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"Unlike practically every major game console that's come before it, the Steam Deck, from PC gaming giant Valve, doesn't lock users into one ecosystem," writes Fast Company's Jared Newman. "While Valve's own Steam store is the default way to buy and play games, the Steam Deck also lets users install whatever software they want on the device's Linux-based operating system. The experience has been liberating..." From the report: In recent weeks, I've gorged on weird indie creations from itch.io, classic games from GOG.com, and free games from the Epic Games Store. I've used Plexamp to stream my personal music collection in place of in-game soundtracks, and I've used Vivaldi to browse the web in the Steam Deck's desktop mode. You don't have to use your Steam Deck this way, but just being knowing that it's an option makes the device more capable and personal. The tech industry is filled with companies that seem deathly afraid of this model, either because they don't trust their users or don't want to risk weakening their own ecosystems. By taking the opposite approach, Valve is proving that open platforms aren't so catastrophic, and it elevates the Steam Deck from yet another gadget into the most exciting consumer electronics device in years. [...] Valve could have easily used the Steam Deck to lock players into its own ecosystem. It could have opted not to include a desktop mode and withheld instructions on how to lift its read-only restrictions. It could have discouraged users from installing different operating systems and made its recovery tools unavailable to the public. Console makers have long insisted that such restrictions are necessary for the good of their platforms. In 2020, for instance, Microsoft argued that because console makers sell their hardware at or below cost to create a market for their software, they shouldn't have to accommodate third-party app stores or sideloading. Similar arguments have spilled out into the broader mobile app business as well. In response to a lawsuit from Epic Games, Apple has claimed that its investments in the App Store wouldn't be feasible if it couldn't force developers to use its in-app purchase mechanisms. Some defenders of Apple's viewpoint, such as Daring Fireball's John Gruber, have argued that iOS is more like a game console than a PC platform. So, it's all the more remarkable that Valve ignored all this hand-wringing and made the Steam Deck a haven for tinkerers. Instead of trying to shut out competitors, the company is betting that its own store will prevail on quality. If the Steam Deck successful -- as it appears to be so far -- it could upend years of conventional wisdom around walled gardens and become a threat to other consoles in more ways than one.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Taiwanese research firm TrendForce said Monday that DRAM pricing for commercial buyers is forecast to drop around three to eight percent across those markets in the third quarter compared to the previous three months. Even prices for DDR5 modules in the PC market could drop as much as five percent from July to September. The Register reports: This could result in DRAM buyers, such as system vendors and distributors, reducing prices for end users if they hope to stimulate demand in markets like PC and smartphones where sales have waned. We suppose they could try to profit on the decreased memory prices, but with many people tightening their budgets, we hope this won't be the case. The culprit for the DRAM price drop is one that we've been hearing a great deal about in the past few months: weaker demand for consumer electronics, including PCs and smartphones, as a result of high inflation and Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, according to TrendForce. The weaker consumer demand means DRAM inventories are building up at system vendors and distributors, which means they don't need to buy as much in the near future. This, in turn, is why memory prices are dropping, the research firm said. On the PC side, DDR4 memory pricing is expected to drop three to eight percent in the third quarter of 2022 after only seeing a zero to five percent decline in the second quarter. DDR5 pricing, on the other hand, is set to drop by only zero to five percent in Q3 after seeing a three to eight percent plummet in the previous quarter. For certain DRAM products, prices could see a steeper decline of more than eight percent, according to TrendForce, though the firm didn't say which products this would include. TrendForce said PC makers are focused on getting rid of their existing DRAM inventories, and a continuously "sluggish" market means they'll be reticent to buy much more memory.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Security researchers found that Adobe Acrobat is trying to block security software from having visibility into the PDF files it opens, creating a security risk for the users. Adobe's product is checking if components from 30 security products are loaded into its processes and likely blocks them, essentially denying them from monitoring for malicious activity. [...] In a post on Citrix forums on March 28, a user complaining about Sophos AV errors due to having an Adobe product installed said that the company "suggested to disable DLL-injection for Acrobat and Reader. Replying to BleepingComputer, Adobe confirmed that users have reported experiencing issue due to DLL components from some security products being incompatible with Adobe Acrobat's usage of the CEF library: "We are aware of reports that some DLLs from security tools are incompatible with Adobe Acrobat's usage of CEF, a Chromium based engine with a restricted sandbox design, and may cause stability issues." The company added that it is currently working with these vendors to address the problem and "to ensure proper functionality with Acrobat's CEF sandbox design going forward." Minerva Labs researchers argue that Adobe chose a solution that solves compatibility problems but introduces a real attack risk by preventing security software from protecting the system.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RISC OS, the operating system of the original Arm computer, the Acorn Archimedes, is still very much alive -- and doing relatively well for its age. The Register reports: In June 1987, Acorn launched the Archimedes A305 and A310, starting at $982 and running a new operating system called Arthur. At the time, it was a radical and very fast computer. In his review (PDF) for Personal Computer World, Dick Pountain memorably said: "It loads huge programs with a faint burping noise, in the time it takes to blink an eye." Arthur was loosely related to Acorn's earlier MOS, the BBC Micro operating system but looked very different thanks to a prototype graphical desktop, implemented in BBC BASIC, that could charitably be called "technicolor." Renamed RISC OS, version 2 followed in 1989 -- the same year that Sun started selling its new SPARCstation 1 (a snip at $9,200) and DEC launched the MIPS R2000-chipset-based DECstation 3100 (for $10,800). RISC OS has had a rather convoluted history, partly due to Acorn spinning out Arm, eventually pulling out of the computer market, rebranding as Element 14 and being acquired by Broadcom, where Arm co-designer Sophie Wilson still works today. And partly due to drama over the ownership of the OS post-Acorn at one point. One fork of RISC OS still supports Acorn-era Arm's odd 26-bit mode, meaning that today it mostly runs on the commercial Virtual Acorn emulator. The other branch, designed for the 32-bit mode of more recent Arm chips, is now owned by RISC OS Developments, which made it fully open source back in 2018. Development and maintenance is done by the team at RISC OS Open Ltd -- ROOL for short -- which offers downloads for a variety of current Arm hardware, such as the Titanium desktops. [...] RISC OS Developments are still working on new functionality for the OS. Notably, it recently released a new TCP/IP stack, derived from OpenBSD. Right now, the main benefit is IPv6 support. A feature more significant to most users is still in development: Wi-Fi support. Also still under development, but available to paid backers, is a new RISC OS web browser, Iris. RISC OS does come with a choice of browsers -- NetSurf and Otter -- but the plan is that the new Iris browser will be a native app, with the RISC OS look and feel, but using the WebKit engine for better compatibility with the modern web. The main remaining limitation is SMP. As an OS from the 1980s, long before the 21st-century technology of mainstream multicore processors, RISC OS practically only supports a single CPU core. Various experimental efforts are under way to address this. One has got NetBSD running on another core, and another has the experimental Genode OS running alongside RISC OS. Another effort is working on adding SMP support into the RISC OS kernel itself.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Crypto lending platform BlockFi announced that it has secured a $250 million revolving credit facility from FTX, BlockFi CEO Zac Prince said in a tweet on Tuesday, and the company subsequently announced in a press release. CoinDesk reports: Prince said the move "bolsters our balance sheet and platform strength." He added that "the proceeds of the credit facility are intended to be contractually subordinate to all client balances across all account types (BIA, BPY & loan collateral) and will be used as needed." This is not the first time FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has stepped in to bail out a major crypto company impacted by the recent market downturn. Last week, crypto broker Voyager Digital (VOYG) secured a revolving line of credit with Bankman-Fried-founded quant trading shop Alameda Research. Though it is now in the position of backstopping a broader market crash, FTX is reportedly one of the firms that liquidated Celsius -- the troubled decentralized crypto lending platform that was forced to halt all user withdraws last week. Celsius, one of BlockFi's competitors, reportedly ran out of funds to repay depositors due to a series of risky decentralized finance bets. In the press release, BlockFi said the credit facility is contingent on the execution of "definitive documents," which the two companies expect to be completed in "the coming days."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Indian Express: The US should do more to attract overseas chipmakers to build plants on its territory as a matter of national security, former Google chief Eric Schmidt wrote in an opinion piece published Monday.Pointing to China's accelerating investment in chip fabrication technology and capacity, Schmidt urged the US to reduce its dependence on Taiwan and South Korea for the most advanced semiconductors powering everything from smartphones to ballistic missiles and build out its own capabilities. Instead, it should be incentivizing national champions Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co. to partner with US chip designers and build more on US soil, he said. International relations scholar Graham Allison, who shares the byline on the Wall Street Journal article with Schmidt, previously warned that the US and China could be on a path to war that neither country wants. The two men set out policy recommendations for improving American competitiveness in the chipmaking race so as to avoid a drastic imbalance between the two superpowers. "If Beijing develops durable advantages across the semiconductor supply chain, it would generate breakthroughs in foundational technologies that the U.S. cannot match," they wrote. "The U.S. can't spend its way out of this predicament." In addition to President Joe Biden's proposed $52 billion investment plan -- which is still under consideration by US legislators -- the US should lean into its strengths of research and development, manufacturing less-advanced but more widely used slower chips through the likes of Intel Corp. and GlobalFoundries Inc., and redouble its efforts to bring TSMC and Samsung on shore. Both Asian companies are constructing fabs in the US, but Schmidt and Allison's message is that more needs to be done to ensure long-term US prosperity. "America is on the verge of losing the chip competition," they said, urging that "the U.S. government mobilizes a national effort similar to the one that created the technologies that won World War II."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's chip industry is growing faster than anywhere else in the world, after US sanctions on local champions from Huawei to Hikvision spurred appetite for home-grown components. From a report: Nineteen of the world's 20 fastest-growing chip industry firms over the past four quarters, on average, hail from the world's No. 2 economy, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compared with just 8 at the same point last year. Those China-based suppliers of design software, processors and gear vital to chipmaking are expanding revenue at several times the likes of global leaders Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. or ASML Holding NV. That supercharged growth underscores how tensions between Washington and Beijing are transforming the global $550 billion semiconductor industry -- a sector that plays an outsized role in everything from defense to the advent of future technologies like AI and autonomous cars. In 2020, the US began restricting sales of American technology to companies like Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. and Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, successfully containing their growth -- but also fueling a boom in Chinese chip-making and supply.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wikimedia Enterprise, a first-of-its-kind commercial product designed for companies that reuse and source Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects at a high volume, today announced its first customers: multinational technology company Google and nonprofit digital library Internet Archive. Wikimedia blog: Wikimedia Enterprise was recently launched by the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, as an opt-in product. Starting today, it also offers a free trial account to new users who can self sign-up to better assess their needs with the product. As Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects continue to grow, knowledge from Wikimedia sites is increasingly being used to power other websites and products. Wikimedia Enterprise was designed to make it easier for these entities to package and share Wikimedia content at scale in ways that best suit their needs: from an educational company looking to integrate a wide variety of verified facts into their online curricula, to an artificial intelligence startup that needs access to a vast set of accurate data in order to train their systems. Wikimedia Enterprise provides a feed of real-time content updates on Wikimedia projects, guaranteed uptime, and other system requirements that extend beyond what is freely available in publicly-available APIs and data dumps. Organizations and companies of any size can access Wikimedia Enterprise offerings with dedicated customer-support and Service Level Agreements, at a variable price based on their volume of use. Interested companies can now sign up on the website for a free trial account which offers 10,000 on-demand requests and unlimited access to a 30-day Snapshot. Google and the Wikimedia Foundation have worked together on a number of projects and initiatives to enhance knowledge distribution to the world. Content from Wikimedia projects helps power some of Google's features, including being one of several data sources that show up in its knowledge panels. Wikimedia Enterprise will help make the content sourcing process more efficient.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unidentified operatives have been using the fitness tracking app Strava to spy on members of the Israeli military, tracking their movements across secret bases around the country and potentially observing them as they travel the world on official business. From a report: By placing fake running "segments" inside military bases, the operation -- the affiliation of which has not been uncovered -- was able to keep tabs on individuals who were exercising on the bases, even those who have applied the strongest possible account privacy settings. In one example seen by the Guardian, a user running on a top-secret base thought to have links to the Israeli nuclear programme could be tracked across other military bases and to a foreign country. The surveillance campaign was discovered by the Israeli open-source intelligence outfit FakeReporter. The group's executive director, Achiya Schatz, said: "We contacted the Israeli security forces as soon as we became aware of this security breach. After receiving approval from the security forces to proceed, FakeReporter contacted Strava, and they formed a senior team to address the issue." Strava's tracking tools are designed to allow anyone to define and compete over "segments," short sections of a run or bike ride that may be regularly raced over, like a long uphill climb on a popular cycling route or a single circuit of a park. Users can define a segment after uploading it from the Strava app, but can also upload GPS recordings from other products or services.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The regional powerhouses of Australia's industrial economy could slash their greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80% and become centres for multibillion-dollar investments in renewable energy, according to a report backed by some of the country's biggest companies. From a report: Bringing down emissions from producing iron, steel, aluminium, chemicals and liquefied natural gas is seen as one of the most challenging parts of Australia's efforts to reach net zero. But the report from the Australian Industry Energy Transitions Initiative (ETI), a partnership between heavy industry and experts working on decarbonisation, says the transition is possible using a range of known technologies, and would bring a jobs bonanza. By introducing a range of technologies along the supply chain, most of them proven and some already commercially available, the report says greenhouse gas emissions could be cut annually by 69.5m tonnes of CO2-equivalent -- about 14% of Australia's current total emissions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DocuSign CEO Dan Springer is stepping down, the company announced Tuesday. The decision comes after the e-signature software maker lost more than 60% of its value year to date. From a report: The company didn't provide a reason for his departure but said Springer "has agreed to step aside," effective immediately. Chairman of the Board Maggie Wilderotter will serve as interim CEO as the company begins its search for the next executive. Shares were up about 1% when markets opened. Springer took on the role of chief executive in 2017 and took the company public in 2018. DocuSign was able to capitalize on the Covid-19 pandemic as more consumers shifted to online transactions and deals. But its business has been slowing in recent quarters, especially as it faces tough comparisons to its dramatic growth in 2020 and early 2021. The deteriorating macro environment has also impacted the company. Shares were off 80% from their 52-week high as of Friday's close.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft, Epic Games, Meta, and 33 other companies and organizations have formed a standards group for "metaverse" tech. The Metaverse Standards Forum is supposed to foster open, interoperable standards for augmented and virtual reality, geospatial, and 3D tech. From a report: According to a press release, the Metaverse Standards Forum will focus on "pragmatic, action-based projects" like hackathons and prototyping tools for supporting common standards. It's also interested in developing "consistent terminology" for the space -- where many players can't even agree on what a "metaverse" is. In addition to the companies above, the group's founding members include major pre-metaverse entities like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Nvidia, Qualcomm, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and Unity, in addition to newer ones like Lamina1, a blockchain payments startup co-founded by Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google is under investigation by Germany's antitrust watchdog amid concerns over potentially illegal terms for the use of its maps platform. From a report: The Federal Cartel Office said Tuesday it opened a formal probe after initial findings suggest that the US giant is limiting options to use alternative map providers when app developers and other businesses seek to combine their offerings with maps. The regulator is also looking at the terms for Google's Automotive Services, according to the statement. Officials are concerned Google limits the option to embed position data from Google Maps, Street View or the search function on maps of other providers, Andreas Mundt, the agency's president said. "We will check whether Google could extent its predominance in certain map services via this practice," Mundt said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For years, activists and academics have been raising concerns that facial analysis software that claims to be able to identify a person's age, gender and emotional state can be biased, unreliable or invasive -- and shouldn't be sold. From a report: Acknowledging some of those criticisms, Microsoft said on Tuesday that it planned to remove those features from its artificial intelligence service for detecting, analyzing and recognizing faces. They will stop being available to new users this week, and will be phased out for existing users within the year. The changes are part of a push by Microsoft for tighter controls of its artificial intelligence products. After a two-year review, a team at Microsoft has developed a "Responsible AI Standard," a 27-page document that sets out requirements for A.I. systems to ensure they are not going to have a harmful impact on society. The requirements include ensuring that systems provide "valid solutions for the problems they are designed to solve" and "a similar quality of service for identified demographic groups, including marginalized groups." Before they are released, technologies that would be used to make important decisions about a person's access to employment, education, health care, financial services or a life opportunity are subject to a review by a team led by Natasha Crampton, Microsoft's chief responsible A.I. officer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

South Korea said it successfully launched a small but working satellite into orbit using its first homemade rocket on Tuesday, bringing the country closer to its dream of becoming a new player in the space industry and deploying its own spy satellites to better monitor North Korea. From a report: The three-stage Nuri rocket, built by the government's Korea Aerospace Research Institute together with hundreds of local companies, blasted off from the Naro Space Center in Goheung on the southwestern tip of South Korea at 4 p.m. Tuesday. Seventy minutes after the liftoff, South Korea announced that Nuri had succeeded in its mission of thrusting a 357-pound working satellite, as well as a 1.3-ton dummy satellite, into orbit 435 miles above the Earth.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon today announced a new effort in bringing quantum computing to its cloud -- at least in the long term. The company today launched the AWS Center for Quantum Computing, a new research effort that aims to push forward the science and engineering of networking quantum computers together, both for building more powerful, multi-processor networks for computation and for creating secure quantum communication networks. From a report: In recent years, Amazon and its AWS cloud computing unit made a number of major investments in quantum computing. With Amazon Braket, the company offers developers access to quantum computers from the likes of IonQ, Oxford Quantum Circuits, Rigetti and D-Wave, as well as other software tools and simulators. In addition to that, the company is also already running two more research-centric efforts: the AWS Center for Quantum Computing in Pasadena, California, which focuses on basic science like building better qubits and error correction algorithms, and the Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab, which puts an emphasis on helping enterprises prepare for the future of quantum computing. Basically, while Braket and the Quantum Solutions Lab focus on near-term practical solutions, the Center for Quantum Computing and now the Center for Quantum Networking focus on long-term research efforts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony might be ready to announce a new lineup of gaming headsets, according to a report from 91Mobiles based on information provided by OnLeaks. From a report: Rather than being specifically PlayStation-branded, like Sony's Pulse headset, the three headsets will apparently be part of a new gaming hardware brand from Sony called "Inzone," which could also include a pair of gaming displays. Leaked images show the three so-called H-series headsets with a similar white color scheme to the existing Pulse headset. The H3 is wired, and has a USB-C port with a physical volume dial. There's a button marked "NC/AMB" shown in renders of the H3, which suggests it might support noise cancellation and have an ambient audio mode to allow players to hear what's going on around them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Paige Thompson, a former Amazon employee accused of stealing the personal information of 100 million customers by breaching banking giant CapitalOne in 2019, has been found guilty by a Seattle jury on charges of wire fraud and computer hacking. From a report: Thompson, 36, was accused of using her knowledge as a software engineer working in the retail giant's cloud division, Amazon Web Services, to identify cloud storage servers that were allegedly misconfigured to gain access to the cloud stored data used by CapitalOne. That included names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, email addresses and phone numbers, and other sensitive financial information, such as credit scores, limits and balances. Some one million Canadians were also affected by the CapitalOne breach. Thompson also accessed the cloud stored data of more than 30 other companies, according to a superseding indictment filed by the Justice Department almost two years after Thompson was first charged, which reportedly included Vodafone, Ford, Michigan State University and the Ohio Department of Transportation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The percentage of U.S. adults saying they use their smartphone "too much" has increased markedly in recent years, rising from 39% when Gallup last asked this in 2015 to 58% today. Gallup News reports: This sentiment was strongly age-contingent in 2015 and remains so now; however, all age groups have become more likely to express this concern. Also, this belief is pervasive not only among 20-somethings; smartphone users aged 30 to 49 (74%) are nearly as likely as those 18 to 29 (81%) to say they are on their phone too much. This contrasts with 47% of those 50 to 64 and 30% of those 65 and older. As in 2015, there is little difference by gender in whether adults think they overuse their smartphone, with 60% of women and 56% of men now saying this. The latest findings are from a self-administered web survey of over 30,000 U.S. adults conducted in January and February of this year, using the probability-based Gallup Panel. Nearly all adults who took the poll, 97%, report they have a smartphone, up from 81% in the 2015 survey. Even as Americans believe they use their smartphone too much, nearly two-thirds think their smartphone has made their life better -- 21% say it has made their life "a lot" better and 44% "a little" better. This has declined slightly from the 72% perceiving a net benefit in 2015. Only 12% say smartphones have made their life worse to any degree, although this is double the rate in 2015.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jupiter's innards are full of the remains of baby planets that the gas giant gobbled up as it expanded to become the behemoth we see today, scientists have found. The findings come from the first clear view of the chemistry beneath the planet's cloudy outer atmosphere. Space.com reports: In the new study, researchers were finally able to peer past Jupiter's obscuring cloud cover using gravitational data collected by NASA's Juno space probe. This data enabled the team to map out the rocky material at the core of the giant planet, which revealed a surprisingly high abundance of heavy elements. The chemical make-up suggests Jupiter devoured baby planets, or planetesimals, to fuel its expansive growth. [...] [T]he researchers built computer models of Jupiter's innards by combining data, which was predominantly collected by Juno, as well as some data from its predecessor Galileo. The probes measured the planet's gravitational field at different points around its orbit. The data showed that rocky material accreted by Jupiter has a high concentration of heavy elements, which form dense solids and, therefore, have a stronger gravitational effect than the gaseous atmosphere. This data enabled the team to map out slight variations in the planet's gravity, which helped them to see where the rocky material is located within the planet. The researcher's models revealed that there is an equivalent of between 11 and 30 Earth masses of heavy elements within Jupiter (3% to 9% of Jupiter's mass), which is much more than expected. The new models point to a planetesimal-gobbling origin for Jupiter because the pebble-accretion theory cannot explain such a high concentration of heavy elements. If Jupiter had initially formed from pebbles, the eventual onset of the gas accretion process, once the planet was large enough, would have immediately ended the rocky accretion stage. This is because the growing layer of gas would have created a pressure barrier that stopped additional pebbles from being pulled inside the planet. This curtailed rocky accretion phase would likely have given Jupiter a greatly reduced heavy metal abundance, or metallicity, than what the researchers calculated. However, planetesimals could have glommed onto Jupiter's core even after the gas accretion phase had begun; that's because the gravitational pull on the rocks would have been greater than the pressure exerted by the gas. This simultaneous accretion of rocky material and gas proposed by the planetesimal theory is the only explanation for the high levels of heavy elements within Jupiter, the researchers said. The study also revealed another interesting finding: Jupiter's insides do not mix well into its upper atmosphere, which goes against what scientists had previously expected. The new model of Jupiter's insides shows that the heavy elements the planet has absorbed have remained largely close to its core and the lower atmosphere. Researchers had assumed that convection mixed up Jupiter's atmosphere, so that hotter gas near the planet's core would rise to the outer atmosphere before cooling and falling back down; if this were the case, the heavy elements would be more evenly mixed throughout the atmosphere. However, it is possible that certain regions of Jupiter may have a small convection effect, and more research is needed to determine exactly what is going on inside the gas giant's atmosphere. The researchers' findings could also change the origin stories for other planets in the solar system. The study was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: More than half of the 24.6 billion stolen credential pairs available for sale on the dark web were exposed in the past year, the Digital Shadows Research Team has found. Data recorded from last year reflected a 64 percent increase over 2020's total (Digital Shadows publishes the data every two years), which is a significant slowdown compared to the two years preceding 2020. Between 2018 and the year the pandemic broke out, the number of credentials for sale shot up by 300 percent, the report said. Of the 24.6 billion credentials for sale, 6.7 billion of the pairs are unique, an increase of 1.7 billion over two years. This represents a 34 percent increase from 2020. With all those credentials available for sale online, account takeover attacks have proliferated as well, the report said. Seventy-five percent of the passwords for sale online were not unique, noted Digital Shadows, which said everyone needs to be wary. Proactive account protection, consistent application of good authentication habits, and awareness of one's organizational digital footprint are necessary to protect against account takeover attacks, the study found. Individuals, the report said, should "use multi-factor authentication, password managers, and complex, unique passwords."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Aiming to produce environmentally friendly alternatives to plastic food wrap and containers, a Rutgers scientist has developed a biodegradable, plant-based coating that can be sprayed on foods, guarding against pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms and transportation damage. From a report: Their article, published in the science journal Nature Food, describes the new kind of packaging technology using the polysaccharide/biopolymer-based fibers. Like the webs cast by the Marvel comic book character Spider-Man, the stringy material can be spun from a heating device that resembles a hair dryer and "shrink-wrapped" over foods of various shapes and sizes, such as an avocado or a sirloin steak. The resulting material that encases food products is sturdy enough to protect bruising and contains antimicrobial agents to fight spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms such as E. coli and listeria. The research paper includes a description of the technology called focused rotary jet spinning, a process by which the biopolymer is produced, and quantitative assessments showing the coating extended the shelf life of avocados by 50 percent. The coating can be rinsed off with water and degrades in soil within three days, according to the study. [...] The paper describes how the new fibers encapsulating the food are laced with naturally occurring antimicrobial ingredients -- thyme oil, citric acid and nisin. Researchers in the Demokritou research team can program such smart materials to act as sensors, activating and destroying bacterial strains to ensure food will arrive untainted. This will address growing concern over food-borne illnesses as well as lower the incidence of food spoilage [...].Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The most impactful change to come out of WWDC had nothing to do with APIs, a new framework or any hardware announcement," writes Jordan Morgan via Daring Fireball. "Instead, it was a change I've been clamoring for the last several years -- and it's one that's incredibly indie friendly. As you've no doubt heard by now, I'm of course talking about iCloud enabled apps now allowing app transfers." 9to5Mac explains how it works: According to Apple, you already could transfer an app when you've sold it to another developer or you would want to move it to another App Store Connect account or organization. You can also transfer the ownership of an app to another developer without removing it from the App Store. The company said: "The app retains its reviews and ratings during and after the transfer, and users continue to have access to future updates. Additionally, when an app is transferred, it maintains its Bundle ID -- it's not possible to update the Bundle ID after a build has been uploaded for the app." The news here is that it's easier for developers to transfer the ownership of apps that use iCloud. Apple said that if your app uses any of the following, it will be transferred to the transfer recipient after they accept the app transfer: iCloud to store user data; iCloud containers; and KVS identifiers are associated with the app. The company said: "If multiple apps on your account share a CloudKit container, the transfer of one app will disable the other apps' ability to read or store data using the transferred CloudKit container. Additionally, the transferor will no longer have access to user data for the transferred app via the iCloud dashboard. Any app updates will disable the app's ability to read or store data using the transferred CloudKit container. If your app uses iCloud Key-Value Storage (KVS), the full KVS value will be embedded in any new provisioning profiles you create for the transferred app. Update your entitlements plist with the full KVS value in your provisioning profile." You can learn more about the news via this Apple Developer page.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's Tencent has officially announced the formation of an "extended reality" unit, "formally placing its bets on the metaverse concept of virtual worlds," reports Reuters. From the report: The unit is tasked with building up the extended reality business for Tencent including both software and hardware, the sources said, adding that it will be led by Tencent Games Global's Chief Technology Officer Li Shen and will be part of the company's Interactive Entertainment business group. Two of the sources said the unit will eventually have over 300 staff, a generous figure given how Tencent has been cost cutting and slowing down hiring. However, they also cautioned that the hiring plans are still fluid, as the company will adjust the unit's headcount based on its performance. The unit was first formed earlier this year but remained shrouded in secrecy, the three sources said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs on Security: Check out this handmade sign posted to the front door of a shuttered Jimmy John's sandwich chain shop in Missouri last week. See if you can tell from the store owner's message what happened. If you guessed that someone in the Jimmy John's store might have fallen victim to a Business Email Compromise (BEC) or "CEO fraud" scheme -- wherein the scammers impersonate company executives to steal money -- you'd be in good company. In fact, that was my initial assumption when a reader in Missouri shared this photo after being turned away from his favorite local sub shop. But a conversation with the store's owner Steve Saladin brought home the truth that some of the best solutions to fighting fraud are even more low-tech than BEC scams. Visit any random fast-casual dining establishment and there's a good chance you'll see a sign somewhere from the management telling customers their next meal is free if they don't receive a receipt with their food. While it may not be obvious, such policies are meant to deter employee theft. You can probably guess by now that this particular Jimmy John's franchise -- in Sunset Hills, Mo. -- was among those that chose not to incentivize its customers to insist upon receiving receipts. Thanks to that oversight, Saladin was forced to close the store last week and fire the husband-and-wife managers for allegedly embezzling nearly $100,000 in cash payments from customers. Saladin said he began to suspect something was amiss after he agreed to take over the Monday and Tuesday shifts for the couple so they could have two consecutive days off together. He said he noticed that cash receipts at the end of the nights on Mondays and Tuesdays were "substantially larger" than when he wasn't manning the till, and that this was consistent over several weeks. Then he had friends proceed through his restaurant's drive-thru, to see if they received receipts for cash payments. "One of [the managers] would take an order at the drive-thru, and when they determined the customer was going to pay with cash the other would make the customer's change for it, but then delete the order before the system could complete it and print a receipt," Saladin said. Saladin said his attorneys and local law enforcement are now involved, and he estimates the former employees stole close to $100,000 in cash receipts. That was on top of the $115,000 in salaries he paid in total each year to both employees. Saladin also has to figure out a way to pay his franchisor a fee for each of the stolen transactions. Now Saladin sees the wisdom of adding the receipt sign, and says all of his stores will soon carry a sign offering $10 in cash to any customers who report not receiving a receipt with their food.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Volvo Trucks said Monday that it had begun to test vehicles that use "fuel cells powered by hydrogen," with the Swedish firm claiming their range could extend to as much as 1,000 kilometers, or a little over 621 miles. CNBC reports: In a statement, Gothenburg-headquartered Volvo Trucks said refueling of the vehicles would take under 15 minutes. Customer pilots are set to begin in the next few years, with commercialization "planned for the latter part of this decade." Fuel cells for the vehicles will be provided by cellcentric, a joint venture with Daimler Truck that was established in March 2021. Alongside hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, Volvo Trucks -- which is part of the Volvo Group -- has also developed battery-electric trucks. [...] While there is excitement in some quarters about the potential of hydrogen-powered vehicles, there are hurdles when it comes to expanding the sector, a point acknowledged by Volvo Trucks on Monday. It pointed to challenges including the "large-scale supply of green hydrogen" as well as "the fact that refueling infrastructure for heavy vehicles is yet to be developed." Described by the IEA as a "versatile energy carrier," hydrogen has a diverse range of applications and can be deployed in a wide range of industries. It can be produced in a number of ways. One method includes using electrolysis, with an electric current splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen. If the electricity used in this process comes from a renewable source such as wind or solar then some call it "green" or "renewable" hydrogen. Today, the vast majority of hydrogen generation is based on fossil fuels. Last week, Volvo Construction Equipment, which is also part of the Volvo Group, said it had commenced testing of a "fuel cell articulated hauler prototype."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pioneering electronic artist Four Tet has reached a settlement in the legal battle against his former record label. The result could set a legal precedent for contract disputes in the music business; where royalty rates have been subject to heavy scrutiny since last year's inquiry into the streaming market by MPs on the Culture Select Committee. The BBC reports: The musician, whose real name is Kieran Hebden, sued Domino Records last year over the royalties he gets paid when his music is downloaded or streamed. He argued that the 13.5% royalty rate he was being offered was unfair, and demanded a 50% split with the label. In a settlement, Domino agreed to the honor the 50% rate and reimbursed the musician for historic underpayments. It was quite a reversal for the indie label, which originally responded to the case by removing several Four Tet albums from streaming services (they were later reinstated). "It has been a difficult and stressful experience to work my way through this court case and I'm so glad we got this positive result," wrote Hebden in a statement announcing the settlement. "Hopefully I've opened up a constructive dialogue and maybe prompted others to push for a fairer deal on historical contracts, written at a time when the music industry operated entirely differently."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinDesk: Investment product provider ProShares is set to list the U.S.'s first exchange-traded fund (ETF) allowing investors to bet against the price of bitcoin (BTC). The ProShares Short Bitcoin Strategy (BITI), which is designed to deliver the inverse of bitcoin's performance, will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Tuesday, ProShares announced Monday. The ETF will allow investors to hedge their bitcoin exposure, which may prove particularly pertinent given the sharp downturn in crypto markets of late. ProShares was the first firm to list a bitcoin futures ETF in October, a factor which saw the world's largest crypto hit an all-time high of around $68,900 in the subsequent weeks. Bitcoin investors will be hoping the listing of a short bitcoin futures ETF does not have a similar effect on the world's largest crypto in reverse. Bitcoin's price dropped below $20,000 for the first time since Dec. 20 on June 18, falling as low as $17,800 the following day.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is charging some small businesses for email and other apps after more than a decade of free use. Business owners say Google is being callous. The New York Times: When Google told some small businesses in January that they would no longer be able to use a customized email service and other workplace apps for free, it felt like a broken promise for Richard J. Dalton Jr., a longtime user who operates a scholastic test-prep company in Vancouver, British Columbia. "They're basically strong-arming us to switch to something paid after they got us hooked on this free service," said Mr. Dalton, who first set up a Google work email for his business, Your Score Booster, in 2008. Google said the longtime users of what it calls its G Suite legacy free edition, which includes email and apps like Docs and Calendar, had to start paying a monthly charge, usually around $6 for each business email address. Businesses that do not voluntarily switch to a paid service by June 27 will be automatically moved to one. If they don't pay by Aug. 1, their accounts will be suspended. While the cost of the paid service is more of an annoyance than a hard financial hit, small-business owners affected by the change say they have been disappointed by the ham-handed way that Google has dealt with the process. They can't help but feel that a giant company with billions of dollars in profits is squeezing little guys -- some of the first businesses to use Google's apps for work -- for just a bit of money. "It struck me as needlessly petty," said Patrick Gant, the owner of Think It Creative, a marketing consultancy in Ottawa. "It's hard to feel sorry for someone who received something for free for a long time and now are being told that they need to pay for it. But there was a promise that was made. That's what compelled me to make the decision to go with Google versus other alternatives." Google's decision to charge organizations that have used its apps for free is another example of its search for ways to get more money out of its existing business, similar to how it has sometimes put four ads atop search results instead of three and has jammed more commercials into YouTube videos. In recent years, Google has more aggressively pushed into selling software subscriptions to businesses and competed more directly with Microsoft, whose Word and Excel programs rule the market. After a number of the longtime users complained about the change to a paid service, an initial May 1 deadline was delayed. Google also said people using old accounts for personal rather than business reasons could continue to do so for free. But some business owners said that as they mulled whether to pay Google or abandon its services, they struggled to get in touch with customer support.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China is fine-tuning its censorship machine, this time proposing changes in how to regulate the billions of online comments posted in the country every day. From a report: On June 17, the internet regulator Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) published a draft update on the responsibilities of platforms and content creators in managing online comments. One line stands out: all online comments would have to be pre-reviewed before being published. Users and observers are worried that the move could be used to further tighten freedom of expression in China. The new changes affect Provisions on the Management of Internet Post Comments Services, a regulation that first came into effect in 2017. Five years later, the Cyberspace Administration wants to bring it up to date.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fraudsters who exploit LinkedIn to lure users into cryptocurrency investment schemes pose a "significant threat" to the platform and consumers, according to Sean Ragan, the FBI's special agent in charge of the San Francisco and Sacramento, California, field offices. From a report: "It's a significant threat," Ragan said in an exclusive interview. "This type of fraudulent activity is significant, and there are many potential victims, and there are many past and current victims." The scheme works like this: A fraudster posing as a professional creates a fake profile and reaches out to a LinkedIn user. The scammer starts with small talk over LinkedIn messaging, and eventually offers to help the victim make money through a crypto investment. Victims interviewed by CNBC say since LinkedIn is a trusted platform for business networking, they tend to believe the investments are legitimate. Typically, the fraudster directs the user to a legitimate investment platform for crypto, but after gaining their trust over several months, tells them to move the investment to a site controlled by the fraudster. The funds are then drained from the account.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Belief in God among Americans dipped to a new low, Gallup's latest poll shows. While the majority of adults in the U.S. believe in God, belief has dropped to 81% -- the lowest ever recorded by Gallup -- and is down from 87% in 2017. From a report: Between 1944 and 2011, more than 90% of Americans believed in God, Gallup reported. Younger, liberal Americans are the least likely to believe in God, according to Gallup's May 2-22 values and beliefs poll results released Friday. Political conservatives and married adults had little change when comparing 2022 data to an average of polls from 2013 to 2017. The groups with the largest declines are liberals (62% of whom believe in God), young adults (68%) and Democrats (72%), while belief in God is highest among conservatives (94%) and Republicans (92%). The poll also found that slightly more than half of conservatives and Republicans say they believe God hears prayers and can intervene, as well as 32% of Democrats, 25% of liberals and 30% of young adults.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artem S. Tashkinov writes: Meta's Reality Labs division has revealed new prototypes in its roadmap toward lightweight, hyper-realistic virtual reality graphics. The breakthroughs remain far from consumer-ready, but the designs -- codenamed Butterscotch, Starburst, Holocake 2, and Mirror Lake -- could add up to a slender, brightly lit headset that supports finer detail than its current Quest 2 display. Yet to be released headsets have features which have been sorely missing previously: near-retina-quality image offering about 2.5 times the resolution of the Quest 2's (sort of) 1832 x 1920 pixels per eye, letting users read the 20/20 vision line on an eye chart, high dynamic range (HDR) lighting with 20,000 nits of brightness and eye tracking. "The goal of all this work is to help us identify which technical paths are going to allow us to make meaningful enough improvements that we can start approaching visual realism." says the Meta CEO.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shares in NetEase dropped on Monday morning after the Chinese gaming company fell foul of China's censors over a social media post that was suspected of alluding to Winnie the Pooh, a popular way to derisively refer to President Xi Jinping. From a report: The company said over the weekend that it would delay the Asian release of the blockbuster game Diablo Immortal, sending its Hong Kong-listed shares down 9 per cent in the morning to HK$137 before they slightly pared losses by midday. Diablo Immortal, an online multiplayer action game developed by NetEase and Activision Blizzard, had been scheduled to launch in China on June 23. But on Sunday, Diablo Immortal said the release date would be pushed back to "optimise the gaming experience." The delay came as a screenshot circulated online of a post published by the game's official account on Weibo, the popular Chinese microblogging site, dated May 22 that read: "Why hasn't the bear stepped down." The remark was interpreted as a reference to China's President Xi Jinping, who is often illustrated as Disney's Winnie the Pooh. The cartoon bear has been blacklisted by censors in China for years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Celsius Network will need more time to stabilize its liquidity and operations, the embattled crypto lending platform said in a blog post after it froze deposits last week. From a report: Celsius, one of the biggest crypto lenders, has been struggling to raise funds in a fragile digital-assets market hit by tightening interest rates, liquidity and the collapse of the Terra blockchain last month. "We want our community to know that our objective continues to be stabilizing our liquidity and operations," Celsius said in its blog on Monday. "This process will take time." The firm has also paused Twitter Spaces and Ask Me Anything, also known as AMAs, in crypto jargon "to focus on navigating these unprecedented challenges," Celsius said in the post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tapping on images of traffic lights or deciphering squiggly text to prove you are human will soon be a much less common nuisance for iPhone users, as iOS 16 introduces support for bypassing CAPTCHAs in supported apps and websites. From a report: The handy new feature can be found in the Settings app under Apple ID > Password & Security > Automatic Verification. When enabled, Apple says iCloud will automatically and privately verify your device and Apple ID account in the background, eliminating the need for apps and websites to present you with a CAPTCHA verification prompt.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Incredible new data presented recently at the European Hematology Association Congress has revealed an experimental CRISPR gene editing therapy is both safe and effective up to three years after treatment. The follow-up results come from one of the longest-running human trials using CRISPR technology to treat a pair of rare genetic blood diseases. From a report: The first human trial in the United States to test CRISPR gene editing technology started back in 2019. The trial focused on two rare blood diseases: beta-thalassemia and sickle cell disease. The treatment involves first gathering stem cells from a patient's blood. Using CRISPR technology a single genetic change is made, designed to raise levels of fetal hemoglobin in red blood cells. The stem cells are then re-administered into the patients. Initial results were extraordinarily promising. The first two patients treated were essentially cured within months, but questions over long-term efficacy remained. A follow-up announcement last year continued the impressive results with 22 patients treated and all demonstrating 100 percent success. Importantly, seven of those patients were 12 months past the initial treatment with no waning of efficacy. Now, a new data release is offering results from 75 patients treated with the groundbreaking CRISPR therapy, now dubbed exa-cel (exagamglogene autotemcel). Of those 75 patients treated, 44 were suffering transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia (TDT) and 31 had severe sickle cell disease (SCD). All but two of the 44 patients with TDT were essentially cured of their disease, needing no more blood transfusions. The two TDT patients still requiring blood transfusions had 75 percent and 89 percent reductions in transfusion volumes respectively. All 31 SCD patients were also free of disease symptoms at long-term follow-up.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A $14.95 smart lamp from Ikea apparently has enough computing power to run the classic PC game Doom. From a report: A software engineer named Nicola Wrachien removed the smart lamp's computer chip and used it to build a miniaturized Doom gaming system. Over the weekend, he uploaded a video to YouTube, showing his creation in action. The system runs a downsized version of Doom that requires less RAM. The chip from the Ikea lamp has enough processing power to play the game at 35 frames per second over a cheap 160-by-128-pixel display. Wrachien, who is from Hungary, embarked on the project after reading headlines about Doom purportedly running on a pregnancy test. In reality, the pregnancy test was only able to run the game due to an added OLED display and streaming it from a PC.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At the end of 2008, Firefox was flying high. Twenty percent of the 1.5 billion people online were using Mozilla's browser to navigate the web. In Indonesia, Macedonia, and Slovenia, more than half of everyone going online was using Firefox. "Our market share in the regions above has been growing like crazy," Ken Kovash, Mozilla's data analytics team manager at the time, wrote in a blog post. Almost 15 years later, things aren't so rosy. From a report: Across all devices, the browser has slid to less than 4 percent of the market -- on mobile it's a measly half a percent. "Looking back five years and looking at our market share and our own numbers that we publish, there's no denying the decline," says Selena Deckelmann, senior vice president of Firefox. Mozilla's own statistics show a drop of around 30 million monthly active users from the start of 2019 to the start of 2022. "In the last couple years, what we've seen is actually a pretty substantial flattening," Deckelmann adds. In the two decades since Firefox launched from the shadows of Netscape, it has been key to shaping the web's privacy and security, with staff pushing for more openness online and better standards. But its market share decline was accompanied by two rounds of layoffs at Mozilla during 2020. Next year, its lucrative search deal with Google -- responsible for the vast majority of its revenue -- is set to expire. A spate of privacy-focused browsers now compete on its turf, while new-feature misfires have threatened to alienate its base. All that has left industry analysts and former employees concerned about Firefox's future. Its fate also has larger implications for the web as a whole. For years, it was the best contender for keeping Google Chrome in check, offering a privacy-forward alternative to the world's most dominant browser.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Electricity to all 118 legal crypto mining centers in Iran to cease from June 22 ahead of seasonal spike in power demand, Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, spokesman for country's power industry says in interview with state TV.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While he couldn't even ethically accept the million dollars, PC Magazine's senior security analyst Max Eddy writes that "how this happened in the first place is indicative of some of the information security industry's worst impulses. It doesn't have to be this way."Back in 2017, Telegram founder Pavel Durov and I had a disagreement... Durov tweeted about how the Signal secure messaging app had received money from the U.S. government. This is true; Signal received funds from the Open Technology Fund (OTF) — a nonprofit that previously was part of the US-backed Radio Free Asia. According to the OTF's website, it gave nearly $3 million to between 2013 and 2016. It's entirely legitimate to be suspicious of government funding (even if TOR, OpenVPN, and WireGuard also received OTF money), and even take a moral stand against recipients of money from governments you disagree with. But Durov went far beyond that. He seemed to think this meant Signal was bought off by the feds and predicted that a backdoor would be found within five years. That's quite an accusation to make, especially without real proof, and it made me mad. Not because people were mouthing off on Twitter — that seems to be that platform's primary function. It made me mad that companies ostensibly working to better people's lives by protecting their security and privacy were trying to drag each other down publicly. This is not new; the VPN industry is full of whisper campaigns and counter-accusations. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with VPN vendors that start with "first off, everything you heard is a lie...." But generally the message from companies in this industry is one of cooperation and protecting everyone. It's a common theme to keynotes at the RSA Conference and Black Hat that the people who work in infosec have a higher calling to protect other people first and do business second. And then this happened (on Twitter): Max Eddy: It's one thing to point out funding and another to say that a "backdoor will be found within five years." Pavel Durov: I am certain of what I'm saying and am willing to bet $1M (1:1) on it. While Eddy didn't have a million dollars, "I knew there was no way I would lose. This would be the easiest million-dollar bet I ever make."I was confident Durov was wrong because Signal, like many companies, has made an effort toward transparency that I can have some confidence in. Signal has made its code available, has registered as a nonprofit, has a fairly comprehensive privacy policy, and has made abundantly clear that it has no information to provide in response to law enforcement requests. Signal's protocol is also used by competitors, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, which have surely done their homework when selecting a method for encrypting messages. Most recently, a document revealed that even the FBI has been frustrated in its attempts to get data from Signal (and Telegram, too). It's been five years, and Eddy now writes that Signal "continues to be recommended by advocacy groups of all kinds as a safe and secure way to communicate..." "Neither Durov nor Telegram responded to my attempts to contact them for this story."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Newsweek reports:Artificial intelligence has become one of Ukraine's most "effective tools" in identifying potential saboteurs amid the ongoing war with Russia, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The ministry issued a report Wednesday on law enforcement's anti-sabotage activities aimed at stopping people in Ukraine who may compromise the counteroffensive or aid Russia in its assault. Officers have been using software on tablets to check if a person they view as "suspicious" is already listed in databases, including a police database of about 2 million people suspected of holding positions in paramilitary units from the far-right faction known as the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR)... The ministry said that Ukrainian police have been fighting against such saboteurs ever since Russia invaded Ukraine. "More than 123 counter-sabotage groups were set up, and at least 1,500 people were involved," First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Yevgeny Yenin said in a statement, according to an English translation. "And the result was not long in coming: More than 800 people suspected of sabotage and intelligence activities were detained and handed over to the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) for investigation." The report, citing Yenin, said that the police database on people with suspected ties to the LDPR alone contains a "huge amount" of operational information that law enforcement and partners have compiled. This includes more than 10 billion photos, it said... Russia has also reportedly contended with sabotage from supporters of Ukraine within its borders.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Telegram became one of the top-5 downloaded apps worldwide in 2022 and now has over 700 million monthly active users," they announced this weekend. "This growth is solely from personal recommendations — Telegram has never paid to advertise its apps." But they add significantly that "As Telegram keeps growing at rocket speed, many users have expressed their will to support our team." And so Telegram is now adding a premium tier, TechCrunch reports. "The firm did not disclose how much it is charging for the premium tier, but the monthly subscription appears to be priced in the range of $5 to $6."The premium tier adds a range of additional and improved features to the messaging app, which topped 500 million monthly active users in January 2021. Telegram Premium enables users to send files as large as 4GB (up from 2GB) and supports faster downloads, for instance, Telegram said. Paying customers will also be able to follow up to 1,000 channels, up from 500 offered to free users, and create up to 20 chat folders with as many as 200 chats each. Telegram Premium users will also be able to add up to four accounts in the app and pin up to 10 chats. The move is Dubai-headquartered firm's attempt to keep its development "driven primarily by its users, not advertisers," it said. It's also the first time an instant messaging app with hundreds of millions of users has rolled out a premium tier. Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple's Messages and Google's Messages, some of Telegram's top rivals, don't offer a premium tier. Some analysts had earlier hoped that Telegram would be able to monetize the platform through its blockchain token project. But after several delays and regulatory troubles, Telegram said in 2020 that it had abandoned the project and offered to return $1.2 billion it had raised from investors.... "Today is an important day in the history of Telegram — marking not only a new milestone, but also the beginning of Telegram's sustainable monetization," the firm said in a blog post Sunday. Premium users will also get animated profile videos and new home screen icons, along with a special chat-list badge, animated stickers, and additional reaction emojis, according to Telegram's blog post. (And of course, no ads.) Telegram's premium tier "will allow us to offer all the resource-heavy features users have asked for over the years," according to the blog post, "while preserving free access to the most powerful messenger on the planet..." "The contributions of premium subscribers will help improve and expand the app for decades to come, while Telegram will remain free, independent and uphold its users-first values, redefining how a tech company should operate."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For one brief limited period of time, New Orleans locals "will have a chance to try the first craft beer created by an AI platform," according to a report from local station WGNO:The AI Blonde Ale will be released at a Launch Party at NOLA Brewery on June 20 to coincide with CVPR, the world's premier computer vision event. Derek Lintern, a brewer at NOLA Brewing said he is excited to have a helping hand when it comes to crafting beer. "It's state-of-the-art technology with the traditional brewing methods, it's pretty unique and it's a recipe I would have never done normally but I really like how it tastes. Its very refreshing and very easy drinking I'm really happy with it," said Lintern.... The technology helps create the recipe, but the beer is still brewed manually. The name of the company that brought the AI to the brewery? "Deep Liquid.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Thursday, Discord introduced AutoMod, "a feature that can automatically detect and block harmful messages before they're posted," reports Engadget:Accessible through Discord's "Server Settings" menu, the tool allows admins and moderators to create a list of words and phrases they want Discord to look for, along with a set of repercussions for those who use them... Discord has put together three starting lists that cover "certain categories of not-nice words or phrases." Moderators can add up to three additional custom filter lists to suit the needs of their users. At launch, AutoMod is only available to Community servers. "Moderating your growing community should feel rewarding and fulfilling, not add constant stress from dealing with bad actors or unruly members," Discord said in a blog post Thursday. To introduce the feature, Discord created a cartoon where chicken superheroes thank AutoMod for patrolling their egg server. Edgadget notes that Discord also has created "a dedicated admin community server run by Discord staff. Here, the company says moderators can gather to chat and learn from one another. Discord also plans to run educational events and share news through the space." Gizmodo adds that Discord also announced this summer's expansion of premium memberships, "a feature that allows a community's creators and owners to put their server behind a paid subscription."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hubble Space Telescope Photographs Mysterious Star Cluster with Same-Generation Stars"A celestial workhorse and its dedicated team of astronomers are at it again," reports Space.com, "by delivering a hypnotic new image of a globular cluster and its infinite depth of stars."But while a new image from the Hubble Space Telescope is stunning, there's much more to this section of the heavens than the eye can see. The cluster, called Ruprecht 106, is also home to a great mystery of Sherlockian proportions — and the game's afoot to unlock clues to the cluster's enigmatic makeup, according to a statement from the European Space Agency, a partner on the observatory. Scientists agree that even though the core stars in a globular cluster were all born at roughly the same time and location, there are stars within these cosmic nurseries that exhibit unique chemical compositions that can differ widely. Astronomers believe that this variation represents later stars formed from gas polluted by processed material of the larger first-generation stars. However, rare globular clusters like Ruprecht 106 are devoid of these varieties of stars and instead are cataloged as single-population clusters, where no second- or third-generation stars ever formed. Astronomers hope that studying this captivating globular cluster in more detail can explain why it sports only one generation of stars.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's federal agents "have begun questioning U.S. technology companies on how their computer chips ended up in Russian military equipment recovered in Ukraine," reports the Washington Post:Commerce Department agents who enforce export controls are conducting the inquiries together with the FBI, paying joint visits to companies to ask about Western chips and components found in Russian radar systems, drones, tanks, ground-control equipment and littoral ships, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive investigations. "Our goal is to actually try to track that back, all the way back to the U.S. supplier" to determine "how did it find its way into that weapons system," one Commerce Department official said of the probes.... It isn't clear which specific components are being probed. But investigators from a variety of countries have identified Western electronics in Russian weaponry found in Ukraine. Many of those components appear to have been manufactured years ago, before the United States tightened export restrictions after Russia seized Crimea in 2014. But others were manufactured as recently as 2020, according to Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a research group in London that has examined some of the parts.... CAR last month sent investigators to Ukraine to examine Russian weaponry and communications equipment, and reported finding components from 70 companies based in the United States and Europe. They found the parts in military radios, airborne defense systems and in remnants of cruise missiles that the Ukrainians recovered in various towns and villages, Damien Spleeters, one of the CAR investigators, said in an interview. An associate professor of electrical/computer engineering at Purdue tells the Post "Most of the items they are listing are available through any commercial computer parts supplier or digital parts supplier." But the Post spoke to a lawyer representing one of the contacted technology companies. "Among the questions federal agents are asking: whether tech companies sold their products to a specific list of companies, including middlemen, that may have been involved in the supply chain."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Practical nuclear fusion is, famously, always 10 years in the future," reports IEEE Spectrum. "Except that the Pentagon recently gave an award to a tiny startup to launch a fusion power system into space in just five..." Avalanche Energy Designs, based near a Boeing facility in Seattle...is working on modular "micro fusion packs," small enough to hold in your hand yet capable of powering everything from electric cars to spaceships. Last month, the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) announced it had awarded Avalanche an unspecified sum to develop its Orbitron fusion device to generate either heat or electricity, with the aim of powering a high-efficiency propulsion system aboard a prototype satellite in 2027.... Avalanche's Orbitron... could theoretically fit on a tabletop. It relies on the Ph.D. thesis of Tom McGuire, a student working on inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion at MIT in 2007... McGuire's IEC work languished until it caught the attention of two engineers working at Blue Origin: Robin Langtry and Brian Riordan. In 2018, they formed Avalanche Energy as a side hustle, eventually leaving Blue Origin in the summer of 2021. In March of this year Avalanche emerged from stealth with $5 million in venture-capital funding and a staff of 10, although Avalanche's official address is still a single-family home in Seattle. Avalanche's website proudly proclaims: "We see our fusion power packs as the foundation for creating a world with abundant clean water, healthy oceans, vast rain forests, and immense glaciers in healthy equilibrium." A patent application filed by Langtry and Riordan contains some details of how their Orbitron may function. It describes an orbital containment system on the order of tens of centimeters in size, where a beam of fuel ions interacts with an electrostatic field to enter an elliptical orbit about an inner electrode. The application describes a system where ions last for a second or more — 10 times as long as in McGuire's simulations, and long enough for each ion to complete millions of orbits in the reactor. An article in GeekWire published as Avalanche exited stealth mode included a claim that the company had already produced neutrons via fusion. Avalanche envisages small fusion packs with 5- to 15-kilowatt capacity, operating either on their own or grouped by the hundreds for megawatt-scale clean-energy solutions. The Pentagon is interested in the packs to potentially enable small spacecraft to maneuver freely in deep space, with higher power payloads. The challenge now is for Avalanche to move from a 15-year old Ph.D. thesis in simulation to a working prototype in space, in just 60 months.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Two years ago a college sophomore started "the Log Off movement." This week the New York Times explored its progress — starting with how their mission's been affected by negative news stories about social media:"The first article I read that really launched me into it was Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation. I found study after study showing the possible correlation between increased rates of anxiety, suicide rates and eating disorders tracking alongside increased rates of usage... The most powerful thing to me was not the studies. It was the fact that personal stories were not being told and there was not an epicenter where people could come together and say: "Here's my personal experience." "Here's how I was harmed." "These were the accounts that made me feel worse about myself." I knew that was necessary. The genie's out of the bottle. As members of Gen Z, we understand that there are positive attributes and there are negative attributes to social media, but right now, in its current usage, it can be really harmful. Q: How does the Log Off Movement address these issues? Through our podcast, a leadership council, an educational curriculum on how to use online spaces safely and blogs, we are discussing ways we can move forward with technology and allow it to become a tool again rather than a controller. What we are asking for teens to do is to be comfortable talking about their experiences so that we can educate legislators to understand a Gen Z perspective, what we need from technology, what privacy concerns we're having, what mental health concerns we're having. We have an advocacy initiative through Tech[nically] Politics, which pushes for laws that help ensure teens have a safe online experience, specifically the California Age Appropriate Design Code Bill.... Q: How have you adjusted your own relationship to social media? What methods have worked? Whenever I go through a stressful period with exams, I delete Instagram. I know that in periods of stress, I'm going to lean towards mindlessly using it as a form of coping. Another thing that's worked for me is Grayscale, which makes the phone appear only in black and white. I always suggest Screentime Genie, which provides solutions on how to limit screen time. I use Habit Lab for Chrome, which helps you reduce your time online. It creates a level of friction between you and addictive technology. One app they still enjoy is BeReal (which notifies you and your friends to take an unstaged picture of what you're genuinely doing at one randomly-chosen moment each day). But the group's founder still remembers the "horrific loop" of using social media apps six hours a day (starting with Instagram at the age of 12) — and "feeling as though I could not stop scrolling because it has this weird power over me..." One teenager who'd spent six hours a day on social media later shared their observation that logging off improved their vision — but also made the world more clear mentally. The group's founder says the ultimate hope is their project "results in a kind of pivot prioritizing the well-being of users in these online environments."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Los Angeles Times reports on "a massive surge of criminal fraud that has been pummeling crypto users with unknown billions of dollars in losses with little relief in sight."The growth in crypto fraud has turned exponential in recent years. The reported losses from crypto scams in 2021 were 60 times larger than in 2018, the Federal Trade Commission reported earlier this month, with crypto now accounting for 1 out of every 4 dollars lost to fraud in the reports monitored by the agency. Over 46,000 people lost more than $1 billion in crypto to scams since 2021, but the real sum of losses is likely vastly larger because most frauds are not reported, the agency said.... "Since 2021, $575 million of all crypto fraud losses reported to the FTC were about bogus investment opportunities, far more than any other fraud type," the agency reported. Financial losses specifically from NFT crimes just through May this year were already more than 600% higher than for all of 2021, with the space seeing twice as many hacks and bigger and bigger heists, according to analysis from digital privacy firm Top10VPN. For many victims, there's little hope of getting their lost art back. The marketplaces where NFTs get sold — crypto exchanges — can't cancel or reverse fraudulent transactions the way a traditional bank or credit card company might; the whole point of crypto was to cut out these sorts of financial middlemen, which many crypto fans greatly distrust. Crypto technology was built out of a "libertarian ethos" in which "there's no nanny state that's going to take care of you," said Jeremy Goldman, an intellectual property attorney who specializes in legal issues involving crypto assets. "These are the consequences when there's a mistake ... there's no one to unwind it, you can't call customer service, you can't go back to the mothership, you can't go back to the bank." But at the same time, law enforcement agencies in the U.S. have also shown a growing willingness and ability to mount sophisticated investigations into crypto fraud.... [I]n March, federal agents sought a court order to seize roughly $165,000 worth of Ethereum in a digital Binance.US wallet. Officials said the cryptocurrency had been stolen from an Orange County investor, nicknamed "P.M.," who got tricked into giving up his coins by an fraudster pretending to be a Coinbase technical support representative. On the bright side, BuzzFeed notes that actor Seth Green has recovered his prized Bored Ape NFT from "Mr Cheese" for $297,000 worth of Ether. But the Los Angeles Times points out that another victim of a Bored Ape heist has sued the creators of Bored Apes. Their lawyer argues the company "refuses to police their own community. They're the gatekeepers, they can lock out the thieves if they wanted to, and they won't do it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.