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The European Space Agency will soon send JUICE, or the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer on a mission to scout out Jupiter and three of its 79 moons: Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede. From a report: Scheduled to launch in April 2023, JUICE will blast off from an Ariane 5 rocket before embarking on a 7.6-year journey to reach the gas giant. Broken up by multiple gravitational assists -- or pushes that help adjust a spacecraft's speed and trajectory -- from Venus and Earth, the explorer will carry some of the most powerful remote sensing and geophysical instruments ever flown to the outer solar system. Last month, a 1:18 scale model of JUICE was employed at the ESA's testing center in the Netherlands to try out one of the instruments, RIME, also known as the Radar For Icy Moons Exploration. RIME will use ice-penetrating radar and a 52-foot-long antennae to map the subsurface structure of these moons, up to about 5.6 miles down. To test, the model was placed in a chamber lined with metal walls that blocked incoming radio signals and black, spiky foam coating that absorbed internal radio signals, or outgoing transmissions. This dichotomy helped the JUICE team simulate both the vast emptiness of space and the challenges the craft could run into during the mission.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gary Smith: In 1970, Marvin Minsky, recipient of the Turing Award ("the Nobel Prize of Computing"), predicted that within "three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being." Fifty-two years later, we're still waiting. The fundamental roadblock is that, although computer algorithms are really, really good at identifying statistical patterns, they have no way of knowing what these patterns mean because they are confined to MathWorld and never experience the real world. The fundamental roadblock is that, although computer algorithms are really, really good at identifying statistical patterns, they have no way of knowing what these patterns mean because they are confined to MathWorld and never experience the real world. Blaise Aguera y Arcas, the head of Google's AI group in Seattle, recently argued that although large language models (LLMs) may be driven by statistics, "statistics do amount to understanding." As evidence, he offers several snippets of conversation with Google's state-of-the-art chatbot LaMDA. The conversations are impressively human-like, but they are nothing more than examples of what Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis have called an LLM's ability to be "a fluent spouter of bullshit" and what Timnit Gebru and three co-authors called "stochastic parrots."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A beta "payments" feature now lets users of the popular encrypted messaging app send MobileCoin around the globe. From a report: In the spring of 2021, the encrypted communications app Signal announced that it would add a payments feature in beta for its users in the UK, testing out an integration with a relatively new, privacy-focused cryptocurrency called MobileCoin. But a much broader phase of that experiment has quietly been underway since mid-November. That's when Signal made the same feature accessible to all of its users without fanfare, offering the ability to send digital payments far more private than a credit card transaction -- or a Bitcoin transfer -- to many millions of phones. MobileCoin founder Josh Goldbard confirmed the timing of the rollout, and says that it spurred massive adoption of the cryptocurrency, which now sees thousands of daily transactions versus just dozens before the global beta release. "There are over a hundred million devices on planet Earth right now that have the ability to turn on MobileCoin and send an end-to-end encrypted payment in five seconds or less," Goldbard says, referencing reports of Signal's total download numbers. In fact, getting started using Signal's payments feature still isn't quite that simple. Anyone outside of sanctioned companies like North Korea and Syria can access their MobileCoin wallet within a message by tapping the "+" icon and then "payment." But the challenge for many will be loading that wallet in the first place; the cryptocurrency is listed for sale on only a few smaller cryptocurrency exchanges -- such as BitFinex and FTX -- none of which yet offer it to US consumers. Signal itself didn't respond to WIRED's requests for comment on the global rollout of the payments feature. But last April, Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike explained to WIRED that he wanted to add payments to the encrypted video-calling and texting app to match features from rivals like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger -- while also bringing Signal's lauded privacy protections to monetary transactions. "I would like to get to a world where not only can you feel [a sense of privacy] when you talk to your therapist over Signal, but also when you pay your therapist for the session over Signal," Marlinspike said at the time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The global computing power of the bitcoin network has dropped sharply as the shutdown this week of Kazakhstan's internet during a deadly uprising hit the country's fast-growing cryptocurrency mining industry. From a report: Kazakhstan became last year the world's second-largest centre for bitcoin mining after the United States, according to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, after China clamped down on crypto mining activity. Russia sent paratroopers into Kazakhstan on Thursday to help put down the countrywide uprising after violence spread across the tightly controlled former Soviet state. Police said they had killed dozens of rioters in the main city, Almaty, while state television said 13 members of the security forces had died. The internet was on Wednesday shut down across the country in what monitoring site Netblocks called "a nation-scale internet blackout." The move would have probably prevented Kazakhstan-based miners from accessing the bitcoin network.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The number of new COVID cases more than tripled over the past two weeks, shattering records all across the U.S. From a report: The Omicron variant appears to be significantly milder than its predecessors, and it's not leading to as much serious illness. But sky-high case counts are still a warning sign, especially in areas whose health care systems are already stretched thin. The U.S. is now averaging nearly 550,000 new cases per day -- a 225% increase over the past two weeks, and by far the highest levels of the entire pandemic. That's likely an undercount, as many people are testing themselves at home. In previous waves, a sharp increase in cases would translate into a similar increase in hospitalizations, and then deaths. Omicron, however, appears to cause severe illness at a much lower rate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNET News writes about Lenovo's ThinkBook Plus Gen 3. From the report: With the first two generations of the ThinkBook Plus, Lenovo put an E Ink display on the lid of a 13-inch laptop. The external display lets you read, take notes, get notifications and see your work calendar, all without opening the laptop. It's a cool idea but also kind of limiting. Aside from being a laptop with two displays, the third-gen model is nothing like its predecessors. For starters, it's an ultrawide 17.3-inch laptop with a 21:10 aspect ratio and a 3,072x1,440 resolution at 120Hz and with 100% P3 color gamut, which could be interesting if this were a gaming laptop. But it's not, it's made for doing work. The second display, an 8-inch color pen-enabled touchscreen with an 800x1,280-pixel resolution, is embedded in the laptop deck to the right of the keyboard and touchpad. It's like if you set down an 8-inch tablet on your laptop's keyboard and it just latched on and wouldn't let go. Aside from the dual displays, though, the laptop isn't too unusual. It'll be powered by 12th-gen Intel Core H-series processors and have up to 32GB of LPDDR5 memory and an up-to-1TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 solid-state drive. It has security features you'd expect to find on a Lenovo business laptop in addition to a fingerprint reader in the power button and a full-HD webcam with an IR camera for face recognition and a privacy shutter. The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 will be available in May starting at $1,399, which seems reasonable for what you're getting.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The CharaChorder is a new kind of typing peripheral that promises to let people type at superhuman speeds. From a report: It's so fast that the website Monkeytype, which lets users participate in typing challenges and maintains its own leaderboard, automatically flagged CharaChorder's CEO as a cheater when he attempted to post his 500 WPM score on the its leaderboards. It's a strange looking device, the kind of thing Keanu Reeves would interface with in Johnny Mnemonic. Your palms rest on two black divots out of which rise nine different finger sized joysticks. These 18 sticks move in every direction and, its website claims, can hit every button you need on a regular keyboard. "CharaChorder switches detect motion in 3 dimensions so users have access to over 300 unique inputs without their fingers breaking contact with the device," it said. Users input words and commands by clicking the switches in different directions. CharaCorder claims that, once a user learns how to type with the machine, they can achieve speeds impossible on a QWERTY keyboard. Most people type around 40 words per minute (WPM) with skilled typists hitting upwards of 100 WPM. Competition typers can break into the 200 WPM. Riley Keen, CharaChorder's CEO, is posting TikToks where he's hitting speeds above 500 WPM.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nearly $41 billion worth of cryptocurrency was sent to two types of Ethereum smart contracts associated with NFT marketplaces and collections from the beginning of 2021 through mid-December, according to a new estimate from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. From a report: The metric revises an estimate the firm included in a December report on NFTs that was based on data through mid-October, said Maddie Kennedy, a spokeswoman for Chainalysis.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM has resurrected its sale process for IBM Watson Health, with hopes of fetching more than $1 billion, people familiar with the situation told Axios. From the report: Big Blue wants out of health care, after spending billions to stake its claim, just as rival Oracle is moving big into the sector via its $28 billion bet for Cerner. IBM spent more than $4 billion to build Watson Health via a series of acquisitions. The business now includes health care data and analytics business Truven Health Analytics, population health company Phytel, and medical imaging business Merge Healthcare. IBM first explored a sale of the division in early 2021, with Morgan Stanley leading the process. WSJ reported at the time that the unit was generating roughly $1 billion in annual revenue, but was unprofitable. Sources say it continues to lose money.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CoinDesk: Garry Kasparov knows math. He knows logic, strategy and decision-making. Widely regarded as the greatest chess player in the history of mankind, the Russian grandmaster -- ranked No. 1 from 1984 to 2005 -- sees the world with a certain clarity. So it will delight many in the blockchain industry to learn that Kasparov, easily one of the smartest people alive, is now a champion of cryptocurrency. And it's partly because of math. Kasparov has spent his "retirement" opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin (a defiance that once got him tossed in jail), fighting for humanitarian causes and serving as chairman of the Human Rights Foundation (a nonprofit that strongly supports bitcoin as a freedom-giving tool). Now he views crypto as a way to check government power. Bitcoin offers protection against rampant government spending, says Kasparov, "because you're protected by math" -- by the logic of the code itself. Kasparov also sees merit in non-fungible tokens. [...] CoinDesk: How'd you get into the crypto space? Kasparov: If you followed my career and read about my early interest in computers and technology, you should not be surprised that I was very excited when I recognized the value of cryptocurrencies and NFTs. This goes all the way back to the '80s; I always tried to be at the cutting edge. It started with chess. But I also saw an opportunity to use computers and new tools to advance individual freedoms. It's my belief that technology should help people fight back against the power of the state. How do cryptocurrencies fit into that? Cryptocurrencies become an inseparable part of or progress, because the whole world is moving digital. And if the economy becomes more digital, so does the money. Another philosophical reason is that ... governments [have] unlimited opportunities to print money. And printing money is the most exquisite form of borrowing from us and from future generations. And I believe that cryptocurrencies -- with bitcoin as a standard -- offer a protection against this onslaught of the government, because you're protected by math. You're protected by the limited number of any code behind the respective currency. Cryptocurrencies, and all the products related to cryptocurrencies, are absolutely vital for the future development of our world.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google was slapped with a record French fine of 150 million euros ($170 million) by the nation's privacy watchdog, together with a 60 million-euro fine for Meta Platforms' Facebook, over the way the companies manage cookies. From a report: CNIL, France's data protection authority, on Thursday issued the companies with a three-month ultimatum "to provide internet users located in France with a means of refusing cookies as simple as the existing means of accepting them, in order to guarantee their freedom of consent." Failing to do so will come with the risk of an additional daily fine of 100,000 euros, CNIL said in the statement. The latest penalties follow probes by the watchdog looking at companies' compliance with new rules on cookies, which are tracking devices that are placed on people's computers. The watchdog in 2020 fined Google 100 million euros and online shopping giant Amazon.com Inc. 35 million euros for placing such cookies on people's computers without their consent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science.org: Astronomers have long thought it takes millions of years for the seeds of stars like the Sun to come together. Clouds of mostly hydrogen gas coalesce under gravity into prestellar cores dense enough to collapse and spark nuclear fusion, while magnetic forces hold matter in place and slow down the process. But observations using the world's largest radio telescope are casting doubt on this long gestational period. Researchers have zoomed in on a prestellar core in a giant gas cloud -- a nursery for hundreds of baby stars -- and found the tiny embryo may be forming 10 times faster than thought, thanks to weak magnetic fields. "If this is proven to be the case in other gas clouds, it will be revolutionary for the star formation community," says Paola Caselli from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, who was not involved with the research. Studying star birth and the tug of war between gravity and magnetic forces has been a challenge because the magnetic fields can be 100,000 times weaker than Earth's. The only direct way to detect them comes from a phenomenon called the Zeeman effect, in which the magnetic fields cause so-called spectral lines to split in a way that depends on the strength of the field. These spectral lines are bright or dark patterns where atoms or molecules emit or absorb specific wavelengths of light. For gas clouds, the Zeeman splitting occurs in radio wavelengths, so radio telescopes are needed. And the dishes must be big in order to zoom in on a small region of space and reveal such a subtle effect. Previously, researchers had used Puerto Rico's Arecibo radio telescope -- which collapsed in 2020 -- to study Lynds 1544, a relatively isolated stellar embryo within the Taurus Molecular Cloud, just 450 light-years away from Earth. They measured the magnetic fields in the wispy layers of gas far out from the core, where magnetic forces dominated over gravity. They also analyzed the stronger fields inside the core, where gravity nevertheless dominated because the core is 10,000 times denser than the outer layer, says Richard Crutcher, a radio astronomer at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. What was missing was an examination of the intermediate region between the core and the outer layer. That has now come into focus with a new tracer of the Zeeman effect -- a particular hydrogen absorption line -- detected by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), a giant dish built inside a natural basin in southwestern China. In a study published today in Nature, researchers report a magnetic field strength of 4 microgauss -- no stronger than in the outer layer. "If the standard theory worked, the magnetic field needs to be much stronger to resist a 100-fold increase in cloud density. That didn't happen," says Di Li, the chief scientist of FAST who led the study. "The paper basically says that gravity wins in the cloud: That's where stars start to form, not in the dense core," Caselli adds. "That's a very big statement." The finding implies that a gas cloud could evolve into a stellar embryo 10 times quicker than previously thought, says lead author Tao-Chung Ching of the Chinese Academy of Sciences's National Astronomical Observatories. Li says he wants to study other molecular clouds to see whether the lessons from Lynds 1544 apply more generally.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An Italian mafia boss on the run for 20 years was tracked down to a Spanish town after being spotted on Google Street View. The Guardian reports: Gioacchino Gammino, a convicted murderer listed among Italy's most wanted gangsters, was arrested in Galapagar, a town near Madrid, where over the years he had married, changed his name to Manuel, worked as a chef and owned a fruit and vegetable shop. Sicilian police carried out several investigations in their search for Gammino, 61, and a European arrest warrant was issued in 2014. The fugitive was traced to Spain, but it was Google Street View that helped to pinpoint his precise location. The navigation tool, accessible through Google Maps, had captured an image of two men chatting outside a fruit and vegetable shop called El Huerto de Manu, or Manu's Garden, in Galapagar. Police believed one of the men closely resembled Gammino, but his identity was only confirmed when they came across a listing for a nearby restaurant called La Cocina de Manu or Manu's Kitchen. The shop and the restaurant are now closed, but the police found a photo of Gammino, dressed in his chef's garb, on a still-existing Facebook page for La Cocina de Manu. He was recognisable by the scar on the left side of his chin. The restaurant's menu included a dish called Cena Siciliana or Sicilian dinner. Gammino was arrested on 17 December but the details surrounding his capture did not come to light until they were reported by La Repubblica on Wednesday. Upon his arrest, Gammino reportedly told police: "How did you find me? I haven't even called my family for 10 years!"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter GFS666 shares a report from Live Science: We may soon be able to test one of Stephen Hawking's most controversial theories, new research suggests. In the 1970s, Hawking proposed that dark matter, the invisible substance that makes up most matter in the cosmos, may be made of black holes formed in the earliest moments of the Big Bang. Now, three astronomers have developed a theory that explains not only the existence of dark matter, but also the appearance of the largest black holes in the universe. "What I find personally super exciting about this idea is how it elegantly unifies the two really challenging problems that I work on -- that of probing the nature of dark matter and the formation and growth of black holes -- and resolves them in one fell swoop," study co-author Priyamvada Natarajan, an astrophysicist at Yale University, said in a statement. What's more, several new instruments -- including the James Webb Space Telescope that just launched -- could produce data needed to finally assess Hawking's famous notion. In the latest research, Natarajan, Nico Cappelluti at the University of Miami and Gunther Hasinger at the European Space Agency took a deep dive into the theory of primordial black holes, exploring how they might explain the dark matter and possibly resolve other cosmological challenges. To pass current observational tests, primordial black holes have to be within a certain mass range. In the new work, the researchers assumed that the primordial black holes had a mass of around 1.4 times the mass of the sun. They constructed a model of the universe that replaced all the dark matter with these fairly light black holes, and then they looked for observational clues that could validate (or rule out) the model. The team found that primordial black holes could play a major role in the universe by seeding the first stars, the first galaxies and the first supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Observations indicate that stars, galaxies and SMBHs appear very quickly in cosmological history, perhaps too quickly to be accounted for by the processes of formation and growth that we observe in the present-day universe. "Primordial black holes, if they do exist, could well be the seeds from which all supermassive black holes form, including the one at the center of the Milky Way," Natarajan said. And the theory is simple and doesn't require a zoo of new particles to explain dark matter. "Our study shows that without introducing new particles or new physics, we can solve mysteries of modern cosmology from the nature of dark matter itself to the origin of supermassive black holes," Cappelluti said in the statement. The model could be tested relatively soon, the report says. "The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched Christmas Day after years of delays, is specifically designed to answer questions about the origins of stars and galaxies. And the next generation of gravitational wave detectors, especially the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), is poised to reveal much more about black holes, including primordial ones if they exist."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's largest coal port has announced it will now be powered entirely by renewable energy. The announcement from Port of Newcastle comes as coal power generation in Australia's national electricity market fell to its lowest level in the final three months of 2021. Though the port continues to export an average of 165Mt of coal a year, the move is part of a plan to decarbonize the business by 2040, and to increase the non-coal portion of its business so that coal only makes up half its revenue by 2030. It has signed a deal with Iberdrola, which operates the Bodangora windfarm near Dubbo in inland New South Wales, for a retail power purchase agreement that provides the port with large scale generation certificates linked to the windfarm. Chief executive officer Craig Carmody said the Port of Newcastle's title as the largest coal port in the world "isn't as wonderful as it used to be" and that change was necessary to avoid what happened in Newcastle and the steel industry closed. "I would prefer to be doing this now while we have control over our destiny, while we have revenue coming in, than in a crisis situation where our revenue has collapsed and no one will lend us money," Carmody said. "We get 84 cents a tonne for coal shipped through our port. We get between $6 and $8 for every other product. You can see where I'd rather have my money." As part of its transition the port has converted 97% of its vehicles to electric and engaged in other infrastructure projects to decarbonize its operations. "It's a good thing they're looking at it, but 50% income diversification by 2030, it's still a decade away," said Andrew Stock, climate councillor and retired energy executive who was a founding board member of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. "That's still a lot of coal that's going to go through that port particularly when the IEA and the IPCC have made it clear we have to move. And 50% by 2030 is still 50% coal income." He went on to say that governments should encourage a "rapid advance in the uptake of renewables" similar to what has occurred in South Australia, which is powered by 100% renewable energy on some days.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At CES in Las Vegas this evening, Sony's Chairman, President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida showed off a brand new prototype of its Vision S concept electric car, and announced that the Sony Group is starting a new division -- the Sony Mobility Inc -- which will start commercializing its electric vehicles. TechCrunch reports: On the CES stage during the Sony press conference, the company showed off its existing Sony Vision-S sedan, which was revealed at CES last year. This year, it also flexed a new model in the lineup, the Sony Vision-S SUV prototype. "The excitement we received after we showed off the Vision-S really encouraged us to further consider how we can bring creativity and technology to change the experience of moving from one place to another," said Yoshida, before revealing the new Vision-S SUV prototype. "This is our new Vision-S SUV. Vision-S has been developed on a foundation of safety, adaptability and entertainment. Safety has been our No. 1 priority in creating a comfortable mobility experience. That has not changed when building this SUV. A total of 40 sensors are installed inside and outside of the vehicle to monitor safety. "In terms of adaptability, we have connectivity that enables us to build a vehicle that continuously evolves. It also makes it possible to personalize the cabin for each user. With 5G, it enables high speed, high capacity and low-latency connectivity between the in-vehicle system and the cloud. The Vision-S also evolves mobility as an entertainment space," said Yoshida. "The Vision-S also evolves mobility as an entertainment space, including gaming experience and audio. We have learned more about mobility through our exploration of Vision-S and through our partners who have supported this effort." There's been a lot of EV announcements today. Not only did GM reveal an electric version of the Chevy Silverado, but Chrysler announced plans to go all-electric by 2028, starting with the Airflow, "a concept crossover that appears to be close to ready for production," reports Ars Technica. BMW also unveiled color-changing paint for its vehicles that relies on the E-ink electronic paper technology found in e-readers like the Kindle.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At CES 2022, BMW unveiled color-changing paint for its vehicles that relies on the E-ink electronic paper technology found in e-readers like the Kindle. Engadget reports: [N]o, this futuristic feature is nowhere near production ready despite appearing at the show on a live demonstration vehicle, dubbed the BMW iX Flow featuring E Ink. The electrophoretic coloring material itself is applied as a vehicle body wrap but works just like it e-ink displays do in your Kindle. The wrap is embedded with millions of microcapsules each containing a negatively-charged white pigment and a positively charged-black pigment. Depending on the setting, applying an electrical charge to the material will cause either the white or black pigments to rise to the top of the microcapsule, changing the vehicle's color in moments. While the current iteration can only swap between a pair of colors, the palette could eventually be expanded to display a rainbow's worth of differing shades. "This gives the driver the freedom to express different facets of their personality or even their enjoyment of change outwardly, and to redefine this each time they sit into their car," Stella Clarke, Head of Project for the BMW iX Flow featuring E Ink, said in a prepared statement. [...] E-ink exterior displays could also prove useful in more practical applications such as changing colors depending on the weather to increase a vehicle's battery life (and therefore, range) in cold climates or reduce the need for air conditioning in balmy weather.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Arbix Finance, an audited and supposedly trustworthy yield farming platform, has been flagged as a 'rugpull,' deleting its site, Twitter, and Telegram channel and transferring $10 million worth of deposited cryptocurrency. Bleeping Computer reports: Rugpulls, otherwise known as "exit scams," are when pseudo-anonymous platforms or cryptocurrencies are created twith the ultimate goal of collecting funds for an allegedly legitimate "service" and then disappear with deposited funds. Because decentralized networks are inherently untrustworthy, entities like CertiK attempt to evaluate them through audits that analyze a token's smart contracts for signs of fraud, vulnerabilities, privacy problems, etc. In Arbix's case, CertiK's conducted an audit on November 19th, 2021, whose findings had initially been a reason for users to trust Arbix Finance. However, today CertiK tweeted that Arbix is now classified as a rugpull after the token's smart contract was detected minting 10 million ARBIX to addresses under the owner's control and then dumping them for Ethereum. The operators of Arbix also moved $10 million in funds deposited by users to "unverified pools," where they were converted to Ethereum. The scammers then transferred the Ethereum to Tornado.cash, which acts as a mixer to make it harder to trace the funds. The funds and their movements are being traced, but the chances of them being recovered are slim at this point.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Aviation Administration tentatively agreed not to seek any more 5G delays from AT&T and Verizon, potentially ending a battle over the aviation industry's unproven claim that 5G transmissions on C-Band frequencies will interfere with airplane altimeters. The commitment came Monday night, when AT&T and Verizon agreed to one more delay of two weeks, pushing their deployment off until January 19. They had previously agreed to a delay from December 5 until January 5. Terms of Monday's deal were described in an attachment to a letter (PDF) that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg sent to the carriers. "In light of the foregoing, and subject to any unforeseen aviation safety issues, DOT and FAA will not seek or demand any further delays of C-Band deployment," the deal terms say. Buttigieg thanked the AT&T and Verizon CEOs, writing, "Your voluntary agreement both to delay initial deployment by two weeks, and to subsequently adopt some additional mitigations, will give us additional time and space to reduce the impacts to commercial flights... We are confident that your voluntary steps will support the safe coexistence of 5G C-Band deployment and aviation activities." The deal incorporates voluntary commitments that AT&T and Verizon previously made, including "C-Band radio exclusion zones" around airports for six months. The aviation industry will give carriers "a list of no more than 50 priority airports" where the exclusion zones will apply. AT&T and Verizon will provide data on base stations, operating characteristics, and planned deployment locations. They will also "continue to work in good faith with aviation stakeholders to support the technical assessment of individual altimeters and airport environments," the deal says. The FAA previously said it "will safely expedite the approvals of Alternate Means of Compliance (AMOCs) for operators with high-performing radio altimeters to operate at those airports," signaling that airlines may already be using altimeters that can co-exist with C-Band transmissions. AT&T and Verizon's C-Band spectrum licenses are for the frequencies from 3.7 GHz to 3.98 GHz, but the companies don't plan to deploy between 3.8 GHZ and 3.98 GHz until 2023. The radio altimeters used to determine airplane altitudes rely on spectrum from 4.2 GHz to 4.4 GHz. "Assuming there are no further problems, AT&T and Verizon would be able to use their spectrum licenses without extra restrictions after July 5," the report says. "At the end of the commitment period specified in the Voluntary Commitments (i.e. through July 5, 2022), Licensees intend to deploy 5G base stations in any manner consistent with their C-Band Licenses, all customary rules and regulations, and any additional airport-specific mitigation measures Licensees have committed to take based on their continued engagement with the FAA and the aviation industry," the agreement said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kosovo's government on Tuesday introduced a ban on cryptocurrency mining in an attempt to curb electricity consumption as the country faces the worst energy crisis in a decade due to production outages. Reuters reports: "All law enforcement agencies will stop the production of this activity in cooperation with other relevant institutions that will identify the locations where there is cryptocurrency production," Economy and Energy Minister Artane Rizvanolli said in a statement. Faced with coal-fired power plant outages and high import prices authorities were forced last month to introduce power cuts. European gas prices soared more than 30% on Tuesday after low supplies from Russia reignited concerns about an energy crunch as colder weather approaches. In December, Kosovo declared a state of emergency for 60 days which will allow the government to allocate more money to energy imports, introduce more power cuts and harsher measures. The country of 1.8 million people is now importing more than 40% of its consumed energy with high demand during the winter when people use electricity mainly for heating. Around 90% percent of energy production in Kosovo is from lignite, a soft coal that produces toxic pollution when burnt.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A supermajority of customer service representatives for Google Fiber, operating out of a store in Kansas City, Missouri, have signed union cards in the hopes of bargaining their first contract with their bosses. Engadget reports: They're organizing under the auspices of the Alphabet Workers Union, a year-old division of the Communication Workers of America which is seeking to represent employees and contractors at all level of Google's parent company. The 11 workers -- 10 of whom have signed cards since the union drive began in October -- are jointly employed by Google and a staffing agency called BDS Connected Solutions. That's not out of the ordinary, as staffing arrangements with Alphabet go: a 2019 story in the New York Times found temps and contractors made up the majority of the tech giant's workforce, while a Recode report that same year indicated that this second class of laborers earned significantly less than Google's own full-time employees. According to two BDS workers who spoke to Engadget, customer representatives had been feeling left out of key conversations about staffing and safety protocols, and communication with management has deteriorated. [...] Kansas City was the very first market Google Fiber launched in, nearly a decade ago. What makes this push to form a bargaining unit somewhat unusual, however, has been the decision to skip straight to petitioning the National Labor Relations Board. Typically, this is the longer, more arduous option when an employer refuses to voluntarily recognize a union. But, according to Adair, Alphabet and BDS have neither attempted to quash the union drive, nor expressed a willingness to recognize it. "There's been no acknowledgement, no pushback. no response at all yet," they said. [...] While they weren't keen to give too many specifics as to what they'd hope to secure in a first contract, one of the benefits they're seeking to obtain is hazard pay [while working in person in a pandemic.] While it may be months or years before the NLRB makes a ruling, Google Fiber representative Mike Knox hopes it might spur action from others within Google Fiber. "We're really hoping that this inspires in that regard," he said. "We're hoping that's a flashpoint where other people can see that and decide to push for more input."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Chevy Silverado, one of the top-selling pickup trucks in the US, is going electric. General Motors CEO Mary Barra unveiled Chevy's answer to the Ford F-150 Lightning during a virtual presentation at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. GM hopes that the plug-in pickup's familiar nameplate will help it lure Silverado owners and other truck fans to the world of zero tailpipe emissions. The Silverado EV is the second electric truck for GM, succeeding the GMC Hummer EV, which went into production last year. But when it comes out in late 2023, the electric Silverado will be one of the flagship vehicles in the company's much larger $35 billion push into electric vehicles, as well as the first electric truck for the automaker's Chevy brand. At launch, the Silverado EV will be available in two configurations: an RST First Edition and a fleet-oriented Work Truck (WT) model. Both models will get more than 400 miles of range on a full charge (though that number still needs to be certified by the Environmental Protection Agency). The base model work truck will start at $39,900, while the fully loaded RST First Edition, named because it will be first off the assembly line in spring 2023, will sell for the suggested price of $105,000. Chevy says that after production ramps up, various versions of the truck will be available for $50,000-$80,000. The automaker is already taking reservations. Like most electric vehicles, the electric Silverado will be incredibly quick, able to sprint from 0 to 60 mph in less than 4.5 seconds. That's quicker than the RWD single-motor Cybertruck and about on par with the Ford F-150 Lightning and the tri-motor Cybertruck. (Tesla says the quad-motor truck will be able to hit 60 mph in 2.9 seconds.) The RST version sounds like it could easily knock the wind out of you, with 485kW of total power (664 horsepower) and 780 pound-feet of torque while in the Silverado's Wide Open Watts Mode. The RST First Edition of the truck will also feature a host of additional features, including: Four-wheel steering; Automatic Adaptive Air Suspension, enabling the vehicle to be raised or lowered 2 inches; Multi-Flex Midgate that expands the truck's cargo capability while maintaining seating for a rear row passengerAvailable Multi-Flex Tailgate with power release; 17-inch LCD infotainment screen paired with a neighboring 11-inch-diagonal reconfigurable driver instrument display and a multi-color driver head-up display with a field of view over 14 inches; and Trailering-capable Super Cruise, GM's hands-free driver assistance technology, allowing drivers to travel hands-free on more than 200,000 miles of compatible roads across the US and Canada. GM doesn't have its own charging network, so Silverado EV owners "will need to rely on a patchwork of third-party EV charging companies for most of their needs," notes The Verge. For onboard power, the Silverado bests the F-150 Lightning "putting out an incredible 10.2kW for all sorts of charging needs, including powering an entire home or charging another electric vehicle." The vehicle will be built in Detroit at GM's Factory Zero EV plant. Further reading: Car and Driver: As Chevy Silverado EV Charges after Ford F-150 Lightning, How They Compare The Drive: Here's What Comes in the $40K 2024 Chevy Silverado EV Work Truck Engadget: Watch GM's Silverado EV Reveal In 10 MinutesRead more of this story at Slashdot.

When it comes to forecasting the elements, many seem ready to welcome the machine. But humans still outperform the algorithms -- especially in bad conditions. From a report: [...] Similarly, research published by NOAA Weather Prediction Service director David Novak and his colleagues show that while human forecasters may not be able to "beat" the models on your typical sunny, fair-weather day, they still produce more accurate predictions than the algorithm-crunchers in bad weather. Over the two decades of information Novak's team studied, humans were 20 to 40 percent more accurate at forecasting near-future precipitation than the Global Forecast System (GFS) and the North American Mesoscale Forecast System (NAM), the most commonly used national models. Humans also made statistically significant improvements to temperature forecasting over both model's guidance. "Oftentimes, we find that in the bigger events is when the forecasters can make some value-added improvements to the automated guidance," says Novak. Particularly in adverse conditions, great improvements to the model's forecast were usually due to human augmentation, he adds. This is even more true for local, severe events like thunderstorms and tornadoes, which rely on split-second decision-making in order to save lives. As forecasters become more familiar with a particular model, they begin to notice its biases and failings, Novak adds. Just like the model learns from us, we learn from the model.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Activision has filed a federal lawsuit against German cheat makers EngineOwning and associated individuals for "trafficking in technologies that circumvent or evade anti-cheat technologies used by Activision to protect the integrity of [Call of Duty] games." From a report: EngineOwning charges 13 euros per month or more for subscription access to individualized suites of cheating tools designed for Call of Duty games -- and also Battlefield, Titanfall 2, and Star Wars Battlefront. The software promises abilities like automated aimbots, auto-firing triggerbots, "2D radar" that shows enemy locations on the HUD, and "3D radar" that can track and display opposing players even behind cover. EO promises its software is undetectable by automated tools, including Activision's recently launched Ricochet kernel-level anti-cheat tools. The software also includes built-in tools to make cheating less obvious to human moderators and recording software, making users "look like a legit player." The company separately sells "hardware ID spoofer" software that promises to get around hardware-based bans in Call of Duty and other games. In its lawsuit, Activision says these tools have been used "thousands of times by players in the United States," earning EngineOwning "hundreds of thousands of dollars or more." Thus, the software has led to "at least tens of thousands of breaches" of the terms of use players must agree to before playing online.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 writes: Millions of small business owners who rely on payment apps like Venmo, PayPal and Cash App could be subject to a new tax law that just took effect in January. Beginning this year, third-party payment processors will be required to report a user's business transactions to the IRS if they exceed $600 for the year. The payment apps were previously required to send users Form 1099-K if their gross income exceeded $20,000 or they had 200 separate transactions within a calendar year. Democrats made the change in March 2021, when they passed the American Rescue Plan without any Republican votes. The new rule only applies to payments received for goods and services transactions, meaning that using Venmo or PayPal to send a loved one a gift, pay your roommate rent, or reimburse a friend for dinner will be excluded. Also excluded is anyone who receives money from selling a personal item at a loss; for example, if you purchased a couch for $300 and sold it for $250, the amount is not taxable.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In November 2020, Microsoft took the wraps off its Pluton security chip, with the goal of bringing it to all Windows 10 PCs. It wasn't until this week, that any of Microsoft's OEMs announced their first Pluton-powered PCs. From a report: At CES, Lenovo unveiled its Ryzen-6000-based ThinkPad Z series laptops running Windows 11, which will integrate the Microsoft Pluton processor. The coming ThinkPad Z series laptops will begin shipping in May 2022. Thanks to Pluton, these devices will be able to receive updated firmware using Windows Update. In the ThinkPad Z13 and Z16, Pluton will help protect Windows Hello credentials, according to Microsoft, by further isolating them from attackers. These new ThinkPads will use Pluton as their TPMs to protect encryption keys from physical attacks, Microsoft officials said. Microsoft pioneered Pluton first in Azure Sphere, its Linux-based microcontroller, and in Xbox. In a January 4 blog post, Microsoft officials noted that Pluton can be configured in three ways: As the Trusted Platform Module (TPM); as a security processor for non-TPM scenarios like platform resiliency; or inside a device where OEMs have opted to ship with the chip turned off.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google used the annual CES technology conference to showcase upcoming deeper ties among its devices and preview support for unlocking more cars with Android phones. From a report: The enhancements announced Wednesday included more quickly pairing accessories with devices running Google's Android and Chromebook laptop software, unlocking devices with Google software via smartwatches running Google's Wear OS and sharing content across products. The new features mirror work Apple has done with its software and hardware, an effort that has led consumers to buy more types of Apple devices. The Cupertino, California-based technology giant has long touted its ecosystem as superior to Google's because of tight integration, and now Google is trying to rival that experience.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is touting a major milestone for Fire TV, claiming it has sold more than 150 million of the streaming devices worldwide. And it announced deals with Ford Motor Co and Stellantis to bring Fire TV to the automakers' in-car entertainment systems. From a report: For comparison, Roku reported 56.4 million active streaming accounts across its family of devices as of the end of the third quarter of 2021 -- although that's a different metric than total devices sold. At the end of 2020, Amazon last reported having more than 50 million active Fire TV accounts. Amazon touted momentum for its connected-TV push, calling out the introduction last fall of the first Amazon-built TVs -- the Amazon Omni and 4-Series -- and a new, more powerful version of the Fire TV Stick 4K Max. According to the ecommerce giant, Fire TV Stick ranked as the top selling product on Amazon on Black Friday among all Amazon products, and customers purchased a record number of Fire TV smart TVs on Amazon.com the week of Black Friday, including models from Insignia, Toshiba, and Pioneer and the Amazon Fire TV Omni and 4-Series.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook parent company Meta Platforms has stopped development of a new software operating system to power its virtual reality devices and upcoming augmented reality glasses, The Information reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the decision. From a report: Shelving the project, which had been underway for several years and involved hundreds of employees, marked a setback for the company's attempt to own the underlying software behind its Oculus VR headset and future augmented or mixed reality devices. The screens of its planned devices aim to overlay digital images on the real world or weave real-world objects into VR apps. Meta uses an open-source version of Google's Android operating system to power Meta's existing Oculus Quest VR devices. But Meta wanted to create an OS from scratch to power them and future devices, a project that became known internally as XROS. XR is a catch-all term for VR, AR, and mixed reality. In MR, the wearer of a headset could view and use real-world objects, such as a keyboard, to do work or play games in a VR-like app. Instead, the company has told some staff it would continue to modify an open-source version of Android, which Google developed for smartphones but which other companies have used to power various devices, the people familiar with the matter said. Meta's modified version of Android, known internally as VROS, powers existing Oculus VR headsets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. organizations that fail to secure customer data against Log4Shell, a zero-day vulnerability in the widely-used Log4j Java logging library, could face legal repercussions, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has warned. From a report: In an alert this week, the consumer protection agency warned that the "serious" flaw, first discovered in December, is being exploited by a growing number of attackers and poses a "severe risk" to millions of consumer products. The public letter urges organizations to mitigate the vulnerability in order to reduce the likelihood of harm to consumers and to avoid potential legal action. "When vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited, it risks a loss or breach of personal information, financial loss and other irreversible harms," the agency said. "The duty to take reasonable steps to mitigate known software vulnerabilities implicates laws including, among others, the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Gramm Leach Bliley Act. It is critical that companies and their vendors relying on Log4j act now, in order to reduce the likelihood of harm to consumers, and to avoid FTC legal action."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The crackdown is killing the entrepreneurial drive that made China a tech power and destroying jobs that used to attract the country's brightest. From a report: Like many ambitious young Chinese, Zhao Junfeng studied hard in college and graduate school so he could land a coveted job as a programmer at a big Chinese internet company. After finishing graduate school in 2019, he joined an e-commerce company in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, got married and adopted a cat named Mango. In November of 2021, he moved to Shanghai to join one of China's biggest video platforms, iQiyi. He was on track to achieve a much-desired middle-class life, documenting his rise on his social media account. Then barely a month into his new job, he was let go when iQiyi laid off more than 20 percent of its staff. The ranks of the unemployed technology workers are swelling, as China's once vibrant internet industry is hit by a harsh and capricious regulatory crackdown. Under the direction of China's top leader, Xi Jinping, the government's unbridled hand is meddling in big ways and small, leaving companies second-guessing their strategies and praying to not become the next targets for crackdown. In place of the pride and ambition that dominated a few years ago, fear and gloom now rule as many tech companies lower their growth targets and lay off young, well-educated workers. Like their American counterparts, China's biggest tech companies are regulated to limit abuses of power and to mitigate systemic risks. But Beijing's hyper-political approach shows that it's more about the Communist Party taking control of the industry than about leveling the playing field. The crackdown is killing the innovation, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit that made China a tech power in the past decade. It is destroying companies, profits and jobs that used to attract China's best and brightest. Even people within the system are alarmed by the heavy-handed approach. The former head of China's sovereign wealth fund urged restrictions on the power of regulators. Hu Xijin, the newly retired editor of the official newspaper Global Times and an infamous propagandist, said he hoped that regulatory actions should help make most companies healthier instead of leaving them "dying on the operating table." The damage has been done. Some internet companies have been forced to shut down, while others are suffering from huge losses or disappointing earnings. Many publicly listed companies have seen their share prices fall by half, if not more.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Prices are going up for some of the cheapest and most popular at-home Covid-19 test kits in the U.S. From a report: Walmart and Kroger are raising their prices for BinaxNOW at-home rapid tests, after the expiration of a deal with the White House to sell the test kits at cost for $14. The two U.S. retail giants and Amazon.com Inc. agreed with the Biden administration last summer to discount the tests, which are made by Abbott Laboratories and generally cost $24 or more for a box with two tests. BinaxNOW, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is among the most commonly used over-the-counter, rapid antigen tests, which have been in high demand as the highly contagious Omicron variant spreads across the U.S. The deal with the White House expired in December, and Walmart said this week that it is raising the kits' price to $19.98 a box. Kroger now sells them for $23.99. The BinaxNOW tests aren't currently available on Amazon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MattSparkes writes: UK police forces have seized more than 300 million pound ($405 million) worth Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, reveals a New Scientist story based on Freedom of Information requests. The individual police forces seized the funds in various investigations and sold them: they're required to give half to the central government via the Home Office -- but they can keep the other half to plough back into investigations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony has announced some basic information about its much-anticipated next-generation VR hardware for the PS5, which it calls -- predictably -- PSVR2. Little was revealed about the device beyond its basic specs but it did confirm some features gamers will care about. From a report: The original PSVR was a competent, relatively affordable, easy to use device but fairly limited in terms of hardware: resolution, field of view and such. So Sony's announcement that the new one will be considerably more advanced will be very welcome. The PSVR2 was confirmed by Sony to have 4K HDR imagery, 2000x2040 per eye, and the field of view will also be wider than the original hardware at 110 degrees. A blog post that appeared after the live announcement confirmed rumors that it uses OLED and will have a 90-120Hz refresh rate. It will however feature eye-tracking and foveated rendering, must-haves these days. Eye-tracking for obvious gameplay and other reasons, and foveated rendering so that the notoriously resource-hungry VR rendering process can focus its cycles on the area where the player is looking.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: China's Covid-19 health code system that strictly governs people's movements crashed in Xi'an this week, worsening conditions in the locked-down city where the country's worst outbreak since Wuhan has been unfolding. The crash has complicated efforts to weed out cases through mass testing, created hurdles for people seeking care at hospitals and led to the suspension of a top official, the latest among a slew of bureaucrats to be punished as Beijing fumes over the situation. Liu Jun, head of Xi'an's big-data bureau, was temporarily dismissed over performance failures, the municipal Communist Party Committee said in a statement. While the committee didn't explicitly lay out the reason behind its decision, it came after Xi'an's health code system -- which is under Liu's purview and tracks individuals' movements and vaccination status -- broke down on Tuesday. The system crash meant that locals were unable to access their Covid infection status after Xi'an embarked on a new widespread round of nucleic acid tests, according to a media report. The provincial government said in a statement later that the system was temporarily paralyzed due to overwhelming traffic, and being fixed. It had also experienced technical issues in December.A pregnant women in Xi'an reportedly lost her baby after being refused entry to a hospital because she "couldn't show she was infection-free via the health code app," reports Bloomberg. "A video posted Tuesday showing what appeared to be a woman bleeding on the sidewalk outside a hospital in Xi'an's Gaoxin district was trending on Weibo. Similar complaints and criticisms were seen elsewhere on Chinese social media as patients failed to get timely treatment at hospitals already overwhelmed by the virus."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FangVT writes: Ars Techinca reports on GAF Energy's new solar shingles which are designed to save on installation costs. They are not only designed to look similar to existing asphalt shingles but to be installed in much the same way, including being nailed in place. The system has moved the wiring to the top, so as to simplify inspections and repairs. "Because each one of our panels is 45 Watts and only 10 volts, we have access to a whole host of electronic components that don't have to be able to withstand 300 Watts, 50 volts," the company says. "That allows us to be more efficient in the electricity generated from those panels." And in what they say is a first, UL has certified the shingles both as solar panels and as roofing materials. The company also says they come with a 25 year warrant and will be offering a more comprehensive warranty that will also include guaranteed power output. They wouldn't provide a hard number on the price, but "a homeowner won't pay any more for a GAF solar roof than they would if they were to get a new roof and have someone put solar on it," said GAF Energy CEO Martin DeBono. "That's our benchmark. We're half the cost of a Tesla solar roof in any given market right now."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

InfiniteZero shares a report from Live Science: China's Tianwen-1 spacecraft at Mars pulled a big New Year's surprise with stunning new images captured by a small camera that flew free of the orbiter to snap epic selfies above the Red Planet. The new images published by the China National Space Administration show Tianwen-1 above Mars' north pole, with its solar arrays and antennas on display, as well as a partial closeup of the orbiter and a view of the Red Planet's northern ice cap. The views give an unprecedented view of a spacecraft in orbit around another planet, showing the golden body of Tianwen-1, the silver high-gain antenna for communications, solar arrays and science antennae. A closeup shows the spacecraft's radar antenna parallel to the solar array.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Agricultural equipment maker John Deere has announced its latest piece of autonomous farming kit: a package of hardware and software that combines machine learning with the company's GPS-powered auto-steer features to create a "fully autonomous tractor." The technology to support autonomous farming has been developing rapidly in recent years, but John Deere claims this is a significant step forward. With this technology, farmers will not only be able to take their hands off the wheel of their tractor or leave the cab -- they'll be able to leave the field altogether, letting the equipment do the work without them while monitoring things remotely using their smartphone. "This is not a demo. It's not a concept machine. It's something we've had in the field with farmers for years and will be taking to production in fall," Deanna Kovar, vice president of production and precision ag production systems at John Deere, told The Verge. "We're not going from no tech all the way up to an autonomous machine," says Kovar. "John Deere's AutoTrac solution has taken the job of steering in the field out of the operators' hands for almost 20 years now." Today's announcement, she says, builds on these solutions. The big difference with this new technology is that drivers will now be able to set-and-forget some aspects of their self-driving tractors. The company's autonomy kit includes six pairs of stereo cameras that capture a 360-degree view around the tractor. This input is then analyzed by machine vision algorithms, which spot unexpected obstacles. "All [farmers] need to do is transport [their tractor] to the field, get it set, get out the cab, and use their mobile phone to 'swipe to farm,'" says Kovar. "And every eight hours, they return to give it fuel and move it from field to field." Although John Deere is presenting this as an autonomous system, it's worth noting that there are humans in the loop, and not just farmers. When the company's algorithms spot something unexpected, images from the cameras will be sent to "tele-operators" -- essentially a call center of third-party contractors who will manually check if the obstacle is a false positive or if the problem has resolved itself. If it's a real issue, they'll escalate things to the farmer via an alert on their mobile app. The farmer can then view the images themselves and decide if they want to plot a new course or check the situation in person. "We've trained the algorithm to know that those are birds flying, you don't have to stop for birds. But if you have, say, a dog in the field, then we'll stop," says Kovar. "We don't want to always alert the farmer because this could be two in the morning. Part of the value of autonomy is allowing farmers to focus on other tasks." At first, the autonomous tractors will focus on the job of tillage. "This is a 'competing priority' job that's usually done around harvest time, says Kofar, meaning farmers may set it aside in favor of more pressing tasks," reports The Verge. "That makes it a perfect target for automation." "The company will be selling its new autonomy package as equipment to be retrofitted onto a number of its more recent tractors. But it has not released pricing -- either upfront costs or annual subscriptions (which it charges for its autosteer products)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London, in partnership with COMPASS Pathways, has established that psilocybin can be safely administered at doses of either 10mg or 25mg to up to six participants simultaneously. King's College London reports: The research, published in The Journal of Psychopharmacology, is an essential first step in demonstrating the safety and feasibility of psilocybin -- a psychedelic drug isolated from the Psilocybe mushroom -- for use within controlled settings alongside talking therapy as a potential treatment for a range of mental health conditions, including treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and PTSD. Current treatment options for these conditions are ineffective or partially effective for many people, resulting in a significant unmet need. Early research has indicated a potential for psilocybin therapy to treat these groups, but no trials have been undertaken at the scale needed for regulatory approval to make the therapy available. The trial is the first of its kind to thoroughly investigate the simultaneous administration of psilocybin. 89 healthy participants with no recent (within 1 year) use of psilocybin were recruited. 60 individuals were randomly picked to receive either a 10mg or 25mg dose of psilocybin in a controlled environment. In addition, all participants were provided with one-to-one support from trained psychotherapists. The remaining 29 participants acted as the control group and received a placebo, also with psychological support. Participants were closely monitored for six to eight hours following administration of psilocybin and then followed up for 12 weeks. During this time, they were assessed for a number of possible changes, including sustained attention, memory, and planning, as well as their ability to process emotions. Throughout the study, there were no instances of anyone withdrawing from the study due to an adverse event, and no consistent trends to suggest that either of the psilocybin doses had any short- or long-term detrimental effects on participants.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A class action lawsuit has been filed in California against Google, Apple and the CEOs of both tech giants for allegedly violating antitrust laws, according to a press release. The complaint calls for the breakup of Google and Apple into separate and independent companies in keeping with the precedent of the of Standard Oil company into Exxon, Mobile, Conoco, Amoco, Sohio, Chevron and others, the release stated. PYMNTS.com reports: Charges in the suit allege that Google and Apple have agreed that Apple would keep out of the internet search business against Google, according to the release. It also claims Google shares its search profits with Apple and gives Apple preferential treatment for all Apple devices; annual multi-billion-dollar payments by Google to Apple not to compete in the search business; suppression of smaller competitors to keep them from the search sector; and acquiring competing companies. Allegations also include higher advertising rates than rates that would be in a competitive system, the release stated. Attorneys are seeking an end to the alleged billion-dollar payments to Apple from Google and asking the court to prohibit non-compete agreements between the two companies and end the profit-sharing agreement and the preferential treatment for Google on Apple devices, according to the release. "These powerful companies abused their size by unlawfully foreclosing and monopolizing major markets which in an otherwise free enterprise system would have created jobs, lowered prices, increased production, added new competitors, encouraged innovations and increased the quality of services in the digital age," Joseph M. Alioto of Alioto Law, who is representing the plaintiffs, said in the release.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A record 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in November while openings remained elevated, highlighting persistent churn in the labor market. The increase in departures was broad across industries and pushed the quits rate up to 3%, matching the most in data back to 2000. Meanwhile, the number of available positions fell to 10.6 million from an upwardly revised 11.1 million in October, the Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed Tuesday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a rise to 11.1 million job openings. While the drop was the largest since April 2020, vacancies remain well above pre-pandemic levels. The unprecedented level of quits -- including a record 1 million in leisure and hospitality alone -- suggests a lingering struggle for employers to retain talent. Meanwhile, the month's increase in hiring showed companies were able to make at least some headway filling vacancies. The data come ahead of Friday's monthly employment report from the Labor Department, which is currently forecast to show that the U.S. added 420,000 jobs in December. [...] Total hires were little changed in November at 6.7 million. Layoffs and discharges were also steady.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's mixed reality headset that's set to launch in 2022 will be equipped with three displays, according to a research report shared today by display analyst Ross Young. MacRumors reports: The display configuration will include two micro OLED displays along with one AMOLED panel, with Sony set to supply the micro OLED displays that Apple will use. The micro OLED displays will be the main displays for the headset, but it's not yet known just what the AMOLED display will be used for. Modern VR headsets don't use AMOLED technology because the pixel density is too low, so it's possible that Apple is going to add it for low-resolution peripheral vision. Sony recently showed off a 4K display with 4000 pixels per inch designed for use with VR headsets, and the report suggests that it's possible Sony developed this display specifically for Apple. If Apple is indeed using this Sony technology, an assumed array of 4000 x 4000 pixels indicates the display for the headset will measure in at 1.4 inches diagonally. This kind of advanced display configuration will come at a "high price," and Young suggests that the headset will cost several thousand dollars, which is in line with previous reports that have indicated a price of around $3,000.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Cold War couldn't stop gaming from thriving in the Eastern Bloc. From the late 1980s through the early 1990s, a generation of young people living behind the Iron Curtain designed and released their own video games and arcade cabinets. Now, you can play English translations of some of these lost classics of early gaming. One is a text adventure where a Soviet military officer hunts and kills Rambo. The translated games all come from Slovakia and are a collaboration between the Slovak Game Developers Association and the Slovak Design Museum. According to Stanislav Hrda, one of the programmers who created the games on offer, making video games was something only kids did. "The games were not sold in shops and the authors were not entitled to remuneration," he said in the post explaining the project. "Therefore, practically no one could engage in video game programming as a business activity, and adult programmers worked at most in state institutions on large mainframe computers. Thus, video game programmers became mainly teenagers." The computing power was limited and the teenagers' technological knowhow almost non-existent so many of these early games were text adventures. "These could also be programmed in the simpler Basic language that every home computer had built in," Hrda said. "Text-based games offered the opportunity to imprint one's fantasies into a world of characters, locations, descriptions of reality or fantasy at will. That is why hundreds of such video games were created in the 1980s in Czechoslovakia. The authors from the ranks of teenagers portrayed their friends, but also heroes from films that were distributed on VHS tapes or from the pop-cultural world of the West from the occasionally available comics, films, TV series and books." Hrda loved American action movies and programmed the video game Satochin, a text adventure where a Soviet officer hunts John Rambo. "The game was very hard to win," Hrda told Ars Technica. "Whenever you made a small mistake, you would die. So before you win, you are killed ten times by Rambo." [...] The project has localized ten games for Western audiences, including Satochin, with plans to tackle more over the next few years. "The games translated over the next 2-3 years after the end of the project will represent almost the complete video game production from the period of 8-bit computers in Slovakia, with an emphasis on text adventure games," the site said. English versions are available here and can be played in the Fuse emulator. The Slovak versions can be played online through the project's website.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ASML Holding has reported a fire at its factory in Berlin, Germany. No one was hurt and the fire was put out on Sunday night, but the incident could exacerbate the current global computer chip shortage. Here's what ASML said about the incident: The fire was extinguished during the night and fortunately no persons were injured during this incident. At this point it is too early to make any statement on the damage or whether the incident will have any impact on the output plan for this year. It will take a few days to conduct a thorough investigation and make a full assessment. As soon as we have such assessment, we will provide an update. The Register reports: ASML is the world's largest supplier of photolithography systems, the machines used to manufacture integrated circuits. Its units -- which cost tens of millions of dollars -- use lasers to etch components into blank silicon wafers, to within an accuracy of nanometers. Berliner Glas, where the fire was extinguished, was acquired by ASML in 2020, and says that over "1,200 employees" work at the firm, now known as ASML Berlin, developing and producing "several key components for ASML lithography systems, including wafer tables and clamps, reticle chucks and mirror blocks." These are key components for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and deep ultraviolet (DUV) systems. EUV, in particular, which helps ASML's semiconductor-making clients print chips in much finer detail and at a lower cost, is seen as one of the drivers behind the firm's predictions of a $1 trillion semiconductor industry by 2030. The Dutch firm's customers include TSMC and Intel. Berlin's fire department said last night that an automatic cleaning system had caught fire across an area of 200m^2 on the second floor of a three-storey "industrial" building in Waldkraiburger Strasse in Berlin's Britz district in the Neukolln area. Resources deployed at the site included a drone that could access the roof. The Berlin company's stated production area is 31,780m^2. A spokesperson confirmed to The Register that a part of the Berlin factory was closed -- but said other parts of the factory were still operating. The firm's stock price dipped 2 per cent on the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"On Tuesday morning, all five layers of the James Webb Space Telescope were fully locked into place," writes Slashdot reader quonset. The BBC reports: There were many who doubted the wisdom of a design that included so many motors, gears, pulleys and cables. But years of testing on full-scale and sub-scale models paid dividends as controllers first separated the shield's different layers and then tensioned them. The fifth and final membrane was locked into place at 16:58 GMT. "The unfurling and securing of the sun shield is part of what NASA refers to as '29 days on the edge,' writes quonset, citing an article from CNN. "During the 29 days, Webb will set up shop, unfurling its giant gold mirror and the protective tennis court-size sunshield. This process involves thousands of parts that must function harmoniously, in the right sequence. Fortunately, each step can be controlled from the ground in case there are issues." "The next step is the unboxing of the mirror which had to be folded to fit inside the nose cone of the rocket for launch. If all goes well, by the end of the weekend, the mirror will be in place and ready for testing before full operations begin."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Popcorn Time, the once-popular app that made watching pirated movies and television shows almost as easy as using Netflix, has shut down. Bloomberg News: The app debuted in 2014 and within a year became one of the most popular services for accessing illegal video content. Popcorn Time's creators deserted the service shortly after its introduction, and emails released after a hack of Sony Group indicated law enforcement may have played a role. But the app's code was open-source, and other developers jumped in to release new versions. In 2015, a developer associated with Popcorn Time told Bloomberg that the service wasn't responsible for piracy because it didn't host any stolen material itself. The software instead offered a link to computers around the world hosting the content through the file-sharing system BitTorrent. "The torrent world was here with millions of users way before us and will be here with BILLIONS of users way after us," he said at the time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Intel launched its 12th Generation Core family of processors late last year, it was only a small set of overclockable parts for desktops that came to market. Featuring Intel's new hybrid core design, the hardware proved competitive and cost effective, making it a very interesting time to be a consumer. However, the main battle for volume sales is typically in the mid-range and notebook segments which power millions of devices, and Intel is launching these processors today. From a report: These include the 35 W and 65 W desktop processors, new desktop coolers, and a handful of 45W+ laptop offerings for the creator and gaming markets. While all the glitz and the glamour goes to the high-profile overclockable processors in any given generation, the bulk of Intel's sales actually comes from the standard, run-of-the-mill hardware that gets put into the majority of commercial and pre-built hardware. To that end, Intel usually releases anywhere from 10 to 50+ new desktop processors to fill in the markets where needed. These processors usually come from anything up to four base physical designs, and parts of those chips are disabled depending on yield or market demand and sold accordingly. For Alder Lake, Intel is launching 22 new desktop processors, from $42 dual core Celerons at 35W all the way up to $489 Core i9-12900 parts. Split down, here's what all the Core names mean: Core i9: 8 Performance Cores + 8 Efficiency CoresCore i7: 8 Performance Cores + 4 Efficiency CoresCore i5: Either 6P+4E, or 6P onlyCore i3: 4 Performance Cores onlyPentium: 2 Performance Cores onlyCeleron: 2 Performance Cores only Just putting Core i5 aside for a split second, what we have here is a scale of hardware that changes in performance cores, but only a select few have efficiency cores. This is because Intel is using two base physical designs for this hardware: either a large 8P+8E chip or a smaller 6P only chip. The smaller chip makes the economics of the lower core count processors work out better, but it does mean that one of the key features for Alder Lake, the hybrid CPU, will be limited to the high-end hardware only.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The World Health Organization said a coronavirus variant found in France hasn't become much of a threat since it was first identified in November. From a report: The variant "has been on our radar," Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager on Covid, said at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. "That virus had a lot of chances to pick up." The variant was identified in 12 people in the southern Alps around the same time that omicron was discovered in South Africa last year. The latter mutation has since traveled the globe and kindled record levels of contagion, unlike the French one that researchers at the IHU Mediterranee Infection -- helmed by scientist Didier Raoult -- nicknamed IHU. The first patient identified with the variant was vaccinated and had just returned from Cameroon, IHU researchers wrote in a paper published on the medRxiv server in late December where they first drew attention to the atypical mutations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Whether it's cigarettes or alcohol, many governments have legislated that companies must warn consumers of the negative effects of their products. This is often achieved on packaging or required in advertising. France is now intending to bring such measures to the automotive industry, forcing carmakers to supplement ads with messages about greener transport alternatives, as reported by CTV News. Coming into force on March 1st, the legislation is the product of years of lobbying from French environmental groups. The law requires the mention of one of three statements in any given advert. Roughly translated, these are "For short journeys, walk or cycle," as well as "think about carpooling" and "Take public transport daily." These messages must be included in all advertising, whether in print, online, or broadcast on radio or TV. The messages must be clearly visible on screen, or in the case of radio ads, be spoken aloud after the ad proper is finished. A hashtag, #SeDeplacerMoinsPolluer, is also required to be displayed in certain contexts, which translates to "Move without pollution." Fines for non-compliance can range up to $56,450. It's part of a wider push to cut down on transport emissions in France, with private cars making up a full 15 percent of the country's greenhouse gas output. The country has already pledged to end the sale of gas and diesel-powered cars by 2040, while the city of Paris has banned older, more polluting vehicles from the city center.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reader segaboy81 shares a report: When Microsoft announced Windows 11 in June of 2021, it was greeted with mixed reactions by the tech press. Some outlets praised the round corners and modern design elements, while others conjectured that visual elements from the remains of Windows 10x had simply been transplanted onto a stable, familiar base. All the while, Microsoft had been gaining a loyal following with what was purported to be last version on Windows. Windows, like Arch Linux, had essentially become a rolling release. That all changed with the announcement of the Surface Pro 8, Surface Go 3, and Surface Laptop Studio. The road has been long for many users, mired with controversy regarding TPM 2.0, AMD Ryzen performance pitfalls, and more. We are a full two months into the official release of Windows 11, but driver support for Microsoft's Surface line of devices listed on the official compatibility list is still incomplete. Counting AMD and Intel variants of the Surface Laptop and the 2021 lineup of new hardware, there are 16 base Surface configurations that support Windows 11. Five of them still don't have a Windows 11 driver package two months after release. They are as follows: Surface Go 2, Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 2, Surface Laptop 3 (Ryzen), and Surface Studio 2.Read more of this story at Slashdot.