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An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters:Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI plans to expand its Memphis, Tennessee, supercomputer to house at least one million graphics processing units (GPUs), the Greater Memphis Chamber said on Wednesday, as xAI races to compete against rivals like OpenAI. The move represents a massive expansion for the supercomputer called Colossus, which currently has 100,000 GPUs to train xAI's chatbot called Grok. As part of the expansion, Nvidia, which supplies the GPUs, and Dell and Super Micro, which have assembled the server racks for the computer, will establish operations in Memphis, the chamber said in a statement. The Greater Memphis chamber (an economic development organization) called it "the largest capital investment in the region's history," even saying that xAI "is setting the stage for Memphis to become the global epicenter of artificial intelligence." ("To facilitate this massive undertaking, the Greater Memphis Chamber established an xAI Special Operations Team... This team provides round-the-clock concierge service to the company.") Reuters calls the supercomputer "a critical component of advancing Musk's AI efforts, as the billionaire has deepened his rivalry against OpenAI..." And the Greater Memphis chamber describes the expansion by Nvidia/Dell/Super Micro as "further solidifying the city's position as the 'Digital Delta'... Memphis has provided the power and velocity necessary for not just xAI to grow and thrive, but making way for other companies as well."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Are Primordial Black Holes real...?" asks Universe Today. "If they do exist, a "new paper suggests they may be hiding in places so unlikely that nobody ever thought to look there..." - in planets, in asteroids, and here on earth.Physicists hypothesize that Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) formed in the early Universe from extremely dense pockets of sub-atomic matter that collapsed directly into black holes. They could form part or all of what we call dark matter. However, they remain hypothetical because none have been observed... The authors claim that evidence for PBHs could be found in objects as large as hollowed out planetoids or asteroids and objects as small as rocks here on Earth. "Small primordial black holes could be captured by rocky planets or asteroids, consume their liquid cores from inside and leave hollow structures," the authors write. "Alternatively, a fast black hole can leave a narrow tunnel in a solid object while passing through it." "We could look for such micro-tunnels here on Earth in very old rocks," the authors claim, explaining that the search wouldn't involve specialized, expensive equipment... "The chances of finding these signatures are small, but searching for them would not require much resources and the potential payoff, the first evidence of a primordial black hole, would be immense," said Dejan Stojkovic [the paper's co-author from the State University of New York]. "We have to think outside of the box because what has been done to find primordial black holes previously hasn't worked...." Cosmology is kind of at a standstill while we wrestle with the idea of dark matter. Could PBHs be dark matter? Could they behave like the authors suggest, and be detected in this manner? "The smartest people on the planet have been working on these problems for 80 years and have not solved them yet," Stojkovic said. "We don't need a straightforward extension of the existing models. We probably need a completely new framework altogether."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Guardian reports: People working in the music sector will lose almost a quarter of their income to artificial intelligence within the next four years, according to the first global economic study examining the impact of the emerging technology on human creativity. Those working in the audiovisual sector will also see their income shrink by more than 20% as the market for generative AI grows from 3bn (A$4.9bn) annually to a predicted 64bn by 2028. The findings were released in Paris on Wednesday by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), representing more than 5 million creators worldwide. The report concluded that while the AI boom will substantially enrich giant tech companies, creators' rights and income streams will be drastically reduced unless policymakers step in... The study concluded that under current regulatory frameworks in most countries, creators stand to lose on two fronts. Unauthorised use of their works by generative AI models will eat into remuneration earned through copyright, while at the same time work opportunities will shrink as AI-generated outputs become more competitive against human-made works. The report predicted that by 2028, exponential growth in generative AI music would account for about 20% of traditional music streaming platforms' revenues, and about 60% of music libraries' revenues. The report warned of revenue "derived directly from the unlicensed reproduction of creators' works, representing a transfer of economic value from creators to AI companies," according to the article. On a hopeful note, it adds that the CISAC's president also applauded Australia and New Zealand for their thoughtful response to the issue. "By setting a gold standard in AI policy, one that protects creators' rights while fostering responsible and innovative technological development, Australia and New Zealand can ensure that AI serves as a tool to enhance human creativity rather than replace it." Thanks to Slashdodt reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bitcoin just broke $100,000 USD for the first time and reached as high as $104k, and is now sitting at $102,857 at the time of this writing. Slashdot was pretty early on Bitcoin. Thoughts, nocoiners?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In March, 2023 the Internet Archive lost in court, with a judge ruling they couldn't scan entire books and then lend them as ebooks. The Internet Archive appealed to a higher court, which also ruled against them in September of 2024. Today, the Internet Archive made an announcement: that "While we are deeply disappointed with the Second Circuit's opinion in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the Internet Archive has decided not to pursue Supreme Court review."We will continue to honor the Association of American Publishers agreement to remove books from lending at their member publishers' requests. We thank the many readers, authors and publishers who have stood with us throughout this fight. Together, we will continue to advocate for a future where libraries can purchase, own, lend and preserve digital books.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bruce Perens wrote the original Open Source definition back in 1997, and then co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond in 1998. But after resigning from the group in 2020, Perens is now diligently developing an alternative he calls "Post Open" to "meet goals that Open Source fails at today" - even providing a way to pay developers for their work. To make it all happen, he envisions software developers owning (and controlling) a not-for-profit corporation developing a body of software called "the Post Open Collection" and collecting its licensing fees to distribute among developers. The hope? To "make it possible for an individual developer to stay at home and code all day, and make their living that way without having to build a company." The not-for-profit entity - besides actually enforcing its licensing - could also:Provide tech support, servicing all Post-Open software through one entity.Improve security by providing developers with cryptographic-hardware-backed authentication guaranteeing secure software chain-of-custody.Handle onerous legal requirements like compliance with the EU Cyber Resilience Act "on behalf of all developers in the Post Open Collection".Compensate documentation writers.Fund lobbying on behalf of developers, along with advocacy for their software's privacy-preserving features."We've started to build the team," Perens said in a recent interview, announcing weeks ago that attorneys are already discussing the structure of the future organization and its proposed license. But what do you think? Perens has agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers... He's also Slashdot reader #3,872. (And Perens is also an amateur radio operator, currently on the board of M17 - a community of open source developers and radio enthusiasts - and in general support of Open Source and Amateur Radio projects through his non-profit HamOpen.org.) But more importantly, Perens "was the person to announce 'Open Source' to the world," according to his official site. Now's your chance to ask him about his next new big idea... Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment. We'll pick the very best questions - and forward them on to Bruce Perens himself to answer!Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's next president "announced Wednesday he has selected Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman and space enthusiast who twice flew to orbit with SpaceX, to become the next NASA administrator," reports Ars Technica:In a post on X, Isaacman said he was "honored" to receive Trump's nomination. "Having been fortunate to see our amazing planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history," Isaacman wrote. "On my last mission to space, my crew and I traveled farther from Earth than anyone in over half a century. I can confidently say this second space age has only just begun...." "Jared Isaacman will be an outstanding NASA Administrator and leader of the NASA family," said Jim Bridenstine, who led NASA as administrator during Trump's first term in the White House. "Jared's vision for pushing boundaries, paired with his proven track record of success in private industry, positions him as an ideal candidate to lead NASA into a bold new era of exploration and discovery. I urge the Senate to swiftly confirm him." Lori Garver, NASA's deputy administrator during the Obama administration, wrote on X that Isaacman's nomination was "terrific news," adding that "he has the opportunity to build on NASA's amazing accomplishments to pave our way to an even brighter future." Isaacman, 41, is the founder and CEO of Shift4, a mobile payment processing platform, and co-founded Draken International, which owns a fleet of retired fighter jets to pose as adversaries for military air combat training... Isaacman, an evangelist for the commercial space industry, has criticized some of NASA's decisions on the Artemis program. In several posts on X, he questioned the agency's decision to fund two redundant lunar landers, while not planning for any backup to the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which costs $2.2 billion per copy, not including expenses for ground infrastructure or the Orion spacecraft itself. One of those casualties might be the SLS rocket. The program is managed by NASA, with suppliers spread across the United States and prime contractors working under cost-plus arrangements with the space agency, meaning the government is on the hook to pay for any delays or cost overruns. If confirmed he'll be the 4th NASA administrator who's actually flown in space, according to the article. And according to Wikipedia, Isaacman was the commander of Inspiration4, a private spaceflight using SpaceX's Crew Dragon Resilience that launched in 2021.The crew returned to Earth on September 18, 2021, after orbiting at 585 km (364 mi) in altitude. The mission was part of a fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, to which Isaacman pledged to donate $100 million. Thanks to Slashdot reader FallOutBoyTonto for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"$15.8 million every 60 seconds. That's how much US consumers spent in two hours on Monday night," reports CNN, "capping off a five-day spending spree that smashed previous records."U.S. consumers spent a total of $13.3 billion on Cyber Monday, up 7.3% from the previous year, according to Adobe Analytics... Consumers spent a record $41.1 billion across the five days beginning Thanksgiving Day, according to Adobe. "While Cyber Monday remained the season's and year's biggest online shopping day, year-over-year growth was stronger on both Thanksgiving and Black Friday," Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement... The company's data projects that holiday spending from November 1 to December 31 will surpass $240 billion, up 8.4% from the previous year. The record sales on Cyber Monday were boosted by US consumers shopping on their mobile devices, which accounted for $7.6 billion in spending. This year, 57% of online sales came through a mobile device, compared to 33% in 2019, as shopping on mobile phones has surged in popularity... Buy now, pay later" programs also contributed nearly $1 billion in spending on Cyber Monday, a record high. About 75% of these types of transactions occurred through a mobile device. Cyber Monday shopping wasn't just confined to the US, either. Global sales reached $49.7 billion, up 3% from the previous year, according to data from Salesforce. The top-selling items included consumer electronics like the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch OLED, the article points out (adding that "About 78% of all consumer smartphones and 87% of consoles were imported from China in 2023, according to a report from the Consumer Technology Association.") More interesting statistics from CNN:"Discounts on apparel peaked at just over 23% off, while TVs and computers peaked at almost 22% off, according to Adobe. And the discounts might last: Adobe projects discounts of up to 18% off computers through the end of the year... " "For US retail sites, the share of revenue from affiliates and partners like social media influencers was 20.3% on Cyber Monday, up almost 7% from the previous year. ""Additionally, companies employed AI chatbots to assist consumers, like Amazon's Rufus. Traffic to retail sites from chatbots increased by nearly 2,000% on Cyber Monday, according to Adobe."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Have you been to Enron.com lately? "It's the comeback story no one asked for," reports CNN, "the resurrection of a brand so toxic it remains synonymous with corporate fraud more than two decades after it collapsed in bankruptcy. "That's right, folks: Enron is back. But only kind of."TL;DR: A company that makes T-shirts bought the Enron trademark and appears to be trying to sell some merch on behalf of the guy behind the satirical conspiracy theory "Birds Aren't Real...." On Monday, the 23rd anniversary of Enron's filing for bankruptcy, rumors began to spread that the former Texas energy giant had come back from the dead. A sleek new website, enron.com, appeared to show that the company had done some serious soul-searching and, inexplicably, reincorporated under its original brand. As a modern energy company, it would be dedicated to "solving the global energy crisis," its press statement reads. The site is packed with the kind of stock art and benign corporate platitudes that lend it credibility. There's a link to job openings, employee testimonials and even a minute-long video titled "I am Enron," a movie-trailer-style mashup of cityscape time lapses, rockets launching into space, a ballerina twirling on a beach - a mess of imagery and baritone voiceover so trite it's almost believable. But the site and its associated social media accounts are, like Enron's balance sheets, mostly fiction. Unlike the Enron scandal, however, this one appears to be little more than performance art designed to sell branded hoodies. Publicly available documents show that an Akansas-based LLC called The College Company bought the Enron trademark for $275 in 2020... You can tab over to the site's "Company Store" page to browse a selection of Enron-branded hoodies ($118 before tax and shipping), puffer vests ($89), tees ($40) baseball hats ($40), beanies ($30) and water bottles emblazoned with the slogan "you've got great energy." Somewhere on the site CNN spotted a list of "key pillars" which included a commitment to "permissionless innovation," which CNN took to be "a nod that prompted some speculation online that the new 'Enron' would launch some kind of digital token." That phrase has apparently been changed now to "continuous innovation."An Enron-branded X account posted and later deleted a message teasing at a crypto offering, saying "we do not have any token or coin (yet). Stay tuned, we are excited to show you more soon." But sharp-eyed X.com users also found the key context to add: that the Terms of Use at Enron.com declare the site's information "is First Amendment-protected parody, represents performance art, and is for entertainment purposes only." Still, the site includes this testimonial from someone it says is a current employee. "Like many of my peers in the Enron family, I was skeptical at first. "Now, not only do I have complete confidence in the integrity of the company, I also genuinely believe that we are leading the way for a new chapter of American business."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

59-year-old Alex Mashinsky, the founder/former CEO of cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, "pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two counts of fraud," reports Reuters. He'd been indicted in July on seven counts of fraud, conspiracy and market manipulation charges, according to the article, and federal prosecutors in Manhattan "said he misled customers of Celsius to persuade them to invest, and artificially inflated the value of his company's proprietary crypto token."On Tuesday, during a hearing before U.S. District Judge John Koeltl, Mashinsky said he pleaded guilty to two out of the seven counts he was initially charged with: commodities fraud, and a fraudulent scheme to manipulate the price of CEL, Celsius' in-house token. In court, Mashinsky admitted to giving Celsius customers "false comfort" by giving an interview in 2021 in which he said Celsius had received approval from regulators for its "Earn" program, which it had not. That program offered to deploy customers' cryptocurrency assets to yield investment returns. He said he also failed to disclose that he had been selling his holdings of CEL, the platform's in-house token. "I know what I did was wrong, and I want to try to do whatever I can to make it right," Mashinsky said. As part of his plea deal with prosecutors, Mashinsky agreed not to appeal any sentence of 30 years or less - the maximum he faces for the two counts. Koeltl is set to sentence him on April 8, 2025. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have said Mashinsky also personally reaped approximately $42 million in proceeds from selling his holdings of the Cel token. "Mashinsky made tens of millions of dollars selling his own CEL at artificially high prices, while his customers were left holding the bag when the company went bankrupt," Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement on Tuesday... Founded in 2017, Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2022 after customers rushed to withdraw deposits as crypto prices fell. Many were initially unable to access their funds... Celsius' former chief revenue officer, Roni Cohen-Pavon, pleaded guilty in September 2023 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors' investigation. "The company exited bankruptcy on Jan. 31, and has pivoted to Bitcoin mining..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A ransomware attack on the multinational Stoli Group in August helped push two of the vodka-maker's U.S. subsidiaries into bankruptcy, according to the company's CEO. From a report: In a Texas bankruptcy court filing on November 29, CEO Chris Caldwell attributed a range of external factors to the financial woes of Stoli Group USA and Kentucky Owl (KO) -- which are facing $84 million in debt. But one of the most prominent was a ransomware attack this year that damaged the parent company's IT system. "In August 2024, the Stoli Group's IT infrastructure suffered severe disruption in the wake of a data breach and ransomware attack," Caldwell said in the filing. "The attack caused substantial operational issues throughout all companies within the Stoli Group, including Stoli USA and KO, due to the Stoli Group's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system being disabled and most of the Stoli Group's internal processes (including accounting functions) being forced into a manual entry mode." Caldwell said the systems will be restored aoeno earlier than in the first quarter of 2025.aRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta is using OpenAI's GPT-4 alongside its own Llama AI model in Metamate, an internal coding assistance tool, Fortune reported Tuesday. The dual-model approach has been in place since early 2024, despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg's public promotion of Llama as a leading AI model. Metamate, previously known as Code Compose, serves Meta's developers and employees with coding support. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Zuckerberg's philanthropic organization, is separately developing an educational AI tool using OpenAI's technology, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joining CZI's AI advisory board.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hyundai "just had its best sales month ever in the U.S.," reports ElectrekHyundai's impressive EV lineup is charging up demand, with its best-selling Hyundai IONIQ 5 SUV also setting a new U.S. record after sales more than doubled in November. With 76,008 vehicles sold in November, Hyundai's record-breaking U.S. sales streak is not slowing down. Hyundai Motor America CEO Randy Parker credited the growing demand for EVs and hybrid vehicles to the growth. Hyundai's EV sales rose 77% from last year, while hybrid sales surged 104%. Electrified retail sales (EV, PHEV, and hybrid models) climbed 92% in total last month. Several vehicles, including the Santa Fe HEV, Tucson PHEV, Tucson HEV, and IONIQ 5, had their best-ever sales month. The article also notes increasing sales for Hyundai's electric SUV, the IONIQ 5. Starting at $43,975 - and recently upgraded to a range of 245 miles (or 318 miles for the $46,550 extended-range model) - it features an NACS port for accessing Tesla's Supercharger network.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The long-running Advent of Code site just entered its 10th year, with 162,809 people completing both of its Day One puzzles (which involve a hunt for the missing historian of the North Pole).But its not the only site offering Christmas-themed programming puzzles:Hundreds of SQL lovers are trying the daily challenges from the "Advent of SQL" site.You can sign up for daily emails with webdev challenges from the Advent of JavaScript and Advent of CSS sites. The "Advent of No-Code" site challenges you to build something new every day using no-code tools like AI-powered dev environments or the social coding site Val Town. TryHackMe.com is publishing "beginner-friendly, daily gamified cyber security challenges" in an event they're calling the "Advent of Cyber."And Norway's biggest chess club (founded by world champion Magnus Carlsen) has even launched a site with daily chess puzzles called - what else? - Advent of Chess. (It promises at the end of the event someone will win a chessboard signed by Magnus Carlsen).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tuesday the Wikimedia Foundation released its annual list of the most-visited Wikipedia pages. (Scroll down to where it says "The full top 25"...) But while the top subjects seem to be politics and pop culture, CNN reports that in the end "a list of deaths in 2024 was the most visited page, garnering over 44 million views." A page about deaths in a given year has ranked at the top of the list five times since 2015, when the Wikimedia Foundation began releasing the data. The topic has never fallen below third place on the list. People also searched for U.S. political figures... [The #2, #3, #5, #7, and #9 most-visited pages were, respectively, for Kamala Harris, the 2024 United States presidential election, Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Project 2025.] While U.S. politics was a notable search subject, popular culture had the largest share of the top 25. The fourth most-visited page was about Lyle and Erik Menendez, the brothers who were sentenced to life in prison for the 1989 murder of their parents and are now facing a resentencing trial. The case received renewed public attention after a Netflix documentary was published this year. The Wikipedia page about the brothers received over 26 million views in 2024. The "Deadpool & Wolverine" and "Dune: Part Two" movies were eighth and 23rd, respectively... [Other high-ranking pop-culture pages included Taylor Swift (#11)and the 2024 Summer Olympics (#14).] "Wikipedia readers in India continue to make a big impact on the list, a trend we saw in 2023 as well," Wikimedia Foundation's Alikhan said. The Indian Premier League, a cricket league in India, garnered over 24.5 million views this year as the site's sixth most visited page... [The 2024 Indian general election came in at #10] Wikipedia's entry on ChatGPT came in at #12, while Elon Musk came in at #17. "When people want to learn about our world - the good, bad, weird, and wild alike - they turn to Wikipedia," explains the blog post from the Wikimedia Foundation, calling Wikipedia "the largest knowledge resource ever assembled in the history of the world" and "a reflection of all the people who live on our planet. its story is your story, your interests, your questions, and your curiosity." Other statistics about Wikipedia in 2024:Nearly 3.5 billion bytes of information were added this year via over 31 million edits.People spent an estimated 2.4 billion hours - nearly 275,000 years! - reading English Wikipedia in 2024, according to data from the Wikimedia Foundation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A handful of countries should be held legally responsible for the ongoing impacts of climate change, representatives of vulnerable states have told judges at the international court of justice (ICJ). From a report: During a hearing at the Peace Palace in The Hague, which began on Monday, Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu's special envoy for climate change and environment, said responsibility for the climate crisis lay squarely with "a handful of readily identifiable states" that had produced the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions but stood to lose the least from the impacts. The court heard how Pacific island states such as Vanuatu were bearing the brunt of rising sea levels and increasingly frequent and severe disasters. "We find ourselves on the frontlines of a crisis we did not create," Regenvanu said. The hearing is the culmination of years of campaigning by a group of Pacific island law students and diplomacy spearheaded by Vanuatu. In March last year the UN general assembly unanimously approved a resolution calling on the ICJ to provide an advisory opinion on what obligations states have to tackle climate change and what the legal consequences could be if they fail to do so. Over the next two weeks, the court will hear statements from 98 countries, including wealthy developed states with the greatest historical responsibility for the climate emergency, such as the UK and Russia, and states that have contributed very little to global greenhouse gas emissions but stand to bear the brunt of their impact, including Bangladesh and Sudan as well as Pacific island countries.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from NBC News:Amid an unprecedented cyberattack on telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon, U.S. officials have recommended that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to ensure their communications stay hidden from foreign hackers... In the call Tuesday, two officials - a senior FBI official who asked not to be named and Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency - both recommended using encrypted messaging apps to Americans who want to minimize the chances of China's intercepting their communications. "Our suggestion, what we have told folks internally, is not new here: Encryption is your friend, whether it's on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication. Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible," Greene said. The FBI official said, "People looking to further protect their mobile device communications would benefit from considering using a cellphone that automatically receives timely operating system updates, responsibly managed encryption and phishing resistant" multi-factor authentication for email, social media and collaboration tool accounts... The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies have a complicated relationship with encryption technology, historically advocating against full end-to-end encryption that does not allow law enforcement access to digital material even with warrants. But the FBI has also supported forms of encryption that do allow some law enforcement access in certain circumstances. Officials said the breach seems to include some live calls of specfic targets and also call records (showing numbers called and when). "The hackers focused on records around the Washington, D.C., area, and the FBI does not plan to alert people whose phone metadata was accessed." "The scope of the telecom compromise is so significant, Greene said, that it was 'impossible" for the agencies "to predict a time frame on when we'll have full eviction.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, appears to be signaling its intention to tackle daylight saving time. Musk has indicated support for ending semiannual clock changes in recent days on his social media platform X, sharing a poll showing majority opposition to the practice. DOGE co-head Ramaswamy also backed the stance, calling time changes "inefficient and easy to change." The initiative follows a failed 2022 legislative attempt, the Sunshine Protection Act, which passed the Senate but stalled in the House. The Department of Transportation, which oversees time changes, cannot alter the system without congressional action. Public sentiment appears to favor reform, with a 2022 YouGov poll showing two-thirds of Americans support ending time changes. Studies have linked the switches to increased rates of heart attacks and traffic accidents, while JPMorgan Chase research found the return to standard time reduces consumer spending by up to 4.9%. Several countries including Mexico, Russia, and Turkey have already discontinued daylight saving time, which originated during World War I as an energy conservation measure.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta is mistakenly removing too much content across its apps, according to a top executive. Nick Clegg, Meta's president of global affairs, told reporters on Monday that the company's moderation "error rates are still too high" and pledged to "improve the precision and accuracy with which we act on our rules." "We know that when enforcing our policies, our error rates are still too high, which gets in the way of the free expression that we set out to enable," Clegg said during a press call I attended. "Too often, harmless content gets taken down, or restricted, and too many people get penalized unfairly." He said the company regrets aggressively removing posts about the covid-19 pandemic. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee the decision was influenced by pressure from the Biden administration. "We had very stringent rules removing very large volumes of content through the pandemic," Clegg said. "No one during the pandemic knew how the pandemic was going to unfold, so this really is wisdom in hindsight. But with that hindsight, we feel that we overdid it a bit. We're acutely aware because users quite rightly raised their voice and complained that we sometimes over-enforce and we make mistakes and we remove or restrict innocuous or innocent content."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A new report suggests South Korea is the first country to have replaced 10% of its workforce with robots to tackle its shrinking population due to its low birth rate, reports Independent. For every 10,000 employees, South Korea now has 1,102 robots, making the country number one in the world in using technology instead of human labour to do tasks, according to the annual survey by World Robotics 2024. South Korea now has twice the number of robots working in its factories than any other country in the world. Only Singapore has been close to South Korea regarding robots, with 770 of such technology per 10,000 workers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel's board of directors ousted CEO Pat Gelsinger after losing confidence in his ambitious turnaround strategy. The move comes as Intel posted significant losses, including $16.6 billion in Q3 2024, its worst quarterly result ever. Under Gelsinger's leadership, Intel struggled to compete in the AI chip market dominated by Nvidia, while facing manufacturing challenges and declining data center revenue. Analysts suggest the board may be considering splitting off Intel's foundry business, though such a move could face scrutiny from the U.S. Commerce Department due to $8 billion in CHIPS Act funding. The Verge adds: But Moorhead and Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin both believe Gelsinger's departure was so sudden, it can't simply have been the straw that broke the camel's back. "There must have been a decision the board made that he was not going to stick around for," Moorhead tells me. His hunch: Intel's board may want to split off its foundry business entirely, above and beyond the spinoff that Gelsinger already announced, turning Intel into a company that simply designs chips like its direct rivals.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Walmart said Tuesday it had completed its $2.3 billion all-cash acquisition of TV maker Vizio, a move by the retailing giant to expand its advertising business. From a report: The closing of the deal follows the expiration of the waiting period under federal regulations. Walmart announced the deal to buy Vizio in February 2024. Walmart said the acquisition of Vizio will let it "bring to market new and differentiated ways for advertisers to meaningfully connect with customers at scale and boost product discovery" through Walmart Connect, the company's U.S. retail media business. Walmart and Vizio will continue to operate separately "for the foreseeable future," according to the announcement. William Wang will continue to lead Vizio as CEO, reporting to Seth Dallaire, executive VP and chief growth officer of Walmart U.S. Vizio, founded in 2002, is a leading vendor of value-priced HDTVs. Its device ecosystem and its smart TV operating system, SmartCast, provide free, ad-supported access to streaming content.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China-linked spies are still lurking inside U.S. telecommunications networks roughly six months after American officials started investigating the intrusions, senior officials told reporters Tuesday. From a report: This is the first time U.S. officials have confirmed reports that Salt Typhoon hackers still have access to critical infrastructure -- and they're proving difficult to kick out. Officials added that they don't yet know the full scope of the intrusions, despite starting the investigation in late spring. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and FBI released guidance Tuesday for the communications sector to harden their networks against Chinese state-sponsored hackers. The guide includes basic steps like maintaining logs of activity on the network, keeping an inventory of all devices in the telecom's environment and changing any default equipment passwords. The hack has given Salt Typhoon unprecedented access to records from U.S. telecommunications networks about who Americans are communicating with, a senior FBI official told reporters during a briefing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nature: Millions of research articles are absent from major digital archives. This worrying finding, which Nature reported on earlier this year, was laid bare in a study by Martin Eve, who studies technology and publishing at Birkbeck, University of London. Eve sampled more than seven million articles with unique digital object identifiers (DOIs), a string of characters used to identify and link to specific publications, such as scholarly articles and official reports. Of these, he found that more than two million were 'missing' from archives -- that is, they were not preserved in major archives that ensure literature can be found in the future. Eve, who is also a research developer at Crossref, an organization that registers DOIs, carried out the study in an effort to better understand a problem librarians and archivists already knew about -- that although researchers are generating knowledge at an unprecedented rate, it is not necessarily being stored safely for the future. One contributing factor is that not all journals or scholarly societies survive in perpetuity. For example, a 2021 study found that a lack of comprehensive and open archiving meant that 174 open-access journals, covering all major research topics and geographical regions, vanished from the web in the first two decades of this millennium. A lack of long-term archiving particularly affects institutions in low- and middle-income countries, less-affluent institutions in rich countries and smaller, under-resourced journals worldwide. Yet it's not clear whether researchers, institutions and governments have fully taken the problem on board. [...] At the heart of the problem is a lack of money, infrastructure and expertise to archive digital resources. [...] For institutions that can afford it, one solution is to pay a preservation archive to safeguard content. Examples include Portico, based in New York City, and CLOCKSS, based in Stanford, California, both of which count a raft of publishers and libraries as customers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More Americans are looking to switch jobs than at any point in the past decade. In a cooling job market, that's a lot easier said than done. From a report: White-collar hiring continues to slow, but workers' restlessness to find new work is intensifying, new Gallup data show. More than half of 20,000 U.S. workers surveyed in November said they were watching for or actively seeking a new job. That's the largest share since 2015, eclipsing the so-called Great Resignation of 2021 and 2022, when millions of people quit jobs for better ones. The result? Job satisfaction has fallen to its lowest level in recent years as employees feel more stuck -- and frustrated -- where they are, according to Gallup, whose quarterly surveys are widely viewed as a bellwether of workplace sentiment. Smaller raises and fewer promotions are spurring some of the discontent, workers say. So are cost-cutting moves and stepped-up requirements to be working in offices more often.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon's data centers could soon double as carbon capture machines, offsetting the harmful effects of the massive amounts of energy required to run them. From a report: Amazon Web Services is partnering with startup Orbital Materials, which used artificial intelligence to create a new material specifically designed for separating carbon from hot air exhaust in data centers, the companies announced Monday. Orbital Materials CEO Jonathan Godwin said he expects AWS to capture enough carbon to exceed the fossil fuel consumption used to power its AI data centers, giving them a net negative impact on climate change. The process will cost less than purchasing captured carbon to offset its climate impact, according to Godwin. The system, part of a pilot program at a to-be-determined data center location, works when outside air is sucked in and used to cool extremely hot semiconductors designed to run or train powerful AI models, such as Anthropic's Claude chatbot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced sweeping action against some of the most important companies in the location data industry, including those that power surveillance tools used by a wide spread of U.S. law enforcement agencies and demanding they delete data related to certain sensitive areas like health clinics and places of worship. From a report: Venntel, through its parent company Gravy Analytics, takes location data from smartphones, either through ordinary apps installed on them or through the advertising ecosystem, and then provides that data feed to other companies who sell location tracking technology to the government or sells the data directly itself. Venntel is the company that provides the underlying data for a variety of other government contractors and surveillance tools, including Locate X. 404 Media and a group of other journalists recently revealed Locate X could be used to pinpoint phones that visited abortion clinics. The FTC says in a proposed order that Gravy and Venntel will be banned from selling, disclosing, or using sensitive location data, except in "limited circumstances" involving national security or law enforcement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MojoKid writes: Intel officially revealed its next generation discrete graphics cards, code named Battlemage, this morning. There are two midrange cards in the series so far, branded Arc B580 and Arc B570, though future higher-end B700 series cards are unknown currently. The graphics architecture for Battlemage is Xe2, and it debuted in the iGPU on Lunar Lake Core Ultra 200V mobile processors earlier this year. Arc B580 is paired to 12GB of GDDR6 memory operating at an effective data rate of 19Gbps over a 192-bit interface, and its average GPU clock should hover around 2,670MHz. The Arc B570 is based on the same slice of silicon, but scales things down with 10GB of GDDR6 memory operating at the same speed as the B580, but connected over a narrower 160-bit interface. The B570's average GPU clock will also be lower, in the 2,500MHz range. Performance-wise, Intel is projecting that Arc B580 will be about 10% faster than an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 on average but will be priced at $249 USD, undercutting GeForce RTX 4060 substantially while offering 4GB more onboard graphics memory. Arc B580 cards are due to arrive in market this month, with Arc B570 arriving in January 2025 at $219 USD.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Major U.S. corporations have eliminated thousands of middle management positions over the past two years in a widespread restructuring trend, with no signs of rehiring, according to workforce data from Revelio Labs. Job postings for middle management roles remained 42% below April 2022 levels in October, even as hiring rebounded for other positions. Meta, Citigroup, UPS, and Amazon have all reduced management layers or increased worker-to-supervisor ratios, citing efficiency goals. Middle managers accounted for 32% of layoffs in 2023, up from 20% in 2019, Live Data Technologies reports. Displaced supervisors, typically in their late 40s to 50s, face limited job prospects as companies permanently eliminate these positions rather than temporarily freezing hiring, Business Insider reports.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The cyber risks facing the United Kingdom are being "widely underestimated," the country's new cyber chief will warn on Tuesday as he launches the National Cyber Security Centre's (NCSC) annual review. From a report: In his first major speech since joining the NCSC -- part of the signals and cyber intelligence agency GCHQ -- Richard Horne will drive a shift in tone in how the cybersecurity agency communicates these risks. Despite some evidence showing cyberattacks growing year-on-year for half a decade, the NCSC has not previously confirmed the trend nor expressed alarm about it. "What has struck me more forcefully than anything else since taking the helm at the NCSC is the clearly widening gap between the exposure and threat we face, and the defences that are in place to protect us," Horne will say, according to an advance preview of his speech on Tuesday. Citing the intelligence that NCSC has access to as an agency within GCHQ, Horne will warn that "hostile activity in UK cyberspace has increased in frequency, sophistication and intensity," adding that despite growing activity from Russian and Chinese threat actors, the agency believes British society as a whole is failing to appreciate the severity of the risk. The annual review reveals that the agency's incident management team handled a record number of cyber incidents over the past 12 months -- 430 compared to 371 last year -- 89 of which were considered nationally significant incidents.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India, the world's fifth-largest economy, is offering the heftiest electric vehicle subsidies globally -- yet has achieved just 2% market penetration so far. From a report: India's total EV subsidies amount to 40-50% of vehicle prices when accounting for GST (goods and services tax), road tax benefits, state subsidies and production-linked incentives. For larger vehicles like the Grand Vitara, the effective subsidy reaches 61%. This dwarfs incentives in other major markets. China's subsidies represent about 10% of EV prices, while South Korea and Germany offer around 16-20%. The US provides roughly 26% through various federal and state programs. Yet India's EV penetration significantly lags these markets. China has reached 24% penetration, South Korea 18%, Germany 20%, and the US 8%. India's 2% looks particularly stark in comparison.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China banned exports of minerals and metals used in semiconductor manufacturing and military applications to the United States on Tuesday, escalating tensions in the growing technology trade war between the world's two largest economies. The commerce ministry halted shipments of gallium, germanium, antimony and related compounds, citing national security concerns. These materials are crucial components in advanced electronics and military hardware, with China controlling 98% of global gallium production and 60% of germanium output, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. The move comes in direct response to Washington's new restrictions on semiconductor exports to China, including controls on high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI systems and limits on manufacturing equipment sales.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mirnotoriety writes: Amid the growing warmth and increasingly volatile weather of an approaching summer, Australia passed a remarkable milestone this week. The number of homes and businesses with a solar installation clicked past 4 million -- barely 20 years since there was practically none anywhere in the country. It is a love affair that shows few signs of stopping. And it's a technology that is having ever greater effects, not just on the bills of its household users but on the very energy system itself. At no time of the year is that effect more obvious than spring, when solar output soars as the days grow longer and sunnier but demand remains subdued as mild temperatures mean people leave their air conditioners switched off. Such has been the extraordinary production of solar in Australia this spring, the entire state of South Australia has -- at various times -- met all of its electricity needs from the technology. [...] [T]here is, at times, too much solar power in Australia's electricity systems to handle.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has integrated Apple Pay into its Onramp service, enabling third-party apps to offer direct cryptocurrency purchases through Apple's payment system. The move significantly streamlines the traditionally complex process of converting traditional currencies to cryptocurrencies, eliminating multiple steps and extra fees previously required. It also marks a notable shift in Apple's historically cautious stance toward cryptocurrency, following years of restricting crypto-related features and removing major exchanges from its App Store in certain markets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India has struck a landmark $715 million deal with 30 global academic publishers to provide nationwide free access to nearly 13,000 research journals. The "One Nation One Subscription" initiative, launching January 2025, will benefit an estimated 18 million students and researchers. The agreement, which surpasses similar arrangements in Germany and the UK, marks a significant shift in India's academic publishing landscape, despite the country's position as the world's third-largest producer of research papers. Science magazine: India's is expected to encompass some 6300 government-funded institutions, which produce almost half the country's research papers. Currently, only about 2300 of these institutions have subscriptions to 8000 journals. Under the new arrangement, "universities that aren't so well funded, and can't afford many journals, will gain," said Aniket Sule of the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. Specialist institutes that only subscribe to journals relevant to their field will benefit from accessing work outside their silos, he added. Colleges that want to subscribe to journals not included under this initiative can use their own funds to do so. Some part of the $715 million will cover the fees some journals charge to publish papers open access, making them immediately free to read by anyone worldwide when published, Madalli told Science. Details of that component have not been worked out yet, but the amount will be calculated based on the country's current spending on these fees, known as article-processing charges (APCs), which are paid by authors or their institutions, Madalli says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 writes: Recruiters approach students with tempting offers, often after observing them for weeks. Promising salaries of over $800 per month -- double the average pay for chemists in Mexican companies, along with potential bonuses like cars or housing -- recruiters capitalize on the financial struggles of young professionals. These "cooks" are tasked with improving fentanyl's addictive quality and finding alternative synthesis methods to mitigate supply chain disruptions caused by stricter chemical export controls from China and pandemic-induced bottlenecks. The Times interviewed seven drug "cooks," three university chemistry students recruited by the Sinaloa cartel, two agents, a recruiter, and a university professor -- all anonymously to avoid cartel retaliation. According to the recruiter, candidates must be passionate, discreet, and indifferent to the ethical consequences of their work. The university professor highlighted a disturbing trend: students openly expressed interest in synthesizing illicit drugs during lectures.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RTFKT, the NFT project most known for its attempt at making "digital shoes" a thing, is shutting down, according to a statement on Monday. From a report: The project, acquired by athletic wear juggernaut Nike in 2021 for an undisclosed sum, plans to fully unwind by the end of January, though its Ethereum-based tokens will remain accessible. Launched in 2020 amid the beginnings of the mania around NFTs and the metaverse, RTFKT quickly garnered a reputation as a fast-moving startup. It spun up "drops" with brands, including Nike, and collaborated with the likes of sneaker designer Jeff Staple and Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Companies have been discussing migrating off of VMware since Broadcom's takeover a year ago led to higher costs and other controversial changes. Now we have an inside look at one of the larger customers that recently made the move. According to a report from The Register today, Beeks Group, a cloud operator headquartered in the United Kingdom, has moved most of its 20,000-plus virtual machines (VMs) off VMware and to OpenNebula, an open source cloud and edge computing platform. Beeks Group sells virtual private servers and bare metal servers to financial service providers. It still has some VMware VMs, but "the majority" of its machines are currently on OpenNebula, The Register reported. Beeks' head of production management, Matthew Cretney, said that one of the reasons for Beeks migration was a VMware bill for "10 times the sum it previously paid for software licenses," per The Register. According to Beeks, OpenNebula has enabled the company to dedicate more of its 3,000 bare metal server fleet to client loads instead of to VM management, as it had to with VMware. With OpenNebula purportedly requiring less management overhead, Beeks is reporting a 200 percent increase in VM efficiency since it now has more VMs on each server.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. movie theaters are struggling to attract casual moviegoers, who once made up a significant portion of box office revenues, as shorter theatrical runs and changing consumer habits reshape the industry. The domestic box office, which regularly exceeded $10 billion in annual ticket sales before COVID-19, is expected to reach only $8.5 billion this year. Films now average 32 days in theaters compared to 80 days pre-pandemic, limiting opportunities for audiences to discover movies spontaneously. Midtier films generating $50-100 million at the box office have become scarcer, particularly in genres like drama and romantic comedy. Theater chains are responding with enhanced experiences and loyalty programs to draw audiences back. "It's fair to say there is a missing billion dollars that, if we had the right movies, people would be going to see them," said Bruce Nash, founder of movie business site the Numbers, told LA Times. Frequent moviegoers comprise only 12-15% of box office revenue, according to Patrick Corcoran of theater consulting firm Fithian Group.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Getty Images CEO has criticized AI companies' stance on copyright, particularly pushing back against claims that all web content is fair use for AI training. The statement comes amid Getty's ongoing litigation against Stability AI for allegedly using millions of Getty-owned images without permission to train its Stable Diffusion model, launched in August 2022. Acknowledging AI's potential benefits in areas like healthcare and climate change, Getty's chief executive argued against the industry's "all-or-nothing" approach to copyright. He specifically challenged Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's assertion that web content has been "freeware" since the 1990s. The Getty chief advocated for applying fair use principles case-by-case, distinguishing between AI models for scientific advancement and commercial content generation. He also drew parallels to music streaming's evolution from Napster to licensed platforms like Spotify, suggesting AI companies could develop similar permission-based models. He adds: As litigation slowly advances, AI companies advance an argument that there will be no AI absent the ability to freely scrape content for training, resulting in our inability to leverage the promise of AI to solve cancer, mitigate global climate change, and eradicate global hunger. Note that the companies investing in and building AI spend billions of dollars on talent, GPUs, and the required power to train and run these models -- but remarkably claim compensation for content owners is an unsurmountable challenge. My focus is to achieve a world where creativity is celebrated and rewarded AND a world that is without cancer, climate change, and global hunger. I want the cake and to eat it. I suspect most of us want the same.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oxford University Press: Following a public vote in which more than 37,000 people had their say, we're pleased to announce that the Oxford Word of the Year for 2024 is 'brain rot.' Our language experts created a shortlist of six words to reflect the moods and conversations that have helped shape the past year. After two weeks of public voting and widespread conversation, our experts came together to consider the public's input, voting results, and our language data, before declaring 'brain rot' as the definitive Word of the Year for 2024. 'Brain rot' is defined as "the supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration." Our experts noticed that 'brain rot' gained new prominence this year as a term used to capture concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media. The term increased in usage frequency by 230% between 2023 and 2024.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: ChatGPT users have spotted an unusual glitch that prevents the AI chatbot from saying the name 'David Mayer.' OpenAI's hugely popular AI tool responds to requests to write the name with an error message, stating: "I'm unable to produce a response." The chat thread is then ended, with people forced to open a new chat window in order to keep interacting with ChatGPT.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new lawsuit filed by a current Apple employee accuses the company of spying on its workers via their personal iCloud accounts and non-work devices. From a report: The suit, filed Sunday evening in California state court, alleges Apple employees are required to give up the right to personal privacy, and that the company says it can "engage in physical, video and electronic surveillance of them" even when they are at home and after they stop working for Apple. Those requirements are part of a long list of Apple employment policies that the suit contends violate California law. The plaintiff in the case, Amar Bhakta, has worked in advertising technology for Apple since 2020. According to the suit, Apple used its privacy policies to harm his employment prospects. For instance, it forbade Bhakta from participating in public speaking about digital advertising and forced him to remove information from his LinkedIn page about his job at Apple.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has stepped down amid the company's continued struggles against rivals, with shares losing over half their value this year. The chipmaker announced Monday that Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner and Executive Vice President Michelle Johnston Holthaus will serve as interim co-CEOs while the board searches for a permanent replacement. Gelsinger, 63, was hired in 2021 to lead an ambitious turnaround aimed at reclaiming Intel's technological edge from competitors like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. His strategy included expanding Intel's factory network with new facilities in Ohio and transforming the company into a contract manufacturer for other firms. The plan faced significant headwinds as Nvidia dominated the AI chip market, with cloud computing companies increasingly favoring Nvidia's processors for AI development over Intel's Gaudi line. Intel's challenges culminated in an August earnings report showing a surprise loss, leading to dividend suspension and plans to cut over 15% of its 110,000-person workforce. Board Chairman Frank Yeary, now serving as interim executive chair, emphasized the need to prioritize Intel's product group to meet customer demands. The leadership change also impacts the Biden administration's semiconductor industry initiatives, as Intel was set to receive the largest grant under the $39 billion Chips Act program. Multiple news outlets including Bloomberg and Reuters report that Gelsinger was forced out by the board because "directors felt Gelsinger's costly and ambitious plan to turn Intel around was not working and the progress of change was not fast enough."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China has overtaken the United States as the dominant force in critical technology research, according to a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The study found China now leads in 57 of 64 critical technologies, up from just three technologies in 2003-2007, while U.S. leadership dropped from 60 to seven technologies over the same period. China has made significant gains in quantum sensors, high-performance computing, and semiconductor chip manufacturing. The U.S. maintains its edge in quantum computing, vaccines, and natural language processing. The report identified 24 technologies at "high risk" of Chinese monopoly, including radar, advanced aircraft engines, and drone technology - nearly double from last year's assessment. India has also emerged as a rising power, ranking among the top five countries in 45 technologies and displacing the U.S. for second place in biological manufacturing and distributed ledgers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bluesky says it will never train generative AI on its users' data. But despite that, "one million public Bluesky posts - complete with identifying user information - were crawled and then uploaded to AI company Hugging Face," reports Mashable (citing an article by 404 Media). "Shortly after the article's publication, the dataset was removed from Hugging Face," the article notes, with the scraper at Hugging Face posting an apology. "While I wanted to support tool development for the platform, I recognize this approach violated principles of transparency and consent in data collection. I apologize for this mistake." But TechCrunch noted the incident's real lesson. "Bluesky's open API means anyone can scrape your data for AI training," calling it a timely reminder that everything you post on Bluesky is public.Bluesky might not be training AI systems on user content as other social networks are doing, but there's little stopping third parties from doing so... Bluesky said that it's looking at ways to enable users to communicate their consent preferences externally, [but] the company posted: "Bluesky won't be able to enforce this consent outside of our systems. It will be up to outside developers to respect these settings. We're having ongoing conversations with engineers & lawyers and we hope to have more updates to share on this shortly!" Mashable notes Bluesky's response to 404Media - that Bluesky is like a website, and "Just as robots.txt files don't always prevent outside companies from crawling those sites, the same applies here." So "While many commentators said that data collection should be opt in, others argued that Bluesky data is publicly available anyway and so the dataset is fair use," according to SiliconRepublic.com.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's FBI "has been investigating a longtime Exxon Mobil consultant," reports Reuters, "over the contractor's alleged role in a hack-and-leak operation that targeted hundreds of the oil company's biggest critics, according to three people familiar with the matter."The operation involved mercenary hackers who successfully breached the email accounts of environmental activists and others, the sources told Reuters. The scheme allegedly began in late 2015, when U.S. authorities contend that the names of the hacking targets were compiled by the DCI Group, a public affairs and lobbying company working for Exxon at the time, one of the sources said. DCI provided the names to an Israeli private detective, who then outsourced the hacking, according to the source. In an effort to push a narrative that Exxon was the target of a political vendetta aimed at destroying its business, some of the stolen material was subsequently leaked to the media by DCI, Reuters determined. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found that DCI shared the information with Exxon before leaking it, the source said. Some environmental activists interviewed by Reuters say the hacking operation disrupted preparations for lawsuits by cities and state attorneys general against Exxon and other energy companies... The stolen material continues to be used today to counter litigation claiming the oil giant misled the public and its investors about the risks of climate change... The investigation into the hack-and-leak operation comes amid growing concern among law enforcement agencies worldwide about how such cyberespionage schemes threaten to taint judicial proceedings. The FBI has been investigating the broader use of mercenary hackers to tamper with lawsuits since early 2018, Reuters has previously reported. The Israeli private detective hired by DCI, Amit Forlit, was arrested this year at London's Heathrow Airport and is fighting extradition to the United States on charges of hacking and wire fraud... Federal prosecutors have secured a related conviction: that of Forlit's former business associate, private investigator Aviram Azari. Azari pleaded guilty in 2022 to wire fraud, conspiracy to commit hacking and aggravated identity theft, which included targeting the environmental activists.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"If NASA establishes a permanent presence on the moon, its astronauts' homes could be made of a new 3D-printable, waterless concrete," writes MIT Technology Review. "Someday, so might yours. "By accelerating the curing process for more rapid construction, this sulfur-based compound could become just as applicable on our home terrain as it is on lunar soil..."Building a home base on the moon will demand a steep supply of moon-based infrastructure: launch pads, shelter, and radiation blockers. But shipping Earth-based concrete to the lunar surface bears a hefty price tag. Sending just 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of material to the moon costs roughly $1.2 million, says Ali Kazemian, a robotic construction researcher at Louisiana State University (LSU). Instead, NASA hopes to create new materials from lunar soil and eventually adapt the same techniques for building on Mars. Traditional concrete requires large amounts of water, a commodity that will be in short supply on the moon and critically important for life support or scientific research, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. While prior NASA projects have tested compounds that could be used to make "lunarcrete," they're still working to craft the right waterless material. So LSU researchers are refining the formula, developing a new cement based on sulfur, which they heat until it's molten to bind material without the need for water. In recent work, the team mixed their waterless cement with simulated lunar and Martian soil to create a 3D-printable concrete, which they used to assemble walls and beams. "We need automated construction, and NASA thinks 3D printing is one of the few viable technologies for building lunar infrastructure," says Kazemian. Beyond circumventing the need for water, the cement can handle wider temperature extremes and cures faster than traditional methods. The group used a pre-made powder for their experiments, but on the moon and Mars, astronauts might extract sulfur from surface soil. Kazemian and his colleagues recently transferred the technology to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center for further testing...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters:The rapid increase in satellites and space junk will make low Earth orbit unusable unless companies and countries cooperate and share the data needed to manage that most accessible region of space, experts and industry insiders said. A United Nations panel on space traffic coordination in late October determined that urgent action was necessary and called for a comprehensive shared database of orbital objects as well as an international framework to track and manage them. More than 14,000 satellites including some 3,500 inactive surround the globe in low Earth orbit, showed data from U.S.-based Slingshot Aerospace. Alongside those are about 120 million pieces of debris from launches, collisions and wear-and-tear of which only a few thousand are large enough to track... [T]here is no centralised system that all space-faring nations can leverage and even persuading them to use such a system has many obstacles. Whereas some countries are willing to share data, others fear compromising security, particularly as satellites are often dual-use and include defence purposes. Moreover, enterprises are keen to guard commercial secrets. In the meantime, the mess multiplies. A Chinese rocket stage exploded in August, adding thousands of fragments of debris to low Earth orbit. In June, a defunct Russian satellite exploded, scattering thousands of shards which forced astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter for an hour... Projections point to tens of thousands more satellites entering orbit in the coming years. The potential financial risk of collisions is likely to be $556 million over five years, based on a modelled scenario with a 3.13% annual collision probability and $111 million in yearly damages, said Montreal-based NorthStar Earth & Space... [Aarti Holla-Maini, director of the U.N . Office for Outer Space Affairs], said the October panel aimed to bring together public- and private-sector experts to outline steps needed to start work on coordination. It will present its findings at a committee meeting next year. Global cooperation is essential to developing enforceable rules akin to those used by the International Civil Aviation Organization for air traffic, industry experts told Reuters. Such effort would involve the use of existing tools, such as databases, telescopes, radars and other sensors to track objects while improving coverage, early detection and data precision. Yet geopolitical tension and reluctance to share data with nations deemed unfriendly as well as commercial concerns over protecting proprietary information and competitive advantages remain significant barriers. That leaves operators of orbital equipment relying on informal or semi-formal methods of avoiding collisions, such as drawing on data from the U.S. Space Force or groups like the Space Data Association. However, this can involve issues such as accountability and inconsistent data standards. "The top challenges are speed - as consensus-building takes time - and trust," Holla-Maini said. "Some countries simply can't communicate with others, but the U.N. can facilitate this process. Speed is our biggest enemy, but there's no alternative. It must be done." Data from Slingshot Aerospace shows a 17% rise in close approaches per satellite over the past year, according to the article. (It adds that SpaceX data "showed Starlink satellites performed nearly 50,000 collision-avoidance manoeuvres in the first half of 2024, about double the previous six months...) The European Space Agency, which has fewer spacecraft than SpaceX, said in 2021 its manoeuvres have increased to three or four times per craft versus a historical average of one."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader sciencehabit writes:Most orange cats are boys, a quirk of feline genetics that also explains why almost all calicos and tortoiseshells are girls. Scientists curious about those sex differences-or perhaps just cat lovers-have spent more than 60 years unsuccessfully seeking the gene that causes orange fur and the striking patchwork of colors in calicos and tortoiseshells. Now, two teams have independently found the long-awaited mutation and discovered a protein that influences hair color in a way never seen before in any animal... Using skin samples collected from various cats, the researchers were able to hone in a mutation on the X chromosome that impacts how much of a protein a gene called Arhgap36 produces. Increasing the amount of the Arhgap36 in pigment producing cells called melanocytes activates a molecular pathway that produces a light red pigment. "Scanning a database of 188 cat genomes, Barsh's team found every single orange, calico, and tortoiseshell cat had the exact same mutation," writes Science magazine. "The group reports the discovery this month on the preprint server bioRxiv. A separate study, also posted to bioRxiv this month, confirms these findings... They also found that skin from calico cats had more Arghap36 RNA in orange regions than in brown or black regions."Arhgap36's inactivation pattern in calicos and tortoiseshells is typical of a gene on the X chromosome, says Carolyn Brown [a University of British Columbia geneticist who was not involved in either study], but it's unusual that a deletion mutation would make a gene more active, not less. "There is probably something special about cats." Experts are thrilled by the two studies. "It's a long-awaited gene," says Leslie Lyons, a feline geneticist at the University of Missouri. The discovery of a new molecular pathway for hair color was unexpected, she says, but she's not surprised how complex the interactions seem to be. "No gene ever stands by itself." Lyons would like to know where and when the mutation first appeared: There is some evidence, she says, that certain mummified Egyptian cats were orange. Research into cat color has revealed all kinds of phenomena, she says, including how the environment influences gene expression. "Everything you need to know about genetics you can learn from your cat."Read more of this story at Slashdot.