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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Researchers have successfully altered the blood type of three donor kidneys in a gamechanging discovery that could significantly improve the chances of patients waiting for a transplant finding a match. The development could increase the supply of kidneys available for transplant, particularly within minority ethnic groups who are less likely to find a match, scientists say. A kidney from someone with blood type A cannot be transplanted to someone with blood type B, nor the other way around. But changing the blood type to the universal O would allow more transplants to take place as this can be used for people with any blood type. University of Cambridge researchers used a normothermic perfusion machine -- a device that connects with a human kidney to pass oxygenated blood through the organ to better preserve it for future use -- to flush blood infused with an enzyme through the deceased donor's kidney. The enzyme removed the blood type markers that line the blood vessels of the kidney, which led to the organ being converted to the most common O type. [...] Now the researchers need to see how the newly changed O-type kidney will react to a patient's usual blood type in their normal blood supply. The machine allows them to do this before testing in people, as they can take the kidneys that have been changed to the O type, and introduce different blood types to monitor how the kidney might react. The full paper on the work is set to be published in the British Journal of Surgery in the coming months.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Germany plans to keep its remaining nuclear power plants open for longer in a major U-turn as it scrambles to keep the lights on this winter with less Russian gas. The Telegraph reports: Officials have concluded the plants are needed due to gas shortages and they can be kept open without safety concerns, the Wall Street Journal reported. Germany pledged to phase out nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, which hardened opposition to the technology. Berlin has been under pressure to change course since the invasion of Ukraine to limit the impact of the gas crisis on manufacturers and households. Germany has three plants left, operated by E.ON, EnBW and RWE, supplying about 6pc of the country's electricity. They are currently due to close at the end of the year. Any extension has yet to be officially adopted and details remain under discussion, the Wall Street Journal added. It came as Norway warned it could not do more to help Germany avoid a gas crisis this winter as Russia restricts supplies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the second year in a row, Arizona and Nevada will face cuts in the amount of water they can draw from the Colorado River as the West endures an extreme drought, federal officials announced Tuesday. The Associated Press reports: The cuts planned for next year will force states to make critical decisions about where to reduce consumption and whether to prioritize growing cities or agricultural areas. The cuts will also place state officials under renewed pressure to plan for a hotter, drier future and a growing population. Mexico will also face cuts. "We are taking steps to protect the 40 million people who depend on the Colorado River for their lives and livelihoods," said Camille Touton, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. The river provides water across seven states and in Mexico and helps feed an agricultural industry valued at $15 billion a year. Cities and farms are anxiously awaiting official estimates of the river's future water levels that will determine the extent and scope of cuts to their water supply. That's not all. In addition to those already-agreed-to cuts, the Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday that states had missed a deadline to propose at least 15% more cuts needed to keep water levels at the river's storage reservoirs from dropping even more. For example, officials have predicted that water levels at Lake Mead, the nation's largest reservoir, will plummet further. The lake is currently less than a quarter full. "The states collectively have not identified and adopted specific actions of sufficient magnitude that would stabilize the system," Touton said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Multiple people who appear to be employees of Microsoft have exposed sensitive login credentials to the company's own infrastructure on GitHub, potentially offering attackers a gateway into internal Microsoft systems, according to a cybersecurity research firm that found the exposed credentials. Motherboard reports: "We continue to see that accidental source code and credential leakages are part of the attack surface of a company, and it's becoming more and more difficult to identify in a timely and accurate manner. This is a very challenging issue for most companies these days," Mossab Hussein, chief security officer at cybersecurity firm spiderSilk which discovered the issue, told Motherboard in an online chat. Hussein provided Motherboard with seven examples in total of exposed Microsoft logins. All of these were credentials for Azure servers. Azure is Microsoft's cloud computer service and is similar to Amazon Web Services. All of the exposed credentials were associated with an official Microsoft tenant ID. A tenant ID is a unique identifier linked to a particular set of Azure users. One of the GitHub users also listed Microsoft on their profile. Three of the seven login credentials were still active when spiderSilk discovered them, with one seemingly uploaded just days ago at the time of writing. The other four sets of credentials were no longer active but still highlighted the risk of workers accidentally uploading keys for internal systems. Microsoft refused to elaborate on what systems the credentials were protecting when asked multiple times by Motherboard. But generally speaking, an attacker may have an opportunity to move onto other points of interest after gaining initial access to an internal system. One of the GitHub profiles with exposed and active credentials makes a reference to the Azure DevOps code repository. Highlighting the risk that such credentials may pose, in an apparently unrelated hack in March attackers gained access to an Azure DevOps account and then published a large amount of Microsoft source code, including for Bing and Microsoft's Cortana assistant. "We've investigated and have taken action to secure these credentials," said a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement. "While they were inadvertently made public, we haven't seen any evidence that sensitive data was accessed or the credentials were used improperly. We're continuing to investigate and will continue to take necessary steps to further prevent inadvertent sharing of credentials."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Stephen Flavall makes his living by playing video games to an audience of thousands on Twitch. When he first started streaming, he only had about fifteen people at a time watching him. He liked how he could engage with a small community, cracking jokes while people cheered him on. Unfortunately, the vibe changed as his popularity grew. "Around 200 viewers was when it started getting exhausting," says Flavall. "Now I have like 2,000 viewers [at a time] and when that many people are asking you questions and telling you what to do, it becomes absolutely unmanageable. I started having anxiety, bordering on full panic attacks." Flavall's gotten to a better place now, but his story isn't unique. Burnout is on the rise across the country, even for those whose work is -- quite literally -- play. While professional video gaming can sound like an enviable gig, it's not too different from being a performer. Streamers have an audience, a persona, and act in the same role for long hours. Streamers can't really take breaks, either. They risk their fanbase losing interest during a stream and logging off. Since they're self-employed, they can't rely on paid vacation, or sick leave. That leaves streamers wondering how to navigate making an income that isn't an official "job." [...] Twitch audiences can also demand that streamers play games they may have soured on. Haelian, another Twitch streamer known for playing rogue-likes, got tired of trying to escape the underworld of Hades day-in and day-out. But that game made his stream popular, and his fans weren't pleased. [...] Twitch's competitive culture also fans the flames. It's not just that a streamer can tire of a game or rude viewers; they can also fall victim to a pervasive "always on" mentality. Taylor Chou, Director of Talent Management at Evil Geniuses, an esports and gaming entertainment company, says that Twitch can be a pretty toxic work environment. "When you're a streamer, you truly know that every single second that you are not online, grinding, posting, streaming -- somebody [else] is," Chou says. "That's a lot of pressure for people to learn how to manage." Chou also says that communicating with your audience and having a support system is key to mitigating streamer burnout. "Most of the best ways to deal with burnout start with a support system," says Chou. "When you're a streamer, make sure that your community has a sense that this is a person they're watching." But that kind of structure can take years to build, and while fans have rallied around streamers, they can just as often stress or even harass them. That leaves many burnt out and on their way to signing off for good. Further reading: Deadly Swatting Increasing On Twitch; Alarmed Streamers Press For Change (Ars Technica)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tesla's Supercharger stations that are open to non-Tesla electric vehicles are deemed "illegal" in Germany due to the lack of kWh counter on the units. Electrek reports: Handelsblatt reports that Tesla's Superchargers are considered "illegal" because they don't have a visible kWh counter at the stations (translated from German): "Every charging station at which charging current is billed according to kilowatt hours must comply with calibration law in Germany , i.e., have a meter that precisely measures the charged current. This applies to public space, but also to company and private premises." Tesla has always relied on its mobile app to monitor charging sessions, and the stations are not equipped with screens. Thomas Weberpals, head of the Bavarian State Office for Weights and Measures, said that it is Tesla's job to retrofit the stations, and it is working toward that. The government doesn't plan to act on it right now: "The illegal operation is not hindered and not sanctioned. It was and is being worked toward a lawful state." "There are a few other charging companies that are also in violation of the regulation, but Tesla has the highest number of stations in violation," notes Electrek.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday upheld the FCC's decision to reallocate part of the 5.9 GHz band for unlicensed use -- rather than the dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) it was originally allocated for. "This is part of the spectrum that in 1999 was set aside exclusively for the auto industry to use for DSCR to improve auto safety," notes Fierce Wireless. "At that time, the full amount set aside was 75 megahertz." From the report: After about 20 years, nothing ever really came of DSRC, and in 2020, the FCC divvied up the 75 megahertz, making 45 megahertz available for unlicensed use with the remaining 30 megahertz designated for auto safety. Specifically, the auto safety spectrum was reallocated for Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) technology, a more modern tech than DSRC. The Intelligent Transportation Society of America and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials didn't like the FCC's decision and appealed, arguing that it violated the Transportation Equity Act. They also said the FCC unlawfully revoked or modified FCC licenses. But Circuit Court Judge Justin Walker said it did not violate the act and said the court disagreed with the transportation officials' arguments "on all fronts."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The Food and Drug Administration decided on Tuesday to allow hearing aids to be sold over the counter and without a prescription to adults, a long-sought wish of consumers frustrated by expensive exams and devices. The high cost of hearing aids, which are not covered by basic Medicare, has discouraged millions of Americans who have hearing loss from buying the devices. Health experts say that untreated hearing loss can contribute to cognitive decline and depression in older people. Under the new rule, people with mild to moderate hearing loss should be able to buy hearing aids online and in retail stores as soon as October, without being required to see a doctor for an exam to get a prescription. The F.D.A. cited studies estimating that about 30 million Americans experience hearing loss, but only about one-fifth of them get help. The changes could upend the market, which is dominated by a relatively small number of manufacturers, and make it a broader field with less costly, and perhaps, more innovative designs. Current costs for hearing aids, which tend to include visits with an audiologist, range from about $1,400at Costco to roughly $4,700elsewhere. The F.D.A.'s final rule takes effect in 60 days. Industry representatives say device makers are largely ready to launch new products, though some may need time to update labeling and packaging or to comply with technical details in the rule. "This could fundamentally change technology," said Nicholas Reed, an audiologist at the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "We don't know what these companies might come up with. We may literally see new ways hearing aids work, how they look."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In its latest effort to contend with soaring inflation, Amazon is planning to raise fulfillment fees during the holiday season, passing off some of its increased costs to the millions of merchants who rely on the site to sell their products. From a report: Starting Oct. 15, and running through Jan. 14, third-party sellers who use Fulfillment by Amazon, or FBA, will have to pay 35 cents per item sold in the U.S. or Canada, the company said Tuesday in an email to sellers. For merchants using FBA, Amazon handles the process of picking, packing and shipping items. The holiday fee comes on top of existing charges that sellers pay for using FBA services. Those costs vary depending on an item's size, category and weight. Amazon said it's implementing an added holiday surcharge for the first time as "expenses are reaching new heights," making it harder for the company to absorb costs tied to the peak shopping season. "Our selling partners are incredibly important to us, and this is not a decision we made lightly," Amazon said in the email. Amazon's third-party marketplace has become the centerpiece of its dominant e-commerce business, as it now accounts for more than half of online retail sales. Because of Amazon's global reach and massive customer base, many retailers count on the company for the majority, and in some cases the entirety, of their business.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's internet giants from Tencent to ByteDance have shared details of their prized algorithms with Beijing for the first time, an unprecedented move aimed at curbing data abuse that may end up compromising closely guarded corporate secrets. From a report: The internet watchdog on Friday published a list describing 30 algorithms that firms including Alibaba Group Holding and Meituan employ to gather data on users, tailor personal recommendations and serve up content. While the public list stopped short of revealing the actual code, it wasn't clear the extent to which internet firms may have revealed their underlying software to regulators in private. The algorithms that decide which TikTok videos, WeChat posts and Instagram photos users see are considered the secret sauce of many online services, critical in capturing user attention and driving growth. China in March adopted regulations that require internet firms to disclose such tools, an effort to address complaints about data abuse that also helps regulators keep internet firms on a tighter leash. Tech industry algorithms are jealously guarded and have been at the heart of political controversies around the world. That disclosure requirement sets China apart from countries like the US, where Meta Platforms and Alphabet have argued successfully that algorithms are business secrets, even as lawmakers and activists seek to better understand how they curate content and manage data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. has identified intensifying technological competition with China as a top national-security threat. But a Commerce Department-led process that reviews U.S. tech exports to the country approves almost all requests and has overseen an increase in sales of some particularly important technologies, according to an analysis of trade data. From a report: Of the U.S.'s total $125 billion in exports to China in 2020, officials required a license for less than half a percent, Commerce Department data shows. Of that fraction, the agency approved 94%, or 2,652, applications for technology exports to China. The figures omit applications "returned without action," meaning their outcomes were uncertain. The result: The U.S. continues to send to China an array of semiconductors, aerospace components, artificial-intelligence technology and other items that could be used to advance Beijing's military interests. The Commerce Department says it is focused on long-term, strategic competition with China and that it makes export-control decisions with its interagency partners in the Defense, State and Energy Departments. Critics say Commerce officials are improperly giving priority to U.S. commercial interests over national security and that an urgent regulatory revamp is necessary to respond to the threat from Beijing. For Steve Coonen, the Pentagon's former top China export-controls analyst, the high rate of approvals for licenses to sell tech with potential military use is evidence of significant policy failure.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google is combining the eyes and arms of physical robots with the knowledge and conversation skills of virtual chatbots to help its employees fetch soda and chips from breakrooms with ease. From a report: The mechanical waiters, shown in action to reporters last week, embody an artificial intelligence breakthrough that paves the way for multipurpose robots as easy to control as ones that perform single, structured tasks such as vacuuming or standing guard. Google robots are not ready for sale. They perform only a few dozen simple actions, and the company has not yet embedded them with the "OK, Google" summoning feature familiar to consumers. While Google says it is pursuing development responsibly, adoption could ultimately stall over concerns such as robots becoming surveillance machines, or being equipped with chat technology that can give offensive responses, as Meta Platforms and others have experienced in recent years. Microsoft and Amazon are pursuing comparable research on robots. "It's going to take a while before we can really have a firm grasp on the direct commercial impact," said Vincent Vanhoucke, senior director for Google's robotics research. When asked to help clean a spill, Google's robot recognizes that grabbing a sponge is a doable and more sensible response than apologizing for creating the mess.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is planning to release its next big Windows 11 update, version 22H2, on September 20th. The Verge: Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans tell The Verge Microsoft will roll out Windows 11 22H2 through Windows Update on September 20th, a week after the company's regular Patch Tuesday fixes. Microsoft has been testing Windows 11 22H2 for months, and it will include a number of new improvements, like app folders in the Start menu, drag and drop on the taskbar, and new touch gestures and animations. Microsoft is also adding a new Live Captions accessibility feature with 22H2, which is ideal for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or anyone who wants to caption audio automatically. Similarly, a new Voice Access tool that allows people to control their PCs by using voice commands is part of 22H2. The Task Manager is also being overhauled in Windows 11 22H2, with a new dark mode and a far better layout that includes a new command bar and an efficiency mode to limit apps from consuming resources. Snap Layouts will also be greatly improved in 22H2, making it easier to drag and app to reveal all the layouts you can use to arrange apps. Microsoft is also working on tabs for File Explorer, which will arrive a little later than September 20th.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

American Airlines has agreed to purchase 20 supersonic Overture planes from Boom Supersonic, the companies announced Tuesday. From a report: The deal is the second firm order in the last two years for Boom, still years from building its first commercial airplane. United Airlines made a commitment last year to buy 15 Overture jets. "Passengers want flights that are faster, more convenient, more sustainable and that's what Overture delivers," Boom CEO Blake Scholl told CNBC. "Flight times can be as little as half as what we have today, and that works great in networks like American where we can fly Miami to London in less than five hours." Boom says the Overture jet will fly as fast as Mach 1.7, or 1,304 mph, dramatically cutting trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific flight times. For example, a flight from Seattle to Tokyo, which typically takes just over 10 hours, could be completed in six hours in an Overture, according to Boom.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A data-marketing and analytics company has sued the Federal Trade Commission, saying the agency is wrongly threatening to sue it for marketing geolocation data that might be used to track consumer visits to sensitive locations such as abortion clinics. From a report: The lawsuit by Kochava was filed on Friday in U.S. District Court in Idaho, where the company is based. The FTC didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. The commission announced last week that it would begin considering rules to protect the privacy of a range of consumer data. The Kochava case represents an early salvo in what could be a lengthy battle over the privacy of some online healthcare data. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and leaving the question of abortion's legality to the states. In response, President Biden issued an executive order encouraging the FTC to take new actions to protect consumers' privacy when they seek information about reproductive health.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon.com accused the US Federal Trade Commission of harassing its founder Jeff Bezos and the company's Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy as it probes the e-commerce giant's business practices. From a report: In a filing made public on Monday, Amazon claimed that FTC staff have made "unduly burdensome" demands as the agency investigates whether the company's subscription services, including Amazon Prime, violate consumer protection laws. The online retailer is seeking to quash or limit the FTC's most recent civil investigative demands, which are similar to subpoenas. Amazon said the FTC's requests are "unworkable for Amazon to discern the information staff demands and to respond in the timeframe allowed." The FTC, which has both antitrust and consumer protection mandates, has been investigating Amazon for potential anticompetitive conduct for several years. The filing offers an unusually public glimpse into the ongoing struggle between one of the world's biggest companies and one of its regulators. FTC Chair Lina Khan, who took over the position in June 2021, has escalated the investigation, shaking up the team, re-interviewing potential witnesses and asking questions about the company's recent acquisition of MGM Studios, Bloomberg reported in MayRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Losses arising from cryptocurrency hacks jumped nearly 60% in the first seven months of the year to $1.9 billion, propelled by a surge in funds stolen from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, according to a blog post from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis released on Tuesday. From a report: In the same period last year, stolen funds from hacking amounted to $1.2 billion. DeFi applications, many of which run on the Ethereum blockchain, are financial platforms that enable crypto-denominated lending outside of traditional banks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple laid off many of its contract-based recruiters in the past week, part of a push to rein in the tech giant's hiring and spending, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From a report: About 100 contract workers were let go in a rare move for the world's most valuable company, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the situation is private. The recruiters were responsible for hiring new employees for Apple, and the cuts underscore that a slowdown is underway at the company. Workers laid off were told the cuts were made due to changes in Apple's current business needs. Bloomberg first reported last month that the company was decelerating hiring after years of staffing up, joining many tech companies in hitting the brakes. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook confirmed during Apple's earnings conference call that the company would be more "deliberate" in its spending -- even as it keeps investing in some areas.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oracle has begun vetting TikTok's algorithms and content moderation models to ensure they aren't manipulated by Chinese authorities, Axios reported Tuesday. From the report: The effort is meant to provide further assurance to lawmakers that TikTok's U.S. platform operates independently from influence by the Chinese Communist Party. TikTok is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance. ByteDance bought the U.S. lip-syncing app Musical.ly in 2017 and merged it with its version of a similar app called TikTok. The app has since skyrocketed in popularity in the U.S.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

VideoLan, the developer of popular media player VLC, says Indian telecom operators have been blocking its website since February of this year in a move that is potentially impacting some users in one of the open source firm's largest markets. From a report: "Most major ISPs [internet service providers] are banning the site, with diverse techniques," VideoLan president and lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf said of the blocking in India, in an email to TechCrunch. India represents 10% of all VLC users worldwide, he said. The website's traffic has seen an overall drop of 20% as a result of the blocking in India. [...] VLC, downloaded over 3.5 billion times worldwide, is a local media player that doesn't require internet access or connection to any particular service online for the vast majority of its features. But by blocking the website, India is pushing its citizens to "shady websites that are running hacked version of VLC. So they are endangering their own citizens with this ban," Kempf added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A successful phishing attack at SMS services company Twilio may have exposed the phone numbers of roughly 1,900 users of the secure messaging app Signal -- but that's about the extent of the breach, says Signal, noting that no further user data could be accessed. In a Twitter thread and support document, Signal states that a recent successful (and deeply resourced) phishing attack on Twilio allowed access to the phone numbers linked with 1,900 users. That's "a very small percentage of Signal's total users," Signal writes, and all 1,900 affected users will be notified (via SMS) to re-register their devices. Signal, like many app companies, uses Twilio to send SMS verification codes to users registering their Signal app. With momentary access to Twilio's customer support console, attackers could have potentially used the verification codes sent by Twilio to activate Signal on another device and thereby send or receive new Signal messages. Or an attacker could confirm that these 1,900 phone numbers were actually registered to Signal devices. No other data could be accessed, in large part because of Signal's design. Message history is stored entirely on user devices. Contact and block lists, profile details, and other user data require a Signal PIN to access. And Signal is asking users to enable registration lock, which prevents Signal access on new devices until the user's PIN is correctly entered. "The kind of telecom attack suffered by Twilio is a vulnerability that Signal developed features like registration lock and Signal PINs to protect against," Signal's support document reads. The messaging app notes that while Signal doesn't "have the ability to directly fix the issues affecting the telecom ecosystem," it will work with Twilio and other providers "to tighten up their security where it matters for our users."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

July 2022 was the world's sixth-hottest July on record, according to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. Last month also saw Earth's sixth-hottest year to date on record as Antarctic sea ice coverage plunged to a record low for a second consecutive month. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports: The July 2022 land and ocean-surface temperature for the globe was 1.57 degrees F (0.87 of a degree C) above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees F (15.8 degrees C). This made it the sixth-hottest July in the 143-year global climate record. July marked the 46th-consecutive July and the 451st-consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th-century average. The five warmest Julys on record have all occurred since 2016. Regionally, July 2022 was among the top-10 warmest Julys on record for several continents. North America saw its second-hottest July on record, Asia had its third hottest, South America had its fourth hottest and Europe had its sixth hottest. The average global land and ocean-surface temperature was the sixth-warmest year to date on record, at 1.55 degrees F (0.86 of a degree C) above average. Asia had its second-hottest such YTD on record with Europe seeing its fifth hottest. Africa, North America and South America all had an above-average YTD, though it did not rank among their top-10 warmest on record. According to NCEI's Global Annual Temperature Rankings Outlook, there is a greater than 99% chance 2022 will rank among the 10-warmest years on record but an 11% chance the year will rank among the top five.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Russian space agency has unveiled a physical model of what a planned Russian-built space station will look like, suggesting Moscow is serious about abandoning the International Space Station (ISS) and going it alone. The Guardian reports: Russia wants to reduce its dependency on western countries and forge ahead on its own, or cooperate with countries such as China and Iran, after sanctions were imposed by the west as a result of the invasion of Ukraine. Roscosmos presented a model of the space station, nicknamed "Ross" by Russian state media, on Monday at a military-industrial exhibition outside Moscow. Roscosmos said its space station would be launched in two phases, without giving dates. For the first phase a four-module space station would start operating. That would be followed by two more modules and a service platform, it said. That would be enough, when completed, to accommodate up to four cosmonauts and scientific equipment. Roscosmos has said the station would afford Russian cosmonauts a much wider view by which to monitor Earth than their current segment. Although designs for some of the station exist, design work is still under way on other segments. Russian state media have suggested the launch of the first stage is planned for 2025-26 and no later than 2030. Launch of the second and final stage is planned for 2030-35, they have reported. The space station, as currently conceived, would not have a permanent human presence but would be staffed twice a year for extended periods. Dmitry Rogozin, the previous head of Roscosmos and a hardliner known for his tough statements against the west, has suggested the new space station could fulfil a military purpose if necessary.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Native DX9 hardware support is officially gone from Intel's Xe integrated graphics solutions on 12th Gen CPUs and A-Series Arc Alchemist discrete GPUs. To replace it, all DirectX 9 support will be transferred to DirectX 12 in the form of emulation. Emulation will run on an open-source conversion layer known as "D3D9On12" from Microsoft. Conversion works by sending 3D DirectX 9 graphics commands to the D3D9On12 layer instead of the D3D9 graphics driver directly. Once the D3D9On12 layer receives commands from the D3D9 API, it will convert all commands into D3D12 API calls. So basically, D3D9On12 will act as a GPU driver all on its own instead of the actual GPU driver from Intel. Microsoft says this emulation process has become a relatively performant implementation of DirectX 9. As a result, performance should be nearly as good, if not just as good, as native DirectX 9 hardware support.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a new study published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, researchers implanted corneas made from pig collagen to restore sight in 20 people who were blind or visually impaired. "Fourteen of the patients were blind before they received the implant, but two years after the procedure, they had regained some or all of their vision," notes NBC News. "Three had perfect vision after the surgery." From the report: The patients, in Iran and India, all suffered from keratoconus, a condition in which the protective outer layer of the eye progressively thins and bulges outward. "We were surprised with the degree of vision improvement," said Neil Lagali, a professor of experimental ophthalmology at Linkoping University in Sweden who co-authored the study. Not all patients experienced the same degree of improvement, however. The 12 Iranian patients wound up with an average visual acuity of 20/58 with glasses; functional vision is defined as 20/40 or better with lenses. Nonetheless, Dr. Marian Macsai, a clinical professor of ophthalmology at the University of Chicago who wasn't involved in the study, said the technology could be a game changer for those with keratoconus, which affects roughly 50 to 200 out of every 100,000 people. It might also have applications for other forms of corneal disease. To create the implant, Lagali and his team dissolved pig tissue to form a purified collagen solution. That was used to engineer a hydrogel that mimics the human cornea. Surgeons then made an incision in a patient's cornea for the hydrogel. "We insert our material into this pocket to thicken the cornea and to reshape it so that it can restore the cornea's function," Lagali said. Traditionally, human tissue is required for cornea transplants. But it's in short supply, because people must volunteer to donate it after they die. So, Lagali said, his team was looking for a low-cost, widely available substitute. "Collagen from pigskin is a byproduct from the food industry," he said. "This makes it broadly available and easier to procure." After two years, the patients' bodies hadn't rejected the implants, and they didn't have any inflammation or scarring. But any experimental medical procedure comes with risk. In this case, Soiberman said, a foreign molecule like collagen could induce an immune reaction. The researchers prescribed patients an eight-week course of immunosuppressive eyedrops to lower the risk, which is less than the amount given to people who receive cornea transplants from human tissue. In those cases, patients take immunosuppressive medicine for more than a year, Lagali said. "There's always a risk for rejection of the human donor tissue because it contains foreign cells," he said. "Our implant does not contain any cells ... so there's a minimal risk of rejection." The procedure itself was also quicker than traditional cornea transplants. The researchers said each operation took about 30 minutes, whereas transplants of human tissue can take a couple of hours. [...] It's not yet clear whether the surgery would work for patients who have other forms of corneal disease aside from keratoconus.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nearly three years after Adam Neumann stepped down as CEO of WeWork following a failed attempt to take the company public, he is said to once again be in charge of a billion-dollar real estate startup. CNN Business reports: Andreessen Horowitz, the prominent venture capital firm known for its early investments in Twitter and Airbnb, has pumped about $350 million into Neumann's newest venture, called Flow, according to The New York Times, citing unnamed sources briefed on the deal. The investment valued the startup at more than $1 billion, according to the report. In a blog post Monday, Marc Andreessen, cofounder and general partner at the VC firm, announced the investment, without disclosing financial details. He also explained his thinking for backing Flow, a residential real estate company, and Neumann despite the founder's high-profile fall from grace at WeWork. "Adam is a visionary leader who revolutionized the second largest asset class in the world -- commercial real estate -- by bringing community and brand to an industry in which neither existed before," Andreessen wrote in his post Monday. "Adam, and the story of WeWork, have been exhaustively chronicled, analyzed, and fictionalized -- sometimes accurately. For all the energy put into covering the story, it's often under appreciated that only one person has fundamentally redesigned the office experience and led a paradigm-changing global company in the process: Adam Neumann." It's not immediately clear how Flow seeks to revolutionize the residential housing industry. Flow currently has a bare bones website, with the slogan "Live life in flow" and two words stating it will launch in 2023. Andreessen positioned the new company as a long-awaited solution to the nation's "housing crisis." He used a mix of jargon-filled terms -- "community-driven, experience-centric service" -- to explain how the new startup would "create a system where renters receive the benefits of owners." "We think it is natural that for his first venture since WeWork, Adam returns to the theme of connecting people through transforming their physical spaces and building communities where people spend the most time: their homes," Andreessen wrote. "Residential real estate -- the world's largest asset class -- is ready for exactly this change."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA), a new federal privacy bill that has actually a chance of becoming law, is designed to introduce new privacy protections for Americans. But it may also have the side effect of wiping out $200 million worth of fines proposed against some of the country's biggest telecommunications companies as part of a major location-data selling scandal in which the firms sold customer data that ended up in the hands of bounty hunters and other parties. The issue centers around the ADPPA's shift of enforcement for privacy related matters from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which proposed the fines, to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The news highlights the complex push and pulls when developing privacy legislation, and some of the pitfalls along the way. The FCC proposed the $200 million fines in February 2020. The fines came after Motherboard revealed that the carriers sold phone location data to a complex supply chain of companies which then provided it to hundreds of bounty hunters and other third parties, including someone that allowed Motherboard to track a phone for just $300. The fines also came after The New York Times and the office of Sen. Ron Wyden found that the carriers sold location data in a similar method to a company called Securus, which allowed law enforcement officials to track the location of phones without a warrant. A former sheriff abused the tool to spy on judges and other officials. The offending telecoms -- AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon -- said they stopped the sale of location data at varying points in time in response to the investigations. The FCC then found that the carriers broke the law by selling such data. FCC Press Secretary Paloma Perez told Motherboard in an emailed statement that "our real-time location information is some of the most sensitive data there is about us, and it deserves the highest level of privacy protection. That is why the FCC has proposed more than $200 million in fines against the nation's largest wireless carriers for selling their customers' location data. Through our continued oversight we have ensured that these carriers are no longer monetizing their consumers' real-time location in this way, and we are continuing our investigation into these practices and expect to reach a conclusion very soon." In July FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel sent letters to a host of U.S. telecommunications, tech, and retail companies to ask about their use of location data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United States is formally banning the export of four technologies tied to semiconductor manufacturing, calling the protection of the items "vital to national security." The Register reports: Announced Friday (PDF) by the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) and enacted today, the rule will ban the export of two ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor materials, as well as some types of electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) technology and pressure gain combustion (PGC) technology. In particular, the BIS said that the semiconductor materials gallium oxide and diamond will be subject to renewed export controls because they can operate under more extreme temperature and voltage conditions. The Bureau said that capability makes the materials more useful in weapons. ECAD software, which aids design for a wide range of circuits, comes in specialized forms that supports gate-all-around field effect transistors (GAAFETs), which are used to scale semiconductors to 3 nanometers and below. PGC technology also has "extensive potential" for ground and aerospace uses, the BIS said. All four items are being classified under Section 1758 of the Export Control Reform Act, which covers the production of advanced semiconductors and gas turbine engines. Those types of technology are also covered by the Wassenaar Arrangement, made in 2013 between the US and 41 other countries, which functions as a broader arms control treaty. "We are protecting the four technologies identified in today's rule from nefarious end use by applying controls through a multilateral regime," Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration Thea D Rozman Kendler said in a statement. "This rule demonstrates our continued commitment to imposing export controls together with our international partners." The reason for the addition of the four forms of technology to export controls is a change made in May to how the BIS characterizes emerging and foundational technologies. Under the change, such tech was reclassified to be covered by Section 1758. The BIS statement announcing the export ban made no mention of the countries, but recent events make it clear the target is China -- the US has been considering other tech export bans (and investment freezes), recently all of which appeared tailored to target China. Analysts in the Middle Kingdom have claimed the ban would have little short-term impact on China's chipmaking industry as no one in China has yet managed to design chips as advanced as those targeted by the ban.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AT&T workers are pushing to keep working from home as an option, citing "long commutes to and from work, exorbitant childcare costs, ongoing concerns over exposure to COVID-19 variants and now monkeybox," reports The Guardian. From the report: At AT&T, the world's largest telecommunication company, workers represented by the Communications Workers of America agreed to a work from home extension until the end of March 2023, but workers say the company is forcing many workers to return to the office much sooner than that, while other departments had already been forced back to the office by their managers. [...] AT&T workers have started a petition demanding the company makes working from home a permanent option for workers. [...] Val Williams, an AT&T worker and union steward for the Communications Workers of America in Houston, Texas, was forced to return to work in the office in April 2022. She criticized the push to bring workers back into the office after she said workers had been praised for productivity while working from home. Williams criticized the pushback to return to the office given AT&T is a communications company with the technology and resources to make working from home a seamless option. "Our revenue has increased over the last two years while we were working from home. Our job descriptions state we are capable of working with little to minimum management and that's what we've been doing," she said. She also argued it was unfair how the push to return workers to the office has been enforced, with some departments being brought back while others are still working from home. "We don't feel like anybody's health is greater than any others. Because everybody has their own health issues, or they may have family members that have health issues that they have to return home to," she added. [...] A spokesperson for AT&T did not provide data on how many workers at the company are still working from home, but claimed it was never the company's intention to make working from home indefinite. "The health and safety of our employees continues to be our priority," said the spokesperson in an email. "As we have throughout the pandemic, we adhere to guidance from the medical community, including implementing safety protocols to help protect our employees' wellbeing. And now that we are a largely vaccinated workforce, we believe it's safe for employees to return to the workplace. We do our best work when we're together."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Walmart reached a deal with Paramount Global to include the Paramount+ streaming service as part of the retailing giant's Walmart+ membership program starting in September. Variety reports: The Paramount+ Essential plan, which includes ads, will be available for no extra cost to Walmart+ members. In the U.S., Paramount+ Essential is regularly $4.99/month. The Essential plan does not include local live CBS stations (available only in Paramount+ Premium, $9.99/month), but it does provide NFL and UEFA Champions League games available via separate live feeds. The move by Walmart is intended to make Walmart+, which launched in September 2020, more competitive with Amazon's Prime by adding a streaming-entertainment component. Walmart+ costs $12.95 per month (or $98 per year), providing subscribers with same-day delivery on more than 160,000 products. Program members also can save up to 10 cents per gallon on gas at more than 14,000 participating stations nationwide and get up to six months of Spotify Premium for free. "In announcing Q2 earnings, Paramount said that Paramount+ now has 43.3 million paid customers, a net add of 3.7 million for the June quarter (including 1.2 million disconnects in Russia)," adds the report. Walmart does not disclose the number of Walmart+ members, but according to a Morgan Stanley survey in May, "the service has around 16 million members compared with about 15 million in November 2021."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: If you were born in the United States within the last 50 or so years, chances are good that one of the first things you did as a baby was give a DNA sample to the government. By the 1970s, states had established newborn screening programs, in which a nurse takes a few drops of blood from a pinprick on a baby's heel, then sends the sample to a lab to test for certain diseases. Over the years, the list has grown from just a few conditions to dozens. The blood is supposed to be used for medical purposes -- these screenings identify babies with serious health issues, and they have been highly successful at reducing death and disability among children. But a public records lawsuit filed last month in New Jersey suggests these samples are also being used by police in criminal investigations. The lawsuit, filed by the state's Office of the Public Defender and the New Jersey Monitor, a nonprofit news outlet, alleges that state police sought a newborn's blood sample from the New Jersey Department of Health to investigate the child's father in connection with a sexual assault from the 1990s. Crystal Grant, a technology fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, says the case represents a "whole new leap forward" in the misuse of DNA by law enforcement. "It means that essentially every baby born in the US could be included in police surveillance," she says. It's not known how many agencies around the country have sought to use newborn screening samples to investigate crimes, or how often those attempts were successful. But there is at least one other instance of it happening. In December 2020, a local TV station reported that police in California had issued five search warrants to access such samples, and that at least one cold case there was solved with the help of newborn blood. "This increasing overreach into the health system by police to get genetic information is really concerning," Grant says. The New Jersey lawsuit alleges that police obtained the blood sample of a newborn child (who is now elementary-school aged) to perform a DNA analysis that linked the baby's father to a crime. This was done using a technique called investigative genetic genealogy, or forensic genealogy. It usually involves isolating DNA left at a crime scene and using it to create a digital genetic profile of a suspect. Investigators can upload this profile to genealogy websites where other people have freely shared their own DNA information in the hope of connecting with family members or learning about their ancestry. Because DNA is shared within families, investigators can use relative matches to map out a suspect's family tree and narrow down their identity. According to the New Jersey lawsuit, police had reopened an investigation into a cold case and had used genetics to place the suspect within a single family: one of several adults or their children. But police didn't yet have probable cause to obtain search warrants for DNA swabs from any of them. Instead, they asked the state's newborn screening lab for a blood sample of one of the children. Analysis of this genetic information revealed a close relationship between the baby's DNA and the DNA taken at the crime scene, indicating that the baby's father was the person police were seeking. That was enough to establish probable cause in the assault investigation, so police sought a warrant for a cheek swab from the father. After analyzing his DNA, the suit contends, police found that it was a match to the crime scene DNA. "Because there are no federal laws governing newborn screening programs, states set their own policies on which diseases they test for, how long samples are stored, and how they can be used," notes Wired. "Some states hold on to blood samples for months, others for years or decades. Virginia only keeps samples from infants with normal results for six months, while Michigan retains them for up to 100 years. New Jersey stores samples for 23 years before destroying them."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you're using Zoom on a Mac, it's time for a manual update. The video conferencing software's latest update fixes an auto-update vulnerability that could have allowed malicious programs to use its elevated installing powers, granting escalated privileges and control of the system. From a report: The vulnerability was first discovered by Patrick Wardle, founder of the Objective-See Foundation, a nonprofit Mac OS security group. Wardle detailed in a talk at Def Con last week how Zoom's installer asks for a user password when installing or uninstalling, but its auto-update function, enabled by default, doesn't need one. Wardle found that Zoom's updater is owned by and runs as the root user. It seemed secure, as only Zoom clients could connect to the privileged daemon, and only packages signed by Zoom could be extracted. The problem is that by simply passing the verification checker the name of the package it was looking for ("Zoom Video ... Certification Authority Apple Root CA.pkg"), this check could be bypassed. That meant malicious actors could force Zoom to downgrade to a buggier, less-secure version or even pass it an entirely different package that could give them root access to the system.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At a military convention in Russia, a local company is showing off a robot dog that's carrying a rocket launcher. From a report: Russian news agency RIA Novosti today filmed the four-legged bot at the Army 2022 convention, which is taking place near Moscow and sponsored by the country's Ministry of Defense. The robot was recorded trotting along on the convention floor while wielding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on its back. The robot is also capable of crouching on the floor, making it harder to spot, while it presumably waits to fire off a rocket. It remains unclear if the robot will ever be used on the field when Russia is locked in a war with Ukraine, and already using air-based drones at least for recon and targeting purposes. But according to RIA Novosti, the bot is dubbed the M-81 system and comes from a Russian engineering company called "Intellect Machine." The developers say the robot dog is being designed to both transport weapons and ammunition and fire them during combat missions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds has announced the first release candidate for the Linux kernel version 6.0, but he says the major number change doesn't signify anything especially different about this release. ZDNet: While there is nothing fundamentally different about this release compared with 5.19, Torvalds noted that there were over 13,500 non-merge commits and over 800 merged commits, meaning "6.0 looks to be another fairly sizable release." According to Torvalds, most of the updates are improvements to the GPU, networking and sound. Torvalds stuck to his word after releasing Linux kernel 5.19 last month, when he flagged he would likely call the next release 6.0 because he's "starting to worry about getting confused by big numbers again." On Sunday's release of Linux 6.0 release candidate version 1 (rc-1), he explained his reasoning behind choosing a new major version number and its purpose for developers. Again, it's about avoiding confusion rather than signaling that the release has major new features. His threshold for changing the lead version number was .20 because it is difficult to remember incremental version numbers beyond that. "Despite the major number change, there's nothing fundamentally different about this release - I've long eschewed the notion that major numbers are meaningful, and the only reason for a 'hierarchical; numbering system is to make the numbers easier to remember and distinguish," said Torvalds. Torvalds lamented some Rust-enabling code didn't make it into the release. The Register adds: "I actually was hoping that we'd get some of the first rust infrastructure, and the multi-gen LRU VM, but neither of them happened this time around," he mused, before observing "There's always more releases. This is one of those releases where you should not look at the diffstat too closely, because more than half of it is yet another AMD GPU register dump," he added, noting that Intel's Gaudi2 Ai processors are also likely to produce plenty of similar kernel additions. "The CPU people also show up in the JSON files that describe the perf events, but they look absolutely tiny compared to the 'asic_reg' auto-generated GPU and AI hardware definitions," he added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An "extreme heat belt" reaching as far north as Chicago is taking shape, a corridor that cuts through the middle of the country and would affect more than 107 million people over the next 30 years, according to new data on the country's heat risks. From a report: The report, released Monday by the nonprofit research group First Street Foundation, found that within a column of America's heartland stretching from Texas and Louisiana north to the Great Lakes, residents could experience heat index temperatures above 125 degrees Fahrenheit by 2053 -- conditions that are more commonly found in California's Death Valley or in parts of the Middle East. The projections are part of First Street Foundation's new, peer-reviewed extreme heat model, which shows that most of the country will have upticks in the number of days with heat index temperatures above 100 degrees over the next 30 years as a result of climate change. The heat index represents what a temperature feels like to the human body when humidity and air temperature are combined. It is commonly referred to as the "feels like" temperature. "Everybody is affected by increasing heat, whether it be absolute increases in dangerous days or it's just a local hot day," said First Street Foundation's chief research officer, Jeremy Porter, a professor and the director of quantitative methods in social sciences at the City University of New York.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Academics and pharmaceutical companies hope that technology based on human cells will help them phase mice and monkeys out of their labs. From a report: The umbrella term for the new field is microphysiological systems or MPS, which includes tumoroids, organoids and organs-on-a-chip. Organoids are grown from stem cells to create 3D tissue in a dish resembling miniature human organs; heart organoids beat like the real thing, for example. Organs-on-a-chip are plastic blocks lined with stem cells and a circuit that stimulates the mechanics of an organ. "We need to move away from animals in a systematic way," says Salim Abdool Karim, South Africa's leading infectious disease expert. "Thatâ...âinvolves regulators being given the data to show that non-animal biological systems will give us compatible, if not better, information." Nathalie Brandenburg co-founded Swiss start-up Sun Bioscience in 2016 to create standard versions of organoids, which makes it easier to trust that results are comparable, and convince scientists and regulators to use them. "When we started we had to tell people what organoids were," she says, referring to the early stage of her research journey. In the past two years, and particularly as scientists emerged from lockdowns -- when many had time to read up on the technology -- demand from large pharmaceutical companies for Sun's products has soared, she says. Companies are becoming more interested in reducing their reliance on animals for ethical reasons, says Arron Tolley, chief executive of Aptamer Group, which creates artificial antibodies for use in diagnostics and drugs. "People are becoming more responsible now, from a corporate governance point of view, and looking to remove animal testing when necessary," he says. Using larger animals, such as monkeys, is particularly problematic, Tolley adds. "The bigger and cuter they get, the more people are aware of the impact." Rare diseases are especially fertile ground for models based on human tissues, says James Hickman, chief scientist at Hesperos, an organ-on-a-chip company based in Florida. "There are 7,000 rare diseases and only 400 are being actively researched because there are no animal models," Hickman says. "We're not just talking about replacing animals or reducing animals, these systems fill a void where animal models don't exist."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This year's major Android update, Android 13, is officially releasing today for Googleâ(TM)s Pixel phones, the search giant has announced. From a report: The annual update is getting an official release a little earlier than usual, following Android 12's release last October and Android 11's release in September 2020. The list of updates arriving with this year's version of Android is likely to be familiar if you've been keeping up with Android 13's beta releases. There's the ability to customize non-Google app icons to match your homescreen wallpaper that we saw in Android 13's first developer preview, a new permission to cut down on notification spam, and a new option to limit which of your photos and videos an app can access. Back in January, we wrote that Google planned to spend this year catching up with Apple's ecosystem integrations, and there's more evidence of this in Android 13's official release. The update includes support for spatial audio with head tracking, which is designed to make sounds appear as though they're coming from a fixed point in space when you move your head while wearing compatible headphones, similar to a feature Apple offers for its AirPods. Today's post doesn't say exactly which headphones this will work with, but Google previously announced it would be updating its Pixel Buds Pro to offer support for spatial audio. Secondly, there's the ability to stream messages from apps including Google Messages directly to a Chromebook, similar to iMessage on the Mac.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The government's $42.5 billion plan to expand internet service to underserved communities is stuck in a holding pattern nearly nine months after approval, largely because authorities still don't know where gaps need to be filled. From a report: The broadband plan, part of the $1 trillion infrastructure bill signed by President Biden last November, stipulates that money to improve service can't be doled out until the Federal Communications Commission completes new maps showing where homes and businesses lack fast service. Lawmakers demanded new maps after flawed data in past subsidy programs caused construction projects across the country to bypass many of the Americans that they were supposed to serve. Officials warn, however, that getting the mapping right will take time. "We understand the urgency of getting broadband out there to everyone quickly," said Alan Davidson, chief of the Department of Commerce office in charge of allocating the broadband funding. "We also know that we get one shot at this and we want to make sure we do it right." That could mean a delay in the expansion of service to people who have long struggled with slow internet. Internet providers including AT&T, Charter Communications, Comcast and Verizon have yet to include any of the 2021 infrastructure law's broadband funding in their public financial projections for the coming years. "The maps are not going to be issued from the FCC until a little bit later this year, and until that happens, the money really can't start to flow at the state level," AT&T Chief Executive John Stankey told analysts on a July conference call.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report:Back in November 2021, cryptocurrencies, which saw a huge surge during most of the pandemic, suddenly began to nosedive. Joe Hovde, a New York-based data scientist, decided that this might be his moment to buy into crypto: He took a risk on the price plunge and bought some Ethereum, the next most popular crypto asset after Bitcoin, on Coinbase, a crypto exchange. A couple of months later, Hovde started getting emails from Coinbase notifying him of swings in the prices of Ethereum, Bitcoin, and other tokens. Though already a steady consumer of financial news and current events, Hovde used the notifications to passively keep tabs on his investment while juggling other things. So when crypto assets began to take another nosedive in April 2022, Hovde noticed that at some point, the emails seemed to have stopped coming. Hovde, who has worked on projects culling trends and patterns from large data sets for both tech companies and media outlets, scraped his inbox and confirmed that he'd received no emailed price notifications from the end of February to when they started back up again at the beginning of June; during that time period, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other currencies lost dozens of percent worth of value in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. Coinbase's decision to stop email notifications in the middle of a dramatic cryptocurrency crash has not been previously reported. But academics who spoke to Mother Jones note that Coinbase's decision likely contributed to losses for retail crypto investors who may otherwise have sold their holdings ahead of further devaluation. The change to price updates could run afoul of federal or state consumer protection laws, they said, particularly if it hurt the wallets of any of the relatively inexperienced traders who flocked to crypto in droves during the pandemic.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Official Xbox One sales have largely been a mystery, but now Microsoft is finally admitting the obvious: the PS4 outsold the Xbox One -- by a lot. From a report: Microsoft stopped reporting its Xbox One sales figures at the beginning of its 2016 financial year, focusing instead on Xbox Live numbers. The change meant we've never officially known how well Xbox One was holding up compared to the PS4 after the Xbox One's troubled launch. Analyst estimates have consistently put Microsoft in third place behind Sony and Nintendo, and now documents submitted to Brazil's national competition regulator finally shed some light on how the Xbox One generation went. "Sony has surpassed Microsoft in terms of console sales and installed base, having sold more than twice as many Xbox in the last generation," admits Microsoft, as translated from Portuguese. Sony no longer report PS4 shipments, which means lifetime sales sit at 117.2 million as of March. While Microsoft hasn't provided a concrete sales number for Xbox One, its admission means the company must have sold less than approximately 58.5 million units. That lines up with market research from Ampere Analysis in 2020, which put the install base of Xbox One at 51 million units at the end of Q2 2020. Nintendo Switch currently sits at 111.08 million lifetime sales, and looks set to pass the PS4 later this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United Arab Emirates is turning to vertical farming and hydroponics to produce food for local livestock as the desert nation tries to reduce its reliance on imports and shield itself from disruptions to global supply chains. From a report: Abu Dhabi-based startup World of Farming will begin building on-site operations at local farms later this year to provide fodder for meat and dairy producers that currently rely on imports for as much as 80% to 90% of their animal feed, said Faris Mesmar, chief executive officer of Hatch & Boost Ventures, a venture capital firm that launches and scales its own startups. "This region doesn't have a lot of arable land and the dependency on imports is becoming an issue for all local privately held and commercial farms," said Mesmar in an interview. Local livestock producers "find themselves with no consistent access with food to feed their animals." Land or resource-scarce countries from the Middle East to Asia are increasingly seeking to insulate themselves against food shocks and global supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic, politics and extreme weather. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has disrupted supplies from one of the world's top grain exporters, while heat waves have been wilting crops in Europe and the US. Techniques such as hydroponics, drip irrigation and enclosed cultivation allow desert nations such as the UAE to reduce costly imports of high-value fresh produce. Dubai-based airline Emirates opened what it says is the world's largest hydroponics farm in July to supply leafy greens for in-flight meals. Hydroponic, vertical farms typically grow plants indoors without soil, irrigating the crops with a water-based nutrient solution and often use artificial light.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Crypto sector's first $1 billion deal, announced at the height of record surge in token prices, is disbanding as the market reverses much of the gains. From a report: Galaxy Digital said Monday it has terminated the $1.2 billion proposed acquisition of crypto custodian BitGo, a high-profile deal they announced in May last year, after the San Francisco-based startup failed to provide its audited financial statements for the year 2021. BitGo's alleged failure to provide the financial statements by July 31 violated the terms the two firms had agreed upon last year, Galaxy Digital said in a public statement, adding that the termination of the deal won't incur the company any fee.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unity rejected AppLovin's offer to buy the company in an all-stock deal valued at $20 billion and instead will move forward with a plan to buy ad tech and monetization software company ironSource, the company said Monday. From a report: AppLovin offered to buy Unity last week under the condition that Unity give up its $4.4 billion deal with ironSource. The merger with AppLovin would have given Unity 55% of the company's shares but only 49% of the voting rights, and CEO John Riccitiello would have kept the same role. But Unity said AppLovin's offer wasn't good enough to edge out a deal with ironSource. The company said the deal would not be in the interest of shareholders and "would not reasonably be expected to result in a 'Superior Proposal' as defined in Unity's merger agreement with ironSource."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Netflix now has a million fewer subscriptions than rival Disney..." reports the Independent. "But it does not necessarily mean that Netflix has fewer subscribers. If a person is subscribed to two of Disney's offerings, that will count as two subscriptions, and the company does not divulge how many individuals are signed up to its services." (Digital Trends notes that "Following its acquisition of 21st Century Fox, Disney also controls Hulu," as well as the streaming sports site ESPN+.) If you just want a straight Netflix-to-Disney+ comparison, the Independent reports Netflix with 220.67 million total subscribers, while IndieWire reported that at the end of June, Disney+ had 152.1 million subscribers. (Disney's chief executive says between March and June, Disney+ added 14.4 million subscribers, according to the Independent.) IndieWire goes on to say that ESPN+ reported 22.8 million subcribers earlier this year, while Hulu had reported 46.2 million subscribers, so, "combined the subscriptions for the individual services making up the Disney Bundle just surpassed Netflix's overall paid global subscriber count."Here, we'll point out that Hulu is still the only one of the Bundle that makes money. However, its operating income declined in Q3, while losses at both Disney+ and ESPN+ increased. Disney+ is expected to reach profitability in 2024, executives said Wednesday on Disney's Q3 conference call.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Apple, the world's biggest listed company, updated its general employee conduct policy about two years ago to explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of caste," reports Reuters, "which it added alongside existing categories such as race, religion, gender, age and ancestry. Apple has more than 165,000 full-time employees, the article points out, and "The inclusion of the new category, which hasn't been previously reported, goes beyond U.S. discrimination laws, which do not explicitly ban casteism."The update came after the tech sector — which counts India as its top source of skilled foreign workers — received a wake-up call in June 2020 when California's employment regulator sued Cisco Systems on behalf of a low-caste engineer who accused two higher-caste bosses of blocking his career.... Since the suit was filed, several activist and employee groups have begun seeking updated U.S. discrimination legislation — and have also called on tech companies to change their own policies to help fill the void and deter casteism.... Elsewhere in tech, IBM told Reuters that it added caste, which was already in India-specific policies, to its global discrimination rules after the Cisco lawsuit was filed, though it declined to give a specific date or a rationale. Meta, Amazon, and Google do not mention caste in internal polices, the article points out — but they all told Reuters it's already prohibited by their current policies against discrimination. And yet, "Over 1,600 Google workers demanded the addition of caste to the main workplace code of conduct worldwide in a petition, seen by Reuters, which they emailed to CEO Sundar Pichai last month and re-sent last week after no response."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The leaders of Canada and Germany will sign a multibillion-dollar green energy agreement this month "that could prove pivotal to Canada's nascent hydrogen industry," reports CTV News:The German government on Friday issued a statement confirming the agreement will be signed August 23 in Stephenville, where a Newfoundland-based company plans to build a zero-emission plant that will use wind energy to produce hydrogen and amonia for export. If approved, the project would be the first of its kind in Canada. Germany is keen to find new sources of energy because Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to a surge in natural gas prices.... Meanwhile, the company behind the Newfoundland project, World Energy GH2, has said the first phase of the proposal calls for building up 164 onshore wind turbines to power a hydrogen production facility at the deep-sea port at Stephenville. Long-term plans call for tripling the size of the project.... "The development of large-scale green hydrogen production facilities is just starting, providing (Newfoundland and Labrador) and Canada with the opportunity and advantages of being a first mover in the green energy sector," the proposal says.... The company says construction of its first wind farm is slated for late next year on the Port au Port Peninsula. Thanks to Slashdot reader theshowmecanuck for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Did Mars ever support life? One clue might be quantifying just how much ice (and other minerals) are lurking just below the planet's surface, a team of researchers argued this month. "If life exists on Mars, that is where it would be," they said in a news release this week. "There is no liquid water on the surface," but in a contrary scenario, "subsurface life would be protected from radiation." Locating ice and minerals has another benefit too, they write in the journal Geophysical Research Letters: to "prepare for human exploration." And fortunately, there's a tool on the InSight lander (which touched down in 2018) that can help estimate the velocity of seismic waves inside the geological crust of Mars — velocities which change depending on which rock types are present, and which materials are filling pores within rocks (which could be ice, water, gas, or other mineral cements). That's the good news. But after running computer models of applied rock physics thousands and thousands of times, the researchers believe it's unlikely that there's any layers saturated with water (or ice) in the top 300 meters (1,000 feet) of the crust of Mars. "Model results confirm that the upper 300 meters of Mars beneath InSight is most likely composed of sediments and fractured basalts." The researchers reached a discouraging conclusion, reports Space.com "The chances of finding Martian life appear poor at in the vicinity of NASA's InSight lander."The subsurface around the landing zone — an equatorial site chosen especially for its flat terrain and good marsquake potential — appears loose and porous, with few ice grains in between gaps in the crust, researchers said.... The equatorial region where InSight is working, in theory, should be able to host subsurface water, as conditions are cold enough even there for water to freeze. But the new finding is challenging scientists' assumptions about possible ice or liquid water beneath the subsurface near InSight, whose job is to probe beneath the surface. While images from the surface have suggested there might be sedimentary rock and lava flows beneath InSight, researchers' models have uncertainties about porosity and mineral content. InSight is helping to fill in some of those gaps, and its new data suggests that "uncemented material" largely fills in the region blow the lander. That suggests little water is present, although more data needs to be collected. It's unclear how representative the InSight data is of the Martian subsurface in general, but more information may come courtesy of future missions. NASA is considering a Mars Life Explorer that would drill 6 feet (2 meters) below the surface to search for possible habitable conditions. Additionally, a proposed Mars Ice Mapper Mission could search for possible water reservoirs for human missions. And of course, as the researchers point out in their announcement, "big ice sheets and frozen ground ice remain at the Martian poles."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week the Rust team announced the release of Rust 1.63. One noteable update? Adding scoped threads to the standard library:Rust code could launch new threads with std::thread::spawn since 1.0, but this function bounds its closure with 'static. Roughly, this means that threads currently must have ownership of any arguments passed into their closure; you can't pass borrowed data into a thread. In cases where the threads are expected to exit by the end of the function (by being join()'d), this isn't strictly necessary and can require workarounds like placing the data in an Arc. Now, with 1.63.0, the standard library is adding scoped threads, which allow spawning a thread borrowing from the local stack frame. The std::thread::scope API provides the necessary guarantee that any spawned threads will have exited prior to itself returning, which allows for safely borrowing data. The official Rust RFC book says "The main drawback is that scoped threads make the standard library a little bit bigger," but calls it "a very common and useful utility...great for learning, testing, and exploratory programming. "Every person learning Rust will at some point encounter interaction of borrowing and threads. There's a very important lesson to be taught that threads can in fact borrow local variables, but the standard library [didn't] reflect this." And otherwise, "Implementing scoped threads is very tricky to get right so it's good to have a reliable solution provided by the standard library."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Need an easy way to make $23 million?" asks Mashable. "Have you ever considered just claiming music others uploaded to YouTube as your own and collecting the royalties?That's basically all two Phoenix men did to swindle Latin music artists like Daddy Yankee and Julio Iglesias out of millions of dollars in royalties, as detailed in a new piece from Billboard last week. According to Kristin Robinson of Billboard, Jose "Chenel" Medina Teran and Webster Batista set up a media company called MediaMuv and claimed to own the rights to various Latin music songs and compositions. In total, MediaMuv claimed to own more than 50,000 copyrights since 2017, when Teran and Batista began their scheme. In order for MediaMuv to claim these copyrights and collect royalties through YouTube's Content ID system, the fraudulent company needed to partner with AdRev, a third-party company that has access to YouTube's CMS and Content ID tools and helps artists manage their digital copyrights. MediaMuv created a few fake documents and provided AdRev with this paperwork in order to prove ownership over the music it claimed. From there, AdRev not only helped MediaMuv collect royalties for those copyrights but also provided Terana and Batista with direct access to YouTube's CMS so they could claim copyrights on its own. Teran and Batista's four-year-long royalties heist came to an end late last year following an investigation from the IRS. According to Billboard, the two were indicted on "30 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft." Mashable calls it "a huge reminder that online copyright is deeply flawed..." "[J]ust think about how many more careful scammers are still skimming royalties off of an untold number of artists."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader drinkypoo writes: John Deere, current and historic American producer of farming equipment, has long been maligned for their DRM-based lockdowns of said equipment which can make it impossible for farmers to perform their own service. Now a new security bypass has been discovered for some of their equipment, which has revealed that it is in general based on outdated versions of Linux and Windows CE. Carried out by Sick Codes, the complete attack involves attaching hardware to the PCB inside a touchscreen controller, and ultimately produces a root terminal. In the bargain and as a result, the question is being raised about JD's GPL compliance. Sick Codes isn't sure how John Deere can eliminate this vulnerability (beyond overhauling designs to add full disk encryption to future models). But Wired also notes that "At the same time, though, vulnerabilities like the ones that Sick Codes found help farmers do what they need to do with their own equipment." Although the first thing Sick Codes did was get the tractor running a farm-themed version of Doom.Read more of this story at Slashdot.