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"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.

"Apple is set to expand ads to new areas of your iPhone and iPad in search of its next big revenue driver," reports Bloomberg. The Verge writes that Apple "could eventually bring ads to more of the apps that come pre-installed on your iPhone and other Apple devices, including Maps, Books, and Podcasts."According to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple has internally tested search ads in Maps, which could display recommendations when you search for restaurants, stores, or other nearby businesses. Apple already implements a similar advertising model on the App Store, as developers can pay to have their app promoted on a search page for a particular query, like "puzzle games" or "photo editor." As noted by Gurman, ads on Maps could work in the same way, with businesses paying to appear at the top of search results when users enter certain search terms. Gurman believes that Apple could introduce ads to its native Podcasts and Books apps as well. [Gurman describes this as "likely".] This could potentially allow publishers to place ads in areas within each app, or pay to get their content placed higher in search results. Just like Maps, Podcasts and Books are currently ad-free.... Gurman mentions the potential for advertising on Apple TV Plus, too, and says the company could opt to create a lower-priced ad-supported tier, something both Netflix and Disney Plus plan on doing by the end of this year. Bloomberg points out that Apple is already displaying ads inside its News app — where some of the money actually goes back to news publishers. ("Apple also lets publishers advertise within their stories and keep the vast majority of that money.") And while you can disable ad personalization — which 78% of iOS users have done — Bloomberg notes that "Another ironic detail here is that the company's advertising system uses data from its other services and your Apple account to decide which ads to serve. That doesn't feel like a privacy-first policy." Bloomberg's conclusion? "Now the only question is whether the customers of Apple — a champion of privacy and clean interfaces — are ready to live with a lot more ads."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Union-organizing startup "Unit of Work" received a $1.4-million pre-seed investment led by the venture capital arm of billionaire Mike Bloomberg, reports the Los Angeles Times. The startup's outside investors "have made fortunes backing technologies such as artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies and video games. One is among California's foremost critics of public-sector labor unions." But the head of the startup's lead investment firm says that "whenever a community has a want that's going unfilled, there's an opportunity for companies."[T]hese people used to multibillion-dollar sales and IPOs see a big opportunity in the atomized, restive condition of America's workforce and the possibility of transforming it through a new era of unionization. "We only invest in areas where we think we can get a return," said Roy Bahat, head of Bloomberg Beta, the venture arm of billionaire Mike Bloomberg's media empire. Unit's business model works like this: The startup's organizers provide free consulting to groups of workers organizing unions within their own workplaces — helping them build support to win elections, advising them on strategy in contract-bargaining sessions, guiding them through paperwork filings and around legal obstacles. Once a contract is in place, members of the new union can decide to pay Unit a monthly fee — similar to traditional union dues — to keep providing support.... Once the company starts earning income, it plans to buy out its investors and give their equity to the unions it helped organize, effectively transitioning corporate control to the customer base. The approach has attracted some strange bedfellows. The second investment firm in the round, Draper Associates, is led by Tim Draper, a third-generation venture capitalist, bitcoin evangelist and outspoken critic of organized labor... [H]e launched a ballot initiative to ban public-sector unions in California.... "Unit of Work is making unions decentralized," Draper wrote in an email explaining his investment. "That will be awesome. Centralized unions tend to restrain trade, and government unions create bloated bureaucracy and poor government service on the whole.... " Despite Draper's enthusiasm for independent unions, as opposed to nationally affiliated labor organizations, Unit's leaders and its website make clear that they support their clients if they decide to affiliate with a larger union.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The German news magazine Der Spiegel spoke to a 54-year-old who had always been in favor of the company's plan to phase out nuclear power by the end of 2022. Until now — with fears about Russia curtailing supplies of natural gas. And he's not the only one:A poll commissioned by DER SPIEGEL has revealed some rather shocking numbers. According to the survey carried out by the online polling firm Civey, only 22 percent of those surveyed are in favor of shutting down the three nuclear plants that are still in operation in Germany...as planned at the end of the year. Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed are in favor of continuing to operate the plants until the summer of 2023, a variant that is being discussed in the political sphere as a "stretch operation" — in other words, continuing to keep them online for a few months, but without the acquisition of new fuel rods. Even among Green Party supporters, a narrow majority favors this approach.... The answers suggest that the attitude of Germans toward nuclear power has changed significantly. Sixty-seven percent are in favor of continuing to operate the nuclear plants for the next five years, with only 27 percent opposed to it. The only group without a clear majority in favor of running the plants for the next five years are the supporters of the Green Party.... On the question of whether Germany should build new nuclear power plants because of the energy crisis, 41 percent of respondents answered "yes," meaning they favor an approach that isn't even up for debate in Germany. The results are astounding all around, especially compared with past surveys. Thirty-three years ago, a polling institute asked a similar question on behalf of DER SPIEGEL. At the time, only a miniscule 3 percent of respondents thought Germany should build new plants. Officially, Germany is supposed to be transitioning to green energies, but these polling figures suggest that people may be interested in returning to the old energy status quo.... It had already become clear in recent years that support for the nuclear phaseout was already slowly crumbling. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has now accelerated this shift, calling into question many old certainties, or overturning them completely.... The energy security that people took for granted for decades in Germany has been shaken ever since Russia cut gas deliveries and costs rose. The result being that an old German dogma now seems to be crumbling: the rejection of nuclear energy. Concerns are either being put on the backburner or are evaporating. Radiation from nuclear waste? Safety risks? Danger of large-scale disasters? Who cares. Those are things you worry about when you have working heat. Electricity first, then ethics. Thanks to Slashdot reader atcclears for sharing the articleRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Last year Rodolfo Castro made baseball history. Called up to the Major Leagues in April, the 22-year-old eventually recorded his first hit — a home run. But his next four recorded hits were all also home runs, something no player had done since 1901. CBS News reports that this week, finally called back up to the Major Leagues, Castro again made history — of another sort:Modern technology has allowed people to take their phones, as well as the power of the internet, with them anywhere they go. Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Rodolfo Castro took his around the bases against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Tuesday night. Yep — an iPhone made a bizarre cameo in the 4th inning, reports the Associated Press:Castro and third base coach Mike Rabelo stood and stared, mortified.... Even third base umpire Adam Hamari had the perfect reaction, pointing at the phone that came flying out of Castro's back pocket during a head-first slide, trying not to giggle at the absurdity of the situation. Those around the sport cringed along with them. "That's obviously not something that should happen," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said.... This faux pas just happened to be at a televised big league game, creating a video clip seen by millions. "I just remember getting dressed, putting my pants on, getting something to eat, using the restroom," the 23-year-old Castro said through a translator Tuesday night after the Pirates lost 6-4 to Arizona. "Never did it ever cross my mind that I still had my cellphone on me...." It's far from the first time a phone has made a cameo on a pro sports field. One of the most famous examples came nearly 20 years ago when New Orleans Saints receiver Joe Horn pulled out a flip phone — remember those? — that he had hidden in the padding around the goalpost and then acted like he was taking a call after scoring a touchdown.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NBC News reports:Facebook, once the go-to social media platform for many, has plummeted in popularity among younger users, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.... The share of 13- to 17-year-olds who said they use Facebook dropped from 71% in the 2015 study to 32% today, Pew found. As Facebook's popularity sinks, YouTube has become the dominating platform among teens, who are also using social media apps like TikTok, Snapchat and [Meta-owned] Instagram... While Facebook still beats out Twitter among Gen Z teens, Snapchat and Instagram have dwarfed its popularity. Sixty-two percent of teens use Instagram and 59% use Snapchat, according to Pew. TikTok also beats Facebook in popularity, with 67% of respondents saying they use the short-form video app, Pew reported.... The most popular platform among 13- to 17-year-olds is YouTube, which is used by 95% of teens, the research found. There's an interesting graph showing trends in Pew's announcement. It's handy way to visualize that over the last seven years usage has dropped for Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler — while usage increased for Instagram and Snapchat. But YouTube hovers above them all with 95% usage.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NBC News reports:Facebook, once the go-to social media platform for many, has plummeted in popularity among younger users, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.... The share of 13- to 17-year-olds who said they use Facebook dropped from 71% in the 2015 study to 32% today, Pew found. As Facebook's popularity sinks, YouTube has become the dominating platform among teens, who are also using social media apps like TikTok, Snapchat and [Meta-owned] Instagram... While Facebook still beats out Twitter among Gen Z teens, Snapchat and Instagram have dwarfed its popularity. Sixty-two percent of teens use Instagram and 59% use Snapchat, according to Pew. TikTok also beats Facebook in popularity, with 67% of respondents saying they use the short-form video app, Pew reported.... The most popular platform among 13- to 17-year-olds is YouTube, which is used by 95% of teens, the research found. There's an interesting graph showing trends in Pew's announcement. It's handy way to visualize that over the last seven years usage has dropped for Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler — while usage increased for Instagram and Snapchat. But YouTube hovers above them all with 95% usage.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In January a California startup named Autonomy began "stocking up on EVs from pretty much every company that makes them," reports Bloomberg (including Tesla, Ford, and Polestar). Their plan? Collect a $5,900 "start fee," then charge $490 to $690 a month for an electric vehicle subscription with up to 1,000 miles of driving (but with no maintenance or registration fees):The subscription model has some logic for consumers. In part because of fast-evolving technology, EVs have traditionally shed value much quicker than gas-powered cars. On a depreciation scale, consumers typically lump them in with cell phones.... But EV ownership is also looking better by the day. The depreciation curve is flattening thanks to longer-range machines, and car companies are getting more vocal about things like battery longevity. A three-year-old Chevrolet Bolt, for example, will recoup 84% of its value today, in line with the average resale of all three-year-old cars in North America, according to CarEdge.com, a consumer-facing market research platform. That could be why auto executives are pushing to round up that sweet, sweet software revenue in smaller chunks. BMW, to much outcry, is selling an $18-a-month subscription for heated seats in the UK, and General Motors turned its OnStar voice navigation into a $1,500 "mandatory" subscription on every new Buick, GMC and Cadillac Escalade. Even without a la carte add-ons, one of the major forces propping up prices for used EVs is, ironically, their ability to update remotely — the same technology carmakers are using to nickel-and-dime drivers with subscription services. A contemporary car is nothing if not a dense stack of software, which means subscriptions on wheels are not entirely bonkers. But a car is also an appliance, and consumers aren't accustomed to renting a refrigerator, let alone paying a monthly fee to use the ice-maker. Luckily for Autonomy, the simplest pitch may be the best one. If it can bigfoot individual EV orders by jumping to the head of the queue, the startup could find scads of subscribers — simply because it will have available cars.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Thursday the International Atomic Energy Agency's director "warned that parts of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant had been knocked out due to recent attacks, risking an 'unacceptable' potential radiation leak," according to CNN:"IAEA experts believe that there is no immediate threat to nuclear safety," but "that could change at any moment," Grossi said.... Ukraine's nuclear agency Energoatom said 10 shells landed near the complex on Thursday, preventing a shift handover. "For the safety of nuclear workers, the buses with the personnel of the next shift were turned back to Enerhodar," the agency said. "Until the situation finally normalizes, the workers of the previous shift will continue to work." Energoatom said radiation levels at the site remained normal, despite renewed attacks. Several Western and Ukrainian officials believe that Russia is using the giant nuclear facility as a stronghold to shield their troops and mount attacks, because they assume Kyiv will not return fire and risk a crisis. Later CNN added:Ukraine and Russia again traded blame after more shelling around the plant overnight on Thursday, just hours after the United Nations called on both sides to cease military activities near the power station, warning of the worst if they didn't. "Regrettably, instead of de-escalation, over the past several days there have been reports of further deeply worrying incidents that could, if they continue, lead to disaster," UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in a statement.... Energoatom, Ukraine's state-run nuclear power company, accused Russian forces on Thursday of targeting a storage area for "radiation sources," and shelling a fire department nearby the plant. A day later, the company said in a statement on its Telegram account that the plant was operating "with the risk of violating radiation and fire safety standards." Ukraine's Interior Minister, Denys Monastyrskyi, said Friday that there was "no adequate control" over the plant, and Ukrainian specialists who remained there were not allowed access to some areas where they should be.... Last weekend, shellfire damaged a dry storage facility — where casks of spent nuclear fuel are kept at the plant — as well as radiation monitoring detectors, making detection of any potential leak impossible, according to Energoatom. Attacks also damaged a high-voltage power line and forced one of the plant's reactors to stop operating. Tonight the BBC reported on a response from Ukraine's president.In his nightly address on Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky said any soldier firing on or from the plant would become "a special target" for Ukraine. He also accused Moscow of turning the plant into a Russian army base and using it as "nuclear blackmail"... Zelenskiy added that "every day" of Russia's occupation of the plant "increases the radiation threat to Europe".... A BBC investigation revealed earlier this week that many of the Ukrainian workers at the site are being kept under armed guard amid harsh conditions. UPDATE (8/14): "Ukraine's military intelligence agency said that on Saturday, Russian artillery fire hit a pump, damaged a fire station and sparked fires near the plant that could not be immediately extinguished because of the damage to the fire station," reports the New York Times:Engineers say that yard-thick reinforced concrete containment structures protect the reactors from even direct hits. International concern, however, has grown that shelling could spark a fire or cause other damage that would lead to a nuclear accident. The six pressurized water reactors at the complex retain most sources of radiation, reducing risks. After pressurized water reactors failed at the Fukushima nuclear complex in Japan in 2011, Ukraine upgraded the Zaporizhzhia site to enable a shutdown even after the loss of cooling water from outside the containment structures, Dmytro Gortenko, a former plant engineer, said in an interview.... "Locals are abandoning the town," said the former engineer, who asked to be identified by only his first name, Oleksiy, because of security concerns. Residents had been leaving for weeks, but the pace picked up after Saturday's barrages and fires, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's "urban innovation" arm Sidewalk Labs planned to build a model "smart city" along a 12-acre patch of Toronto waterfront known as Quayside. But they abandoned the project in 2020, points out MIT's Technology Review, "at the tail end of years of public controversy over its $900 million vision for a data-rich city within the city." Sidewalk's big idea was flashy new tech. This unassuming section of Toronto was going to become a hub for an optimized urban experience featuring robo-taxis, heated sidewalks, autonomous garbage collection, and an extensive digital layer to monitor everything from street crossings to park bench usage. Had it succeeded, Quayside could have been a proof of concept, establishing a new development model for cities everywhere. It could have demonstrated that the sensor-Âladen smart city model embraced in China and the Persian Gulf has a place in more democratic societies. Instead, Sidewalk Labs' two-and-a-half-year struggle to build a neighborhood "from the internet up" failed to make the case for why anyone might want to live in it.... The project's tech-first approach antagonized many; its seeming lack of seriousness about the privacy concerns of Torontonians was likely the main cause of its demise. There is far less tolerance in Canada than in the U.S. for private-sector control of public streets and transportation, or for companies' collecting data on the routine activities of people living their lives. "In the U.S. it's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," says Alex Ryan, a senior vice president of partnership solutions for the MaRS Discovery District, a Toronto nonprofit founded by a consortium of public and private funders and billed as North America's largest urban innovation hub. "In Canada it's peace, order, and good government. Canadians don't expect the private sector to come in and save us from government, because we have high trust in government." With its very top-down approach, Sidewalk failed to comprehend Toronto's civic culture. Almost every person I spoke with about the project used the word "hubris" or "arrogance" to describe the company's attitude. Some people used both. In February Toronto announced new plans for the area, the article points out, with "800 affordable apartments, a two-acre forest, a rooftop farm, a new arts venue focused on indigenous culture, and a pledge to be zero-carbon.... Indeed, the philosophical shift signaled by the new plan, with its emphasis on wind and rain and birds and bees rather than data and more data, seems like a pragmatic response to the demands of the present moment and the near future." The article calls it "a conspicuous disavowal not only of the 2017 proposal but of the smart city concept itself."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The fate of Warner Bros. DC Comics movies is looking grim," writes the Verge. Since April's merger between Warner Brothers and Discovery, they call it "fairly obvious" that "the new guard at Warner Bros. Discovery wants to jettison or at the very least put some distance between itself and the DC Extended Universe's current iteration (along with all the baggage associated with the endeavor.)"The DC Extended Universe was plagued by a number of issues long... like a general lack of cohesion, subpar storytelling, and an association with a toxic fandom whose obsession eventually devolved into harassment campaigns against studio executives. Looking back, Justice League as it was released in 2017 was a haphazard attempt to catch up to the Marvel Cinematic Universe that put far too much faith in the power of people's general familiarity with characters like Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and Aquaman who didn't really have presences in the DC Extended Universe at the time. Screen Rant calls Justice League "a movie that polarized audiences and was less successful than Man of Steel at the box office" — then explains what happened next:The DC Extended Universe had been struggling with highly divisive or critically panned movies, such as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad, but it was not until Justice League that the franchise really took a significant financial hit. In addition, Justice League was also the start of a series of behind-the-scenes controversies, and at this point, it is difficult to picture the Justice League cast all returning for a sequel.... With Ben Affleck seemly done with Batman and the studio wanting to move away from everything Justice League-related, DC needed a way to combine what had been working, such as Jason Momoa's Aquaman and Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, with new strategies, such as Michael Keaton's [appearing in the upcoming Flash movie as] Batman. The answer seemed simple — the multiverse.... The fact that Batgirl, a movie that would have shown the aftermath of The Flash's multiverse journey, was canceled [last week] proves that the multiverse is no longer a priority for DC. Not only that but right before Batgirl's cancelation was announced, it was reported that Ben Affleck would replace Michael Keaton's rumored cameo in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.... During Warner Bros. Discovery's earning calls on August 5, CEO David Zaslav mentioned that the new management will make upcoming DC Extended Universe movies like Black Adam and The Flash "even better", suggesting that reshoots could be on the way.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been confirmed a year after it was achieved at a laboratory in California," reports Newsweek:Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers.... Ignition during a fusion reaction essentially means that the reaction itself produced enough energy to be self-sustaining, which would be necessary in the use of fusion to generate electricity. If we could harness this reaction to generate electricity, it would be one of the most efficient and least polluting sources of energy possible. No fossil fuels would be required as the only fuel would be hydrogen, and the only by-product would be helium, which we use in industry and are actually in short supply of.... This landmark result comes after years of research and thousands of man hours dedicated to improving and perfecting the process: over 1,000 authors are included in the Physical Review Letters paper. This week the laboratory said that breakthrough now puts researchers "at the threshold of fusion gain and achieving scientific ignition," with the program's chief scientist calling it "a major scientific advance in fusion research, which establishes that fusion ignition in the lab is possible at the National Ignition Facility." More news from this week's announcement by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:Since the experiment last August, the team has been executing a series of experiments to attempt to repeat the performance and to understand the experimental sensitivities in this new regime. "Many variables can impact each experiment," Kritcher said. "The 192 laser beams do not perform exactly the same from shot to shot, the quality of targets varies and the ice layer grows at differing roughness on each target...." While the repeat attempts have not reached the same level of fusion yield as the August 2021 experiment, all of them demonstrated capsule gain greater than unity with yields in the 430-700 kJ range, significantly higher than the previous highest yield of 170 kJ from February 2021. The data gained from these and other experiments are providing crucial clues as to what went right and what changes are needed in order to repeat that experiment and exceed its performance in the future. The team also is utilizing the experimental data to further understanding of the fundamental processes of fusion ignition and burn and to enhance simulation tools in support of stockpile stewardship. Looking ahead, the team is working to leverage the accumulated experimental data and simulations to move toward a more robust regime — further beyond the ignition cliff — where general trends found in this new experimental regime can be better separated from variability in targets and laser performance. Efforts to increase fusion performance and robustness are underway via improvements to the laser, improvements to the targets and modifications to the design that further improve energy delivery to the hotspot while maintaining or even increasing the hot-spot pressure. This includes improving the compression of the fusion fuel, increasing the amount of fuel and other avenues. "It is extremely exciting to have an 'existence proof' of ignition in the lab," said Omar Hurricane, chief scientist for the lab's inertial confinement fusion program. "We're operating in a regime that no researchers have accessed since the end of nuclear testing, and it's an incredible opportunity to expand our knowledge as we continue to make progress." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hesdeadjim99 for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader sciencehabit shared this thought-provoking anecdote from Science magazine:NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission was brutish and short. It began on 9 October 2009, when the hull of a spent Centaur rocket stage smashed into Cabeus crater, near the south pole of the Moon, with the force of about 2 tons of TNT. And it ended minutes later, when a trailing spacecraft flew through and analyzed the lofted plume of debris before it, too, crashed. About 6% of the plume was water, presumably from ice trapped in the shadowed depths of the crater, where the temperature never rises above -173ÂC. The Moon, it turned out, wasn't as bone dry as the Apollo astronauts believed. "That was our first ground truth that there is water ice," says Jennifer Heldmann, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center who worked on the mission. Today, Heldmann wants to send another rocket to probe lunar ice — but not on a one-way trip. She has her eye on Starship, a behemoth under development by private rocket company SpaceX that would be the largest flying object the world has ever seen. With Starship, Heldmann could send 100 tons to the Moon, more than twice the lunar payload of the Saturn V, the workhorse of the Apollo missions. She dreams of delivering robotic excavators and drills and retrieving ice in freezers onboard Starship, which could return to Earth with tens of tons of cargo. By analyzing characteristics such as the ice's isotopic composition and its depth, she could learn about its origin: how much of it came from a bombardment of comets and asteroids billions of years ago versus slow, steady implantation by the solar wind. She could also find out where the ice is abundant and pure enough to support human outposts. "It's high-priority science, and it's also critical for exploration," Heldmann says. When SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks up Starship, it's mostly about human exploration: Set up bases on Mars and make humans a multiplanetary species! Save civilization from extinction! But Heldmann and many others believe the heavy lifter could also radically change the way space scientists work. They could fly bigger and heavier instruments more often — and much more cheaply, if SpaceX's projections of cargo launch costs as low as $10 per kilogram are to be believed. On Mars, they could deploy rovers not as one-offs, but in herds. Space telescopes could grow, and fleets of satellites in low-Earth orbit could become commonplace. Astronomy, planetary science, and Earth observation could all boldly go, better than they ever have before. Of course, Starship isn't real yet. All eyes will be on a first orbital launch test, expected sometime in the coming months. Starship would've made it easier to deploy the massive James Webb Space Telescope, the article points out, while in the future Starship's extra fuel capacity could make it easier to explore Mercury, earth's outermost planets, and even interstellar space. In fact, Heldmann and colleagues have now suggested that NASA create a dedicated funding line for missions relying on Starship. Heldmann argues that "We on the science side need to be ready to take advantage of those capabilities when they come online." The article notes that at an event in February, Elon Musk "explained how a single Starship, launching three times per week, would loft more than 15,000 tons to orbit in a year — about as much as all the cargo that has been lifted in the entire history of spaceflight."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Independent reports that the UK's National Health System is experiencing a major outage "expected to last for more than three weeks" after a third-party supplying the NHS's "CareNotes" software was hit by ransomware. Unfortunately, this leaves doctors unable to see their notes on patients, and the mental health trusts that provide care "across the country will be left unable to access patient notes for weeks, and possibly months."Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust has declared a critical incident over the outage, which is believed to affect dozens of trusts, and has told staff it is putting emergency plans in place. One NHS trust chief said the situation could possibly last for "months" with several mental health trusts, and there was concern among leaders that the problem is not being prioritised. In an email to staff, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust chief executive Nick Broughton, said: "The cyberattack targeted systems used to refer patients for care, including ambulances being dispatched, out of hours appointment bookings, triage, out of hours care, emergency prescriptions and safety alerts. It also targeted the finance system used by the trust.... An NHS director said: "The whole thing is down. It's really alarming...we're carrying a lot of risk as a result of it because you can't get records and details of assessments, prescribing, key observations, medical mental health act observations. You can't see any of it...Staff are going to have to write everything down and input it later." They added: "There is increased risk to patients. We're finding it hard to discharge people, for example to housing providers, because we can't access records." "'Weeks' is an unreasonable period," argues Slashdot reader Bruce66423, wondering why it couldn't be resolved with a seemingly simple restore from backups? And Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at Surrey University, warns the Guardian that "Even if it was ransomware ... that doesn't mean data was not stolen."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Australia's public broadcaster interviewed a virologist who "played a key role in mapping the evolution of COVID-19" (and was also "the first person to release the sequence of SARS-CoV-2 to the world.") But interestingly, this Australian virologist also visited the Wuhan market in 2014, "and recognised the risk of virus transmission between animals and humans and suggested taking some samples.""While I was there, I noticed there were these live wildlife for sale, particularly raccoon dogs and ... muskrats" he said. "I took the photographs because I thought to myself: 'God, that's, that's not quite right'." Raccoon dogs had been associated with the emergence of a different coronavirus outbreak, SARS-CoV-1, in 2002-04, which became known worldwide as the SARS virus. Even in 2014, Professor Holmes believed the market could become a site of virus transmission between animals and humans. The monitoring that Professor Holmes suggested never took place but, in the early days of COVID-19, he was still convinced that a market like the one in Wuhan was the logical origin of the virus. "They are the kind of engine room of [this sort] of disease emergence ... because what you're doing is you're putting humans and wildlife in close proximity to each other," he said. The professor also describes the theory that the virus some how leaked from a Chinese lab as "horrendous, blame-game finger-pointing," noting that the nearest lab is miles away. And he cites other reasons the market is where the virus originated:Aside from the geographic clustering, he also points to the fact that two different strands emerged almost simultaneously in humans, something that is much more likely if the virus had already been mutating in animals. "They're sufficiently far apart that they were probably independent jumps. "It means there was a pool of infected animals in the market and it's mutated amongst them before it jumped to humans." All of this has led Professor Holmes to conclude that the question of how COVID-19 emerged is settled. "I'm extremely confident that the virus is not from a laboratory. I think that's just a nonsensical theory," he said. Detailed mapping of where samples were detected inside the Huanan seafood wholesale market allowed Professor Holmes and his colleagues to even pinpoint to a few square metres where COVID-19 was likely to have jumped between humans and animals. "It's extraordinary," he said. "And I took a photo in 2014 of one of the stalls that was the most positively tested in the whole market."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Python seems to be unstoppable," argues the commentary on August's edition of the TIOBE index (which attempts to calculate programming-language popularity based on search results for courses, vendors, and "skilled engineers"). By that measure Python's "market share" rose another 2% in this month's index — to an all-time high of 15.42%.It is hard to find a field of programming in which Python is not used extensively nowadays. The only exception is (safety-critical) embedded systems because of Python being dynamically typed and too slow. That is why the performant languages C and C++ are gaining popularity as well at the moment. If we look at the rest of the TIOBE index, not that much happened last month. Swift and PHP swapped places again at position 10, Rust is getting close to the top 20, Kotlin is back in the top 30, and the new Google language Carbon enters the TIOBE index at position 192. InfoWorld notes it's been 10 months since Python first claimed the index's #1 spot last October, "becoming the only language besides Java and C to hold the No. 1 position."In the alternative Pypl Popularity of Programming Language index, which assesses language popularity based on Google searches of programming language tutorials, the top 10 rankings for August were: 1. Python, 28.11% share2. Java, 17.35%3. JavaScript, 9.48%4. C#, 7.08%5. C/C++, 6.19%6. PHP, 5.47%7. R, 4.35%8. TypeScript, 2.79%9. Swift, 2.09%10. Objective-C, 2.03%Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In June Netflix launched Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies, and the Internet, a true-crime series. It began with an episode documenting the 2017 death of a 28-year-old Kansas man named Andrew Finch after California gamer Tyler Barriss faked an emergency call from Finch's home to the Wichita, Kansas police department. So where are they now? Barriss is now serving a 20-year prison sentence, Bustle reports. "Barriss, a resident of Los Angeles, California, pled guilty to a total of 51 charges, all having to do with hoax emergency calls he'd made, including the call that resulted in Finch's murder." Barriss received as 12-and-a-half year sentence for the Kansas call, and then another 8-and-a-half-year sentence for all the other illegal calls placed between 2015 and 2017 to 17 different U.S. states. "He also received another five years of supervised release in Washington, D.C., for phoning in bomb threats to the FBI and Federal Communications Commission in 2017." And the 19-year-old who'd hired Barriss "received a 15-month prison sentence in 2019 after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice." Meanwhile, Andrew Finch's surviving family members filed legal actions against the police department responsible for Finch's death. And while police officers normally receive "qualified immunity" protecting them from lawsuits over the performance of their duties, there was an update last month:An officer with the Wichita Police Department will face a civil trial in connection with the December 2017 swatting incident... Justin Rapp was the officer who shot the unarmed man. A U.S. appeals court sided with the Kansas district court in denying Officer Rapp qualified immunity in Finch's death. The court said a reasonable jury could believe Finch was unarmed and unthreatening when Rapp fired the shot that killed him. Finch's family brought the excessive force civil suit. Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett declined to prosecute Rapp for fatally shooting Finch. The Wichita Police Department conclude Rapp didn't violate department policy.... Along with its conclusion that the civil case against Rapp can move forward, the appellate court also affirmed the district court's summary judgment on liability claims against the City of Wichita. This decision essentially maintained the city and the WPD as a whole weren't liable in Finch's death. The court of appeals dismissed arguments saying, in sum, "[the lawsuit from Finch's family] has failed to show any deliberately indifferent policies or customs that caused Rapp to use excessive lethal force."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google uses Linux "in almost everything," according to the leader of Google's "product security response" team — including Chromebooks, Android smartphones, and even Google Cloud. "Because of this, we have heavily invested in Linux's security — and today, we're announcing how we're building on those investments and increasing our rewards."In 2020, we launched an open-source Kubernetes-based Capture-the-Flag (CTF) project called, kCTF. The kCTF Vulnerability Rewards Program lets researchers connect to our Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) instances, and if they can hack it, they get a flag, and are potentially rewarded. All of GKE and its dependencies are in scope, but every flag caught so far has been a container breakout through a Linux kernel vulnerability. We've learned that finding and exploiting heap memory corruption vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel could be made a lot harder. Unfortunately, security mitigations are often hard to quantify, however, we think we've found a way to do so concretely going forward.... First, we are indefinitely extending the increased reward amounts we announced earlier this year, meaning we'll continue to pay $20,000 — $91,337 USD for vulnerabilities on our lab kCTF deployment to reward the important work being done to understand and improve kernel security. This is in addition to our existing patch rewards for proactive security improvements. Second, we're launching new instances with additional rewards to evaluate the latest Linux kernel stable image as well as new experimental mitigations in a custom kernel we've built. Rather than simply learning about the current state of the stable kernels, the new instances will be used to ask the community to help us evaluate the value of both our latest and more experimental security mitigations. Today, we are starting with a set of mitigations we believe will make most of the vulnerabilities (9/10 vulns and 10/13 exploits) we received this past year more difficult to exploit. For new exploits of vulnerabilities submitted which also compromise the latest Linux kernel, we will pay an additional $21,000 USD. For those which compromise our custom Linux kernel with our experimental mitigations, the reward will be another $21,000 USD (if they are clearly bypassing the mitigations we are testing). This brings the total rewards up to a maximum of $133,337 USD. We hope this will allow us to learn more about how hard (or easy) it is to bypass our experimental mitigations..... With the kCTF VRP program, we are building a pipeline to analyze, experiment, measure and build security mitigations to make the Linux kernel as safe as we can with the help of the security community. We hope that, over time, we will be able to make security mitigations that make exploitation of Linux kernel vulnerabilities as hard as possible. "We don't care about vulnerabilities; we care about exploits," Vela told the Register. "We expect the vulnerabilities are there, they will get patched, and that's nice and all. But the whole idea is what do to beyond just patching a couple of vulnerabilities."In total, Google paid out $8.7 million in rewards to almost 700 researchers across its various VPRs last year. "We are just one actor in the whole community that happens to have economic resources, financial resources, but we need the community to help us make the Kernel better," Vela said. "If the community is engaged and helps us validate the mitigations that we have, then, we will continue growing on top of that. But the whole idea is that we need to see where the community wants us to go with this...." [I]t's not always about the cash payout, according to Vela, and different bug hunters have different motivations. Some want money, some want fame and some just want to solve an interesting problem, Vela said. "We are trying to find the right combination to captivate people."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday proposed extending the life of the state's last operating nuclear power plant by five to 10 years," reports the Associated Press, "to maintain reliable power supplies in the climate change era."Newsom's draft proposal includes a potential forgivable loan for PG&E for up to $1.4 billion and would require state agencies to act quickly to clear the way for the reactors to continue running. The seaside plant located midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco produces 9% of the state's electricity. The proposal says its continued operation beyond 2025 is "critical to ensure statewide energy system reliability" as climate change stresses the energy system.... Newsom clearly wants to avoid a repeat of August 2020, when a record heat wave caused a surge in power use for air conditioning that overtaxed California's electrical grid. That caused two consecutive nights of rolling blackouts for the state, affecting hundreds of thousands of residential and business customers. The Newsom administration is pushing to expand clean energy, as the state aims to cut emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Nuclear power doesn't produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels, but leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries. The California Legislature has less than three weeks to determine if it will endorse the plan and attempt to extend the life of the plant — a decision that would be made amid looming questions over the costs and earthquake safety risks.... The Democratic governor, who is seen as a possible future White House candidate, has urged PG&E for months to pursue a longer run beyond a scheduled closing by 2025, warning that the plant's power is needed as the state transitions to solar, wind and other renewable sources of energy. One concerned Democratic state Senator (from the district housing the plant) argued that another earthquake fault was discovered near the plant in 2008, and reminded the Associated Press that "seismic upgrades were never totally completed. Will they address that?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times tried an experiment with four classic science fiction films from exactly 40 years ago:If you were a moviegoer in the 1980s, you were constantly presented with imaginative questions that seemed cosmic and existential. Would humanity someday settle its differences here on earth and learn to travel the stars as a unified species? Or were we destined for a dystopian future with little more to look at than smoggy skies and gargantuan billboards? Did our advancing technology have the ability to literally absorb us or replace us entirely? Might we someday encounter alien life that was intelligent and benevolent? Surely some of these questions would be answered by the far-off future year 2000. "Blade Runner," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," "Tron" and "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," all released 40 years ago, in the summer of '82, have become foundational works, shaping the next several decades of fantasy franchises. But what if this wasn't the science-fiction cinema you grew up with? What if you came of age in a later generation, and knew these movies only as celebrated if somewhat distant influences? Would they still seem exciting, innovative and thought-provoking? Or — to confront another terrifying speculative scenario — would they just seem uncool? To find out for ourselves, we enlisted four stars of the current day — all born in the 21st century — and asked them each to watch one of those seminal science-fiction films. They shared their reactions and reflections, didn't judge the special effects too harshly and still shed tears when they thought E.T. died. They showed Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan to Celia Rose Gooding, who plays Uhura in the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Gooding's response was "the machoism of the men in charge has not changed in the future... these are still two guys trying to see whose ship is bigger." Meanwhile, the 22-year-old star of Netflix's Cobra Kai, Jacob Bertrand, was watching both Tron and its 2010 sequel Tron: Legacy. "I feel like the new one doesn't hold a candle to the old one.... I was trying to think of how they could have done this with the technology at the time, and everything that I could think of just sounds like so much work. I was like, dude, how are they pulling this off back then? Holy cow, these people were dedicated." 19-year-old Iman Vellani (star of Disney+ show Ms. Marvel) felt that Blade Runner "hit the mark... I feel like everyone of my generation is always searching for some higher purpose or trying to prove they're worthy enough or special enough for the spotlight, or just worthy of more life. I find myself sympathizing with the replicants a lot more, upon rewatch, in a way I did not expect." And the 19-year-old star of Netflix's Stranger Things, Finn Wolfhard, described E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial as "incredibly sweet."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thursday Meta published a blog post by their "product management director of Messenger Trust," who emphasized that they've begun at least testing end-to-end encryption by default for Messenger chats. But Meta also announced plans "to test a new secure storage feature for backups of your end-to-end encrypted chats on Messenger...." "As with end-to-end encrypted chats, secure storage means that we won't have access to your messages, unless you choose to report them to us." CNBC provides some context:The announcement comes after Facebook turned over Messenger chat histories to Nebraska police as part of an investigation into an alleged illegal abortion. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the feature has been in the works for a while and is not related to the Nebraska case... The feature is rolling out on Android and iOS devices this week, but it isn't yet available on the Messenger website. The company has been discussing full-scale deployment of end-to-end encryption since 2016, but critics have said the security measure would make it much more difficult for law enforcement to catch child predators....Meta said in the release that it is making progress toward the global rollout of default end-to-end encryption for personal messages and calls in 2023. Other privacy enhancements announced Thursday by Meta: "We plan to bring end-to-end encrypted calls to the Calls Tab on Messenger."Meta announced that the deleting of messages will start syncing across your other devices "soon."Messenger will continue offering the option of "Disappearing" messages, in which viewed messages in an end-to-end encrypted chat automatically then disappear after a pre-specified period of time.And there's more, according to Meta's announcement:. "This week, we'll begin testing default end-to-end encrypted chats between some people. If you're in the test group, some of your most frequent chats may be automatically end-to-end encrypted, which means you won't have to opt in to the feature. You'll still have access to your message history, but any new messages or calls with that person will be end-to-end encrypted. You can still report messages to us if you think they violate our policies, and we'll review them and take action as necessary.... "Last year, we started a limited test of opt-in end-to-end encrypted messages and calls on Instagram, and in February we broadened the test to include adults in Ukraine and Russia. Soon, we'll expand the test even further to include people in more countries and add more features like group chats.... "We will continue to provide updates as we make progress toward the global rollout of default end-to-end encryption for personal messages and calls in 2023."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AmiMoJo shares a report from Wired: Since 2018, ELON Musk's Starlink has launched more than 3,000 small satellites into orbit. This satellite network beams internet connections to hard-to-reach locations on Earth and has been a vital source of connectivity during Russia's war in Ukraine. Thousands more satellites are planned for launch as the industry booms. Now, like any emerging technology, those satellite components are being hacked. Today, Lennert Wouters, a security researcher at the Belgian university KU Leuven, will reveal one of the first security breakdowns of Starlink's user terminals, the satellite dishes (dubbed Dishy McFlatface) that are positioned on people's homes and buildings. At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Wouters will detail how a series of hardware vulnerabilities allow attackers to access the Starlink system and run custom code on the devices. To access the satellite dish's software, Wouters physically stripped down a dish he purchased and created a custom hacking tool that can be attached to the Starlink dish. The hacking tool, a custom circuit board known as a modchip, uses off-the-shelf parts that cost around $25. Once attached to the Starlink dish, the homemade printed circuit board (PCB) is able to launch a fault injection attack -- temporarily shorting the system -- to help bypass Starlink's security protections. This 'glitch' allows Wouters to get into previously locked parts of the Starlink system. The researcher notified Starlink of the flaws last year and the company paid Wouters through its bug bounty scheme for identifying the vulnerabilities. Wouters says that while SpaceX has issued an update to make the attack harder (he changed the modchip in response), the underlying issue can't be fixed unless the company creates a new version of the main chip. All existing user terminals are vulnerable, Wouters says. Wouters is making his hacking tool open source on GitHub. Following his presentation, Starlink says it plans to release a "public update" to address the issue but additional details were not shared.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

joshuark shares a report from Computerworld: Despite previously claiming the DogWalk vulnerability did not constitute a security issue, Microsoft has now released a patch to stop attackers from actively exploiting the vulnerability. [...] The vulnerability, known as CVE-2022-34713 or DogWalk, allows attackers to exploit a weakness in the Windows Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT). By using social engineering or phishing, attackers can trick users into visiting a fake website or opening a malicious document or file and ultimately gain remote code execution on compromised systems. DogWalk affects all Windows versions under support, including the latest client and server releases, Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022. The vulnerability was first reported in January 2020 but at the time, Microsoft said it didn't consider the exploit to be a security issue. This is the second time in recent months that Microsoft has been forced to change its position on a known exploit, having initially rejected reports that another Windows MSDT zero-day, known as Follina, posed a security threat. A patch for that exploit was released in June's Patch Tuesday update.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A 17-year-old [named Robert Sansone] created a prototype of a novel synchronous reluctance motor that has greater rotational force -- or torque -- and efficiency than existing ones," writes Slashdot reader hesdeadjim99 from a report via Smithsonian Magazine. "The prototype was made from 3-D printed plastic, copper wires and a steel rotor and tested using a variety of meters to measure power and a laser tachometer to determine the motor's rotational speed. His work earned him first prize, and $75,000 in winnings, at this year's Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the largest international high school STEM competition." From the report: The less sustainable permanent magnet motors use materials such as neodymium, samarium and dysprosium, which are in high demand because they're used in many different products, including headphones and earbuds, explains Heath Hofmann, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan. Hofmann has worked extensively on electric vehicles, including consulting with Tesla to develop the control algorithms for its propulsion drive. [...] Synchronous reluctance motors don't use magnets. Instead, a steel rotor with air gaps cut into it aligns itself with the rotating magnetic field. Reluctance, or the magnetism of a material, is key to this process. As the rotor spins along with the rotating magnetic field, torque is produced. More torque is produced when the saliency ratio, or difference in magnetism between materials (in this case, the steel and the non-magnetic air gaps), is greater. Instead of using air gaps, Sansone thought he could incorporate another magnetic field into a motor. This would increase this saliency ratio and, in turn, produce more torque. His design has other components, but he can't disclose any more details because he hopes to patent the technology in the future. [...] It took several prototypes before he could test his design. [...] Sansone tested his motor for torque and efficiency, and then reconfigured it to run as a more traditional synchronous reluctance motor for comparison. He found that his novel design exhibited 39 percent greater torque and 31 percent greater efficiency at 300 revolutions per minute (RPM). At 750 RPM, it performed at 37 percent greater efficiency. He couldn't test his prototype at higher revolutions per minute because the plastic pieces would overheat -- a lesson he learned the hard way when one of the prototypes melted on his desk, he tells Top of the Class, a podcast produced by Crimson Education. In comparison, Tesla's Model S motor can reach up to 18,000 RPM, explained the company's principal motor designer Konstantinos Laskaris in a 2016 interview with Christian Ruoff of the electric vehicles magazine Charged. Sansone validated his results in a second experiment, in which he "isolated the theoretical principle under which the novel design creates magnetic saliency," per his project presentation. Essentially, this experiment eliminated all other variables, and confirmed that the improvements in torque and efficiency were correlated with the greater saliency ratio of his design. [...] Sansone is now working on calculations and 3-D modeling for version 16 of his motor, which he plans to build out of sturdier materials so he can test it at higher revolutions per minute. If his motor continues to perform with high speed and efficiency, he says he'll move forward with the patenting process.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Polio has been detected in New York City wastewater, suggesting that the virus that causes the disease is probably circulating in the city, the health authorities said on Friday. The announcement came three weeks after a man in Rockland County, N.Y., north of the city, was diagnosed with polio thatleft him with paralysis. Health officials fear that the detection of polio in New York City's wastewater could precede other cases of paralytic polio. The spread of the virus poses a risk to unvaccinated people, but a three-dose course of the vaccine provides at least 99 percent protection. Most adults in the United Stateswere vaccinated against polio as children. In New York City, the overall rate of polio vaccination among children 5 and under is 86 percent. Still, insome city ZIP codes, fewer thantwo-thirds of children in that group have received a full regimen, a figure that worries health officials. (The citywide vaccination rate dipped amid the pandemic, as visits to pediatricians were postponed.) Although many people who become infected with polio do not develop symptoms, about 4 percent will get viral meningitis and about 1 in 200 will become paralyzed, according to the health authorities. Parents of children who have not yet been fully vaccinated should see that they are immediately, officials said. "While the polio virus had previously been detected in wastewater samples in Rockland and neighboring Orange Counties, the announcement on Friday was the first sign it had been found in New York City," adds the report. "The city's health department did not provide details about where exactly in the five boroughs polio had been found in the wastewater, nor did officials provide dates for when the virus was detected or say how many samples had tested positive." Further reading: Vaccine-Derived Polio Is On the RiseRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Version 9.3 of NetBSD is here, able to run on very low-end systems and with that authentic early-1990s experience. The Register reports: Version 9.3 comes some 15 months after NetBSD 9.2 and boasts new and updated drivers, improved hardware support, including for some recent AMD and Intel processors, and better handling of suspend and resume. The next sentence in the release announcement, though, might give some readers pause: "Support for wsfb-based X11 servers on the Commodore Amiga." This is your clue that we are in a rather different territory from run-of-the-mill PC operating systems here. A notable improvement in NetBSD 9.3 is being able to run a graphical desktop on an Amiga. This is a 2022 operating system that can run on late-1980s hardware, and there are not many of those around. NetBSD supports eight "tier I" architectures: 32-bit and 64-bit x86 and Arm, plus MIPS, PowerPC, Sun UltraSPARC, and the Xen hypervisor. Alongside those, there are no less than 49 "tier II" supported architectures, which are not as complete and not everything works -- although almost all of them are on version 9.3 except for the version for original Acorn computers with 32-bit Arm CPUs, which is still only on NetBSD 8.1. There's also a "tier III" for ports which are on "life support" so there may be a risk Archimedes support could drop to that. This is an OS that can run on 680x0 hardware, DEC VAX minicomputers and workstations, and Sun 2, 3, and 32-bit SPARC boxes. In other words, it reaches back as far as some 1970s hardware. Let this govern your expectations. For instance, in VirtualBox, if you tell it you want to create a NetBSD guest, it disables SMP support.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's first fully autonomous, commercial robotaxi rides -- with no safety drivers -- are about to open for public passengers in Wuhan and Chongqing, marking an inflection point for one of the key technological revolutions of the 21st century. New Atlas reports: The two newly-issued permits allow Baidu to charge for driverless rides within a 13-sq-km (5-sq-mi) area in Wuhan, between 9 am and 5 pm, and within a larger 30-sq-km (11.6-sq-mi) zone in Chonqing's Yongchuan district between 9.30 am and 5.30 pm -- so while they're currently set to avoid peak hours, they'll be mixing it up with plenty of daytime traffic. Each zone will run five 5th-generation Apollo cars, with remote drivers ready to assume control if the vehicles get themselves into any sticky situations. Home base will be watching closely through the cars' camera systems, particularly in these early days. Baidu's Apollo Go is already the world's biggest robotaxi company, with operations already live in all tier-one Chinese cities using the same 5th-gen car, with backup drivers on board. The company recently revealed its 6th-gen design, its first ground-up fully autonomous car for mass production. The Apollo RT6 will cost just RMB 250,000 (US$37,000) to manufacture, says Baidu, and its optional, removable steering wheel and generous, configurable cabin space will make it one of the first proper mobility pod-type services when it hits the streets commercially in 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook announced on Thursday it will begin testing end-to-end encryption as the default option for some users of its Messenger app on Android and iOS. The Guardian reports: Facebook messenger users currently have to opt in to make their messages end-to-end encrypted (E2E), a mechanism that theoretically allows only the sender and recipient of a message to access its content. Facebook spokesperson Alex Dziedzan said on Thursday that E2E encryption is a complex feature to implement and that the test is limited to a couple of hundred users for now so that the company can ensure the system is working properly. Dziedzan also said the move was "not a response to any law enforcement requests." Meta, Facebook's parent company, said it had planned to roll out the test for months. The company had previously announced plans to make E2E encryption the default in 2022 but pushed the date back to 2023. "The only way for companies like Facebook to meaningfully protect people is for them to ensure that they do not have access to user data or communications when a law enforcement agency comes knocking," Evan Greer, the director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, said. "Expanding end-to-end encryption by default is a part of that, but companies like Facebook also need to stop collecting and retaining so much intimate information about us in the first place."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For some people, the term "Ring Nation" might evoke a warrantless surveillance dystopia overseen by an omnipotent megacorp. To Amazon-owned MGM, Ring Nation is a clip show hosted by comedian Wanda Sykes, featuring dancing delivery people and adorable pets. Deadline reports that the show, due to debut on September 26, is "the latest example of corporate synergy at Amazon." Amazon owns household video security brand Ring, Hollywood studio MGM, and Big Fish, the producer of Ring Nation. Viral videos captured by doorbell cameras have been hot for a while now. You can catch them on late-night talk shows, the r/CaughtOnRing subreddit, and on millions of TikTok users' For You page. Amazon's media properties, perhaps sensing an opportunity to capitalize and soften Ring's image, are sallying forth with an officially branded offering. Ring Nation will feature "neighbors saving neighbors, marriage proposals, military reunions and silly animals," Deadline writes. But Ring Nation might be aiming even higher, according to Ring founder Jamie Siminoff -- to something approaching a salve for our deeply divided nation. "Bringing the new community together is core to our mission at Ring, and Ring Nation gives friends and family a fun new way to enjoy time with one another," Siminoff told Deadline. "We're so excited to have Wanda Sykes join Ring Nation to share people's memorable moments with viewers." "Ring sharing its owners' moments with other viewers has been a contentious issue," notes Ars. Amazon's Ring can share footage with police during emergencies without consent and without warrants. The service has also reportedly partnered with hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the country to increase Ring installations and ease police access to footage.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this week, Samsung unveiled their new Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 -- two of the most refined and polished foldable smartphones on the market. However, what Samsung hasn't done (or any other phone manufacturer for that matter) "is make the case for why you'd actually want a foldable phone," writes David Pierce via The Verge. "And until it can explain why it's worth all the extra cost and tradeoffs, I'm having a hard time figuring out why you'd be willing to give up the phone you know and love to get one." From the report: What Samsung needs to do with the Galaxy Fold (and the rest of the industry will eventually need to do with their own foldables) is convince people that it's worth buying a phone that's more expensive, more fragile, and takes up more room in your pocket. Right now, the worst thing about foldables is that they force you to make significant sacrifices on the most important device you own: your smartphone. The new Fold 4 is a little shorter, about an ounce heavier, and about twice as thick as the Galaxy S22 Ultra. It's also $600 more expensive. The Ultra has a bigger battery, better camera specs, and a 6.8-inch screen that supports an S Pen. The Fold 4, when opened, is noticeably larger, but the candy bar phones still get plenty big. And Fold makes a lot of sacrifices for some more real estate. It's not even clear to me that Samsung knows why you should make all of those sacrifices. On its website, one of the first selling points the company offers is that you can prop up the screen on a table by opening it halfway for watching or taking videos hands-free. Here in reality, we call that a kickstand, and this is an awfully expensive one. In this mode, you're also only using half the screen, which sort of defeats the whole purpose. So far, multitasking seems to be the foldable's one actual advantage. Open up your Galaxy Fold, and you can run two apps side by side or even three or four on the screen at once! This, I agree, is a delightful thing. Being able to use my browser and my notes app side by side or see my calendar and my email together is much better than constantly swiping between two full-screen apps. And seeing two pages at a time in the Kindle app is the best. And you know what? Big screens are just good -- good for games, good for reading, good for watching Netflix. But these aren't just arguments for foldables; they're arguments for tablets. And so far, the arguments for Android tablets don't seem to be convincing many users. While Android has gotten better as a large-screen operating system, and the Fold 4's software being based on Android 12L is a good sign, too many apps that are "optimized" for foldables are actually just sticking a giant sidebar onto one side, which doesn't accomplish much. Others just streeeetch everything to fit the larger screen. Don't even get me started on how the vast majority of apps deal with Microsoft's approach of two separate screens attached with a hinge. Samsung has done an admirable job of wrangling all of Android's weirdness onto the Fold's screen, and in general, it's not that the Fold doesn't work; it's that there's nothing about the Fold that is dramatically better than the phone or tablet you might already be carrying around. And shoving them into a single device actually makes them both a little worse.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the most popular media player software and streaming media server VLC media player, developed by VideoLAN project, is no longer working in India. India Today reports: As per a report by MediaNama, VLC Media Player has been blocked in India nearly 2 months ago. Neither the company nor the Indian government has revealed any details about the ban. Some reports suggest that VLC Media Player has been blocked in the country because the platform was China-backed hacking group Cicada was using it for cyber attacks. Just a few months ago, security experts discovered that Cicada was using VLC Media Player to deploy a malicious malware loader as part of a long-running cyber attack campaign. Since it was a soft ban, neither the company, nor the Indian government officially announced the banning of the media platform. Some users on Twitter are still discovering the restrictions of the platform. One of the Twitter users by the name Gagandeep Sapra tweeted a screenshot of the VLC website that shows âoethe website has been blocked as per order Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under IT Act, 2000." Currently, the VLC Media Player website and download link are blocked in the country. In simple words, this means that no one in the country can access the platform for any work. This is seemingly the case for users who have the software installed on their device. It is said that VLC Media Player is blocked on all major ISPs including ACTFibernet, Jio, Vodafone-idea and others.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Lawsuits from disgruntled investors are beginning to stack up after crypto prices plummeted over the past few months, leaving them with steep losses. Billionaire Mark Cuban is the latest celebrity on the receiving end of investor ire. A group of Voyager Digital customers filed a class-action suit in Florida federal court against Cuban, as well as the basketball team he owns, the Dallas Mavericks, alleging their promotion of the crypto platform resulted in more than 3.5 million investors losing $5 billion collectively. Voyager Digital's CEO, Stephen Ehrlich, was also named as a defendant in the suit. Voyager, a New Jersey-based crypto firm, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July following a crash in crypto prices that instigated a liquidity crunch on the platform. The firm is one of many that got burned after loaning money, in Voyager's case worth ~$600 million, to hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC). 3AC declared bankruptcy in the wake of the Terra collapse, triggering a domino effect throughout the crypto markets when the hedge fund defaulted on more than $3.5 billion worth of obligations to its lenders. The plaintiffs in the suit against Cuban described Voyager as "an unregulated and unsustainable fraud, similar to other Ponzi schemes." They claim in the complaint that Cuban and Ehrlich personally reached out to investors both individually and through a partnership with the Dallas Mavericks, to encourage them to invest with the platform. The lawsuit also specifically calls out Voyager's Earn Program Accounts (EPAs), claiming they are unregistered securities. The Mavericks launched their exclusive, five-year partnership with Voyager in October 2021, giving fans cash rewards for making trades on the platform. The announcement said the cryptocurrencies were "an attractive investment for novice investors who might only have $100 to start." According to the lawsuit filed today, Cuban also promoted the company "as a Voyager customer himself, in a ploy to dupe investors into believing that Voyager was a safe platform." Although the partnership with the Mavericks was disclosed, the lawsuit alleges that Cuban did not disclose the compensation he personally received to promote Voyager. "During the runup in crypto prices, many web3 companies, apparently including Voyager, pretended that existing laws and regulations did not apply to crypto," said Shane Seppinni, founder of law firm Seppinni LLP, who was worked on various crypto and "meme stock" lawsuits. "Even smart people like Mark Cuban got caught up in the hype. But now that crypto prices have crashed it's plain to see that centuries-old legal theories like fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and civil conspiracy are as applicable to crypto as they are elsewhere."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US Federal Election Commission approved a Google plan to let campaign emails bypass Gmail spam filters. From a report: The FEC's advisory opinion adopted in a 4-1 vote said Gmail's pilot program is permissible under the Federal Election Campaign Act and FEC regulations "and would not result in the making of a prohibited in-kind contribution." The FEC said Google's approved plan is for "a pilot program to test new Gmail design features at no cost on a nonpartisan basis to authorized candidate committees, political party committees, and leadership PACs." On July 1, Google asked the FEC for the green light to implement the pilot after Republicans accused the company of giving Democrats an advantage in its algorithms. Republicans reportedly could have avoided some of their Gmail spam problems by using the proper email configuration. At a May 2022 meeting between Senate Republicans and Google's chief legal officer, "the most forceful rebuke" was said to come "from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed that not a single email from one of his addresses was reaching inboxes," The Washington Post reported in late July. "The reason, it was later determined, was that a vendor had not enabled an authentication tool that keeps messages from being marked as spam, according to people briefed on the discussions."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Mount Sinai Health System began an effort this week to build a vast database of patient genetic information that can be studied by researchers -- and by a large pharmaceutical company. From a report: The goal is to search for treatments for illnesses ranging from schizophrenia to kidney disease, but the effort to gather genetic information for many patients, collected during routine blood draws, could also raise privacy concerns. The data will be rendered anonymous, and Mount Sinai said it had no intention of sharing it with anyone other than researchers. But consumer or genealogical databases full of genetic information, such as Ancestry.com and GEDmatch, have been used by detectives searching for genetic clues that might help them solve old crimes. Vast sets of genetic sequences can unlock new insights into many diseases and also pave the way for new treatments, researchers at Mount Sinai say. But the only way to compile those research databases is to first convince huge numbers of people to agree to have their genomes sequenced. Beyond chasing the next breakthrough drug, researchers hope the database, when paired with patient medical records, will provide new insights into how the interplay between genetic and socio-economic factors -- such as poverty or exposure to air pollution -- can affect people's health. The health system hopes to eventually amass a database of genetic sequences for 1 million patients, which would mean the inclusion of roughly one out of every 10 New York City residents. The effort began this week, a hospital spokeswoman, Karin Eskenazi, said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From a report, shared by a reader: Through the winter mist of the hills of the Terai, in lowland Nepal, 18-year-old Hima Kusunda emerges from the school's boarding house, snug in a pink hooded sweatshirt. Hima is one of the last remaining Kusunda, a tiny indigenous group now scattered across central western Nepal. Their language, also called Kusunda, is unique: it is believed by linguists to be unrelated to any other language in the world. Scholars still aren't sure how it originated. And it has a variety of unusual elements, including lacking any standard way of negating a sentence, words for "yes" or "no", or any words for direction. According to the latest Nepali census data from 2011, there are 273 Kusunda remaining. But only one woman, 48-year-old Kamala Khatri, is known to be fluent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Software sold by market leaders tend to be primary purchases for regular consumers. Brand comfort is important but so too is affordability, especially when pirate copies are available for free. Some find a middle ground with purchases of discounted activation keys but, as a new Microsoft lawsuit shows, that can amount to copyright infringement for buyers and sellers alike. From a report: In a complaint filed at a Washington court this week, Microsoft targets Canadian company The Search People Enterprises Ltd (TSPE), assumed director Mehtabjit Singh, and 'John Doe' defendants 1-10. The defendants are described as prolific distributors of "black market access devices," aka activation keys and tokens for Microsoft software. Those who bought keys and tokens may have been under the impression that they were purchasing official software but as Microsoft explains, that is not only misleading but a mischaracterization of the things they were sold. Products including Microsoft Office, Project, Visio, Windows 10, and Windows 11 are all subject to licensing terms that restrict how the products can be used. Microsoft can also provide a product activation key to be entered as part of the installation process, with data about the activation sent to the company's servers. Like software tokens, which enable downloads and automatic software activation, activation keys are anti-piracy tools, and exchanging money for them is not the same as buying a license. Indeed, Microsoft makes itself very clear -- the activation of a piece of software means nothing in the absence of a license. Microsoft's problem is that product activation keys can be 'decoupled' from the software they were meant to authorize and then reused to activate more copies of the software, in some cases more copies than the attached Microsoft license permits.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Australia's consumer watchdog agency said Friday that Google has been ordered to pay AU$60 million, nearly $43 million, by the Federal Court over the collection of location data on Android phones. From a report: The fine stems from legal action the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission initiated back in 2019. The ACCC accused Google of "making misleading representations to consumers" about the collection and use of personal location data on Android devices between January 2017 and December 2018. The court previously found that Google misled consumers into thinking "Location History" was the only setting that impacted whether the tech giant collected, kept and used location data, when in fact, the "Web & App Activity" setting also allowed Google to collect some of this information, according to the ACCC. An estimated 1.3 million people with Google accounts in Australia may have "viewed a screen found by the Court to have breached the Australian Consumer Law," the ACCC said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Physical labour is exhausting. A long run or a hard day's sweat depletes the body's energy stores, resulting in a sense of fatigue. Mental labour can also be exhausting. Even resisting that last glistening chocolate-chip cookie after a long day at a consuming desk job is difficult. Cognitive control, the umbrella term encompassing mental exertion, self-control and willpower, also fades with effort. But unlike the mechanism of physical fatigue, the cause of cognitive fatigue has been poorly understood. Previous accounts were incomplete. One of the most widely known, the biological one, draws from what is known about muscular fatigue. It posits that exerting cognitive control uses up energy in the form of glucose. At the end of a day spent intensely cogitating, the brain is metaphorically running on fumes. The problem with this version of events is that the energy cost associated with thinking is minimal. One analysis of previous studies suggests that cognitively overworked and "depleted" brains use less than one-tenth of a Tic-Tac's worth of additional glucose. If cognitive fatigue is not caused by a lack of energy, then what explains it? A team of scientists led by Antonius Wiehler of Pitie-Salpetriere University Hospital, in Paris, looked at things from what is termed a neurometabolic point of view. They hypothesise that cognitive fatigue results from an accumulation of a certain chemical in the region of the brain underpinning control. That substance, glutamate, is an excitatory neurotransmitter that abounds in the central nervous systems of mammals and plays a role in a multitude of activities, such as learning, memory and the sleep-wake cycle. In other words, cognitive work results in chemical changes in the brain, which present behaviourally as fatigue. This, therefore, is a signal to stop working in order to restore balance to the brain. In their new paper in Current Biology, the researchers describe an experiment they undertook to explain how all this happens.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The earliest sales pitch for Stadia, the Google streaming service that beams high-end video games to web browsers via the cloud, included the idea that it might work as simply as Googling your favorite game. You might search for a popular game to learn more about it, only to immediately see an option to start playing it inside your web browser, no additional hardware required -- and perhaps no payment, either. Nearly three years after Stadia's official launch -- and 18 months after the service's massive internal downgrade -- that scenario has finally begun to play out. What's more, the feature appears to be streamer-agnostic, as multiple Stadia-like streaming services have started appearing in search results. This week, Google rolled out a limited launch of a "Play Now" tab that appears on searches for select video games on desktop browsers. (As of press time, out of three Google accounts tested, the search results shown in this article only appear on one of them.) This tab can be found in the right-hand "knowledge panel" that is otherwise automatically populated with user reviews, game details, and digital download purchase links. When a Google game search returns a Play Now tab, it will include as many compatible streaming services as possible, including Google Stadia, Microsoft Xbox Cloud Gaming, Amazon Luna, and Nvidia GeForce Now. Each entry shows what kind of fee may be required to play the game. Conveniently enough, many Google Stadia games can now be played for free for the first 30 minutes or as long as 120 minutes, and supported free-trial Stadia games get a bright-green flash of italicized text: "trial available." Other games and services that have appeared thus far have included tags like "premium subscription" or "free-to-play."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung's de-facto leader secured a pardon Friday of his conviction for bribing a former president in a corruption scandal that toppled a previous South Korean government, an act of leniency that underscored the tech company's huge influence in the nation. From a report: Lee Jae-yong's pardon is partially symbolic since he was released on parole a year ago after serving 18 months of a prison term that would have ended in July, and critics say the billionaire has remained in control of Samsung even while behind bars. Still, the pardon will allow the heir to the electronics juggernaut to fully resume his management duties and could make it easier for the company to pursue investments and mergers. The Justice Ministry said President Yoon Suk Yeol, who as a prosecutor investigated the corruption scandal involving Lee, will issue the pardon Monday, a national holiday when some 1,700 people are set to receive clemency, including other top business leaders. Lee, 54, was convicted in 2017 of bribing former President Park Geun-hye and her close confidante to win government support for a merger between two Samsung affiliates that tightened Lee's control over the corporate empire. Park and the confidante were also convicted in the scandal, which enraged South Koreans, who staged massive protests for months demanding an end to the shady ties between business and politics. The demonstrations eventually led to Park's ouster from office. [...] Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon said the pardons of the business tycoons were aimed at "overcoming the economic crisis through encouraging business activity" at a time when South Koreans are grappling with rising prices, high personal debt and a faltering job market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An ongoing dispute over privacy between Apple and Facebook is roiling the digital economy, leading companies to shift billions in ad spending as users continue to limit the data available to advertisers. The feud took off last year, when Apple rolled out iOS 14.5, a version of its mobile operating system that made it easier than ever for iPhone and iPad users to opt out of letting apps like Facebook track their activity on their devices. The two companies weren't always at odds. In fact, they were almost business partners. From a report: In the years before the change, Apple suggested a series of possible arrangements that would earn the iPhone maker a slice of Facebook's revenue, according to people who either participated in the meetings or were briefed about them. As one person recalled: Apple officials said they wanted to "build businesses together." One idea that was discussed: creating a subscription-based version of Facebook that would be free of ads, according to people familiar with the discussions. Because Apple collects a cut of subscription revenue for apps in its App Store, that product could have generated significant revenue for the Cupertino, Calif., giant. The companies also haggled over whether Apple was entitled to a piece of Facebook's sales from so-called boosted posts, said people familiar with the matter. A boost allows a user to pay to increase the number of people that see a post on Facebook or Instagram. Facebook, which considers boosts ads, has always contended that boosts are a form of advertising, in part because they are often used by small businesses to reach a bigger audience, said one of the people. Apple, which doesn't take a cut of advertising from developers, argued that Facebook boosts should be considered in-app purchases, according to a person familiar with the matter. Apple's standard terms would entitle it to take a 30% share of those sales.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Dutch government agency responsible for investigating financial crimes said it has arrested an individual suspected of being a developer of the U.S.-sanctioned crypto mixing service Tornado Cash in a move that has rattled some crypto and privacy advocates. From a report: The Fiscal Information and Investigation Service said Friday that the arrested 29-year-old man is suspected to be involved in "concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering" through the popular crypto mixing service. "Multiple arrests are not ruled out," it said. The agency added that it arrested the individual in Amsterdam. The move comes days after the U.S. government sanctioned Tornado Cash -- a service that allows users to mask their transactions by jumbling funds from different sources before sending them to the ultimate destination -- for its role in enabling billions of dollars' worth of cryptocurrency to be laundered through its platform.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The world's largest smartphone market is in deep trouble. China saw a 14.7% decline in phone shipments in the second quarter, according to research firm IDC. And multibillion-dollar pillars of the industry like Xiaomi Corp., Vivo and Oppo all reported steep sales declines. From a report: Many factors drove the fall, including a strict Covid Zero policy that torpedoed demand, but the bigger issue is one that's long been feared by the country's smartphone makers. China's 10-year-plus smartphone boom, fueled by new buyers and ceaseless upgrades, is likely coming to an end. China was eager to become a mobile nation a decade ago. It used state capital to build 4G base stations in almost every village, enabling brands like Oppo and Vivo to sell chic-looking devices to hundreds of millions of people in rural areas, most of whom had never tried a touchscreen. Apple, Samsung Electronics and Motorola pursued tech-savvy city dwellers with more expensive options. (Although the latter two quickly fell out of the game due to product flaws, marketing missteps and geopolitical pressures.) More recently, smartphone makers saw an opportunity as China pushed toward advanced 5G networks. But few saw the trouble already brewing. A key problem is that China's massive smartphone market has become highly saturated. The country has more than 1.6 billion active mobile phone accounts by the end of last year compared to its 1.4 billion population. The penetration rate is well above the global average and has led to fierce competition. The need to replace phones has also dwindled. The life cycles of smartphones are getting longer, and can be stretched when the economy isn't doing well. The price of 5G service has prompted many people in China to simply keep their adequate 4G subscriptions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The British government declared a drought for parts of southern, eastern and central England on Friday as the country, unaccustomed to such extreme heat, endured another day of scorching conditions. From a report: The declaration came after a group of officials and experts, including the National Drought Group, met to discuss the government's response to "the driest summer in 50 years," the Environment Agency said in a statement. Extreme-heat warnings have also been issued for parts of southern England and Wales, just weeks after Britain withered under some of its highest temperatures on record. "We are currently experiencing a second heat wave after what was the driest July on record for parts of the country," Britain's water minister, Steve Double, said in a statement released after the drought group's meeting. "Action is already being taken by the government and other partners," to deal with the drought, he added. The drought announcement will allow water companies to impose stricter conservation measures. Several water companies have temporarily banned the use of hoses to water yards and gardens and to wash vehicles. The Met Office, Britain's national weather service, issued an extreme-heat warning through Sunday for much of the southern half of England and for parts of Wales, underscoring that the soaring temperatures could not only disrupt travel but also raise the risk of heat-related illnesses for certain groups.Read more of this story at Slashdot.