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Officials from the Group of Seven wealthy nations announced Friday that they will aim to largely end greenhouse gas emissions from their power sectors by 2035, making it highly unlikely that those countries will burn coal for electricity beyond that date. From a report: Ministers from the G-7 countries meeting in Berlin also announced a target to have a "highly decarbonized road sector by 2030," meaning that electric vehicles would dominate new car sales by the end of the decade. And in a move aimed at ending the recurring conflict between rich and poor nations during international climate talks, the G-7 recognized for the first time the need to provide developing countries with additional financial aid to cope with the loss and damage caused by global warming. The agreements, which will be put to leaders next month at the G-7 summit in Elmau, Germany, were largely welcomed by climate activists. "The 2035 target for power sector decarbonisation is a real breakthrough. In practice, this means countries need to phase out coal by 2030 at the latest," said Luca Bergamaschi, director of Rome-based campaign group ECCO.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta Platforms built its industry-leading virtual reality headset by infringing Immersion's patents, the smaller company alleged in a lawsuit. From a report: The Meta Quest 2, which dominates the market, infringes six patents covering haptic technology, Immersion said in a complaint filed Thursday in federal court in Waco, Texas. In video game systems and controllers, haptics allow users to experience vibrations that mimic real-life forces -- such as blocking a punch in a virtual boxing game. Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has committed to spending $10 billion a year to bring to life his vision of a virtual reality-enabled metaverse. Sales of Meta Quest 2 hit 8.7 million units in 2021, twice as much as in the prior year, and the company owns 80% of the market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starlink has been authorized to provide satellite internet services in the Philippines, paving the way for the SpaceX unit's expansion to Southeast Asia. From a report: The Philippine National Telecommunications Commission said it approved Starlink's registration as a value-added service provider, according to a statement Friday. This would allow Starlink to directly access satellite systems, and to build and operate broadband facilities. The Philippines will be the first country in Southeast Asia to offer Starlink's high speed, low latency satellite internet service, the NTC said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Coordinated industry lobbying is overwhelming the scattered efforts of consumer groups and privacy-minded lawmakers. From a report: In late 2019, Utah state senator Kirk Cullimore got a phone call from one of his constituents, a lawyer who represented technology companies in California. "He said, 'I think the businesses I represent would like to have some bright lines about what they can do in Utah,'" Cullimore told The Markup. At the time, tech companies in California were struggling with how they could comply with a new state law that gave individual Californians control over the data that corporations routinely gather and sell about their online activities. The lawyer, whom Cullimore and his office wouldn't identify, recounted how burdensome his corporate clients found the rules, Cullimore remembered, and suggested that Utah proactively pass its own, business-friendly consumer privacy law. "He said, 'I want to make this easy so consumers can make use of their rights and the compliance is also easy for companies.' He actually sent me some suggested language [for a bill] that was not very complex," Cullimore told The Markup. "I introduced the bill as that." What followed over the next two years was a multipronged influence campaign straight out of a playbook Big Tech is deploying around the country in response to consumer privacy legislation. It's common for industries to lobby lawmakers on issues affecting their business. But there is a massive disparity in the state-by-state battle over privacy legislation between well-funded, well-organized tech lobbyists and their opposition of relatively scattered consumer advocates and privacy-minded politicians, The Markup has found. During the 2021 and 2022 Utah legislative sessions -- when Cullimore's bill made its way through the legislature -- Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft collectively registered 23 active lobbyists in the state, according to their lobbying disclosures. Thirteen of those lobbyists had never previously registered to work in the state, and some of them were influential in shaping Cullimore's legislation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We all need great internet service, but it doesn't happen by accident. From a report: Let's talk about internet policy! In Canada! Wheee! I'm serious that there are useful lessons from a saga over home internet service in Canada. What has been a promising, albeit imperfect, system that increased choices and improved internet service for Canadians is poised to fall apart. Barring a last-minute government intervention today or Friday, many smaller internet providers in Canada are likely to significantly increase their prices and lose customers or shut down. The dream of more competition leading to better internet service for Canadians is on life support. What's happening in Canada reveals why we need smart internet policy to be paired with strong government oversight to have better and more affordable internet for all -- and it shows what happens when we lose that. The U.S. has botched it for years, and that's one reason America's internet service stinks. Canada may be a real-world experiment in what happens when muddled government regulation undermines internet policy that has mostly been effective. Bear with me for a lesson in Canada's home internet service. The bottom line is that Canadians have something that is relatively novel to Americans: Many people have options to pick a home internet provider that they don't hate. That's because in Canada -- similar to many countries including Britain, Australia and Japan -- the companies that own internet pipelines are required to rent access to businesses that then sell internet service to homes. Regulators keep a close watch to make sure those rental costs and terms are fair.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In January, Sony bought Bungie for $3.5 billion, giving the company one of the most popular first-person shooter games to compete with Microsoft and the various game studios it owns. Now, according to Forbes, Sony "has a whole plan to integrate Bungie's live service-building philosophies into its other teams that are making games [...]." From the report: Bungie enjoys one of the major live service successes in the current era, 7, going on 8 years of Destiny as a hyper-engaging franchises, and Sony believes the lessons they've learned can translate into other places. Twelve other places, to be specific. Sony is apparently about to announce a massive slate of live service offerings to join its traditional single player fare. While high profile AAA Sony games like God of War and Horizon Forbidden West sell well and are praised by fans and critics, they are not ongoing revenue streams like live service games can be. For Sony, they feel like they're missing a rather large boat. The plan here is to ramp up to have 3 live service games by FY2022, 6 by FY2023, 10 by FY2025 and 12 by FY2025. Currently, the only game they even consider a live service title in their lineup as The Show 22. So uh, 12 by 2025? That seems... ambitious, even with Bungie on board to help.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike Bouma writes: Despite being expensive and having been sold out for quite some time at the main Amiga Dealers, two days after Linus Torvalds' release of Linux 5.18, Christian "xeno74" Zigotzky made the latest PPC kernel available for the AmigaOne X1000/X5000. Here and here are some screenshots. Linux PPC performs well on AmigaOne computers. For example, here is a 5-year-old YouTube AmigaOne X5000 demonstration video.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Humble Bee Bio is on a mission to create a biodegradable alternative to plastics by synthesizing the biology of bees. TechCrunch reports: While the New Zealand-based company is still at an early stage -- it's about halfway through its proof of concept -- if Humble Bee is successful, its bioplastics are likely to make it into the sustainable textiles industry. Humble Bee, which just raised $3.2 million (NZD $5 million) in convertible notes as part of its Series A, has been studying the Australian masked bee, a type of solitary bee that doesn't make honey, but does make a nesting material for laying larvae in, which has many plastic-like properties. "It's resistant to acids and bases. It's hydrophobic, it's waterproof, it's flame retardant, it's stable up to 240 degrees Celsius," Ryan Graves, Humble Bee's chief technology officer, told TechCrunch. "The idea is, how do we recreate this?" The team is using a synthetic biology approach that involves going into the bee's genetic code and identifying the genes and proteins responsible for the nesting material. Humble Bee has extracted the code and is trying to recreate it in the laboratory. Next, the company will attempt to synthesize plastic-like materials, focusing on four different types of biomaterials that can be turned into fibers and finishing for fabrics. Humble Bee is aiming for anywhere from March to June 2023 to prove out the concept, at which point the team hopes to scale production using industrial-scale fermentation. "There's a degree of exploration still to go on," said Graves, "The processes are time-intensive and they are challenging. Getting going from code to protein is usually a 12-month process, and then we need to scale it up to get hundreds of grams of the stuff out."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: A team of scientists created a novel type of temporary pacemaker -- one that dissolves on its own, without requiring any removal. In their latest research, they've paired the pacemaker with a series of wireless sensors on the skin, which should allow it to smartly monitor a patient's vital signs and adjust its pacing autonomously. Should the device continue to show promise, it could one day be used in patients undergoing cardiac surgery or who otherwise only need a pacemaker for a short while. Last year, researchers at Northwestern University and George Washington University debuted the first version of the pacemaker. [...] In their new study, published Thursday in Science, the group has added more features to their pacemaker. According to author Igor Efimov, a professor of biomedical engineering and professor of medicine at Northwestern University, the pacemaker now comes with a "fully integrated network of wearable devices" attached to a patient's skin, four in total. These devices not only monitor a person's heartbeat and other vital signs like body temperature -- they also wirelessly power the pacemaker and control its pacing automatically as needed. Doctors can remotely monitor the data collected by the device via a computer network. And in experiments with living rodents and dogs, as well as human hearts in the lab, the pacemaker and its closed loop system seemed to work as intended.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Verge's Sean Hollister has been testing a number of "nifty" USB cables that magnetically stick to themselves and don't get all tangled up in your drawers and bags. The only problem is "they all suck big time at data transfer, charging, or both," he writes. From the report: This one, which also has its own built-in blue LED light and magnetic swappable tips for USB-C, micro-USB, and Lightning, won't charge most of my USB-C gadgets at all, but I was able to sling some files from an external drive at lackluster USB 2.0 speeds and charge my iPhone over Lightning. It's also got super weak coiling magnets and felt even cheaper than the rest. This USB-C to USB-C one was pretty decent at charging, giving me 65W of USB-C PD power and had the best magnets of the bunch -- but it wouldn't connect to a Pixel 4A phone or my USB-C external drive at all. They just didn't show up on my desktop! This USB-A to USB-C cable was the worst of the lot. Just wiggling it would disconnect anything I had plugged in, and it topped out at 10W of charging -- not the 15-18W I'd usually see with my Pixel. Lastly, this USB-A to Lightning one seems to be a SuperCalla cable, showing up in an "Original SuperCalla" box, even though it's sold by a brand named "Tech." Slow charging, slow data, but at least it seems to stay reliably connected to my iPhone so far. But those aren't the only style of magnetic no-tangle cable I found. I also bought this neat accordion-style one, which is perhaps the best of the bunch: I got 15W charging, and it feels better built than the rest. But it's less fun to play with, the magnets aren't as strong, and it's got a bit of an awkward shape when fully extended because the joints will always stick out. Plus, it tops out at USB 2.0 speeds of 480Mbps (or around 42MB/s in practice.) I couldn't find a C-to-C or Lightning version. [...] Right now, all I've found are these cheap-o, $10 novelty cables, and that's a real shame. The magnet design deserves better, and so do we.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Industry trade group the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) could be dropping the "cable" moniker as it eyes a potential name change. Fierce Video reports: A trademark application filed by NCTC on May 17 shows one proposal for a new name: National Content & Technology Cooperative. An NCTC spokesperson confirmed to Fierce that the organization will be changing its name, but said it is considering a large number of options and hasn't yet settled on a final decision. The spokesperson noted it's taking time to register potential names, but some of the other choices on the table include simply "NCTC," "NCTC Online" or even sticking with its current brand of the National Cable Television Cooperative. [...] According to the application, it appears NCTC is also considering losing the image of a coaxial cable that's currently featured in its logo. So why the potential shift away from cable? One factor could be that the industry has clearly changed since NCTC formed in 1984, with cable operators in recent years deemphasizing traditional video offerings. The "Cable Television" part of the group's name is becoming less accurate over time, said Brett Sappington, VP of Interpret. "Broadband, not television, is the cash cow for the cable industry," he told Fierce Video. "Many of the organization's members are actually moving away from offering their own video service and are, instead, focusing on broadband bundled with streaming services." [...] Along with industry changes come some shifts in perception as well. "Cable TV doesn't necessarily have a positive connotation today," Sappington noted. "In fact, many online TV services such as Sling TV or FuboTV emphasize why consumers should 'drop cable' and go with their services instead," he continued.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Designer and co-founder of The Iconfactory, Corey B. Marion, has died following a long battle with cancer. He was 54. AppleInsider reports: Marion founded The Iconfactory in 1996 with Talos Tsui, and Gedeon Maheux, when he was 29. For a quarter of a century, he led the firm while also designing icons -- including the company's own factory logo one -- and created a typeface based on his own handwriting. [...] The Iconfactory produces sets of icons, such as free ones commissioned by Paramount to promote a "Star Trek" film, and over 100 for Microsoft Windows XP. Corey designed logos, emojis, and wallpapers too. Plus from 1997 to 2004, he was a judge on The Iconfactory's annual Pixelpalooza icon design contest, created specifically for the Mac community. "We hope you'll join us in celebrating his life via the digital gifts he gave of himself as well as send warm and comforting wishes to his entire family," says a statement on the front page of the company's site. "Our sadness is tempered by the fact that his art and legacy live on in all of us here at the factory as well as for all those, like yourselves, who have enjoyed his creations over the years."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: Atari pulled the plug on the release of Marble Madness II almost exactly 31 years ago after the follow up to their hit game failed to perform well in location tests. For decades the only way to play this now sought after rarity has been on one of a handful of known surviving units when it was exhibited by a private collector at annual events. That has all changed after the ROM mysteriously appeared on The Internet Archive and was subsequently emulated by MAME developer David Haywood. Ars Technica provides background information on this story and talks with a number of the digital archaeologists involved. They discuss the events that unfolded, speculate as to why the game may have failed, and look at what it means to the community.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UnknowingFool writes: The current Linux kernel in development, 5.19, added 495,793 new lines of code for graphic driver updates. David Airlie sent in the new lines as part of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem of Linux. The majority of additions were for AMD's RDNA and CDNA platforms but Intel also submitted changes for their DG2 graphics as well. Updates also came from Qualcomm and MediaTek for their GPU offerings.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adam Neumann made his post-WeWork debut when Flowcarbon, a blockchain-based carbon credits company, announced that it has raised $70 million in its first round of funding. Neumann is both a founder and an investor in the startup. Reuters reports: The company aims to tap into the growing market for carbon credits companies buy to offset their greenhouse gas emissions as the world transitions to a low-carbon economy in the fight against climate change. Despite increasing demand, the market has drawn criticism for being fractured, opaque, hard to access and with question marks over the quality of some credits. To help fix this, Flowcarbon lets project developers sell their carbon credits through tokens, digital assets stored and traded using blockchain technology, allowing them to access cheaper funding and scale their projects more quickly. "Our mission is to provide the financing necessary to scale projects that reduce or remove carbon from the atmosphere, in particular nature-based projects," said Chief Executive Dana Gibber. Nature-based projects could include those focused on reforestation, conservation or nature restoration. By "tokenizing," developers can access cheaper financing earlier in the life of their project by selling forward their credits, she said. Buyers, meanwhile, will have greater transparency over their holdings and a broader range of them can join in, including individuals, smaller companies and those in the crypto market. The firm raised $32 million in the funding round led by Silicon Valley financiers Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz through their a16z crypto venture capital firm. Other investors included General Catalyst and Samsung Next. The balance was raised through the sale of a token - the Goddess Nature Token - backed by a parcel of certified carbon credits from nature-based projects over the last five years. More such tokens are planned with other parcels of credits. Further reading: WeWork Co-Founder Adam Neumann's New Crypto Project Sounds Like a Scam Within a Scam (Recode)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A hacker has obtained a database that includes the full name, email address, corporate ID numbers, and phone number of hundreds of Verizon employees. It's unclear if all the data is accurate or up to date. Motherboard was able to confirm that at least some of the data is legitimate by calling phone numbers in the database. Four people confirmed their full names and email addresses, and said they work at Verizon. Another one confirmed the data, and said she used to work at the company. Around a dozen other numbers returned voicemails that included the names in the database, suggesting those are also accurate. The hacker contacted Motherboard last week to share the information. The anonymous hacker said they obtained the data by convincing a Verizon employee to give them remote access to their corporate computer. At that point the hacker said they gained access to a Verizon internal tool that shows employee's information, and wrote a script to query and scrape the database. "These employees are idiots and will allow you to connect to their PC under the guise that you are from internal support," they told Motherboard in an online chat. The hacker said they would like Verizon to pay them $250,000 as a reward. A Verizon spokesperson confirmed the hacker has been in contact with the company. "A fraudster recently contacted us threatening to release readily available employee directory information in exchange for payment from Verizon. We do not believe the fraudster has any sensitive information and we do not plan to engage with the individual further," the spokesperson told Motherboard. "As always, we take the security of Verizon data very seriously and we have strong measures in place to protect our people and systems."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows Central: For a few years, rumors have persisted that Microsoft was exploring building some form of streaming stick to offer Xbox Cloud Gaming via a more affordable dongle, similarly to Chromecast and Google Stadia. The first hint was Project Hobart. More recently, a code name "Keystone" appeared in an Xbox OS list, lending fire to rumors that Microsoft was continuing to explore additional hardware for the Xbox lineup. We can now confirm that that is indeed true, and it pertains to a modernized HDMI streaming device that runs Xbox Game Pass and its cloud gaming service. Microsoft is, however, taking exploring additional iterations of the product before taking it to market. In a statement provided to Windows Central, a Microsoft spokesperson described its commitment to lowering boundaries to Xbox content via low cost-hardware, while acknowledging that the existing version of Keystone needs a little more time to bake before going live.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Republican Senators want to bar U.S. app stores including Apple and Google from hosting apps that allow payments to be made with China's digital currency, according to a copy of proposed legislation seen by Reuters, amid fears the payment system could allow Beijing to spy on Americans. From a report: The bill to be unveiled on Thursday by Senators Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Mike Braun states that companies that own or control app stores "shall not carry or support any app in [their] app store(s) within the United States that supports or enables transactions in e-CNY." According to Cotton's office, digital yuan could provide the Chinese government with "real-time visibility into all transactions on the network, posing privacy and security concerns for American persons who join this network."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: You might have seen the headlines over the past year: Chinese sellers are leaving Amazon. Since early 2021, the e-commerce giant says it has banned 3,000 Chinese accounts for using paid reviewers to artificially inflate ratings, a practice known as "brushing." The narrative sounds pretty simple, right? Dishonest Chinese sellers gaming the system! Of course they should be punished. Amazon has said that it issued the bans after repeated warnings over manipulated reviews, and that no seller has been targeted by nationality. Meanwhile, in Chinese media, the sellers have a different account. They describe paying ever-rising costs, while struggling with restrictions on how they sell on the platform. When they have brushed up their ratings, sellers told Chinese tech media Pingwest, it's because Amazon's stringent requirements have pushed them to, in order to survive. (A Chinese e-commerce industry association estimates at least 50,000 banned.) Either way, the relationship has somewhat soured. In 2012, when Amazon entered China and aggressively recruited sellers onto its third-party Marketplace platform, merchants treated founder Jeff Bezos with reverence. Many of them considered him a role model, and resonated with Amazon's lofty principles of "putting the customer first" and "creating long-term value." Amazon Marketplace was appealing to Chinese sellers in two important ways: there was almost no barrier to entry, and they could mark up their products as much as they liked. Products that cost 5-6 yuan on Taobao could be sold for $20 (about 140 yuan) on Amazon -- a markup of 20-30 times the original price! Not percent, but times. Lured by the crazy-high profit margin, the number of Chinese sellers on Amazon climbed sharply. Within a few years, Marketplace growth took off. Between 2014 and 2015, sales from Amazon's Chinese merchants tripled. By 2017, one-third of all international sellers on Amazon were from China, and Marketplace's sales volume had surpassed that of the main Amazon platform. Here comes the catch. Despite all the PR around Amazon Web Services, we know that Marketplace is Amazon's real moneymaker. Recall that Amazon charges for commissions, advertising, logistics and warehousing. And warehousing costs alone have soared since Chinese sellers came on board, continuing to grow with a nice 11% bump just this February. Costs to advertise -- something crucial for smaller sellers -- surged 50% during the pandemic. But the thing is, it's hard to sell if you're not part of Prime, wherever you're based, and that probably means signing up for all the above charges. And this is the case inside just the Amazon universe.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a new court filing, Epic Games challenges Apple's position that third-party app stores would compromise the iPhone's security. And it points to Apple's macOS as an example of how the process of "sideloading" apps -- installing apps outside of Apple's own App Store, that is -- doesn't have to be the threat Apple describes it to be. From a report: Apple's Mac, explains Epic, doesn't have the same constraints as found in the iPhone operating system, iOS, and yet Apple touts the operating system used in Mac computers, macOS, as secure. The Cary, N.C.-based Fortnite maker made these points in its latest brief, among several others, related to its ongoing legal battle with Apple over its control of the App Store. Epic Games wants to earn the right to deliver Fortnite to iPhone users outside the App Store, or at the very least, be able to use its own payment processing system so it can stop paying Apple commissions for the ability to deliver its software to iPhone users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is highlighting how Chromebooks can work in "zero trust" corporate environments with its new Chrome Enterprise Connectors Framework. From a report: The new integration system is designed to make the Chrome browser and Chrome OS devices easier for IT departments to implement with existing security, endpoint, and authentication solutions as well as bother management solutions. Google Chrome OS exec John Solomon describes the new tools as a "plug and play" solution that lets other companies helm Chrome OS management functions like remote-wiping a Chromebook using BlackBerry Unified Endpoint Management or flagging malware downloads with Splunk. These types of management functions previously worked through the Google Admin console. Managing and enrolling Chrome OS devices in the enterprise will still rely on Google tools like Google Admin and Chrome Browser Cloud Management. But new tools like Chrome OS Data Controls give enterprises more options to allow or lock down actions like printing, screen capture, copy / paste, and other potential data loss situations. It might even give IT a better handle on buggy Chrome OS updates and is currently available through the Trusted Tester program.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Broadcom has announced it is acquiring VMware in a massive $61 billion deal. From a report: The deal is a combination of cash and stock, with Broadcom assuming $8 billion in VMware debt. With VMware, Broadcom gets more than the core virtualization, which the company was built on. It also gets other pieces it acquired along the way to diversify, like Heptio for containerization, and Pivotal, which helps provide support services for companies transitioning to modern technology. At the same time it bought Pivotal, it also acquired security company Carbon Black. That touches upon a lot of technology, but it begs the question, where does it all fit with Broadcom (which has spent a fair amount of money in recent years buying up a couple of key software pieces prior to today's announcement)?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bipartisan legislative effort to rein in the nation's largest tech companies is facing fresh resistance from a faction of Senate Democrats over complaints the measure could threaten their chances of holding their slim majority, 10 people familiar with the matter told POLITICO. From a report: The internal opposition comes as Democratic leaders are pushing for a vote on the bill by summer, in an effort to pass what has become a central element of the party's broader antitrust agenda. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act, S. 2992 (117) -- led by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) -- would ban major tech firms like Amazon and Google from favoring their products over their competitors. For example, the legislation would bar Amazon from promoting its own private-label products over rival items on its e-commerce platform. The bill marks the most serious attempt at tightening oversight of the tech industry in years and passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with support from both parties earlier this year. Yet in the days since Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told Klobuchar he would hold a floor vote as early as next month, several Democratic senators have privately expressed deep reservations about voting for the legislation, particularly with a midterm election looming, in their conversations with Schumer and other Democratic offices.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft will slow hiring in its Windows, Office and Teams chat and conferencing software groups, citing a need to realign staffing priorities as it approaches a new fiscal year in a time of global economic uncertainty. From a report: All new hires must be approved by Executive Vice President Rajesh Jha and his leadership team, Jha told employees in an email Thursday, a Microsoft spokesperson said. Those groups have expanded recently and the company wants to make sure it's making the right hires in the right places, the spokesperson said. The slowdown is not companywide, and overall the software maker will continue to hire, the spokesperson said, noting that such caution is typical in periods of economic volatility. "As Microsoft gets ready for the new fiscal year, it is making sure the right resources are aligned to the right opportunity," the company said in a statement. "Microsoft will continue to grow headcount in the year ahead and it will add additional focus to where those resources go." The company's fiscal year starts July 1.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In an interview with the FT, Epic chief executive Tim Sweeney spoke about the metaverse and expressed his concerns that tech giants Apple and Google could "unfairly" extend their "stranglehold" on smartphone platforms to "dominate all physical commerce taking place in virtual and augmented reality." An excerpt from the report: FT: How convinced are you that the metaverse -- this immersive virtual world -- really is the next digital platform beyond the smartphone? Tim Sweeney: It's happening already. If you look at Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft and other real-time 3D social entertainment experiences, you can readily identify at least 600mn monthly active users in a medium that's growing at a significant rate every year. So, there's no question that this phenomenon is happening. The only question is: when does it reach billions? FT: When I think of the metaverse, it's much broader than gaming. It's doing work in the metaverse, and meeting your colleagues in there. What are the challenges of bringing that vision into existence? Tim Sweeney: I'm not sure if that vision actually works, because it's not very fun to sit around in 3D and just talk to people. It gets really awkward really fast. A bunch of guys can't get together and just sit in a room for hours and have a conversation, right? You have to be shooting darts or playing billiards or shooting hoops or doing something together to break up the dull moments and keep you entertained for a long period of time. And that's what this medium does. I think if you strip the entertainment aspect from it, you end up with a super creepy version of America Online chat rooms!Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JPMorgan Chase is using blockchain for collateral settlements, the latest Wall Street experimentation with the technology in the trading of traditional financial assets. From a report: The bank's first such transaction came on May 20, when two of its entities transferred the token representation of BlackRock money market fund shares as collateral on its private blockchain. The effort will allow investors to pledge a wider range of assets as collateral and use them outside of market operating hours, according to New York-based JPMorgan. "What we've achieved is the friction-less transfer of collateral assets on an instantaneous basis," Ben Challice, JPMorgan's global head of trading services, said in an interview. While BlackRock wasn't a counterparty, "they have been heavily involved since Day One, and are exploring use of this technology." Blockchain-based collateral settlement can be used for transactions such as derivatives and repo trading, as well as securities lending. In the coming months, the bank plans to expand tokenized collaterals to include equities, fixed income and other asset types, it said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the past few years, ransomware attacks have crippled schools, hospitals, city governments, and pipelines. Yet, despite the heavy toll such incidents have on both the public and private sectors, government officials have only a limited understanding of ransomware attacks and how cryptocurrencies are being used to collect payment, according to a new report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. From a report: "Cryptocurrencies -- which allow criminals to quickly extort huge sums of money, can be anonymized, and do not have consistently enforced compliance with regulations, especially for foreign-based attackers -- have further enabled cybercriminals to commit disruptive ransomware attacks that threaten our national and economic security," said Michigan Senator Gary Peters, the committee's chair, in a statement. "My report shows that the federal government lacks the necessary information to deter and prevent these attacks, and to hold foreign adversaries and cybercriminals accountable for perpetrating them." Part of the issue is in reporting: The federal government doesn't have a standardized place for victims to log ransomware attacks, which typically encrypt data until a ransom is paid in cryptocurrency. Both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have websites where victims can report incidents, and some people report the attacks directly to their local FBI field offices -- all of which can leave people unsure of where to turn and lead to different agencies having records of different incidents. Financial regulators, including the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also gather some data on ransomware, particularly around payments, but it's also far from comprehensive. A new law passed by Congress in March, as part of a broad government funding bill, will soon require operators of "critical infrastructure" to report to CISA within 72 hours when they've been the victims of a "substantial cyber incident," and within 24 hours of paying a ransom, but the provision hasn't yet gone into effect, pending regulatory decisions by CISA.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some resort owners think they have found a way to avoid getting stuck with excess inventory when guests cancel at the last minute. It involves converting room nights for sale into nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, that can be bought or sold by hotel guests, similar to the StubHub market for concert and sporting event tickets. From a report: Owners say this ensures they get paid for the rooms because guests would sell their reservation in the market if they decide not to go, and appeal to the crypto-enthusiastic traveler. "We can reach another consumer that maybe isn't booking through traditional means," said Jason Kycek, senior vice president with Casa de Campo Resort & Villas, a Dominican Republic resort, who is planning to soon begin booking rooms with NFTs. Casa de Campo has signed with the startup Pinktada, which recently launched a booking system that includes hotels in the Caribbean, Mexico, San Francisco and Hawaii. Hotel guests can reserve rooms at those properties by buying NFTs through Pinktada. By using this system, guests can book a room at a discount to what the hotel would charge for a refundable reservation. The sale is final from the point of view of hotel owners, so their revenue is guaranteed whether or not the room is used. If travelers change plans, they can use the tokens for other Pinktada hotels or sell them to another traveler in the Pinktada network. Pinktada (the name is a reference to a type of pearl oyster) promises to be the buyer-of-last resort if another traveler doesn't buy it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: For five years, Foxconn promised and spectacularly failed to build a much-hyped sprawling factory near Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. Now, the area's leaders may be saddled with $300 million in bond repayments that the Taiwanese iPhone maker had promised to repay. According to the Wall Street Journal, Foxconn agreed to pay $36 million annually across a 20-year term to pay for the surrounding infrastructure supporting the now-abandoned 3,000-acre site. Those payments are scheduled to start next tax year, and local leaders told the newspaper they're counting on Foxconn's cash to maintain the site while they try to attract another occupant. Finding an occupant hasn't been easy. Intel, which announced a $20 billion investment in two chip factories in Ohio in January, was also considering Wisconsin for the project, with its focus on Racine, the nearest large city to the proposed Foxconn plant. The other option to cover the costs would be a total Foxconn pullout, which state officials said would let the government sell the land, assessed at a value of over $500 million. Ultimately, we're told, Foxconn promised to cough up $300 million to cover bonds for the infrastructure, whether the plant went ahead or not, but with that deal in tatters, it's now not clear if the money will be paid.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Twitter has agreed to pay a $150 million fine after federal law enforcement officials accused the social media company of illegally selling advertisements based on an improper use of personal data over six years. NPR reports: In court documents made public on Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice say Twitter violated a 2011 agreement with regulators in which the company vowed to not use information gathered for security purposes, like users' phone numbers and email addresses, to help advertisers target people with ads. Federal investigators say Twitter broke that promise. "As the complaint notes, Twitter obtained data from users on the pretext of harnessing it for security purposes but then ended up also using the data to target users with ads," said FTC Chair Lina Khan. Twitter requires users to provide a telephone number and email address to authenticate accounts. That information also helps people reset their passwords and unlock their accounts when the company blocks logging in due to suspicious activity. But until at least September 2019, Twitter was also using that information to boost its advertising business by allowing advertisers access to users' phone numbers and email addresses. That ran afoul of the agreement the company had with regulators. More than 140 million Twitter users provided this kind of personal information based on "Twitter's deceptive statements," according to federal prosecutors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers may have pinpointed the source of a famous supposed alien broadcast discovered nearly a half century ago. Space.com reports: The prominent and still-mysterious Wow! Signal, which briefly blared in a radio telescope the night of Aug. 15, 1977, may have come from a sun-like star located 1,800 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. "The Wow! Signal is considered the best SETI (or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence) candidate radio signal that we have picked up with our telescopes," Alberto Caballero, an amateur astronomer, told Live Science. [...] The Wow! Signal most likely came from some kind of natural event and not aliens, Caballero told Live Science, though astronomers have ruled out a few possible origins like a passing comet. Still, Caballero noted that in our infrequent attempts to say hello to E.T., humans have mostly produced one-time broadcasts, such as the Arecibo message sent toward the globular star cluster M13 in 1974. The Wow! Signal may have been something similar, he added. Knowing that the Big Ear telescope's two receivers were pointing in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius on the night of the Wow! Signal, Caballero decided to search through a catalog of stars from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite to look for possible candidates. "I found specifically one sun-like star," he said, an object designated 2MASS 19281982-2640123 about 1,800 light-years away that has a temperature, diameter and luminosity almost identical to our own stellar companion. Caballero's findings appeared May 6 in the International Journal of Astrobiology. "I think this is perfectly worth doing because we want to point our instruments in the direction of things we think are interesting," Rebecca Charbonneau, a historian who studies SETI at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and who wasn't involved in the work, told Live Science. "There are billions of stars in the galaxy, and we have to figure out some way to narrow them down," she added. But she wonders if looking for only sun-like stars is too limiting. "Why not just look at a bunch of stars?" she asked.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The building of the world's largest bioreactors to produce cultivated meat has been announced, with the potential to supply tens of thousands of shops and restaurants. Experts said the move could be a "gamechanger" for the nascent industry. The US company Good Meat said the bioreactors would grow more than 13,000 tons of chicken and beef a year. It will use cells taken from cell banks or eggs, so the meat will not require the slaughter of any livestock. There are about 170 companies around the world working on cultured meat, but Good Meat is the only company to have gained regulatory approval to sell its product to the public. It began serving cultivated chicken in Singapore in December 2020. The creation of Good Meat's 10 new bioreactors is under way, the company says, each of which has a capacity of 250,000 liters and will stand four stories tall, far bigger than any constructed to date. The US site for the facility is due to be finalized within three months and operational in late 2024, reaching 11,800 tons a year by 2026 and 13,700 tons by 2030. The bioreactors are being manufactured as part of an agreement with ABEC, a leading bioprocess equipment manufacturer, which is also making a 6,000-liter bioreactor for Good Meat's Singapore site -- this is scheduled to begin production in early 2023 and will itself be the biggest cultured meat bioreactor installed to date. Cultivated meat has not yet been approved for sale by the US Food and Drug Administration. "Weâ(TM)ve submitted our application," said Josh Tetrick, the chief executive of Good Meatâ(TM)s parent company, Eat Just. "Weâ(TM)ve found the agency to be fully engaged, asking all the questions youâ(TM)d expect, from cell identification to final product. Weâ(TM)d prefer not to try to predict if and when [approval] will occur." Tetrick also said the company had produced a cell growth serum that does not require the use of bovine fetuses, which were previously widely used.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Dev Box is intended to simplify the process of getting new developer workstations up and running quickly, with all necessary tools and dependencies installed and working out-of-the-box (so to speak), along with access to up-to-date source code and fresh copies of any nightly builds. Ars Technica reports: Dev Box is built on Windows 365, a service that IT admins can use to provide preconfigured virtual PCs to users. Admins can build operating system images and offer hardware configurations with different amounts of CPU power, storage, and RAM based on what particular users (or workloads) need. Windows 365 virtual machines, including but not limited to Dev Box VMs, can be accessed from other Windows PCs, or devices running macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, or ChromeOS. "Microsoft Dev Box supports any developer IDE, SDK, or internal tool that runs on Windows," writes Microsoft product manager Anthony Cangialosi [in a blog post introducing the service]. "Dev Boxes can target any development workload you can build from a Windows desktop and are particularly well-suited for desktop, mobile, IoT, and gaming. You can even build cross-platform apps using Windows Subsystem for Linux." Dev Box is currently available in a private preview. If you're interested in testing it when the preview goes public, you can sign up to learn more here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

California could soon hold social media companies responsible for harming children who have become addicted to their products, permitting parents to sue platforms like Instagram and TikTok for up to $25,000 per violation under a bill that passed the state Assembly on Monday. The Associated Press reports: The bill defines "addiction" as kids under 18 who are both harmed -- either physically, mentally, emotionally, developmentally or materially -- and who want to stop or reduce how much time they spend on social media but they can't because they are preoccupied or obsessed with it. Business groups have warned that if the bill passes, social media companies would most likely cease operations for children in California rather than face the legal risk. The proposal would only apply to social media companies that had at least $100 million in gross revenue in the past year, appearing to take aim at social media giants like Facebook and others that dominate the marketplace. It would not apply to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu or to companies that only offer email and text messaging services. [...] The bill gives social media companies two paths to escape liability in the courts. If the bill becomes law, it would take effect on Jan. 1. Companies that remove features deemed addictive to children by April 1 would not be responsible for damages. Also, companies that conduct regular audits of their practices to identify and remove features that could be addictive to children would be immune from lawsuits. "Monday's vote is a key -- but not final -- step for the legislation," adds the report. "The bill now heads to the state Senate, where it will undergo weeks of hearings and negotiations among lawmakers and advocates. But Monday's vote keeps the bill alive this year."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dyson has revealed that it has an entire division that's secretly been developing robot prototypes that do household chores. Engadget reports: The company didn't detail any of the models in particularly, but many look like regular robot arms adapted to do specialized home chores like cleaning and tidying. One appeared to be designed to vacuum out the seat cushions, mapping an armchair out in detail to do the job. "So this means I'll never, ever find crisps around the back of my sofa again?" the company's chief engineer, Jake Dyson, asked a researcher in a video (here). Another robot was putting away dishes or at least placing them in a drying rack, and another was grasping a teddy bear, presumably picking up after a child. Dyson also showed off a "Perception Lab" that was all about robotic vision systems, detecting its environment and mapping humans with sensors, cameras and thermal imaging systems. Dyson is currently on a recruiting drive, looking for around 700 engineers, which is one reason it finally decided to show off the lab (located at Hullavington Airfield, Wiltshire in the UK) after keeping it under wraps.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Environmental and social justice-focused funds are booming -- so much so that the Securities and Exchange Commission is mulling new regulations to clamp down on funds that fail to back up certain altruistic claims. From a report: On Wednesday, the SEC proposed broadening the scope of its Names Rule, which enables the agency to take action against mutual and exchange-traded funds with misleading names. The amendment would require funds that use ESG (Environmental, social and governance) or similar terminology in their names to put at least 80% of their holdings into those assets. According to the SEC, the update "would help to prevent potential 'greenwashing' in fund names by requiring a fund's investment activity to support the investment focus its name communicates." The SEC first floated such a change in 2020. Should the proposal pass, it would be the first amendment to the Names Rule since it was adopted more than two decades ago. The agency also proposed upping disclosure rules for funds that market themselves under the ESG banner, mandating that they explain how they plan to track their progress towards such goals.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Tesla's advanced battery research group in Canada in partnership with Dalhousie University has released a new paper on a new nickel-based battery that could last 100 years while still favorably comparing to LFP cells on charging and energy density. [...] The paper describes a nickel-based battery chemistry meant to compete with LFP battery cells on longevity while retaining the properties that people like in nickel-based batteries, like higher energy density, which enables longer range with fewer batteries for electric vehicles. The group wrote in the paper's abstract: "Single crystal Li[Ni0.5Mn0.3Co0.2]O2//graphite (NMC532) pouch cells with only sufficient graphite for operation to 3.80 V (rather than [greater than or equal to] 4.2 V) were cycled with charging to either 3.65 V or 3.80 V to facilitate comparison with LiFePO4//graphite (LFP) pouch cells on the grounds of similar maximum charging potential and similar negative electrode utilization. The NMC532 cells, when constructed with only sufficient graphite to be charged to 3.80 V, have an energy density that exceeds that of the LFP cells and a cycle-life that greatly exceeds that of the LFP cells at 40C, 55C and 70C. Excellent lifetime at high temperature is demonstrated with electrolytes that contain lithium bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide (LiFSI) salt, well beyond those provided by conventional LiPF6 electrolytes." The cells showed an impressive capacity retention over a high number of cycles. The research group even noted that the new cell described in the paper could last a 100 years if the temperature is controlled at 25C: "Ultra-high precision coulometry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy are used to complement cycling results and investigate the reasons for the improved performance of the NMC cells. NMC cells, particularly those balanced and charged to 3.8 V, show better coulombic efficiency, less capacity fade and higher energy density compared to LFP cells and are projected to yield lifetimes approaching a century at 25C." One of the keys appears to be using an electrolyte with LiFSI lithium salts, and the paper notes that the benefits could also apply to other nickel-based chemistries, including those with no or low cobalt. The paper has been published in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting this fall with its locations in California, the Swedish furniture giant Ikea will sell the means to power your Starkvind (that's an air purifier) and Stjarnstatus (that's a fridge) by adding solar panels to the company's offerings. Thankfully, assembly will be handled by the professionals. Curbed reports: To bring photovoltaics -- the technical name for solar panels -- to the people, Ikea is partnering with SunPower, one of the largest solar-energy providers in the country, which will install the rooftop systems and a DC-battery storage unit. As with all solar installations, the cost and energy generated will vary depending on a range of factors, such as the size of the roof and how much sunlight it sees during the day. Incentives like tax credits can also help sweeten the deal, depending on where you live. [...] The stated goal of Ikea's solar efforts is to zero out the emissions generated to power its plugged-in products, which the company estimates are about 20 percent of its total. Now let's see if Ikea can make solar panels as ubiquitous and affordable for U.S. homes as its Billy bookshelf -- one of which is made every three seconds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stepped down from Twitter's board of directors Wednesday. TechCrunch reports: Dorsey had already begun to distance himself from the social media platform he co-founded, leaving Twitter's chief executive role late last year to focus on Block, formerly known as Square. The plan for Dorsey to leave the board has been in place since he stepped down as CEO. At the time, the company noted that Dorsey would stay on the board "until his term expires at the 2022 meeting of stockholders." Dorsey's exit from the board marks the end of an era, as Dorsey has been involved with the company in an official capacity since its founding. With SpaceX and Tesla billionaire Elon Musk still poised to buy Twitter, cold feet notwithstanding, the world's most prominent real-time social network is on the cusp of a lot of change.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Clearview AI is expanding sales of its facial recognition software to companies from mainly serving the police, it told Reuters, inviting scrutiny on how the startup capitalizes on billions of photos it scrapes from social media profiles. [...] Clearview primarily helps police identify people through social media images, but that business is under threat due to regulatory investigations. The settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union bans Clearview from providing the social-media capability to corporate clients. Instead of online photo comparisons, the new private-sector offering [called "Clearview Consent"] matches people to ID photos and other data that clients collect with subjects' permission. It is meant to verify identities for access to physical or digital spaces. Vaale, a Colombian app-based lending startup, said it was adopting Clearview to match selfies to user-uploaded ID photos. [...] Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That said a U.S. company selling visitor management systems to schools had signed up as well. He said a customer's photo database is stored as long as they wish and not shared with others, nor used to train Clearview's AI. But the face-matching that Clearview is selling to companies was trained on social media photos. It said the diverse collection of public images reduces racial bias and other weaknesses that affect rival systems constrained by smaller datasets. The company outlined their path forward in a press release Wednesday. "Today, FRT is used to unlock your phone, verify your identity, board an airplane, access a building, and even for payment," Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That said in a statement. "Now, we are offering companies who use facial recognition as part of a consent-based workflow access to Clearview AI's superior, industry-leading FRT algorithm, bringing an increased level of security and protection to the marketplace." He added: "Using facial recognition as a preventative measure means fewer crimes and fewer victims. Ultimately, Clearview Consent is all about making everyday consumers feel more secure in a world that is rife with crime and fraud."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Carbon dioxide removal will soon be written into Finnish law: In a historic Wednesday vote, the country's Parliament approved a new Climate Change Act that would commit the country to carbon neutrality by 2035, and carbon negativity 2040. From a report: Assuming it is signed by President Sauli Niinisto, the law would make Finland the first country in the world to make its carbon commitments legally binding. University of Eastern Finland international law professor Kati Kulovesi called the new targets "remarkable," particularly the carbon negativity commitment. The targets are based on a scientific analysis of the country's nationally determined contributions, which Kulovesi also commended. "However, other details of the act could have been stronger," Kulovesi told Protocol. "There is an important gap between current measures and those required to reach the targets, and now there is a legal obligation to act." The new law also updates absolute emissions reduction targets, requiring at least a 60% reduction by 2030 and 80% by 2040, as compared with 1990 levels. Finland had previously committed to an 80% reduction by 2050, so this change catapults the country's progress forward by a full decade. Combining those reductions with the new legally mandated carbon negative goals in less than 20 years will require the country to rely on carbon dioxide removal in addition to simply lowering its overall emissions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Zuckerberg said he plans to invest heavily in his company's metaverse ambitions and that will mean losing "significant" amounts of money on the project in the next three to five years. From a report: The metaverse, an immersive digital world, will eventually make money from a creator economy, as people build businesses selling virtual goods and services, the Meta Platforms chief executive officer said, responding to a question about return on investment at the company's annual shareholder meeting Wednesday. "We want to get the hardware to be as affordable as possible for everyone, and make sure the digital economy grows," Zuckerberg said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From Santa Barbara, Calif., to Hefei, China, scientists are developing a new kind of computer that will make today's machines look like toys. From a report: Harnessing the mysterious powers of quantum mechanics, the technology will perform tasks in minutes that even supercomputers could not complete in thousands of years. In the fall of 2019, Google unveiled an experimental quantum computer showing this was possible. Two years later, a lab in China did much the same. But quantum computing will not reach its potential without help from another technological breakthrough. Call it a "quantum internet" -- a computer network that can send quantum information between distant machines. At the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, a team of physicists has taken a significant step toward this computer network of the future, using a technique called quantum teleportation to send data across three physical locations. Previously, this was possible with only two. The new experiment indicates that scientists can stretch a quantum network across an increasingly large number of sites. "We are now building small quantum networks in the lab," said Ronald Hanson, the Delft physicist who oversees the team. "But the idea is to eventually build a quantum internet." Their research, unveiled this week with a paper published in the science journal Nature, demonstrates the power of a phenomenon that Albert Einstein once deemed impossible. Quantum teleportation -- what he called "spooky action at a distance" -- can transfer information between locations without actually moving the physical matter that holds it. This technology could profoundly change the way data travels from place to place. It draws on more than a century of research involving quantum mechanics, a field of physics that governs the subatomic realm and behaves unlike anything we experience in our everyday lives. Quantum teleportation not only moves data between quantum computers, but it also does so in such a way that no one can intercept it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Swiss-based encrypted email provider ProtonMail today announced a restructuring of its privacy-first services, bringing them under a new unifying brand name: Proton. "Today, we are undertaking our biggest step forward in the movement for an internet that respects your privacy. The new, updated Proton offers one account, many services, and one privacy-by-default ecosystem. You can now enjoy unified protection with a modernized look and feel. Evolving into a unified Proton reflects our growth from an end-to-end encrypted email provider to an entire privacy ecosystem, allowing us to deliver even more benefits to the Proton community and make privacy accessible to everyone," the company said. MacRumors adds: Previously, users could only subscribe to each service the company offered individually. Going forward, the new Proton offers one account to access all the services offered in the company's privacy-by-default ecosystem, including Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Calendar, and Proton Drive, all of which can be accessed from proton.me. All Proton services remain available as a free tier, with more advanced features and more storage available via paid plans. The free Proton tier includes up to 1GB of storage and one Proton email address, as well as access to Proton's encrypted Calendar and VPN services. Further reading: Proton Is Trying to Become Google -- Without Your Data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new website that published leaked emails from several leading proponents of Britain's exit from the European Union is tied to Russian hackers, according to a Google cybersecurity official and the former head of UK foreign intelligence. From a report: The website - titled "Very English Coop d'Etat" - says it has published private emails from former British spymaster Richard Dearlove, leading Brexit campaigner Gisela Stuart, pro-Brexit historian Robert Tombs, and other supporters of Britain's divorce from the EU, which was finalized in January 2020. The site contends that they are part of a group of hardline pro-Brexit figures secretly calling the shots in the United Kingdom. "I am well aware of a Russian operation against a Proton account which contained emails to and from me," said Dearlove, referring to the privacy-focused email service ProtonMail.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have now demonstrated a low-cost gel film that can pull many liters of water per day out of even very dry air. New Atlas reports: The gel is made up of two main ingredients that are cheap and common -- cellulose, which comes from the cell walls of plants, and konjac gum, a widely used food additive. Those two components work together to make a gel film that can absorb water from the air and then release it on demand, without requiring much energy. First, the porous structure of the gum attracts water to condense out of the air around it. The cellulose meanwhile is designed to respond to a gentle heat by turning hydrophobic, releasing the captured water. In tests, the gel film was able to wring an astonishing amount of water out of the air. At a relative humidity of 30 percent, it could produce 13 L (3.4 gal) of water per day per kilogram of gel, and even when the humidity dropped to just 15 percent -- which is low, even for desert air -- it could still produce more than 6 L (1.6 gal) a day per kilogram. [...] And the new gel film's efficiency could be improved even further, the team says, by creating thicker films, absorbent beds, or other array formations of the material. Perhaps most importantly, the material is extremely inexpensive to produce, costing as little as $2 per kilogram. The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

tomhath shares a report from The New York Times: The United States said on Monday that it would supply Romania with a training simulator in preparation for building a new type of nuclear power generating plant in the country. If an agreement on moving ahead with a power station is reached, Romania could become the first country in Europe, and perhaps in the world, to have such a plant, known as a small modular reactor. The one in Romania would be built by NuScale Power, a start-up company based in Portland, Ore. The government announced that the plant would be built in Doicesti, at the site of a shuttered coal-fired power plant about 55 miles northwest of Bucharest. [...] NuScale's approach to nuclear energy involves constructing relatively small reactors in factories and then assembling groups of them at the actual site for generating power. The aim is to reduce costs as well as the time required for construction. Conventional modern nuclear plants can cost $10 billion or more. The plan involves building a power station composed of six of the modular units. The plant would generate 462 megawatts of electricity, making it the size of a medium-size conventional power station. Such a plant might cost around $1.6 billion, according to figures published by the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest. The hope is to have it operating by the end of the decade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: China christened a remarkable new 290-foot ship last week -- the world's first semi-autonomous drone carrier. It'll carry, launch, recover and co-ordinate the actions of more than 50 other autonomous aerial, surface and underwater vehicles. The Huangpu Wenchong Shipyard began construction on the Zhu Hai Yun last July in Guangzhou. According to the South China Morning Post, it's the first carrier of its kind, a self-contained autonomous platform that will roll out with everything necessary to perform a fully integrated operation including drone aircraft, boats and submersibles. [...] Zhu Hai Yun will run on remote control until it's out in the open water, and then its self-driving systems will take over to execute whatever mission it's running. It's kitted out with everything it needs to deploy its own boats, subs and aircraft, communicate with them, and run co-ordinated missions, including conducting "task-oriented adaptive networking to achieve three-dimensional views of specific targets," according to the shipbuilding company. The aerial drones can land back on its deck, and it stands ready to retrieve the boats and subs once they've made their rounds. While it's mainly pitched as an ocean research platform, the SCMP also reports that it has "military capability to intercept and expel invasive targets," a capability at the forefront of many autonomous marine projects. "Please note that Beijing went from laying down a new class of ship to christening in less than a year," adds the reader.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MattSparkes shares a report from New Scientist: The idea that autonomous cars, even in small numbers, can increase fuel efficiency, travel times and safety for all cars on the road will be put to the test on routes around Nashville, Tennessee, later this year. Benedetto Piccoli at Rutgers University, New Jersey, and his colleagues previously used a computer model of a simple circular road with just one lane in each direction, and found that autonomous cars could decrease overall fuel consumption of all traffic by 40 percent, even once adoption of these vehicles had only reached 5 per cent. The best-case scenarios from these new models "rarely happen" in the real world, he says, but his team still hopes to reduce fuel consumption of all vehicles on the road during the trial -- not just the driverless cars -- by as much as 10 percent. "If you take just the overall cost of the traffic system in any country, and you reduce that by even 5 percent we are talking about billions of dollars," he says. The researchers have shared their findings in a paper via arXiv.org.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Spanish government on Tuesday announced plans to invest $13.2 billion to build microchips in the country and "help reduce the dependence of Span and the European Union on other suppliers," reports the Associated Press. From the report: Speaking in Madrid, Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Nadia Calvino said the five-year plan is aimed at enabling Spain to cover every area in the design and production of microchips, which are now considered key to all areas of modern industry. She said the plan was among the most ambitious of the Spanish government's projects to reboot the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic and that it would have an effect on other sectors. The project was directed at boosting the EU's weak position in microchip production, which Calvino said represented some 10% of the world total. She said this led to a great dependence on a small number of major producers such as Taiwan, the United States, South Korea, Japan and China. Calvino added that "the war in Ukraine makes it a priority to reinforce strategic autonomy in energy, technology, food production as well as cyber security."Read more of this story at Slashdot.