematopoiesis. Mutations like this can be caused by exposure to excess ultraviolet radiation, and other forms of radiation including chemotherapy. In this case, researchers are suspicious that the mutations may have been the result of space radiation. "Astronauts work in an extreme environment where many factors can result in somatic mutations, most importantly space radiation, which means there is a risk that these mutations could develop into clonal hematopoiesis," said lead author David Goukassian, professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in a statement. The blood samples for this latest study were collected from 12 male and two female astronauts ten days before their flight and on the day of their landing. The samples were then cryogenically stored at -112 degrees Fahrenheit for around two decades. The mutations observed in the blood samples resemble the kind of somatic mutations we see in older individuals -- which is interesting on its own, considering the median age of the astronauts was only 42. "Although the clonal hematopoiesis we observed was of a relatively small size, the fact that we observed these mutations was surprising given the relatively young age and health of these astronauts," Goukassian said. "The presence of these mutations does not necessarily mean that the astronauts will develop cardiovascular disease or cancer," he added, "but there is the risk that, over time, this could happen through ongoing and prolonged exposure to the extreme environment of deep space." Therefore, Goukassian and his team are recommending that NASA should regularly screen astronauts for these kinds of mutations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA said Thursday that it is working to fix the issues that delayed the launch of its Artemis I moon rocket last week, and that it hopes to make another attempt later this month. CNBC reports: The space agency on Sept. 3 called off the second attempt to launch the mission after detecting a hydrogen leak as the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was being fueled. The Artemis I mission represents the debut of the SLS rocket and the uncrewed Orion capsule it is carrying, for what is expected to be a more than month-long journey around the moon. NASA made several unsuccessful attempts during the launch countdown on Saturday to fix the leak. During a press conference on Thursday, NASA officials said work at the launchpad is ongoing, with the agency's team aiming to complete the replacement of seals on the fueling system by the end of the day. NASA then hopes to conduct a tanking demonstration on Sept. 17 to verify the replacement work was successful. Assuming the work and testing are completed by then, NASA has requested new launch dates from the U.S. Space Force's Eastern Range -- which reviews and approves all missions that liftoff from Cape Canaveral region. The agency has asked to make launch attempts on Sept. 23 and Sept. 27.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The U.S. Navy says that releasing any additional UFO videos would "harm national security" and told a government transparency website that all of the government's UFO videos are classified information. In a Freedom of Information Act request response, the Navy told government transparency site The Black Vault that any public dissemination of new UFO videos "will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release." The Black Vault was seeking all videos "with the designation of 'unidentified aerial phenomena.'" This is an interesting response from the Navy because, often, military agencies will issue a so-called GLOMAR response, where they neither confirm nor deny that the records (in this case videos) exist, and refuse to say anything more. In this response, the Navy is admitting that it has more videos, and also gives a rationale for releasing three previous UFO videos. "While three UAP videos were released in the past, the facts specific to those three videos are unique in that those videos were initially released via unofficial channels before official release," it said. "Those events were discussed extensively in the public domain; in fact, major news outlets conducted specials on these events. Given the amount of information in the public domain regarding these encounters, it was possible to release the files without further damage to national security."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bruce66423 shares a report from Reuters: In 2007, the U.S. Congress mandated the blending of biofuels such as corn-based ethanol into gasoline. One of the top goals: reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But today, the nation's ethanol plants produce more than double the climate-damaging pollution, per gallon of fuel production capacity, than the nation's oil refineries, according to a Reuters analysis of federal data. The average ethanol plant chuffed out 1,187 metric tons of carbon emissions per million gallons of fuel capacity in 2020, the latest year data is available. The average oil refinery, by contrast, produced 533 metric tons of carbon. The ethanol plants' high emissions result in part from a history of industry-friendly federal regulation that has allowed almost all processors to sidestep the key environmental requirement of the 2007 law, the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), according to academics who have studied ethanol pollution and regulatory documents examined by Reuters. The rule requires individual ethanol processors to demonstrate that their fuels result in lower carbon emissions than gasoline. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged with writing the regulations to meet the goals set by Congress. For processors, that translates to an EPA requirement that the plants use certain emissions-control processes the agency assumes will result in lower-than-gasoline emissions. But the agency has exempted more than 95% of U.S. ethanol plants from the requirement through a grandfathering provision that excused plants built or under construction before the legislation passed. Today, these plants produce more than 80% of the nation's ethanol, according to the EPA. Some of the exempted plants produced much less pollution, including some owned by the same companies producing the highest emissions. The EPA said about a third meet the law's environmental standard even though they are not required to do so. But as a group, the plants freed from regulation produced 40% more pollution per gallon of fuel capacity, on average, than the plants required to comply, the Reuters analysis found.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia announced yesterday that its upcoming H100 "Hopper" Tensor Core GPU set new performance records during its debut in the industry-standard MLPerf benchmarks, delivering results up to 4.5 times faster than the A100, which is currently Nvidia's fastest production AI chip. Ars Technica reports: The MPerf benchmarks (technically called "MLPerfTM Inference 2.1") measure "inference" workloads, which demonstrate how well a chip can apply a previously trained machine learning model to new data. A group of industry firms known as the MLCommons developed the MLPerf benchmarks in 2018 to deliver a standardized metric for conveying machine learning performance to potential customers. In particular, the H100 did well in the BERT-Large benchmark, which measures natural language-processing performance using the BERT model developed by Google. Nvidia credits this particular result to the Hopper architecture's Transformer Engine, which specifically accelerates training transformer models. This means that the H100 could accelerate future natural language models similar to OpenAI's GPT-3, which can compose written works in many different styles and hold conversational chats. The chip, which is still in development, is forecasted to replace the A100 as the company's flagship data center GPU. The U.S. government imposed restrictions last week on exports of the chips to China, leading many to fear that Nvidia might not be able to deliver the H100 by the end of the year. However, Nvidia clarified that the U.S. government will allow it to continue development of the chip in China, "so the project appears back on track for now," reports Ars.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a blog post today, YouTube says it's launching an embeddable video player for education apps that removes ads, external links, and recommendations so viewers can "avoid distractions." The Verge reports: The ad- and recommendation-free player will be open to select partners to start, including education tech companies like EDpuzzle, Google Classroom, Purdue University, and Purdue Global. YouTube also announced new tools for creators making educational content on the platform -- including ways to charge viewers for their videos. Beginning next year, certain creators will be able to make free or paid "courses," with playlists of videos set up for audiences. If a viewer buys a course, they'll be able to watch the content ad-free and play the videos in the background. Courses will come to the US and South Korea first in beta. Finally, YouTube announced a new quiz feature that creators can set up in the community tab on their channel that relates to the educational content they make. The company will introduce quizzes in beta in the coming months, with creators getting access to the feature next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In a tweet posted this morning, artificial intelligence company Runway teased a new feature of its AI-powered web-based video editor that can edit video from written descriptions, often called "prompts." Runway's "Text to Video" demonstration reel shows a text input box that allows editing commands such as "import city street" (suggesting the video clip already existed) or "make it look more cinematic" (applying an effect). It depicts someone typing "remove object" and selecting a streetlight with a drawing tool that then disappears (from our testing, Runway can already perform a similar effect using its "inpainting" tool, with mixed results). The promotional video also showcases what looks like still-image text-to-image generation similar to Stable Diffusion (note that the video does not depict any of these generated scenes in motion) and demonstrates text overlay, character masking (using its "Green Screen" feature, also already present in Runway), and more. Video generation promises aside, what seems most novel about Runway's Text to Video announcement is the text-based command interface. Whether video editors will want to work with natural language prompts in the future remains to be seen, but the demonstration shows that people in the video production industry are actively working toward a future in which synthesizing or editing video is as easy as writing a command. [...] Runway is available as a web-based commercial product that runs in the Google Chrome browser for a monthly fee, which includes cloud storage for about $35 per year. But the Text to Video feature is in closed "Early Access" testing, and you can sign up for the waitlist on Runway's website.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than two dozen civil organizations and advocacy groups are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to block Amazon's $1.7 billion acquisition of Roomba maker iRobot. If allowed to go through, the advocates warn the deal could "endanger fair competition" and jeopardize consumer privacy. Gizmodo reports: Fight for the Future, Public Citizen, and Athena were among the 26 organizations that sent an open letter to the FTC's five commissioners on Friday. The groups view Amazon's acquisition of iRobot, which they described as a "competing smart home device business" as an anti-competitive action that could harm the overall consumer technology market. "Amazon seeks to unduly expand its market power by eliminating a competitor through acquisition, rather than through organic growth," the groups wrote. "The company also aims to minimize fair competition by exploiting consumer data not accessible to other market participants." That "consumer data" refers to detailed video footage of customers' homes and floor plans constantly sucked up by iRobot's Roomba and other home devices. That type of data is potentially well worth the $1.7 billion Amazon intends to spend on the company if for nothing else than to determine more useful shit to sell you through its main business. Privacy advocates, however, fear Amazon -- which already has smart devices hooked up in around a third of U.S. households -- could potentially misuse that potentially sensitive data. Critics, including some U.S. senators, warn we've already witnessed a version of this through Amazon-owned Ring sharing user data with police without its owners' consent or a police warrant. "There is no more private space than the home," the letter reads. "Yet with this acquisition, Amazon stands to gain access to extremely intimate facts about our most private spaces that are not available through other means, or to other competitors." While Amazon's recent acquisition attempt is significant, the groups warn Amazon's iRobot deal amounts to a symptom of a larger problem. "Amazon's business model largely relies on acquiring rivals, sometimes in adjacent markets, and then rapidly expanding through anti-competitive predatory pricing while leveraging vast troves of consumer data to grow its overall grip on the economy,â the letter reads. To bolster that point, the groups pointed to Amazon's 2018 acquisition of smart doorbell maker Ring. Within three years, Ring transformed from a successful but growing product to the undisputed king of smart doorbells. That sudden market annihilation, the groups argue, was only made possible through Amazon pushing the product through its "ubiquitous" e-commerce platform at below market price points.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Garmin has reacted to Apple's new rugged Apple Watch Ultra, saying in a tweet following the iPhone 14 and Apple Watch event that it measures battery life in "months" and "not hours," promoting its latest Enduro 2 watch for athletes. MacRumors reports: While the Apple Watch Ultra has the longest battery life of any Apple Watch to date, with Apple promising up to 36 hours of normal use and up to 60 hours with watchOS 9's new Low Power Mode setting and other optimizations, the Enduro 2 can last significantly longer depending on usage scenarios. Despite Garmin's claim that it measures battery life in months, the company actually advertises the Enduro 2 as having "up to 150 hours of battery life in GPS mode with solar charging" and "up to 34 days of battery life in smartwatch mode." The Enduro 2 has a 1.4-inch solar-powered display, compared to the nearly 2-inch display on the Apple Watch Ultra that can reach a peak brightness of 2,000 nits, the brightest ever in an Apple Watch. Battery life seems to be the main point of contention, based on comments from Hacker News and Reddit. "As someone who is into trail running and backpacking, a 36 hour battery life is untenable, and charging it every night seems like a pain," writes user lukeinator42. "The real irony of the charge-at-night model is that you miss the single biggest source of error in human life: lack of sleep," adds killjoywashere. "Accurate sleep measurement is, on a day-to-day basis, far more valuable than many of the features advertised on this system."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Prosecutors in Taiwan have indicted five men for running an operation that uploaded movies to the internet and then extorted cash settlements from the BitTorrent users who downloaded them. One of the men is former ultramarathon runner Kevin Lin, who founded a copyright consultancy company after graduating from law school in 2020. According to reports, Lin's company enticed users to download the torrents, tracked their IP addresses, and then filed copyright lawsuits in an effort to profit from cash settlements. Lin said that due to his support for the opposition government and his criticism of its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the investigation against him is politically motivated. In May 2021, licenses were obtained from Vie Vision Pictures Co. and Applause Entertainment Ltd, which led to 18 movies being uploaded to BitTorrent networks, to tempt users into downloading them. After capturing their IP addresses, Lin's company obtained their identities from ISPs and sued them. The goal was to obtain out-of-court settlements. Since August 2021, Lin's company filed 937 lawsuits for copyright infringement. In just 25 of those cases, the company managed to "extort" settlements of $29,207, FocusTaiwan reports. In addition to Lin, several other people have also been indicted for their part in the operation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel has dripped out details about its upcoming Arc graphics cards over the last few months, but until recently, we didn't have full specifications for the GPUs. That changed when Intel dropped a video and a post breaking down the full Arc A-series. From a report: The company shared the spec sheets of the Arc A380, Arc A580, Arc 750, and Arc A770. It also explained the naming structure of the new GPUs along with other details. Just about the only major piece of information we're still missing is the release date for the cards. At the top end of the range, Intel's Arc A770 will have 32 Xe cores, 32 ray-tracing units, and a graphics clock of 2100MHz. That GPU will be available with either 8GB or 16GB of memory. Sitting just below the Arc A770, the Arc A750 will have 28 Xe cores, 28 ray-tracing units, and 8GB of memory. The Intel Arc A580 will sit in the middle between the company's high-end GPUs and the Intel Arc A380.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dutch government's short-shower campaign urges a splash and dash to burn less natural gas to heat water. From a report: Carla Generaal used to spend 15 minutes in the shower, slowly raising the temperature as the minutes passed. Her boyfriend, who takes one-and-a-half-minute cold showers, couldn't fathom how she could be so wasteful. He bought her a five-minute sand-filled timer. "Sometimes I used it a bit to relax," she said of her extended shower routine. She would often daydream and lose track of time. "I think I'm probably not the only person in the world" doing that, she added. Now the Dutch government is trying to get the Noordwijk resident, a 37-year-old executive for an online retailer, and others like her to save some of that hot water and help build the Netherlands' energy reserves, following Russia's squeeze on gas supplies in response to Western sanctions for invading Ukraine. The average shower in the Netherlands lasts nine minutes, according to Milieu Centraal, a government-affiliated research organization. It says cutting that to under five minutes could save a household 60 cubic meters a year of natural gas, the fuel many homes use to heat water. Before the energy crisis, 40 billion cubic meters of gas was used annually nationwide, according to Pieter ten Bruggencate, a spokesman for the country's Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate. The speedier showers could also save each household about $130 a year, the government says. In one northeastern province, local authorities handed out timers to prod people along, just as Ms. Generaal's 8 did. The transition hasn't always been easy. Ms. Generaal's timer broke. There is some debate as to how it happened.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

United Airlines is moving deeper into the flying taxi business. Not only has the airline plowed $15 million into Eve Air Mobility, it ordered 200 flying taxis and has an option for another 200. United expects to start receiving Eve's four-seater electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle (eVTOL) as soon as 2026. From a report: The company says its investment was spurred by both its confidence in the urban air mobility market and Eve's working relationship with Embraer. According to United, Embrarer is "a trusted aircraft manufacturer with a proven track record of building and certifying aircraft over the company's 53-year history." Embrarer previously worked with Uber on a flying taxi project that the latter eventually ditched. Eve's flying taxi has conventional fixed wings, rotors and pushers with a design that United says favors safety, efficiency, reliability and certifiability. It's said to have a range of 60 miles and United added that the vehicle can "reduce noise levels by 90 percent compared to current conventional aircraft."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roblox, the platform with metaverse ambitions that targets tweens, is introducing a host of new features aimed at making its experiences more age-appropriate and profitable for the company. From a report: In coming weeks, Roblox will introduce age guidelines for individual experiences or games, chief product officer Manuel Bronstein said, helping its 52 million daily users better navigate the games hosted on the site. The games will be marked as either appropriate for all ages, suitable for those nine and older and those 13-and-older. "Our platform is aging up now," said Roblox chief product officer Manuel Bronstein. "More than 50% of our users are 13 plus, and our fastest growing demographic is 17 to 24. So it makes sense for people to have control over what experiences they're going to access." Roblox's platform comprises user-generated games, many created by children and teens, some of whom have made millions of dollars for themselves. The company declined to share exact percentages of how many users are under the age of 13. Last year, it said 54% were under the age of 13. Roblox notes that about 90% of the developers of its top 1,000 games by earnings are above the age of 18. The platform has over 12 million game developers. All ages content could contain infrequent mild violence or light unrealistic blood, according to the company, while the gated content for 13 and above could feature moderate violence and light realistic blood. Roblox says it doesn't allow romantic or sexual content on its platform.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new forensic analysis of controversial Donkey Kong world records claims those records were scored on an emulator and not on original hardware, essentially accusing the record holder of cheating. From a report: The controversy revolves around Billy Mitchell, a well-known player who holds several records on classic arcade games such as Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, and the main character in the documentary King of Kong. For years, some people in the retro arcade game community have accused Mitchell of lying about his Donkey Kong records, prompting Twin Galaxies, an arcade game community that keeps track of high scores (among other things) and the Guinness World Records to strip Mitchell of its recognition, though the organization later reversed its decision. The new technical analysis focuses on Mitchell's Donkey Kong records of 1,047,200 and 1,050,200 points. The author of the analysis is Tanner Fokkens, a hardware engineer and a competitive Donkey Kong player. His report was backed by five other experts. The crux of the controversy and accusations against Mitchell is that he claimed to have scored those records on original Donkey Kong arcade hardware, while his critics accused him of using MAME, an emulator that is recognized as a legitimate way to play the game, but records scored on these two different platforms are recognized as two different categories of records. "MAME scores which are passed off as coming from original arcade are disqualified," Fokkens wrote in his report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Android 13 has recently hit the streets, and with it, Google is raising the minimum requirements for Android phones. From a report: Google's latest blog post announced that the minimum amount of RAM for Android Go, the low-end version of Android, is now 2GB for Android 13, whereas previously, it was 1GB. Esper's Mishaal Rahman and Google Product Expert Jason Bayton also claim the minimum storage requirements have been bumped up to 16GB, though Google doesn't seem to have publicly documented this anywhere. The increase in system requirements means any phone that doesn't meet the minimum specs won't be able to update to Android 13. New phones launching with Android 13 will need to meet the minimum requirements to be eligible for Play Store licensing, though launching with an older version of Android (with lower requirements) will still be an option for a while. Technically, anyone can grab the Android source code and build anything with it, but if you want to license the Google apps and have access to the Google-trademarked brand "Android," you'll need to comply with Google's rules.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India plans to mandate which loan apps are allowed on app stores in the country, the latest in a series of recent steps from the world's second largest internet market to crack down on sketchy and unethical lenders. From a report: The Reserve Bank of India, the country's central bank, will prepare a "whitelist" of all legal apps and the nation's IT ministry will ensure that only approved apps are hosted on app stores, the Finance Ministry said in a statement. The central bank will also monitor "mule" or "rented" accounts for money laundering practices and review and cancel licenses of non banking financial institutions if they are found guilty, the Finance Ministry said Friday. Indian authorities in recent quarters have been clamping down on lending apps that levy exorbitant fees and use unethical means to collect the payments back. India's central bank said earlier this month that it was moving ahead with new guidelines for digital lending that will mandate firms to provide more disclosure and transparency to benefit consumers as well as restrict several business practices.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

North Korea has passed a law declaring itself to be a nuclear weapons state, according to state news agency KCNA. The country's leader Kim Jong-un called the decision "irreversible" and ruled out the possibility of any talks on denuclearisation, it said. From a report: The law also enshrines the country's right to use a pre-emptive nuclear strike to protect itself. Despite crippling sanctions, Pyongyang has conducted six nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017. It has continued to advance its military capability - in breach of United Nations Security Council resolutions - to threaten its neighbours and potentially even bring the US mainland within striking range. Mr Kim carried out long-range launches and nuclear tests in 2019 following two headline-grabbing but inconclusive summits with then US president Donald Trump. But talks between the countries have since stalled. Although the Biden administration has indicated it's willing to talk to Pyongyang, it hasn't said whether President Joe Biden would meet Mr Kim. The White House also said its attempts to contact Pyongyang and overtures of help over its Covid outbreak had gone unanswered so far. The US reviewed its North Korea policy last year and reiterated that "complete denuclearisation" of the Korean peninsula was the goal. Mr Biden said he would pursue it with a mix of diplomacy and "stern deterrence". Mr Kim responded by saying his country must prepare for both "dialogue and confrontation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The first beta for the Android 13 quarterly release includes a new "clear calling" feature that "reduces background noises during calls." From a report: It was first spotted by Mishaal Rahman on Twitter who also tweeted directions to enable it for yourself without root, if you're feeling bold. The images shared by Rahman note that Clear Calling works "on most mobile networks," is "not available for Wi-Fi calling," and "content from your call is not sent to Google."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Logitech makes some of the most popular webcams in the world, but using them on some of the most popular computers, like the M2 MacBook Air or M1 Pro MacBook Pro, is a less than stellar experience. From a report: Plugging one into any M1 or M2 Mac for a video call isn't an issue, but if you want to tweak in-depth settings or use some of these webcams' highlight features, doing that right now ranges from clumsy to impossible. That's because its most capable webcam software, Logitech Capture, isn't available on computers with Apple silicon. Logitech switched up its software plan for people who use newer Mac laptops and desktops without making much effort to tell anyone. Instead of offering Logitech Capture, its de facto software focused squarely on webcam settings and content creation features, it has two distinct and lesser Mac applications to choose from: Logi Tune and Logitech G Hub. Tune is a confusing app that lets you toggle settings for Logitech gadgets, with calendar integration added in, for some reason. G Hub was built for gamers who want to tweak RGB lighting and sensitivity settings for gaming-focused products and, now, webcams. Each app's interface looks different and lets you switch different settings, so you've got a choice with which app you use -- too much choice, if you ask me, given how limited the functionality is within each one. But neither offers as many options as Logitech Capture. You can access basic settings, like the ability to zoom in for a tighter crop or make a host of adjustments to the picture settings (or set them to auto settings), but you can't adjust the frame rate or the resolution. What that means is people who own an M1 or M2 Mac cannot utilize its face-tracking feature or switch between horizontal or vertical orientations on a nice, relatively high-end webcam like the $160 Logi StreamCam.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Streaming television is going through an existential crisis, involving the people who make it and the viewers who watch it. Its revolutionary zeal has naturally faded, as that initial wave of near limitless expansion, boundless creative opportunities and vast archival choices crashes ashore, after a spate of megamergers and a drop in new subscribers. From a report: Just when streaming has finally attracted more viewers than cable or broadcast TV, its major players are engaged in a long-predicted war for subscribers, who are becoming all too aware of rising subscription prices and, both subtly and directly, a change in what programs get made and how long they stick around. Commercials could soon become more common, and services may be bundled (for one low monthly price!), already triggering visions of a future that recalls the dark days of cable. The list of seismic rumblings in recent weeks is long, as chronicled in the Hollywood Reporter, Variety and elsewhere: Warner Bros. Discovery is cutting shows from its archives and unfinished movies from HBO Max as it prepares to merge it with its sister streaming service Discovery Plus, having promised its shareholders a $3 billion cut in costs. Faced with a plunging stock price and worrisome subscriber loss, Netflix plans to add an advertising-supported model for a lower price and may crack down on password sharing. Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus, which can all be subscribed to in a cable-esque bundle, are raising prices after taking a more than $1 billion hit in the fiscal third quarter. [...] The fear of having your show or movie deleted on an executive's whim -- a growing reality for many, including Katai -- is compounded by the fact that in the post-DVD digital age, viewers may never be able to access the shows again. Showrunners might not even have physical copies of their own work. And that's not the only downside for creators.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google pays billions of dollars each year to Apple, Samsung Electronics and other telecom giants to illegally maintain its spot as the No. 1 search engine, the US Justice Department told a federal judge Thursday. From a report: DOJ attorney Kenneth Dintzer didn't disclose how much Google spends to be the default search engine on most browsers and all US mobile phones, but described the payments as "enormous numbers." "Google invests billions in defaults, knowing people won't change them," Dintzer told Judge Amit Mehta during a hearing in Washington that marked the first major face-off in the case and drew top DOJ antitrust officials and Nebraska's attorney general among the spectators. "They are buying default exclusivity because defaults matter a lot." Google's contracts form the basis of the DOJ's landmark antitrust lawsuit, which alleges the company has sought to maintain its online search monopoly in violation of antitrust laws. State attorneys general are pursuing a parallel antitrust suit against the search giant, also pending before Mehta.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The biz's GENE-ADP6, announced this week, can pack as much as a 12-core/16-thread Intel processor with Iris Xe graphics into a 3.5-inch form factor. The diminutive system is aimed at machine-vision applications and can be configured with your choice of Intel silicon including Celeron, or Core i3, i5, or a choice of 10 or 12-core i7 processors. As with other SBCs we've seen from Aaeon and others, the processors aren't socketed so you won't be upgrading later. This device is pretty much aimed at embedded and industrial use, mind. All five SKUs are powered by Intel's current-gen Alder Lake mobile processor family, including a somewhat unusual 5-core Celeron processor that pairs a single performance core with four efficiency cores. However, only the i5 and i7 SKUs come equipped with Intel's Iris Xe integrated graphics. The i3 and Celeron are stuck on UHD graphics. The board can be equipped with up to 64GB of DDR5 memory operating at up to 4800 megatransfers/sec by way of a pair of SODIMM modules. For I/O the board features a nice set of connectivity including a pair of NICs operating at 2.5 Gbit/sec and 1 Gbit/sec, HDMI 2.1 and Display Port 1.4, three 10Gbit/sec-capable USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, and a single USB-C port that supports up to 15W of power delivery and display out. For those looking for additional connectivity for their embedded applications, the system also features a plethora of pin headers for USB 2.0, display out, serial interfaces, and 8-bit GPIO. Storage is provided by your choice of a SATA 3.0 interface or a m.2 mSATA/NVMe SSD. Unlike Aaeon's Epic-TGH7 announced last month, the GENE-ADP6 is too small to accommodate a standard PCIe slot, but does feature a FPC connector, which the company says supports additional NVMe storage or external graphics by way of a 4x PCIe 4.0 interface.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today is Disney+ Day, and, as part of its perks, the company is offering Disney+ subscribers a new AR experience in conjunction with the short film "Remembering," starring and produced by "Captain Marvel" Brie Larson and directed and written by filmmaker Elijah Allan-Blitz. The eight-minute-long movie features a companion augmented reality app that allows users to scan their TV with an iOS device to watch an extension of the movie on the small screen. TechCrunch reports: In "Remembering," Larson plays a writer who forgets an idea she had when her phone rings and interrupts her thoughts. The writer's inner child -- played by the young actress Dusty Peak -- helps her recover her lost idea, which is represented as a flying and talking cluster of light, also voiced by Larson. The inner child lives in "The World of Imagination," a fantastical wonderland full of rainbows, shooting stars and dolphin-shaped clouds. The movie aims to spark a discussion about why it is essential to remember your younger self and all the creativity you once had. In doing so, it explores concepts like the origin of ideas and why adults can sometimes be reluctant to use their imaginations. In years past, Disney has created a number of AR experiences, but this is the first AR app that connects directly to content on the Disney+ platform, the company told TechCrunch. It's an experiment in seeing if AR can serve to enhance movie storytelling even when viewers are watching in their living rooms. The "Remembering" AR component itself is designed to bring "The World of Imagination" alive to viewers by having them engage with the film using their smartphones. [...] The AR app is only available on iOS devices. There are currently no confirmed plans for the app to become available on Android devices. Viewers aren't required to download the app to watch the film and can choose to have a passive viewing experience instead.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The ship that would have become the world's largest cruise liner has been scrapped before it ever had the chance to take its maiden voyage. Gizmodo reports: Global Dream II was slated to carry 9,000 passengers and was built by German-Hong Kong shipbuilding firm MV Werften to the tune of nearly $US1.4 ($2) billion, according to the Daily Mail. It was nearly finished when the company went bankrupt at the start of this year. Since that happened, no buyer has stepped up to buy the 20-deck, 341.99 m-long monstrosity. That means it's now destined for the scrap heap. The Mail says that Global Dream II also features an outdoor waterpark and a movie theatre. The capacity of this ship blows the second largest ship, the Oasis-class Wonder of the Sea which is owned and operated by Royal Caribbean, out of the water (I love a good pun). The Wonder of the Seas has a passenger capacity of only 6,988. Pathetic. Despite the $US1.4 ($2) billion put out to build this behemoth, the ship still needs about $US230,000,000 ($319,286,000) worth of work. Apparently, it is structurally complete, but equipment and passenger facilities still need to be finished. Eagle-eyed readers will have noted the "II" in the ship's name. Yes, there is a twin Global Dream, but it hasn't been given the ax... yet. The Mail reports that right now the two ships are being stored in a German shipyard in Wismar. However, that yard will soon be used to build military vessels. That means the Global Dreams have to be out of there by the end of next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from JURIST: The Australian parliament Thursday passed (PDF) new legislation pledging to reduce carbon emissions by 43 percent by the year 2030 and to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The laws mark the first Australian climate change legislation in over a decade and are the first substantial steps to combat climate change from the Australian Labor Party (ALP). ALP took power in May, defeating a conservative government that pulled back many of Australia's existing climate change measures. The new legislation requires government agencies to take emissions targets into account when creating their budgets, infrastructure or regulations. It also requires businesses to comply with new standards for energy usage, encouraging many businesses to embrace renewable energy. Chris Bowen, Minister for Climate Change and Energy, said (PDF) to Parliament, "today is a good day for our parliament and our country, and we're going to need many more of them." Bowen believes the legislation will help businesses, saying, "[l]egislating these [emissions] targets gives certainty to investors and participants in the energy market and will help stabilize our energy system." Bowen also hopes an annual climate statement to parliament will help improve accountability and transparency for the Australian people. "The passage of the climate change legislation sends a message to the world that Australia is serious about driving down emissions, and serious about reaping the economic opportunities from affordable renewable energy," added Bowen.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

San Francisco lawmakers have unanimously approved a measure calling for the decriminalization of psychedelics like psilocybin and ayahuasca. DoubleBlind Mag reports: The Board of Supervisors approved the measure, sponsored by Supervisors Dean Preston (D) and Hillary Ronen (D), on Wednesday. While it doesn't immediately enact changes to criminal justice policy in San Francisco, it urges police to deprioritize psychedelics as "amongst the lowest priority" for enforcement and requests that "City resources not be used for any investigation, detention, arrest, or prosecution arising out of alleged violations of state and federal law regarding the use of Entheogenic Plants listed on the Federally Controlled Substances Schedule 1 list." Decriminalize Nature San Francisco helped advance the resolution, which also implores city officials to "instruct" its state and federal lobbyists to push for psychedelics decriminalization in California and federally. The whereas section of the measure talks about emerging research that shows entheogenic substances have therapeutic potential to treat a wide range of mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance misuse disorder. It further notes that the "state legislature has already started the conversation around the decriminalization of personal possession of small amounts of seven psychedelic substances," in the form of a bill from Sen. Scott Wiener (D) that passed the Senate and several Assembly committees before being significantly scaled back in a final panel and ultimately pulled by the sponsor.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rolls-Royce has ended its involvement in a project by Boom Supersonic to develop a faster-than-sound passenger airliner, leaving unclear the powerplant options available to Boom. FlightGlobal reports: "We are appreciative of Rolls-Royce's work over the last few years, but it became clear that Rolls' proposed engine design and legacy business model is not the best option for Overture's future airline operators or passengers," Boom said on 7 September. "Later this year, we will announce our selected engine partner and our transformational approach for reliable, cost-effective and sustainable supersonic flight." Earlier in the day, news broke that R-R had backed out of the Boom project. "We've completed our contract with Boom and delivered various engineering studies for their Overture supersonic program," the UK engine manufacturer says. "After careful consideration, Rolls-Royce has determined that the commercial aviation supersonic market is not currently a priority for us and, therefore, will not pursue further work on the program at this time. It has been a pleasure to work with the Boom team and we wish them every success in the future." Boom, with offices in Denver, has been developing a supersonic aircraft called Overture that it says will carry up to 80 passengers and cruise at Mach 1.7. It initially intended for Overture to have two engines, but recently changed to a four-engined design. The company has been targeting first flight of Overture in 2026 and first delivery in 2029. "Overture remains on track to carry passengers in 2029, and we are looking forward to making our engine announcement later this year," Boom says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The state of Virginia has over a third of America's hyperscale datacenter capacity, and this amounts to more than the entire capacity of China or the whole of Europe, highlighting just how much infrastructure is concentrated along the so-called Datacenter Alley. The Register reports: These figures come from Synergy Research Group, which said that the US accounts for 53 percent of global hyperscale datacenter capacity, as measured by critical IT load, at the end of the second quarter of 2022. The remainder is relatively evenly split between China, Europe, and the rest of the world. While few would be surprised at the US accounting for the lion's share of datacenter capacity, the fact that so much is concentrated in one state could raise a few eyebrows, especially when it is centered on a small number of counties in Northern Virginia -- typically Loudoun, Prince William, and Fairfax -- which make up Datacenter Alley. "Hyperscale operators take a lot of factors into account when deciding where to locate their datacenter infrastructure," said Synergy chief analyst John Dinsdale. "This includes availability of suitable real estate, cost and availability of power supply options, proximity to customers, the risk of natural disasters, local incentives and approvals processes, the ease of doing business and internal business dynamics, and this has inevitably led to some hyperscale hot spots." Amazon in particular locates a large amount of its datacenter infrastructure in Northern Virginia, with Microsoft, Facebook, Google, ByteDance, and others also having a major presence, according to Synergy. The big three cloud providers -- Amazon, Microsoft and Google -- have the broadest hyperscale bit barn footprint, with each of these having over 130 datacenters of the 800 or so around the globe. When measured in datacenter capacity, the leading companies are Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Alibaba and Tencent, according to Synergy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: AI image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney have become an especially buzzy topic lately, and it's easy to see why. Using machine learning models trained on billions of images, the systems tap into the allure of the black box, creating works that feel both alien and strangely familiar. Naturally, this makes fertile ground for all sorts of AI urban legends, since nobody can really explain how the complex neural networks are ultimately deciding on the images they create. The latest example comes from an AI artist named Supercomposite, who posted disturbing and grotesque generated images of a woman who seems to appear in response to certain queries. The woman, whom the artist calls "Loab," was first discovered as a result of a technique called "negative prompt weights," in which a user tries to get the AI system to generate the opposite of whatever they type into the prompt. To put it simply, different terms can be "weighted" in the dataset to determine how likely they will be to appear in the results. But by assigning the prompt a negative weight, you essentially tell the AI system, "Generate what you think is the opposite of this prompt." In this case, using a negative-weight prompt on the word "Brando" generated the image of a logo featuring a city skyline and the words "DIGITA PNTICS." When Supercomposite used the negative weights technique on the words in the logo, Loab appeared. "Since Loab was discovered using negative prompt weights, her gestalt is made from a collection of traits that are equally far away from something," Supercomposite wrote in a thread on Twitter. "But her combined traits are still a cohesive concept for the AI, and almost all descendent images contain a recognizable Loab." The images quickly went viral on social media, leading to all kinds of speculation on what could be causing the unsettling phenomenon. Most disturbingly, Supercomposite claims that generated images derived from the original image of Loab almost universally veer into the realm of horror, graphic violence, and gore. But no matter how many variations were made, the images all seem to feature the same terrifying woman. "Through some kind of emergent statistical accident, something about this woman is adjacent to extremely gory and macabre imagery in the distribution of the AI's world knowledge," Supercomposite wrote. It's unclear which AI tools were used to generate the images, and Supercomposite declined to elaborate when reached via Twitter DM. "I can't confirm or deny which model it is for various reasons unfortunately! But I can confirm Loab exists in multiple image-generation AI models," Supercomposite told Motherboard.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The White House on Thursday outlined six principles to reform Big Tech platforms and said it was encouraged to see bipartisan interest in Congress to rein in major U.S. tech companies. Reuters reports: The six principles include promoting technology sector competition; adopting robust federal privacy protections, and tougher privacy and online protections for children; rescinding special legal protections for large tech platforms; increasing transparency about platforms' algorithms and content moderation decisions; and ending discriminatory algorithmic decision-making. "The rise of tech platforms has introduced new and difficult challenges," the White House said, "from the tragic acts of violence linked to toxic online cultures, to deteriorating mental health and wellbeing, to basic rights of Americans and communities worldwide suffering from the rise of tech platforms big and small." A group of bipartisan lawmakers has introduced antitrust legislation aimed at reining in the four tech giants -- Meta Platform's Facebook, Apple, Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com -- that would bar the companies from favoring their own businesses in search results and other ways. The lawmakers have said they believe they have the 60 Senate votes needed to move forward, but no vote has yet been scheduled. Further reading: Big Tech's $95 Million Spending Spree Leaves Antitrust Bill On Brink of DefeatRead more of this story at Slashdot.

When the world champion withdrew from a major tournament after a stunning loss, it ignited suspicions of foul play. Hans Moke Niemann, his opponent, denied any wrongdoing. Chaos ensued. The Wall Street Journal reports: Magnus Carlsen's 53-game unbeaten streak had been over for only a few hours when the reigning chess world champion made a move that indicated something was off. Carlsen had lost to 19-year-old American grandmaster Hans Moke Niemann at a prestigious tournament in St. Louis called the Sinquefield Cup when he announced, without explanation, that he was withdrawing from the whole event. The chess world was quick to read the tea leaves. "I think Magnus believes that Hans probably is cheating," said Hikaru Nakamura, an American grandmaster ranked No. 6 in the world, who added that the allegation remains "unproven." What has followed since Carlsen's exit is a supercharged scandal that is short on details and long on breathless speculation. Carlsen, the world's top player, has said nothing publicly other than a not-so-cryptic tweet in which famous soccer manager Jose Mourinho protests the result of a match by saying: "If I speak, I am in big trouble." A spokesperson for Carlsen didn't respond to a request for comment. Niemann forcefully denied ever cheating at over-the-board chess -- while also conceding that he has previously cheated online. Tournament organizers, meanwhile, instituted additional fair play protocols. But their security checks, including game screening of Niemann's play by one of the world's leading chess detectives, the University at Buffalo's Kenneth Regan, haven't found anything untoward. The controversy gained such momentum that top grandmasters are taking sides. In one camp are the chess professionals legitimizing the allegation and jumping to Carlsen's defense. In the other are the players who view the whole thing as a witch hunt. One competitor, Wesley So, said he could hardly sleep because of the drama. Another, Ian Nepomniachtchi, said that stamping out cheating completely would require extraordinary measures -- such as "playing naked in a locked room" to make sure no one was carrying any secret buzzers or other devices. "I don't see this happening," added Nepomniachtchi, who was Carlsen's last challenger for the World Chess Championship. The Russian had already expressed his surprise at Niemann's victory over Carlsen, calling it "more than impressive."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Princeton University said it will cover all expenses for most families making as much as $100,000 a year and slash costs for those that earn more. The Ivy League school, among the world's richest, is continuing its "national leadership in the area of financial aid as families across the income spectrum struggle with rising college costs," the New Jersey university said Thursday in a statement. Roughly 1,500 undergraduates, about 25% of the student body, will pay nothing for tuition, housing and food under the plan, Princeton said. Previously, families making $65,000 or less were eligible. The costs for students whose families earn as much as $150,000 annually will be cut by almost half, and a "$3,500 student contribution typically earned through summer savings and campus work will be eliminated," the university said. "The total cost to attend Princeton this year is $79,540," notes Bloomberg. "The school's endowment totaled $37.7 billion at the end of June 2021."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta Platforms has disbanded its Responsible Innovation team, which was once a prominent piece of its effort to address concerns about the potential downsides of its products. From a report: The team had included roughly two dozen engineers, ethicists and others who collaborated with internal product teams and outside privacy specialists, academics and users to identify and address potential concerns about new products and alterations to Facebook and Instagram. Meta spokesman Eric Porterfield said the company remains committed to the team's goals, and that most of its former members would continue similar work elsewhere at Meta, though they aren't guaranteed new jobs. He said the company believed its safe and ethical product design resources were better spent on more issue-specific teams. The team's demise comes at a tumultuous time for Meta, as it contends with a precipitous slowdown in its core digital-advertising business that has prompted it to slow hiring in recent months. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to overhaul a broad swath of the social-media giant's businesses, emphasizing initiatives that can help drive near-term growth or that fit with his longer-term emphasis on the metaverse, a loosely defined, more immersive version of the internet that he says is central to the company's future. As envisioned, according to past statements by the company and the team's leaders, the Responsible Innovation team was to have had a formative role in future company products, beginning with encouraging newly hired engineers in how to think about potential downsides to what they build and then consulting on the design of specific products.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

North Carolina-based developer Idrees Hassan loves Minecraft so much that he recently created a monospaced font for programming based on the typeface found in the wildly popular video game. The result, Monocraft, gives programmers the feel of being in Minecraft without using any assets from the game. From a report: "To be honest, I made this font because I thought it'd be fun to learn how fonts worked," Hassan told Ars. "Existing Minecraft fonts were missing a bunch of small details like proper kerning and pixel size, so I figured I should make my own. Once that was done, there was nothing stopping me from going overboard and turning it into a 'proper' programming font. Plus, now I can write Minecraft plugins in a Minecraft font!" To adapt the Minecraft font for development purposes, Hassan redesigned characters to look better in a monospaced format, added a few serifs to make letters such as "i" and "l" easier to distinguish, created new programming ligature characters, and refined the arrow characters to make them easier to read. (Ligature characters combine popular operational character strings such as "!=" into a single new character, but they aren't always popular with developers.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

smooth wombat writes: France has taken steps to outlaw so-called dark stores - city-centre food depots used for instant home deliveries ordered over the internet. Faced by growing protests from local people as well as city authorities, President Emmanuel Macron's government has decreed that the stores be classified as warehouses, rather than as shops - meaning that in Paris and other cities most will probably be forced to close. Run by half a dozen competing companies such as Gorillas, Cajoo, Getir, Flink and Gopuff, "dark stores" have proliferated in France as elsewhere over the last two years after Covid confinement popularised internet food shopping. Advertising in Paris urges householders to get their food delivered in less than 10 minutes - or "quicker than a double by Benzema," referring to the French football star. A campaign by Cajoo shows "Alex" doing his shopping by smartphone while sitting on the lavatory. But residents of buildings where "dark stores" have replaced pre-existing grocery shops are angry about noise from early morning lorries and the disruption caused by squads of deliverers on electric bicycles and scooters. City officials - who spent millions to safeguard the high street against out-of-town shopping centres - are worried that the new threat from "quick commerce" will drain life from public spaces and hasten the trend to an "atomised" society of solitary consumers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.