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The Washington Post profiles Lasso Loop, the startup behind "a hefty home appliance machine that automatically sorts and breaks down the recyclables you toss inside it," saying the company tackles "a flaw in our waste management systems that many people probably aren't aware of."As it turns out, much of the material we toss into our recycling bins doesn't actually ever get recycled. That's for a whole host of reasons: improperly cleaned materials can contaminate others that would have been recyclable otherwise, and some of the items people might just assume are recyclable — say, plastic cutlery — usually aren't. And ultimately, that means more trips to the landfill.... In its current form, the company's Lasso machine is bigger than a dishwasher but smaller than a fridge, though the team hopes to be able to squeeze the final model under your countertops. What's more interesting is the stuff inside: Lasso growth manager Dominique Leonard said the machine uses a smattering of sensors, cameras and AI to determine whether the stuff you've put inside it can be recycled. (Anything that doesn't pass muster, like certain kinds of plastic, are summarily rejected.) From there, the remaining plastic, glass and metal products are steam cleaned, broken apart — seriously — and stored separately in a series of bins based on type to prevent contamination.... [T]hat sophistication will come at a cost, especially at first. The Lasso team plans to sell its machine for $5,000 — or $3,500 with a prelaunch discount — to start, though it hopes incentives from local governments will help lighten the load on potential customers. The Post adds that Lasso is launching a pilot program with customers in the San Francisco Bay area next year, in which "owners are meant to schedule pickups from a smartphone app" (which summons Lasso subcontractors). The Post also profiled ClearDrop, a startup from Texas businessman Ivan Arbouzov that makes a trash can-sized compactor just for single-use plastic bags:You're meant to feed all of your soft plastics into a slot onto the top of the machine, and once it has had enough — Arbouzov said that usually takes around a month — the Minimizer heats and compresses the bags to form a slightly squishy brick. If your municipality is one of the rare ones that accepts soft plastics, you should be able to toss those bricks into your recycling bin. "If worse comes to worse, you can still take it to Walmart and put it in their box," said Arbouzov. In other words, you're meant to toss your (acceptable) plastics into both machines and move on with your life.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: To wit, the Nasdaq 100 just did something it hasn't done since the aftermath of the internet bubble: fall more than 1% in every session of a week. It doesn't count as a superlative because Monday was a holiday. But for investors caught up in the selloff, it felt like something shifted. A full week of big down days hasn't happened since the dot-com bubble burst, first in April 2000 and then in September 2001. Back then, the Nasdaq went on to fall another 28% before the market bottomed roughly a year later. The Nasdaq 100 tumbled 7.5% this week as what started as an aggressive selloff in speculative corners spread to the rest of the market. Disappointing results from pandemic darlings like Netflix accentuated investor angst that as the economy recovers, tech's growth edge is disappearing. Add that to stretched valuations and there was room for a pullback. Down almost 12% in January, the Nasdaq 100 is on course for its worst month since the 2008 global financial crisis. On any four-day basis, the current streak of 1% drops was the first since 2018. Investors appear to be paying up for near-term hedges as share prices spiraled down. The CBOE NDX Volatility Index, a gauge of cost options tied to the Nasdaq, jumped 8 points over the four days to 34.06, the highest level since last March. Whether this is the start of a bottoming process or something worse is hard to tell. In Bank of America Corp.'s latest survey of global fund managers, net allocation to the technology sector fell to the lowest level since 2008. "If there's this kind of liquidation underway here, you have to wonder how much further things could fall," said Pearkes at Bespoke. "On the other hand, this sort of pervasive negativity and selling is what contrarians look for as a sign sentiment has gotten carried away to the downside."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MIT, Brigham, and Women's Hospital researchers are working to eliminate many of the headaches associated with treating diabetes. According to Engadget, "They're developing all-in-one devices that measure glucose, calculate the necessary insulin dose and inject you accordingly." From the report: The first device includes the blood-drawing lancet, glucose test strips and an insulin needle. Users would first take a photo of their meal using a smartphone app to estimate the food volume and carbohydrate levels. After that, they'd start the automated process of collecting blood, calculating glucose (again through the app) and delivering the appropriate amount of insulin. The second gadget would only need one needle jab -- it would build the glucose sensor into the insulin needle and inject the appropriate amount of insulin. You'd have to wait five to ten seconds, but you wouldn't have to stick yourself twice. The technology is still some ways off. While the first device would use parts that were already FDA-approved, it hasn't been tested in humans. The second, meanwhile, uses a new sensor type that will likely require more work to be testable with humans. Scientists have filed patents for both devices and are hoping to work with companies on further development. There's a strong motivation to bring these devices to market, at least. People with diabetes would only need to use one device at meals, and with the hybrid sensor/needle might suffer less pain. That, in turn, could encourage consistent treatment that improves your overall wellbeing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2021, there was an upsurge in peculiar sightings reported, thanks to people with smartphones or other video gear that captured these strange glimmers in the sky. In 2022, UAP will get more attention from both the scientific community and the federal government, experts told Space.com. From the report: One potential major development in 2022 will be UFO detection, according to Mark Rodeghier, scientific director of the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago. "The effort to detect, track and measure the UFO phenomenon in the field, in real time, has recently entered a new phase," Rodeghier told Space.com. "The technology has gotten better, software tools have improved and the current interest in UFOs has attracted new, qualified professionals. "While one can't predict how soon we will gain new, fundamental knowledge about UAP/UFOs, I believe that these efforts are very likely to succeed and set UFO research onto a new foundation of reliable, physical data," Rodeghier added. "And as a consequence, we will have even more evidence -- as if it was needed -- that the UFO phenomenon is real and can be studied scientifically." One upcoming initiative, called the Galileo Project, will search for extraterrestrial equipment near Earth. It has two branches. The first aims to identify the nature of interstellar objects that do not resemble comets or asteroids -- like 'Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object to visit the solar system. The second branch targets UAP, similar to those of interest to the U.S. government. "The Galileo Project's data will be open to the public, and its scientific analysis will be transparent," said Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who is spearheading the project. "The related scientific findings would expand humanity's knowledge, with no attention to borders between nations." The Galileo research team includes more than 100 scientists who plan to assemble the project's first telescope system on the roof of the Harvard College Observatory in spring 2022. "The system will record continuous video and audio of the entire sky in the visible, infrared and radio bands, as well as track objects of interest," Loeb said. "Artificial intelligence algorithms will distinguish birds from drones, airplanes or something else. Once the first system will operate successfully, the Galileo Project will make copies of it and distribute them in many geographical locations." Currently, there is a lack of coordination among organizations involved in UAP detection equipment, but that may change this year, said Robert Powell, an executive board member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) in Austin, Texas. "I believe that will improve as we go into 2022," he said. A number of SCU members are involved with the Galileo Project, and the organization has partnered with several groups, including UFODATA, the UFO Data Acquisition Project (UFODAP) and UAPx. "UFODAP already has a working model that has been sold into the marketplace and is reasonably priced in the $2,000 to $5,000 range, depending on the accessories desired," Powell told Space.com. "This system has already been used by a group known as UAPx to collect data. Our goal is to coordinate these activities in a way such that we use a system with standardized equipment set to collect data." But before that happens, Powell said, the groups need to plot out exactly what that equipment is trying to measure and verify that the system can achieve that goal.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of legitimate WordPress add-ons downloaded from their original sources have been found backdoored through a supply chain attack, researchers said. The backdoor has been found on "quite a few" sites running the open source content management system. The backdoor gave the attackers full administrative control of websites that used at least 93 WordPress plugins and themes downloaded from AccessPress Themes. The backdoor was discovered by security researchers from JetPack, the maker of security software owned by Automatic, provider of the WordPress.com hosting service and a major contributor to the development of WordPress. In all, Jetpack found that 40 AccessPress themes and 53 plugins were affected. In a post published Thursday, Jetpack researcher Harald Eilertsen said timestamps and other evidence suggested the backdoors were introduced intentionally in a coordinated action after the themes and plugins were released. The affected software was available by download directly from the AccessPress Themes site. The same themes and plugins mirrored on WordPress.org, the official developer site for the WordPress project, remained clean. "Users who used software obtained directly from the AccessPress website unknowingly provided attackers with backdoor access, resulting in an unknown number of compromised websites," Ben Martin, a researcher with Web security firm Sucuri, wrote in a separate analysis of the backdoor. The Jetpack post said evidence indicates that the supply chain attack on AccessPress Themes was performed in September. Martin, however, said evidence suggests the backdoor itself is much older than that. Some of the infected websites had spam payloads dating back nearly three years. He said his best guess is that the people behind the backdoor were selling access to infected sites to people pushing web spam and malware. He wrote, "[...] it seems that the malware that we've found associated with this backdoor is more of the same: spam, and redirects to malware and scam sites." The Jetpack post provides full names and versions of the infected AccessPress software. Anyone running a WordPress site with this company's offerings should carefully inspect their systems to ensure they're not running a backdoored instance. Site owners may also want to consider installing a website firewall, many of which would have prevented the backdoor from working.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter NoMoreDupes shares a report from CoinDesk: The crypto market was in a sea of red on Friday as bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, tumbled more than 10% over the past 24 hours. It appears that global investors have entered the year with a reduced appetite for risk, and so the correlations between speculative assets such as cryptocurrencies and equities have increased, which results in widespread losses. Bitcoin is down roughly 40% from its all-time high of almost $69,000, while the S&P 500 is down about 7% from its peak, compared with a 10% drawdown in the Nasdaq 100 Index. Alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) led the way lower on Friday given their higher risk profile relative to bitcoin. Ether, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was down about 13% over the past 24 hours, compared with a 14% drop in AVAX and a 16% drop in FTM over the same period. Despite the losses, some analysts still foresee a short-term bounce. "We expect BTC to find a bid around the $35K mark, close to 50% from the top. In the short term, we can bounce to challenge the $45K-$50K zone, but the overall outlook remains bearish as liquidity remains tight," Pankaj Balani, CEO of Delta Exchange, a crypto derivatives trading platform, wrote in an email to CoinDesk.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Wednesday, Google announced that it is getting rid of the G Suite legacy free edition, "which allowed those that snuck in before 2012 to get free Google apps services tied to a custom domain rather than Gmail," reports Android Police. Since a lot of people will be left "in the lurch" after the shutdown, attorneys at Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith are opening an investigating into the matter for a potential class-action lawsuit. From the report: No lawsuit has been filed yet; the attorneys involved are just collecting information for a potential lawsuit in the future once all the facts are straight (and Google has had time to reconsider its actions). When we covered the original news of the legacy G Suite shutdown, it seemed unreasonable to us, because customers using those legacy accounts are unable to transfer purchases or things like grandfathered subscription discounts to new accounts. When we asked if moving purchases between accounts might be possible, a Google representative confirmed it wasn't. [...] That means years of purchases tied to Google Play -- potentially hundreds to thousands of dollars of assets like movie and music purchases for a given customer, across thousands of affected customers -- could be tied to broken accounts because of the transition. Google explicitly confirmed to us that was the case, though customers could elect to keep using their broken suspended account alongside a working one. In essence, everyone that migrated to one of these accounts while they were still offered (from 2006 at least until 2012, so far as I can tell) will have to pay extra money to keep their existing purchases tied to a fully working account, and we think that's pretty ridiculous.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After 17 years of relatively smooth sailing, NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has entered safe mode after detecting a "possible failure" in one of the six reaction wheels used to change attitude. Engadget reports: While it's not clear exactly what (if anything) went wrong, NASA has halted direction-based scientific observations until it can either give the all-clear or continue operations with five wheels. This is the first potential reaction wheel problem since the Swift Observatory began operations in February 2005, NASA said. The rest of the vehicle is otherwise working properly. The Swift Observatory has played an important role in astronomy over the past two decades. It was primarily built to detect gamma-ray bursts and detects roughly 70 per day. However, it has increasingly been used as a catch-all observer across multiple wavelengths, spotting solar flares and hard-to-find stars. NASA won't necessarily run into serious trouble if Swift has a lasting problem, but it would clearly benefit from keeping the spacecraft running as smoothly as possible.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A British-Belgian teenager became the youngest woman to fly solo around the world on Thursday and the first person to do so in a microlight plane after a five-month, five-continent odyssey in her Shark ultralight. Nineteen-year-old Zara Rutherford landed back at Kortrijk-Wevelgem Airport in Belgium after flying 51,000 km (32,000 miles) over 52 nations since her Aug. 18 departure in the world's fastest microlight aircraft. "It's just really crazy, I haven't quite processed it," Rutherford, smiling broadly and cloaked in British and Belgian flags, told reporters. After the penultimate leg to a German village on Wednesday, she said it was an exploit she would never repeat. After North and South America, Rutherford was stuck for a month in Alaska because of weather and visa delays. A winter storm forced another long stop in far eastern Russia, before she travelled to South Asia, the Middle East and back to Europe. Her favorite flyovers were New York and an active volcano in Iceland, but there were moments when she feared for her life, including her flight across Siberia's frozen wastes and a narrow escape from entering North Korean air space during bad weather. "They have been testing missiles with no warning," she said of her concerns as she considered cutting across the reclusive authoritarian state during a detour from Russia to South Korea. [...] To meet criteria for a round-the-world flight, Rutherford touched two points opposite each other on the globe: Jambi in Indonesia and Tumaco in Colombia. Rutherford took the record from Afghan-born American Shaesta Wais, who in 2017 became the youngest woman to fly solo around the world at 30. The youngest male record holder, American Mason Andrews, was 18 when he did it in 2018. She also became the first Belgian to circumnavigate the world solo in a single-engine aircraft, getting through the long days by shuffling through a 40-hour playlist of songs. [...] Rutherford dreams of being an astronaut and hopes her voyage will encourage women in science, technology and aviation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

nickwinlund77 shares a report from SciTechDaily: UNSW Sydney-led research paves the way for large silicon-based quantum processors for real-world manufacturing and application. Australian researchers have proven that near error-free quantum computing is possible, paving the way to build silicon-based quantum devices compatible with current semiconductor manufacturing technology. [...] [The researcher's] paper is one of three published today in Nature that independently confirm that robust, reliable quantum computing in silicon is now a reality. This breakthrough is featured on the front cover of the journal. [Professor Andrea Morello of UNSW, who led the work] et al achieved 1-qubit operation fidelities up to 99.95 percent, and 2-qubit fidelity of 99.37 percent with a three-qubit system comprising an electron and two phosphorous atoms, introduced in silicon via ion implantation. A Delft team in the Netherlands led by Lieven Vandersypen achieved 99.87 percent 1-qubit and 99.65 percent 2-qubit fidelities using electron spins in quantum dots formed in a stack of silicon and silicon-germanium alloy (Si/SiGe). A RIKEN team in Japan led by Seigo Tarucha similarly achieved 99.84 percent 1-qubit and 99.51 percent 2-qubit fidelities in a two-electron system using Si/SiGe quantum dots. The UNSW and Delft teams certified the performance of their quantum processors using a sophisticated method called gate set tomography, developed at Sandia National Laboratories in the U.S. and made openly available to the research community. Morello had previously demonstrated that he could preserve quantum information in silicon for 35 seconds, due to the extreme isolation of nuclear spins from their environment. But the trade-off was that isolating the qubits made it seemingly impossible for them to interact with each other, as necessary to perform actual computations. Today's paper describes how his team overcame this problem by using an electron encompassing two nuclei of phosphorus atoms. The three papers from the UNSW team, Delft team and RIKEN group in Tokyo can be found at their respective links.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Reserve on Thursday released its long-awaited study of a digital dollar, exploring the pros and cons of the much-debated issue and soliciting public comment. CNBC reports: Billed as "the first step in a public discussion between the Federal Reserve and stakeholders about central bank digital currencies," the 40-page paper (PDF) shies away from any conclusions about a central bank digital currency, or CBDC. The report originally was expected in the summer of 2021 but had been delayed. Instead, it provides an exhaustive look at benefits such as speeding up the electronic payments system at a time when financial transactions around the world already are highly digitized. Some of the downside issues the report discusses are financial stability risks and privacy protection while guarding against fraud and other illegal issues. "A CBDC could fundamentally change the structure of the U.S. financial system, altering the roles and responsibilities of the private sector and the central bank," the report says. One primary difference between the Fed's dollar and other digital transactions is that current digital money is a liability of commercial banks, whereas the CBDC would be a Fed liability. Among other things, that would mean the Fed wouldn't pay interest on money stored with it, though because it is riskless some depositors may prefer to keep their money with the central bank. The paper lists a checklist of 22 different items for which it is soliciting public feedback. There will be a 120-day comment period. Fed officials say the report is the first step in an extensive process but there is no timetable on when it will be wrapped up. The paper released Thursday notes that the Fed's "initial analysis suggests that a potential U.S. CBDC, if one were created, would best serve the needs of the United States by being privacy-protected, intermediated, widely transferable, and identity-verified." However, the report also states that it "is not intended to advance a specific policy outcome and takes no position on the ultimate desirability of" the digital dollar. The report notes that the speed of the project is not a top priority. Instead, the authors of the report are focused on getting it right. "The introduction of a CBDC would represent a highly significant innovation in American money," the report says. "Accordingly, broad consultation with the general public and key stakeholders is essential. This paper is the first step in such a conversation." The Fed also said that it will not proceed without a clear mandate from Congress, preferably in the form of "a specific authorizing law."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The FAA has announced that an "estimated 78 percent of the U.S. commercial fleet" have been cleared to land at airports with 5G C-band, even under low-visibility conditions. The Verge reports: The agency's statement comes after a week of controversy surrounding the rollout of AT&T and Verizon's upgraded cellular tech, which saw US airlines warning of "catastrophic disruption" to travel and shipping and some international airlines announcing they'd halt flights to some US airports. At issue are concerns that some radio altimeters won't properly ignore signals from the new 5G transmitters. While there are precautions that should keep this from happening, including creating buffer zones around airports, an incorrect altimeter reading could cause real problems during a low-visibility landing. Given the high stakes, the FAA has said that only planes with altimeters that it has tested and cleared will be allowed to land in sub-optimal conditions at airports where the new 5G tech has rolled out. [...] On January 16th, the agency announced that it had cleared two altimeters, which it bumped up to five on Wednesday. It said the cleared altimeters were installed in "some" versions of planes like the Boeing 737, 747, and 777. The FAA changed that language on Thursday, saying that the 13 cleared altimeters should cover "all" Boeing 717, 737, 747, 757, 767, 777, 787, MD-10/-11, and Airbus A300, A310, A319, A320, A330, A340, A350, and A380 models. It also notes that "some" Embraer 170 and 190 regional jets are covered. The FAA is still predicting that some altimeters won't pass the test and will be "too susceptible to 5G interference." Planes equipped with those models won't be allowed to land at airports with the new 5G tech in low-visibility conditions -- which could prevent airlines from scheduling any flights using those planes to airports of concern, given the unpredictability of weather and the disruption such a diversion would cause.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: With its $68.7 billion acquisition of mammoth embattled video game publisher Activision Blizzard, Microsoft will be taking on a lot. It will be absorbing a company criticized by its employees for its workplace culture, one that is embroiled in lawsuits alleging gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment. Microsoft will also be taking on game development studios that have inched closer to unionization over the past several months. But it will also be adding an element that newly minted CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer sees as core to Microsoft's strategy for consumer acquisition: a slew of video games and long-abandoned franchises. The games created by Activision Blizzard's developers provide the centerpiece of Microsoft's strategic thinking around the acquisition. The titles are some of the most popular in the world. And those Activision Blizzard properties extend well beyond Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush. In discussing some of the intellectual properties owned by Activision Blizzard, Spencer's excitement may have mirrored the enthusiasm of a "StarCraft" player noticing the long-dormant franchise's logo in Microsoft's acquisition announcement. "I was looking at the IP list, I mean, let's go!" Spencer said. " 'King's Quest,' 'Guitar Hero,' I should know this but I think they got 'HeXen.' " "HeXen," indeed an Activision Blizzard property, is a cult hit first-person game about using magic spells. Microsoft's pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard also means owning the rights to many creations from gaming's past, including Crash Bandicoot, the original Sony PlayStation mascot. There's also the influential and popular Tony Hawk skateboard series and beloved characters like Spyro the Dragon. Toys for Bob, one of the studios working under the Activision Blizzard banner, successfully launched games like "Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time," but was later folded into supporting Call of Duty games. Spencer said the Xbox team will talk with developers about working on a variety of franchises from the Activision Blizzard vaults. "We're hoping that we'll be able to work with them when the deal closes to make sure we have resources to work on franchises that I love from my childhood, and that the teams really want to get," Spencer said. "I'm looking forward to these conversations. I really think it's about adding resources and increasing capability." Spencer said he's concerned about tech companies unfamiliar with the gaming industry barging in to the space, as opposed to the current, experienced competition against Nintendo and Sony. "They have a long history in video games," he said. "Nintendo's not going to do anything that damages gaming in the long run because that's the business they're in. Sony is the same and I trust them. [...] Valve's the same way. When we look at the other big tech competitors for Microsoft: Google has search and Chrome, Amazon has shopping, Facebook has social, all these large-scale consumer businesses. [...] The discussion we've had internally, where those things are important to those other tech companies for how many consumers they reach, gaming can be that for us." He added: "I think we do have a unique point of view, which is not about how everything has to run on a single device or platform. That's been the real turning point for us looking at gaming as a consumer opportunity that could have similar impact on Microsoft that some of those other scale consumer businesses do for other big tech competitors. And it's been great to see the support we've had from the company and the board."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google has hired former PayPal executive Arnold Goldberg to run its payments division and set a new course for the business after it scrapped a push into banking. Bloomberg reports: The move is part of a broader strategy to team up with a wider range of financial services, including cryptocurrencies, said Bill Ready, Google's president of commerce. The business, known for the Google Pay system and mobile wallet, has largely avoided the crypto industry. The changes follow a major turnabout in October. Google had spent years planning a digital checking and savings service, lining up 11 banking partners for the launch. But that month the company nixed the proposed offering, called Plex. Instead, Google wants to become the connective tissue for the entire consumer finance industry, not just certain partners, according to Ready. "We're not a bank -- we have no intention of being a bank," Ready said in an interview. "Some past efforts, at times, would unwittingly wade into those spaces." Tom Noyes, an industry analyst, estimated in 2020 that Google accounted for 4% of contactless payments in the U.S., calling the service "largely a failure." As part of the overhaul, Google will focus more on being a "comprehensive digital wallet" that includes digital tickets, airline passes and vaccine passports, Ready said. He didn't provide an update on the current number of Google Pay users. The company is integrating payments more tightly with Google's shopping efforts, such as a feature that shows consumer loyalty cards and personal discounts directly in search results. Google also is trying to position itself as more welcoming to merchants than Amazon. In 2020, Google eliminated fees for retailers selling on its shopping service. Tiptoeing into crypto also could help Google entice users. Google has partnered with companies, including Coinbase and BitPay, to store crypto assets in digital cards, while still having users pay in traditional currencies. Ready said Google is looking to do more of these partnership, though the company still isn't accepting crypto for transactions. "Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to," he said. "As user demand and merchant demand evolves, we'll evolve with it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to the Financial Times, Meta is developing ways to create, display and sell NFTs on Facebook and Instagram. TechCrunch reports: The company's Novi wallet technology would power much of the "supporting functionality," one tipster said. Instagram is reportedly testing a way to showcase NFTs, while Meta is also said to be discussing a marketplace that would help you buy or sell these digital collectibles. The company has already declined to comment, and the sources cautioned the effort was still early and could change.However, Instagram leader Adam Mosseri said in December that his social network was "actively exploring" NFTs. The technology is on the company's mind, at least. Twitter appears to have beat Meta to the chase. According to Engadget, the social media company is testing a new feature that allows NFT owners to authenticate NFTs displayed in their profile photos. It's currently only available for Twitter Blue subscribers, but the authentication symbol will be visible to everyone on Twitter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: An initial CIA investigation into the mysterious set of symptoms known as Havana syndrome has found that it is unlikely to be the result of a worldwide campaign of attacks by a foreign power against US diplomats and spies. However, two dozen cases, including some of those originally afflicted in Havana in 2016, could not be explained and would be further studied for evidence of a possible attack, according to a senior CIA official who briefed the US press. "While we have reached some significant interim findings, we are not done," the CIA director, Williams Burns, said in a statement. "We will continue the mission to investigate these incidents and provide access to world-class care for those who need it." Since the original outbreak of the symptoms, which include hearing strange sounds, dizziness, loss of balance, nausea and memory loss, more than 1,000 cases have been studied around the world. The interim findings of a CIA investigation have found that the majority of cases could probably be attributed to a pre-existing medical condition, or environmental factors, or stress, the senior official said. The defense department and an independent panel of experts are conducting their own investigations which have yet to publish reports. A Havana syndrome victims support group said in a statement: "The decision to release the report now and with this particular set of 'findings' seems a breach of faith, and an undermining of the intent of Congress and the president to stand with us and reach a government-wide consensus as to what is behind this," a Havana syndrome victims group said in a statement. "This report was neither cleared nor coordinated through the interagency and must stand as the assessment of one agency [CIA] alone."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Following through on a plan he announced before he took office, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Thursday that his first paycheck, which arrives on Friday, will be converted from US dollars into cryptocurrency. The transaction will take place on Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, and will convert Adams' pay into Bitcoin and Ethereum. From a report: "New York is the center of the world, and we want it to be the center of cryptocurrency and other financial innovations," Adams said in a statement. "Being on the forefront of such innovation will help us create jobs, improve our economy, and continue to be a magnet for talent from all over the globe."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved the antitrust bill aimed at Apple, Meta Platforms, Amazon and Alphabet's Google, bringing the measure one step closer to consideration by the full Senate. From a report: The bill, S. 2992, sponsored by Senators Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley, would prohibit companies from giving an advantage to their own products on their platforms. Smaller competitors have said these so-called gatekeeper companies use unfair business practices to maintain their dominance. The affected companies warn that the legislation would hurt U.S. innovation by giving an advantage to foreign competitors, would risk user privacy and security and would damage products enjoyed by consumers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Good poker players have always known that they need to maintain a balance between bluffing and playing it straight. Now they can do so perfectly. From a report: One of the earliest and most devoted adopters of what has come to be known as "game theory optimal" poker is Seth Davies's friend and poker mentor, Jason Koon. On the second day of the three-day Super High Roller tournament, I visited Koon at his multimillion-dollar house, located in a gated community inside a larger gated community next to a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course. On Day 1, Koon paid $250,000 to play the Super High Roller, then a second $250,000 after he was knocked out four hours in, but again he lost all his chips. "Welcome to the world of nosebleed tourneys," he texted me afterward. "Just have to play your best -- it evens out." For Koon, evening out has taken the form of more than $30 million in in-person tournament winnings (and, he says, at least as much from high-stakes cash games in Las Vegas and Macau, the Asian gambling mecca). Koon began playing poker seriously in 2006 while rehabbing an injury at West Virginia Wesleyan College, where he was a sprinter on the track team. He made a good living from cards, but he struggled to win consistently in the highest-stakes games. "I was a pretty mediocre player pre-solver," he says, "but the second solvers came out, I just buried myself in this thing, and I started to improve like rapidly, rapidly, rapidly, rapidly." In a home office decorated mostly with trophies from poker tournaments he has won, Koon turned to his computer and pulled up a hand on PioSOLVER. After specifying the size of the players' chip stacks and the range of hands they would play from their particular seats at the table, he entered a random three-card flop that both players would see. A 13-by-13 grid illustrated all the possible hands one of the players could hold. Koon hovered his mouse over the square for an ace and queen of different suits. The solver indicated that Koon should check 39 percent of the time; make a bet equivalent to 30 percent the size of the pot 51 percent of the time; and bet 70 percent of the pot the rest of the time. This von Neumann-esque mixed strategy would simultaneously maximize his profit and disguise the strength of his hand. Thanks to tools like PioSOLVER, Koon has remade his approach to the game, learning what size bets work best in different situations. Sometimes tiny ones, one-fifth or even one-tenth the size of the pot, are ideal; other times, giant bets two or three times the size of the pot are correct. And, while good poker players have always known that they need to maintain a balance between bluffing and playing it straight, solvers define the precise frequency with which Koon should employ one tactic or the other and identify the (sometimes surprising) best and worst hands to bluff with, depending on the cards in play.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

First, Amazon competed with malls. Now, it's moving inside one. From a report: The online retailing giant said Thursday that it plans to open a clothing store in a Southern California mall later this year. It's the latest foray into brick-and-mortar for Amazon, which already sells more than 10% of all clothes in the U.S. The store, which will sell women's and men's clothing as well as shoes and other accessories, will open at Americana at Brand, a mall in Glendale, California. The entry into malls could become another threat to traditional clothing sellers because of the data and shopper insights Amazon may gain, experts say. Amazon says its algorithms will spit out real-time recommendations as shoppers keep scanning items that they see. Shoppers can also fill out an online survey of their preferences for style and fit. The store will be about 30,000 square feet, similar in size to a Kohl's, but about one-third the size of other department stores like Macy's. However, it will offer more than double the number of styles as traditional stores do because only one of each piece of clothing will be on display, with the rest in the back room. Items are chosen by Amazon curators who also use feedback provided by millions of customers shopping on Amazon.com.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

London's mayor says he needs to charge drivers a "small" daily fee of up to 2 pound ($2.73) for "all but the cleanest vehicles" to help hit climate change targets. From a report: The road pricing proposal is part of a push by Sadiq Khan to encourage people towards public transport, walking, cycling or electric vehicles. The RAC called the plan "poorly timed" with cleaner vehicles being "too expensive for most people." Longer term, Mr Khan says he needs to bring in a pay-per-mile system. He is also considering charging drivers from outside the capital who wish to travel into Greater London, widening out the current charging zone. Mr Khan said he was "not willing to put off action."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NGOs looking to provide emergency aid to Afghanistan are turning to cryptocurrency. From a report: When the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August of last year, Fereshteh Forough feared that the group would close her school in Herat, the country's third-largest city. Code to Inspire, an NGO Forough founded, was teaching computer programming to young Afghan women, and the Taliban oppose secondary education for women. Months later, the picture is much different -- and worse -- from what Forough imagined. The school survived, becoming mostly virtual, but has transformed from a coding boot camp into a relief organization. The biggest risk for Forough's students wasn't lack of education, it was hunger. Forough looked for a way to provide emergency checks to the women but was stymied by banks that don't want to risk violating severe U.S. sanctions. JPMorgan Chase repeatedly blocked her attempts to transfer money, she said, and she grew increasingly alarmed by students who said they couldn't access cash at local Afghan banks -- many of which have closed or imposed strict withdrawal limits. In response, she turned to cryptocurrency to provide monthly emergency payments to help students afford enough food to survive. [...] There are several advantages to using crypto: Afghans fleeing the Taliban can take their assets with them without risk. Humanitarian agencies seeking to bypass banks and discreetly avoid the Taliban can provide cash directly to those in need. Smugglers and intermediaries who may steal or try to resell aid packages can be circumvented if aid is given directly through a digital transaction.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta may be the loudest company building AR and VR hardware. Microsoft has HoloLens. Apple is working on something, too. But don't count out Google. The Verge: The search giant has recently begun ramping up work on an AR headset, internally codenamed Project Iris, that it hopes to ship in 2024, according to two people familiar with the project who requested anonymity to speak without the company's permission. Like forthcoming headsets from Meta and Apple, Google's device uses outward-facing cameras to blend computer graphics with a video feed of the real world, creating a more immersive, mixed reality experience than existing AR glasses from the likes of Snap and Magic Leap. Early prototypes being developed at a facility in the San Francisco Bay Area resemble a pair of ski goggles and don't require a tethered connection to an external power source. Google's headset is still early in development without a clearly defined go-to-market strategy, which indicates that the 2024 target year may be more aspirational than set in stone. The hardware is powered by a custom Google processor, like its newest Google Pixel smartphone, and runs on Android, though recent job listings indicate that a unique OS is in the works. Given power constraints, Google's strategy is to use its data centers to remotely render some graphics and beam them into the headset via an internet connection. I'm told that the Pixel team is involved in some of the hardware pieces, but it's unclear if the headset will ultimately be Pixel-branded.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony said Thursday that it expected Microsoft to ensure that games from Activision Blizzard are available on non-Microsoft videogame platforms if Microsoft completes its proposed acquisition of Activision. From a report: "We expect that Microsoft will abide by contractual agreements and continue to ensure Activision games are multiplatform," a Sony spokesman said Thursday. Activision supplies some of the most popular games for Sony's PlayStation game console, including the Call of Duty series. After Microsoft on Tuesday announced its acquisition plan, some analysts raised the possibility that Activision games might be available exclusively for Microsoft's own Xbox console and its subscription videogame services in the future.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elon Musk's brain implant company Neuralink is now hiring a clinical trial director, an indication that the company's longstanding goal of implanting chips in human brains is coming closer. Bloomberg: The trial director position would oversee the startup's long-promised human trials of its medical device, according to the listing. Neuralink's brain implant -- which Musk has said already allows monkeys to play video games with their thoughts alone -- is intended to help treat a variety of neurological disorders, such as paralysis. The job description for the position, based in Fremont, California, promises that the applicant will "work closely with some of the most innovative doctors and top engineers" as well as with "Neuralink's first Clinical Trial participants." It also indicates that the job will mean leading and building "the team responsible for enabling Neuralink's clinical research activities," as well as adhering to regulations. Last month, Musk told the Wall Street Journal that Neuralink hoped to implant its device in human brains sometime in 2022.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russia must ban cryptocurrencies, the country's central bank said in a report released Thursday. From a report: The report, "Cryptocurrencies: trends, risks, measures," was presented during an online press conference with Elizaveta Danilova, the director of the Bank of Russia's Financial Stability Department. The report says cryptocurrencies are volatile and widely used in illegal activities such as fraud. By offering an outlet for people to take their money out of the national economy, they risk undermining it and making the regulator's job of maintaining optimal monetary policies harder, the report says. The bank, therefore, suggest Russia needs new laws and regulations that effectively ban any crypto-related activities in the country. In particular, cryptocurrency issuance and organization of its circulation in Russia must be banned. The ban should apply to exchanges, over-the-counter trading desks and peer-to-peer platforms. An existing ban on using crypto for payments should be reinforced, and punishment should be introduced for buying or selling goods, services and labor by Russian individuals and businesses, the report suggests.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A cyberattack targeting a contractor working for the International Committee of the Red Cross has spilled confidential data on more than 515,000 "highly vulnerable" people, many of whom have been separated from their families due to conflict, migration and disaster. From a report: The Red Cross did not name the contractor, based in Switzerland, which it uses to store data nor say what led to the security incident, but said that the data comes from at least 60 Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies. In a statement, the international organization pleaded with the attackers not to publicly share or leak the information given the sensitivity of the data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is forming a group dedicated to the blockchain and related technologies under a newly appointed executive who has spent more than a decade on the company's core business of search advertising. From a report: Shivakumar Venkataraman, an engineering vice president for Alphabet's Google, is now running a unit focused on "blockchain and other next-gen distributed computing and data storage technologies," according to an email viewed by Bloomberg News. The executive will become a "founding leader" of Labs, a business division in which Google houses its various virtual and augmented reality efforts, according to the email.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Antimicrobial resistance poses a significant threat to humanity, health leaders have warned, as a study reveals it has become a leading cause of death worldwide and is killing about 3,500 people every day. More than 1.2 million -- and potentially millions more -- died in 2019 as a direct result of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, according to the most comprehensive estimate to date of the global impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The stark analysis covering more than 200 countries and territories was published in the Lancet. It says AMR is killing more people than HIV/Aids or malaria. Many hundreds of thousands of deaths are occurring due to common, previously treatable infections, the study says, because bacteria that cause them have become resistant to treatment. The new Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (Gram) report estimates deaths linked to 23 pathogens and 88 pathogen-drug combinations across 204 countries and territories in 2019. Statistical modeling was used to produce estimates of the impact of AMR in all locations -- including those with no data -- using more than 470m individual records obtained from systematic literature reviews, hospital systems, surveillance systems, and other data sources. The analysis shows AMR was directly responsible for an estimated 1.27 million deaths worldwide, and associated with an estimated 4.95 million deaths, in 2019. HIV/Aids and malaria have been estimated to have caused 860,000 and 640,000 deaths, respectively, in 2019. While AMR poses a threat to people of all ages, young children were found to be at particularly high risk, with one in five deaths attributable to AMR occurring in children under the age of five. Some of the actions policymakers can take, as mentioned in the report, include "optimizing the use of existing antibiotics, taking greater action to monitor and control infections, and providing more funding to develop new antibiotics and treatments."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Red Cross has disclosed that it was the victim of a cyber attack and has asked the hackers who broke into the IT network of one of its contractors not to leak the personal information of more than 515,000 of "highly vulnerable people." The Record reports: The data was stolen from a Red Cross program called Restoring Family Links, which aims to reunite family members separated by conflict, disaster, or migration. "While we don't know who is responsible for this attack, or why they carried it out, we do have this appeal to make to them," said Robert Mardini, director-general for the International Committee of the Red Cross. "Your actions could potentially cause yet more harm and pain to those who have already endured untold suffering. The real people, the real families behind the information you now have are among the world's least powerful. Please do the right thing. Do not share, sell, leak or otherwise use this data," Mardini said. "While we don't know who is responsible for this attack, or why they carried it out, we do have this appeal to make to them," said Robert Mardini, director-general for the International Committee of the Red Cross. "Your actions could potentially cause yet more harm and pain to those who have already endured untold suffering. The real people, the real families behind the information you now have are among the world's least powerful. Please do the right thing. Do not share, sell, leak or otherwise use this data," Mardini said. "The people affected include missing people and their families, unaccompanied or separated children, detainees and other people receiving services from the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement as a result of armed conflict, natural disasters or migration," the organization said in an email.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A quick and pain-free scan of the human eyeball could one day help doctors identify "fast agers," who are at greater risk of early mortality. ScienceAlert reports: A machine learning model has now been taught to predict a person's years of life simply by looking at their retina, which is the tissue at the back of the eye. The algorithm is so accurate, it could predict the age of nearly 47,000 middle-aged and elderly adults in the United Kingdom within a bracket of 3.5 years. Just over a decade after these retinas were scanned, 1,871 individuals had died, and those who had older-looking retinas were more likely to fall in this group. For instance, if the algorithm predicted a person's retina was a year older than their actual age, their risk of death from any cause in the next 11 years went up by 2 percent. At the same time, their risk of death from a cause other than cardiovascular disease or cancer went up by 3 percent. The findings are purely observational, which means we still don't know what is driving this relationship at a biological level. Nevertheless, the results support growing evidence that the retina is highly sensitive to the damages of aging. Because this visible tissue hosts both blood vessels and nerves, it could tell us important information about an individual's vascular and brain health. The study was published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The Royal Society is the UK's national academy of sciences. On Wednesday, it published a report on what it calls the "online information environment," challenging some key assumptions behind the movement to de-platform conspiracy theorists spreading hoax info on topics like climate change, 5G, and the coronavirus. Based on literature reviews, workshops and roundtables with academic experts and fact-checking groups, and two surveys in the UK, the Royal Society reached several conclusions. The first is that while online misinformation is rampant, its influence may be exaggerated, at least as far as the UK goes: "the vast majority of respondents believe the COVID-19 vaccines are safe, that human activity is responsible for climate change, and that 5G technology is not harmful." The second is that the impact of so-called echo chambers may be similarly exaggerated and there's little evidence to support the "filter bubble" hypothesis (basically, algorithm-fueled extremist rabbit holes). The researchers also highlighted that many debates about what constitutes misinformation are rooted in disputes within the scientific community and that the anti-vax movement is far broader than any one set of beliefs or motivations. One of the main takeaways: The government and social media companies should not rely on "constant removal" of misleading content [because it is] not a "solution to online scientific misinformation." It also warns that if conspiracy theorists are driven out of places like Facebook, they could retreat into parts of the web where they are unreachable. Importantly, the report makes a distinction between removing scientific misinformation and other content like hate speech or illegal media, where removals may be more effective: "... Whilst this approach may be effective and essential for illegal content (eg hate speech, terrorist content, child sexual abuse material) there is little evidence to support the effectiveness of this approach for scientific misinformation, and approaches to addressing the amplification of misinformation may be more effective. In addition, demonstrating a causal link between online misinformation and offline harm is difficult to achieve, and there is a risk that content removal may cause more harm than good by driving misinformation content (and people who may act upon it) towards harder-to-address corners of the internet." Instead of removal, the Royal Society researchers advocate developing what they call "collective resilience." Pushing back on scientific disinformation may be more effective via other tactics, such as demonetization, systems to prevent amplification of such content, and fact-checking labels. The report encourages the UK government to continue fighting back against scientific misinformation but to emphasize society-wide harms that may arise from issues like climate change rather than the potential risk to individuals for taking the bait. Other strategies the Royal Society suggests are continuing the development of independent, well-financed fact-checking organizations; fighting misinformation "beyond high-risk, high-reach social media platforms"; and promoting transparency and collaboration between platforms and scientists. Finally, the report mentions that regulating recommendation algorithms may be effective.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A YouTuber and former Olympic snowboarder has been accused of crashing his plane on purpose for clicks, and the FAA has opened an investigation to get to the bottom of the growing mess. The Drive reports: Trevor Jacob has been the subject of online criticism after posting a YouTube video where he parachuted from a Taylorcraft BL64 plane and filmed it crashing into the hills of the Los Padres National Forest near Cuyama, California. The video outlined his newly-purchased Taylorcraft's final flight on Nov. 24, 2021, a trip from the Lompoc City Airport in Santa Barbara to Mammoth Lakes where he planned to partake in some general adventuring like paragliding and snowboarding. [If Nov. 24 rings a familiar bell in your head, that's the same day that D.B. Cooper famously jumped from a hijacked plane with $200,000 in ransom 50 years prior.] Jacob also mentioned that he would be spreading the ashes of his friend Johnny Strange during the flight. Strange was killed in a wingsuit accident in 2015 and Jacob explains that he loved the Sierra Nevada Mountains. During the flight, however, the Taylorcraft's engine supposedly lost power, stalled, and could not be restarted. Jacob then points the plane nose-down and exits, sending the unoccupied aircraft into the ground. Jacob continued to film himself as he descended and proclaimed, "This is why I always fly with a parachute." He then trekked back to the wreckage and hiked until a farmer, who he credits with saving his life, found him in the darkness. This is where things started to go south. The video of the incident was posted to YouTube where it immediately began racking up views. The aviation sector of YouTube wasted no time picking apart Jacob's claims. At the time of writing, the video has reached over one million views. It also amassed more than 5,000 comments, many of which called out the crash as being staged. Comments on the video have since been turned off, but that hasn't stopped people from making reaction and explainer videos that point out abnormalities in the pilot's videos. It's worth noting here that some suspect the video currently on Jacob's YouTube to be a trimmed-down version of what was originally uploaded. However, a few of the segments can be found when looking at other videos uploaded by YouTubers critiquing the pilot's handling of the situation. [...] "Whether or not Jacob will be prosecuted for the crash, or if he will have his pilot's license revoked, will take some time to play out," concludes Rob Stumpf via The Drive. "The FAA is notoriously thorough in investigating matters like these and often takes a year or longer to produce a final report and recommendation. But most importantly, if the FAA does decide he's guilty, it must prove that Jacob showed intent to break the law and federal aviation regulations."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

gollum123 shares a report from CNN: Major international airlines are canceling flights to the United States over aviation industry fears that 5G technology could interfere with crucial onboard instruments. But it's business as usual in Europe, where the latest generation of high speed mobile networks is being rolled out without a hitch. Why is there a potential problem in the United States, but not Europe? It comes down to technical details. Mobile phone companies in the United States are rolling out 5G service in a spectrum of radio waves with frequencies between 3.7 and 3.98 GHz. The companies paid the US government $81 billion in 2021 for the right to use those frequencies, known as the C-Band. But in Europe, 5G services use the slower 3.4 to 3.8 GHz range of spectrum. The aviation industry is worried that US 5G service is too close to the spectrum used by radar altimeters, which is between 4.2 and 4.4 GHz. Europe does not face the same risk, according to the industry, because there is a much larger buffer between the spectrum used by radar altimeters and 5G. There are other differences in how 5G is being rolled out, according to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Other countries are using lower power levels, restricting the placement of 5G antennas near airfields and requiring them to be tilted downward to limit potential interference with aircraft. In France -- cited by telecom carriers such as AT&T and Verizon as an example of 5G and aviation working seamlessly together -- the height of a 5G antenna and the power of its signal determine how close it is allowed to a runway and the flight path of an aircraft, according to a technical note from France's National Frequency Agency (ANFR). Antennas around 17 major French airports are also required to be tilted away from flight paths to minimize the risk of interference, the agency's director of spectrum planning and international affairs, Eric Fournier, told CNN.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung is significantly falling behind in the rush to bring augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) devices to market, partially due to the company's "obsession" with foldable smartphones, The Korea Herald reports. MacRumors reports: Samsung's main competitors, including Apple, Microsoft, Meta, and Sony, are developing or have already launched AR and VR devices amid massive industry-wide investments into the future of the technology, but it is unclear if Samsung is actively developing such devices at all. eBest Investment and Securities analyst Kim Gwang-soo said: "Big tech companies, rather than smartphone manufacturers, are leading XR devices because they have the necessary content and platforms. Google has an operating system Android, Microsoft has Xbox and Sony has PlayStation. It's risky for Samsung to roll out XR devices, so it has no choice but to stick to foldable smartphones." The growth of Samsung's smartphone business has slowed down to just 0.9 percent year on year, but the company remains committed to the potential of foldable devices to reignite momentum. Samsung shareholders are said to be concerned by its perceived preoccupation with foldable devices, which is distracting the company's attention from the need to compete with future AR and VR devices from its main rivals. Industry insiders claim that even if Samsung develops its own AR and VR devices, it lacks the content and platform to create a cohesive and compelling ecosystem. In an attempt to catch up in the race to make inroads into the AR and VR market, Samsung made a belated investment in DigiLens, a California startup that makes AR glasses. To stay relevant, market observers are warning that Samsung may need to find a partner that already has content or a platform in exchange for chip expertise, similar to the relationship between Qualcomm and Microsoft.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, Kris Marszalek, has finally confirmed that hundreds of user accounts were indeed compromised by hackers and had funds stolen as a result, though details of the exact method of breach remain unclear. Marszalek acknowledged the hack in an online interview with Bloomberg Wednesday, stating that around 400 customer accounts had been compromised. He also told Bloomberg that he had not received any outreach from regulators since the attack was first disclosed but would share information if official inquiries were made. Previous statements from Marszalek and other communications from Crypto.com have been criticized for being vague and unclear. Official messaging from the company referred to a security "incident," and an early Twitter post mentioned only that a small number of users were "reporting suspicious activity on their accounts." Marszalek followed up by tweeting that "no customer funds were lost" -- a statement some commentators interpreted as meaning that the exchange would take the financial hit rather than passing it on to customers. Shortly afterward, security company PeckShield posted a tweet claiming that, in reality, Crypto.com's losses amounted to around $15 million in ETH and were being sent to Tornado Cash to be "washed."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel, one of the world's largest chip makers, is likely to unveil a specialized crypto-mining chip at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February, according to the conference's agenda (PDF). CoinDesk reports: One of Intel's "highlighted chip releases" at the conference is entitled "Bonanza Mine: An Ultra-Low-Voltage Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC." The session is scheduled for Feb. 23. This brings the company into direct competition with the likes of Bitmain and MicroBT in the market for bitcoin mining ASICs, or application-specific integrated circuits, for the first time. [...] Unlike its competitor Nvidia, Intel has said it doesn't plan to add ether mining limits on its graphics cards.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenSubtitles, one of the largest repositories of subtitle files on the internet, has been hacked. TorrentFreak reports: Founded in 2006, the site was reportedly hacked in August 2021 with the attacker obtaining the personal data of nearly seven million subscribers including email and IP addresses, usernames and passwords. The site alerted users yesterday after the hacker leaked the database online. "In August 2021 we received message on Telegram from a hacker, who showed us proof that he could gain access to the user table of opensubtitles.org, and downloaded a SQL dump from it. He asked for a BTC ransom to not disclose this to public and promise to delete the data," the post reads. "We hardly agreed, because it was not low amount of money. He explained us how he could gain access, and helped us fix the error. On the technical side, he was able to hack the low security password of a SuperAdmin, and gained access to an unsecured script, which was available only for SuperAdmins. This script allowed him to perform SQL injections and extract the data." Indeed, searches on data breach site Have I Been Pwned reveals that the database is now in the wild, containing all of the data mentioned by OpenSubtitles and more. [...] OpenSubtitles describes the hack as a "hard lesson" and admits failings in its security. The platform has spent time and money securing the site and is requiring members to reset their passwords. However, for those who have had their data breached, it may already be too late to prevent damage. The hacker has already had access to data for several months and now the breach is in the wild, problems could certainly escalate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Vishal Garg, the Better.com founder, who fired roughly 900 of his workers via Zoom last month and then took "time off," is returning to his position as the head of his mortgage lending company. "As you know, Better's C.E.O. Vishal Garg has been taking a break from his full-time duties to reflect on his leadership, reconnect with the values that make Better great and work closely with an executive coach," Better.com's board said on Tuesday in an email to the staff, which was reviewed by The New York Times. "We are confident in Vishal and in the changes he is committed to making to provide the type of leadership, focus and vision that Better needs at this pivotal time." Better.com has since conducted a "thorough, independent" review of its culture, according to the board's memo on Tuesday. The review was led by Anthony Barkow, a partner at the law firm Jenner & Block and a former federal prosecutor. As a result of that investigation, the company is working to expand its leadership by recruiting a new chairman for the board, a president and a chief human resources officer. In the meantime, a former McKinsey senior partner, Richard Benson-Armer, will serve as interim head of human resources, and the company's chief financial officer, Kevin Ryan, will serve as interim president. Two members of the board also recently resigned, but not "because of any disagreement with Better," according to the memo. Some of the additional measures the company announced Tuesday include a training program on building "a respectful workplace" and a new ethics and compliance committee, reporting directly to the board.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter HillNKnowlton22 writes: U.S. federal agencies have been using a 35-year-old American surveillance law to secretly track WhatsApp users with no explanation as to why and without knowing whom they are targeting. In Ohio, a just-unsealed government surveillance application reveals that in November 2021, DEA investigators demanded the Facebook-owned messaging company track seven users based in China and Macau. The application reveals the DEA didn't know the identities of any of the targets, but told WhatsApp to monitor the IP addresses and numbers with which the targeted users were communicating, as well as when and how they were using the app. Such surveillance is done using a technology known as a pen register and under the 1986 Pen Register Act, and doesn't seek any message content, which WhatsApp couldn't provide anyway, as it is end-to-end encrypted. As Forbes previously reported, over at least the last two years, law enforcement in the U.S. has repeatedly ordered WhatsApp and other tech companies to install these pen registers without showing any probable cause. As in those previous cases, the government order to trace Chinese users came with the statement that the Justice Department only needed to provide three "elements" to justify tracking of WhatsApp users. They include: the identity of the attorney or the law enforcement officer making the application; the identity of the agency making the application; and a certification from the applicant that "the information likely to be obtained is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation being conducted by that agency." "Other than the three elements described above, federal law does not require that an application for an order authorizing the installation and use of a pen register and a trap and trace device specify any facts," the government wrote in the latest application.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via MIT Technology Review: Biologists at several startups are applying the latest advances in genetic engineering to the age-old problem of baldness, creating new hair-forming cells that could restore a person's ability to grow hair. Some researchers tell MIT Technology Review they are using the techniques to grow human hair cells in their labs and even on animals. A startup called dNovo sent us a photograph of a mouse sprouting a dense clump of human hair -- the result of a transplant of what the company says are human hair stem cells. The company's founder is Ernesto Lujan, a Stanford University -- trained biologist. He says his company can produce the components of hair follicles by genetically "reprogramming" ordinary cells, like blood or fat cells. More work needs to be done, but Lujan is hopeful that the technology could eventually treat "the underlying cause of hair loss."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AMD's GPU technology is returning to mobile handsets with Samsung's Exynos 2200 system-on-chip, which was announced on Tuesday. The Register reports: The Exynos 2200 processor, fabricated using a 4nm process, has Armv9 CPU cores and the oddly named Xclipse GPU, which is an adaptation of AMD's RDNA 2 mainstream GPU architecture. AMD was in the handheld GPU market until 2009, when it sold the Imageon GPU and handheld business for $65m to Qualcomm, which turned the tech into the Adreno GPU for its Snapdragon family. AMD's Imageon processors were used in devices from Motorola, Panasonic, Palm and others making Windows Mobile handsets. AMD's now returning to a more competitive mobile graphics market with Apple, Arm and Imagination also possessing homegrown smartphone GPUs. Samsung and AMD announced the companies were working together on graphics in June last year. With Exynos 2200, Samsung has moved on from Arm's Mali GPU family, which was in the predecessor Exynos 2100 used in the current flagship Galaxy smartphones. Samsung says the power-optimized GPU has hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which simulates lighting effects and other features to make gaming a better experience. [...] The Exynos 2200 has an image signal processor that can apparently handle 200-megapixel pictures and record 8K video. Other features include HDR10+ support, and 4K video decoding at up to 240fps or 8K decoding at up to 60fps. It supports display refresh rates of up to 144Hz. The eight-core CPU cluster features a balance of high-performing and power-efficient cores. It has one Arm Cortex-X2 flagship core, three Cortex-A710 big cores and four Cortex-A510s, which is in the same ballpark as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Mediatek's Dimensity 9000, which are the only other chips using Arm's Armv9 cores and are made using a 4nm process. An integrated 5G modem supports both sub-6GHz and millimeter wave bands, and a feature to mix LTE and 5G signals speeds up data transfers to 10Gbps. The chip also has a security processor and an AI engine that is said to be two times faster than its predecessor in the Exynos 2100.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to NASA researchers, the power of a massive volcanic eruption that took place on Saturday near the island nation of Tonga was equivalent to around 10 megatons of TNT. "That means the explosive force was more than 500 times as powerful as the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II," reports NPR. From the report: The blast was heard as far away as Alaska and was probably one of the loudest events to occur on Earth in over a century, according to Michael Poland, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "This might be the loudest eruption since [the eruption of the Indonesian volcano] Krakatau in 1883," Poland says. That massive 19th-century eruption killed thousands and released so much ash that it cast much of the region into darkness. But for all its explosive force, the eruption itself was actually relatively small, according to Poland, of the U.S. Geological Survey. Unlike the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which spewed ash and smoke for hours, the events at Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai lasted less than 60 minutes. He does not expect that the eruption will cause any short-term changes to Earth's climate, the way other large eruptions have in the past. In fact, Poland says, the real mystery is how such a relatively small eruption could create such a big bang and tsunami.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science.org: After many decades of growth, China's population could begin to shrink this year, suggest data released yesterday by China's National Bureau of Statistics. The numbers show that in 2021, China's birth rate fell for the fifth year in a row, to a record low of 7.52 per 1000 people. Based on that number, demographers estimate the country's total fertility rate -- the number of children a person will bear over their lifetime -- is down to about 1.15, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 and one of the lowest in the world. Young couples are deciding against having more children, "despite all the new initiatives and propaganda to promote childbearing," says Yong Cai, a demographer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "China's population decline will be rapid," he predicts. The shift from growth to decline has happened startlingly fast. Projections made just a few years ago suggested China's population would expand until around 2027. Last year, when it announced results from the 2020 census, the statistics bureau still pegged the total fertility rate at 1.3. The report also found that China is becoming ever more urbanized, "with nearly 65% of the population now living in urban areas, up 0.8 percentage points from 2020," reports Science.org. The crowded housing, high living costs, and exorbitant education expenses all "reduce people's willingness to have a second child, let alone a third child," says Wei Guo, a demographer at Nanjing University.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the planet now threatens the stability of global ecosystems upon which humanity depends, scientists have said. The Guardian reports: Plastics are of particularly high concern, they said, along with 350,000 synthetic chemicals including pesticides, industrial compounds and antibiotics. Plastic pollution is now found from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans, and some toxic chemicals, such as PCBs, are long-lasting and widespread. The study concludes that chemical pollution has crossed a "planetary boundary", the point at which human-made changes to the Earth push it outside the stable environment of the last 10,000 years. Determining whether chemical pollution has crossed a planetary boundary is complex because there is no pre-human baseline, unlike with the climate crisis and the pre-industrial level of CO2 in the atmosphere. There are also a huge number of chemical compounds registered for use -- about 350,000 -- and only a tiny fraction of these have been assessed for safety. So the research used a combination of measurements to assess the situation. These included the rate of production of chemicals, which is rising rapidly, and their release into the environment, which is happening much faster than the ability of authorities to track or investigate the impacts. The well-known negative effects of some chemicals, from the extraction of fossil fuels to produce them to their leaking into the environment, were also part of the assessment. The scientists acknowledged the data was limited in many areas, but said the weight of evidence pointed to a breach of the planetary boundary. [...] The researchers said stronger regulation was needed and in the future a fixed cap on chemical production and release, in the same way carbon targets aim to end greenhouse gas emissions. Their study was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. "The rise of the chemical burden in the environment is diffuse and insidious," said Prof Sir Ian Boyd at the University of St Andrews. "Even if the toxic effects of individual chemicals can be hard to detect, this does not mean that the aggregate effect is likely to be insignificant." "Regulation is not designed to detect or understand these effects. We are relatively blind to what is going on as a result. In this situation, where we have a low level of scientific certainty about effects, there is a need for a much more precautionary approach to new chemicals and to the amount being emitted to the environment."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some Roku smart TV owners are seeing banner ads appear over live content, according to a thread on the r/cordcutters subreddit. Ars Technica reports: [A photo posted by the Reddit user] shows a Sharp TV running Roku software and displaying an ad for a bed over a live sports broadcast, plus a prompt to 'press OK to get offer.' These ads don't seem to appear on Roku's own hardware, like the Roku Ultra, Express, Streambar, or Streaming Stick. Rather, they show up on certain smart TVs running the Roku TV platform -- and it might just be certain brands, like Sharp. Some owners of TCL Roku TVs commented that they had not seen the ads. Fortunately, users in the thread reported that the feature can be disabled in privacy settings. But it's possible that doing so may disable other Roku features.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter sperm shares a report from the BBC: The Beijing Winter Olympics app that all Games attendees must use contains security weaknesses that leave users exposed to data breaches, analysts say. The My2022 app will be used by athletes, audience members and media for daily Covid monitoring. The app will also offer voice chats, file transfers and Olympic news. But cybersecurity group Citizen Lab says the app fails to provide encryption on many of its files. China has dismissed the concerns. Questions about the app come amid a rise in warnings about visitors' tech security ahead of the Games, which begin on 4 February. People attending the Beijing Olympics should bring burner phones and create email accounts for their time in China, cyber security firm Internet 2.0 said on Tuesday. Several countries have also reportedly told athletes to leave their main devices at home. The report also says that it's found a "censorship keywords" list built into the app, and a feature that allows people to flag other "politically sensitive" expressions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Israeli police allegedly conducted warrantless phone intercepts of Israeli citizens, including politicians and activists, using the NSO group's controversial Pegasus spyware, according to an investigation by the Israeli business media site Calcalist. Among those described as having been targets in the report were local mayors, leaders of political protests against the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former government employees. According to the report, the surveillance was done without the court supervision required for Israeli citizens and without monitoring of how the data was used, a claim denied explicitly by the Israeli police service and a government minister. A separate report in the Israeli daily Haaretz, based on an invoice seen by the paper, suggested the Israeli police was invoiced by NSO group for 2.7m shekels ($862,000) in 2013, apparently for a basic version of the program. While numerous reports have emerged over the misuse of Pegasus, which is designed and sold by Israel's NSO group to foreign governments, the latest claims mark a major departure in suggesting that Israelis were also targeted for interception. The Guardian understands from sources familiar with NSO's licensing that while that means foreign third-party clients to whom it has sold its software cannot target US and Israeli phone numbers from abroad, an Israeli law enforcement client that purchased the spyware -- for instance the police service -- would be able to target Israeli phones. While the report does not mention its sources, it claims that the order to use the spyware was given by senior officers and carried out by police electronic interception specialists. The claim is highly significant because for the first time it counters assurances given to Israelis that they could not be targeted by Pegasus and would appear to question the understanding that Israelis are protected from warrantless intrusion. The Jerusalem Post adds: "[This] astounding report, if true, would blow gaping holes through a number of NSO, police and potentially state prosecution narratives about the proper balance between collecting evidence and respecting citizens' privacy rights and court protections from unlawful searches and seizures."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier today, Microsoft announced it will buy the video game publisher Activision Blizzard in a $69 billion deal. It's the largest video game acquisition in history and will make Microsoft the world's third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony, when and if the deal closes. According to Insider, citing a report from the Wall Street Journal, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is expected to leave the company once the deal closes. From the report: Those sources said that both Microsoft and Activision have agreed that Kotick "will depart once the deal closes," which could take anywhere from 12 to 18 months. That's in stark contrast to what Microsoft said in its press release on Tuesday morning. "Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard," the release said, "and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company's culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming." Kotick reportedly knew for years about a variety of claims of sexual harassment and rape at his company. An investigation by the Wall Street Journal detailed several specific examples of harassment and rape at Activision. Kotick was not only aware of those claims but, in a least one instance, reportedly intervened to keep a male staffer who was accused of sexual harassment despite the company's human resources department recommending he be fired.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

X2b5Ysb8 shares a report from ABC News: California prosecutors have filed two counts of vehicular manslaughter against the driver of a Tesla on Autopilot who ran a red light, slammed into another car and killed two people in 2019. The defendant appears to be the first person to be charged with a felony in the United States for a fatal crash involving a motorist who was using a partially automated driving system. Los Angeles County prosecutors filed the charges in October, but they came to light only last week. The driver, Kevin George Aziz Riad, 27, has pleaded not guilty. Riad, a limousine service driver, is free on bail while the case is pending. The misuse of Autopilot, which can control steering, speed and braking, has occurred on numerous occasions and is the subject of investigations by two federal agencies. The filing of charges in the California crash could serve notice to drivers who use systems like Autopilot that they cannot rely on them to control vehicles. The criminal charges aren't the first involving an automated driving system, but they are the first to involve a widely used driver technology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.