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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Kotaku, written by Luke Plunkett: RPCS3, an emulator I've been writing about since 2016, but which first began in 2011, has come along way since it made its first tentative steps towards making PS3 games playable on a PC. From those humble beginnings, the team behind it have just announced a huge milestone: everything ever released on the PS3 will now boot up. Earlier today the RPCS3 team tweeted: "We're delighted to announce that RPCS3 now has a total of ZERO games in the Nothing status! This means that all known games and applications at least boot on the emulator, with no on-going regressions that prevent games from booting. We look forward to emptying out Loadable too!" There have been over 6,000 games and programs tracked over the emulator's lifespan, so to get every single one of them to some degree of booting up is an incredible achievement. It's important to note, though, that of the emulator's five tiers of playability, only one -- "Playable" -- is worth your time. The others are saddled with huge numbers of glitches, performance issues, or simply the fact they refuse to load past the title screens. [...] As of today, 63.53% of PS3 games are "playable" on the emulator, which means 36.47% are not; still a hugely impressive number, but just something to bear in mind!Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just when some wireless carriers were trying to move away from phone giveways, T-Mobile upped the ante on Thursday with a deal offering new customers as much as $1,000 if they switch. From a report: The second-largest U.S. wireless carrier said that starting Friday consumers who bring a bill from their current provider to a T-Mobile store can get a prepaid debit card for any remaining amount owed on their phone, up to $1,000. Rivals AT&T and Verizon reported stronger-than-expected subscriber gains this week after using phone giveaways to help prime the pump in the third quarter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AMD and Microsoft have issued patches to address the slowdowns reported with Ryzen processors when Windows 11 launched. Engadget reports: The latest chipset driver (version 3.10.08.506) should take care of the UEFI CPPC2 issue, which in some cases didn't "preferentially schedule threads on a processor's fastest core," AMD said. That could have slowed down apps that are sensitive to CPU thread performance. AMD noted that the problem was likely more noticeable in more powerful processors with more than eight cores and 65W or higher Thermal Design Power (TDP). Meanwhile, Microsoft is rolling out a software update tackling a bug that increased L3 cache latency. The issue impacted apps that need quick memory access, which in turn caused CPUs to slow down by up to 15 percent. The patch, Windows 11 update KB5006746, will be available starting today, but at the time of writing, a page containing instructions for installing it isn't yet live. You should be able to install it via Windows Update too.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dutch paint maker Akzo is running out of ingredients to make some shades of blue, the latest fallout from the global supply-chain disruptions that are spreading across manufacturers. From a report: "There is one basic color tint that is extremely difficult to get," Chief Executive Officer Thierry Vanlancker said in an interview Wednesday after publishing third-quarter earnings. "It's creating complete chaos." In addition to the bluish hue, Akzo Nobel is having trouble sourcing the tinplate used to make metal cans, forcing the Amsterdam-based company to ship empty pots from one country to another for filling. It also called a force majeure on deliveries of some exterior wall paints because an additive needed to make them waterproof is unavailable. The supply-chain snarls that have sown disarray across industries are raising prices and creating shortages of some basic household products. Paint makers, which typically rely on hundreds of additives and chemicals, have warned for months of higher costs and logistical issues. Akzo Nobel earlier Wednesday said the spiraling costs and materials shortages will last through the middle of next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Food and Drug Administration approved a virtual reality-based treatment for children with the visual disorder amblyopia, or lazy eye, the company behind the therapy announced today. The Verge reports: Luminopia's approach uses TV and movies to develop the weaker eye and train the eyes to work together. Patients watch the show or movie through a headset that shows the images to each eye separately. The images shown to the stronger eye have a lower contrast, and the images are presented with overlays that force the brain to use both eyes to see them properly. Kids using the therapy and wearing glasses had more improvement in their vision than a similar group of kids who did not use the therapy and just wore corrective glasses full time during a clinical trial of the technology. After 12 weeks watching the shows one hour per day, six days per week, 62 percent of kids using the treatment had a strong improvement in their vision. Only around a third of the kids in the comparison group had similar improvements over the course of the 12 weeks. Luminopia has over 700 hours of programming in its library, and it partnered with kids' content distributors like Nelvana and Sesame Workshop to develop the tool. The authors of the clinical trial wrote that they think that the option to pick popular videos might be one reason users stuck to the program -- people followed the treatment plan 88 percent of the time. Less than 50 percent of patients stick to eye patches or blurring drops. With the approval, Luminopia joins only a handful of companies with clearance to offer a digital therapeutic as a prescription treatment for medical conditions. Last year, the FDA approved a prescription video game called EndeavorRx, which treats ADHD in kids between eight and 12 years old. Luminopia said in a statement that it plans to launch the treatment in 2022.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Responding to a growing controversy over investing practices, the Federal Reserve announced Thursday a wide-ranging ban on officials owning individual stocks and bonds and limits on other activities as well. The ban includes top policymakers such as those who sit on the Federal Open Market Committee, along with senior staff. Future investments will have to be confined to diversified assets such as mutual funds. Fed officials can no longer have holdings in shares of particular companies, nor can they invest in individual bonds, hold agency securities or derivative contracts. The new rules replace existing regulations that, while somewhat restrictive, still allowed officials such as regional presidents to buy and sell stocks. "These tough new rules raise the bar high in order to assure the public we serve that all of our senior officials maintain a single-minded focus on the public mission of the Federal Reserve," Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in a statement. Under the new rules, the officials will have to provide 45 days' notice in advance of buying or selling any securities that are still allowed. They also will be required to hold the securities for at least a year, and they cannot buy or sell funds during "heightened financial market stress," a news release announcing the moves said. "I'm hopeful that swift action will allow us to put this behind us and get us back focused on the job ahead," Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic told CNBC during a "Closing Bell" interview.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Almost two years after a wave of complaints flooded Google's support forums about YouTube accounts getting hijacked even if users had two-factor authentication enabled, Google's security team has finally tracked down the root cause of these attacks. From a report: In a report published today, the Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG) attributed these incidents to "a group of hackers recruited in a Russian-speaking forum." TAG said the hackers operated by reaching out to victims via email with various types of business opportunities. YouTubers were typically lured with potential sponsorship deals. Victims were asked to install and test various applications and then publish a review. Apps typically used in these schemes involved antivirus software, VPN clients, music players, photo editors, PC optimizers, or online games. But unbeknownst to the targets, the hackers hid malware inside the apps. Once the YouTube creators received and installed the demo app, the installer would drop malware on their devices, malware which would extract login credentials and authentication cookies from their browsers and send the stolen data to a remote server. The hackers would then use the authentication cookies to access a YouTuber's account -- bypassing the need to enter a two-factor authentication (2FA) token -- and move to change passwords and the account's recovery email and phone numbers. With the victims locked out of their accounts, the hackers would typically sell the hijacked YouTube channel on underground marketplaces for stolen identities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Twitter is publicly sharing research findings today that show that the platform's algorithms amplify tweets from right-wing politicians and content from right-leaning news outlets more than people and content from the political left. From a report: The research did not identify whether or not the algorithms that run Twitter's Home feed are actually biased toward conservative political content, because the conclusions only show bias in amplification, not what caused it. Rumman Chowdhury, the head of Twitter's machine learning, ethics, transparency and accountability team, called it "the what, not the why" in an interview with Protocol. "We can see that it is happening. We are not entirely sure why it is happening. To be clear, some of it could be user-driven, people's actions on the platform, we are not sure what it is. It's just important that we share this information," Chowdhury said. The META team plans to conduct what she called a "root-cause analysis" to try to discover the "why," and that analysis will likely include creating testable hypotheses about how people use the platform that could help show whether it's the way users interact with Twitter or the algorithm itself that is causing this uneven amplification. Twitter didn't define for itself what news outlets and politicians are "right-leaning" or belong to right-wing political parties, instead using definitions from other researchers outside the company. The study looked at millions of tweets from politicians across seven countries and hundreds of millions of tweets of links from news outlets, not tweets from the outlets themselves.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is not primarily known as a logistics company, but in 2020 the company shipped more parcels than FedEx. From a report: Logistics is a $1.5 trillion business -- and it has long been controlled by a handful of key players, like FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service. Now Amazon is poised to conquer it. Amazon has 21% of the U.S. shipping market -- right behind UPS (24%) and ahead of FedEx (16%). The USPS remains dominant with 38%, and all other shippers account for just 1% of the market, according to Pitney Bowes, which tracks the global shipping and e-commerce industry. Amazon's rise is remarkable, as it had zero share of the U.S. shipping market as recently as 2014, and it relied on legacy shippers like FedEx and UPS for all of its deliveries. Since then, Amazon has poured resources into building a network of warehouses, trucks, planes and delivery drivers. As it strengthened its own shipping arm, Amazon took its business away from the other shippers. Now, the company is turning shipping from a cost to a source of revenue by offering its logistics capabilities as a service.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gov. Mike Parson escalated his war with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Wednesday when his political operation published a video doubling down on his attack against a reporter who informed the state that a state website revealed teacher Social Security numbers. From a report: The video is produced by Uniting Missouri, a political action committee created by Parson supporters to back his 2020 election campaign. The PAC continues to raise and spend large sums of money to promote Parson's political agenda. It operates without direct input from Parson on its activities. "The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is purely playing politics," the ad states. "Exploiting personal information is a squalid excuse for journalism." The ad comes less than a week after Parson's widely criticized demand for an investigation and prosecution of the reporter who discovered the security flaw in a state website, along with "all those involved." Parson read a statement calling the reporter "a hacker" to reporters gathered outside his Missouri Capitol office last Thursday, then left without taking questions. John Hancock, chairman of Uniting Missouri, declined to discuss any specifics about the video.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Quick Google Stadia recap: Things have not been great. From a report: Google's AAA cloud gaming service launched in 2019 to middling reviews and since then has severely undershot Google's sales and usage estimates by hundreds of thousands of users. The company shut down its first-party studio, "Stadia Games & Entertainment (SG&E)," before it could ever develop a game, and it did so one week after lead executive Phil Harrison gave the division a positive progress report. Several key executives have left the struggling division, like Assassin's Creed co-creator and SG&E leader Jade Raymond, Stadia's VP and head of product, John Justice, and Engineering Lead Justin Uberti. When Google killed the game division at the beginning of the year, an accompanying blog post hinted that big changes were coming to Google's strategy: "In 2021, we're expanding our efforts to help game developers and publishers take advantage of our platform technology and deliver games directly to their players." Rather than continuing to push Stadia as a consumer-facing, branded service, Google seems to want to pivot the service to what would essentially be "Google Cloud Gaming Platform." This would be a back-end, white-label service that could power other companies' products, just like a million other Google Cloud products, like database hosting and push messaging. Google said it believes a back-end service "is the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business." This all brings us to this Batman game presented by AT&T Wireless.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is lowering commissions on all subscription-based businesses on the Google Play Store, the company announced today. From a report: Previously, the company had followed Apple's move by reducing commissions from 30% to 15% on the first $1 million of developer earnings. Now, it will lower the fees specifically for app makers who generate revenue through recurring subscriptions. Instead of charging them 30% in the first year, which lowers to 15% in year two and beyond, Google says developers will only be charged 15% from day one. The company says 99% of developers will qualify for a service fee of 15% or less, as Google is also further reducing fees for specific vertical apps in the Play Media Experience Program. These will be adjusted to as low as 10%, it says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As investors race to capitalize on surging interest in cryptocurrencies, startups are getting creative in how they onboard a generation of crypto users to their first wallets. From a report: Worldcoin is perhaps one of the most audacious efforts to bribe the world to embrace their currency. The startup, founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alex Blania, wants to put a crypto wallet (and some of their currency) onto every human's smartphone, but in order to do so they have to build a way to determine whether someone is a unique human. Worldcoin is aiming to make their proof-of-personhood network in the least dystopian way possible, that being said, it still requires scanning a billion people's eyeballs with a 5-pound chromatic sphere called "The Orb." The internet has developed with a very amorphous mesh of user networks. Bot networks operate alongside real people using their real identities, alongside users impersonating real people, alongside pseudonymous users. This can be a recipe for misaligned user incentives, as modern social media platforms have showcased, but when it comes to finance it can also be a recipe for fraud and inequality. Worldcoin wants to avoid all of that while ensuring equitable distribution of their currency, ensuring that each human on earth only signs up for one wallet in their network. Worldcoin CEO Alex Blania tells TechCrunch that the currency is part of a larger effort to drive a more unified and equitable global economy driven by the internet economy, something cryptocurrencies notably haven't nailed in their first several years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roku on Thursday told customers via a post on its corporate blog that it has still not been able to strike a distribution agreement with YouTube TV, which has been removed from Roku's channel store for five months. From a report: It's the first time Roku has directly acknowledged the issue to its customers. Roku says YouTube TV parent Google has made anti-competitive demands in distribution negotiations, which still haven't been resolved. In the blog post, Roku says Google has made anti-competitive demands in carriage agreements, including asking Roku to create a dedicated search results row for YouTube within the Roku smart TV interface and demanding certain features on Roku that they don't insist on getting from other streaming platforms. Roku reiterated that "our concerns with Google are not about money," but striking an agreement with fair distribution terms. "We have not asked for a single change in the financial terms of our existing agreement," Roku writes in the blog post. " In fact, Roku does not earn a single dollar from YouTube's ad supported video sharing service today, whereas Google makes hundreds of millions of dollars from the YouTube app on Roku."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bloomberg: There was a sense that, without the moderating influence of the late Steve Jobs, perhaps Jony Ive started to prioritize aesthetics a little too much. Since he stepped down as chief designer at the end of 2019, Apple seems to have reemphasized function. From the iPhone to Apple TV to the Macbook, gone are the days of "The user be damned, we think this looks cool." Monday's unveiling of a new Macbook Pro lineup of laptops provides evidence of the shift. Headline features released five years ago under Ive's aegis have been scrapped. Gone is the so-called "butterfly" keyboard, which rendered the device thinner but whose clunky mechanics made typing more difficult; farewell too to the Touch Bar, a touch sensitive strip display along the top of the keyboard which could show functions for the web browser one moment and mixing tools for music apps the next, but was almost impossible to use without looking; back are HDMI ports, which let you plug the computer into high-definition displays without using an adapter. Perhaps this would have happened under Ive, but Evans Hankey, who now heads the industrial design team, has overseen plenty of other tweaks that seem to indicate a change of philosophy. [...] But there is merit in sometimes listening to your customers, particularly when the pendulum has swung too far away from function and towards form. After all, you're liable to lose professional customers -- architects, musicians, film-makers -- if they can't plug their laptops into external monitors. And professional users can afford to pay for the top-of-the-range devices that are more profitable to Apple. Dieter Rams, a significant influence on Ive, compiled 10 principles for "Good Design." Number three was "good design is aesthetic." Apple seems to have remembered numbers two and four: "good design makes a product useful" and "good design makes a product understandable."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia's new RTX 3080 plan for GeForce Now is probably the biggest upgrade for its cloud-streaming service since it turned on RTX ray tracing for subscribers over two years ago. From a report: The new plan is targeted at more traditional gamers for whom 60fps simply doesn't cut it, and it'll cost $100 for every six months you're signed up. In addition to the RTX ray tracing of the Priority plan, it offers 8-hour sessions, up to 1440p and 120fps gaming on PC and Mac (1600p on MacBooks), 4K HDR 60fps with 7.1 surround audio on Nvidia Shield (using DLSS) and up to 120fps on select Android devices. On iOS, GeForce Now has to use Safari rather than a dedicated app, which likely either can't handle or is too locked down to hit the higher frame rates.) According to the company, MacBooks are the second most popular device it sees used by the service, which isn't surprising given how poor the Mac's gaming is compared to PCs. The new MacBook Pro models, with their 120Hz displays, will be able to take advantage of the higher resolution and frame rates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Donald Trump has announced plans to launch a social media platform called TRUTH Social that will rolled be out early next year. The former president, who was banned from Facebook and Twitter earlier this year, says his goal is to rival the tech companies that have denied him the megaphone that was paramount to his rise. "I'm excited to soon begin sharing my thoughts on TRUTH social and to fight back against big tech," Trump said in a statement. Trump announced the news in a press release on Wednesday, saying the platform will be open to "invited users" for a beta launch in November, with plans to make it available to the broader public in the beginning of next year. Truth social will be a product of a new venture called the Trump Media & Technology Group which was created through a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. The group said it seeks to become a publicly listed company. Users can sign up to be put on a waiting list or pre-order the app via the App Store.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter Motard writes: Dallara Indy Lights racing cars outfitted as autonomous vehicles by Clemson University and programmed by various international collegiate teams will participate in a 20-lap race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday, Oct. 23rd 2021. The event will be livestreamed by the Indy Autonomous Challenge website. Nine teams representing 21 universities from 9 different countries will compete for a $1 million prize. [The second and third-placed teams will receive $250,000 and $500,000 respectively. Only those that complete the race in 25 minutes or less will be eligible for prize money.]Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony has been granted a patent that would allow livestream spectators and participants to remove players from a game. "Besides removing unskilled players, the system would allow spectators to pay for the privilege of removing players," reports Kotaku. From the report: In the patent document, Sony outlined a system in which spectators to a livestream can vote to remove a player from an ongoing game. The player would have no veto power over this decision, and they may be reassigned to a different match. The system would display the skill level of the current players and their statistics for the game, such as time played, ratings, and achievements. All of this would take place through "the cloud gaming system," whatever that means. To avoid audience abuse of this system, a 60% voting threshold needs to be met in order to bench a player from a game. Spectators with a higher skill level will also have their votes counted more heavily in the election. Despite Sony claiming that this system would be beneficial for removing disrespectful "griefers" from matches, the patent also includes the ability for spectators to pay a fixed price or bid for the ability to remove players from a game. The text also mentions a system in which spectators can warn active players to improve their gameplay. Damn.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Pricing right now on TVs is the highest since at least 2012," says Stephen Baker, vice president of Industry Analysis at NPD group. "Holiday pricing overall is likely to be at least $100 above normal. Last year the average price of a TV was $363 during the fourth quarter, which is fairly typical over the last few years. This year our forecast is for the average price to be approximately $500." For a lot of shoppers a $500 TV sounds pretty affordable, but that's the average of every TV sold in the US. The majority are entry-level models with small screens and modest features that bring down the average. [...] TVs come in a wide range of prices and sizes, and the higher average selling price will impact smaller, cheaper models more than larger, more-expensive ones. In fact, high-dollar TVs are selling better than ever, which of course helps drive up the average price. "Sales of TVs over $1,500 are at record levels, and sales of TVs 75-inch and above are performing much better than the overall market," says Baker. The good news? Inventory this holiday season likely won't be a problem. "Right now we don't expect significant shortages in TVs," says Baker. "While the port blockages are a concern, there are a lot of choices in the TV market. So if consumers can be flexible around brand and screen size, availability should be sufficient." He adds that over the last few months TV sales have been tepid, which allows TV makers to build up enough inventory to deal with the holiday rush. So what does all of this mean for TV shoppers? Traditional holiday price drops will still happen, but maybe those $100 doorbuster deals won't be as common. "There will be price drops, there will be promotions, the calendar does not disappear," says Baker. "But all of those pricing activities will happen on products priced substantially higher than in previous years." In other words, midrange and higher-end TVs, the ones selling at a historic clip, are still likely to see plenty of price reductions in the next couple months. In fact, some are happening already.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elon Musk's Boring Company just won approval from local officials to move forward with building a network of vehicle tunnels underneath Las Vegas. The Verge reports: Elon Musk's Boring Company just won approval from local officials to move forward with building a network of vehicle tunnels underneath Las Vegas. The Boring Company already operates a small version of this "Teslas in Tunnels" system underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center, which opened earlier this year and involves two 0.8-mile tunnels. But Musk's startup proposed a massive city-wide expansion in December 2020 that largely lines up with what Clark County officials approved Wednesday. The system that was approved involves 29 miles of tunnels and 51 stations. Clark County says as many as 57,000 passengers will be able to travel through it per hour and that no taxpayer money will be spent to build it. The Boring Company previously said that it would foot the bill for building the main tunnels but planned to ask hotel casinos or other businesses that want a station to pay for those construction costs. Each one of those stops has to go through its own permitting process, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Even as world leaders vow to take stronger action on climate change, many countries are still planning to dramatically increase their production of oil, gas and coal in the decades ahead, potentially undermining those lofty pledges, according to a United Nations-backed report released Tuesday. From a report: The report looked at future mining and drilling plans in 15 major fossil fuel producing countries, including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Canada, China, India and Norway. Taken together, those countries are currently planning to produce more than twice as much oil, gas and coal through 2030 as would be needed if governments want to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Scientists and world leaders increasingly say that holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is crucial if humanity wants to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change, such as ever-deadlier heat waves, large scale flooding and widespread extinctions. The world has already heated up roughly 1.1 degrees since the Industrial Revolution. But the planned global expansion of fossil fuel extraction clashes sharply with those climate goals, the report found. If the world remains awash in oil, gas and coal for decades to come, then many countries could find it more difficult to shift to cleaner sources of energy. At the same time, many of the oil wells and coal mines now being approved and developed could prove deeply unprofitable if demand for fossil fuels shrinks, creating economic disruption. By 2030, the report found, the world's nations are planning to produce 240 percent more coal, 57 percent more oil and 71 percent more natural gas than would be needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the first time, the price of a Raspberry Pi single-board computer is increasing and we have the global supply chain shortages to thank for it. PCMag reports: Eben Upton, chief executive of Raspberry Pi Trading, made the announcement today, but also made it clear the price increase is only temporary and only impacts one model of the Raspberry Pi 4. In February last year, the price of the Raspberry Pi 4 2GB dropped from $45 to $35 "permanently" and the 1GB model was discontinued. The 2GB model is reverting back to $45 and the 1GB model is making a comeback for industrial customers at its previous $35 price. The reason for this is one of supply chain challenges, with Upton confirming they will only manage to match 2020's shipments of around seven million units this year. The main shortages have been for the Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi 4 2GB. We don't know how long the price increase will last, but Upton was upbeat: "The good news is that we've been able to hold the line on pricing for all but one of our products; that we expect to have enough 28nm silicon over the next twelve months to support both our existing Raspberry Pi 4 and Compute Module 4 customers, and customers migrating from Raspberry Pi 3B+; and that we see early signs that the supply chain situation is starting to ease."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The World Health Organization has hired the company, called Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, as part of a $100 million plan to figure out how to make an mRNA vaccine against COVID that is as close as possible to the version produced by Moderna. Until recently, Afrigen specialized in developing veterinary vaccines using fairly traditional methods. Now, says Afrigen's managing director, Petro Treblanche, the company's labs are a hive of research into the cutting-edge technology behind mRNA vaccines. Once Afrigen has sorted out all the complicated steps to make Moderna's shot on an industrial scale, WHO and other partners plan to pay Afrigen to become a teaching center. "We call it a 'technology transfer hub,' " says Martin Friede, the WHO official in charge of this effort. "Manufacturers from around the world will be invited to come and learn the entire process. So this will accelerate the availability of the technology, not to one manufacturer but to many manufacturers." Friede says it makes sense to set up more manufacturers of mRNA vaccines in particular because the technology appears so effective against COVID -- and because it shows promise against other diseases including malaria and tuberculosis. As to why WHO has chosen to try to copy Moderna rather than the other mRNA COVID vaccine, which is made by Pfizer BioNTech, Friede says the choice was practical. "Moderna has reiterated on several occasions that they will not enforce their intellectual property during the pandemic," says Friede. In other words, a manufacturer probably won't face a lawsuit for producing a vaccine that's virtually identical to Moderna's. Also, says Friede, compared to Pfizer's vaccine, there just happens to be a lot more information in the public domain about how Moderna's vaccine is made. But Afrigen's Petro Treblanche says there are still a lot of unknowns. Take Moderna's patent. "It's written very carefully and cleverly to not disclose absolutely everything," says Treblanche. So while Afrigen has been able to determine most of the equipment and specialized ingredients that are needed, "what we don't know is the exact concentrations," says Treblanche. "And we don't know some of the mixing times -- some of the conditions of mixing and formulating." A particularly vexing question is how to replicate Moderna's "lipid nano-particle" -- a special casing around the mRNA strand at the heart of the vaccine that keeps it stable as it travels through the body to, as Treblanche puts it, "essential places like the spleen and lymph nodes." "We understand other encapsulations," says Treblanche. But for all the expertise at Afrigen, "my team has never formulated a liquid nanoparticle."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Three dogs that are trapped near the erupting Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Islands may soon be saved by a drone. Gizmodo reports: The poor, emaciated pups have been stuck in a yard surrounded by lava for a month. The volcano began erupting in September for the first time in 50 years, forcing thousands of people to evacuate, and the eruption is still ongoing. Spanish drone operator Aerocamaras said last Thursday that it had a plan to rescue the dogs. It could fly drones over to the yard with food for the pups and a camera that could help operators on the ground find the best to airlift them. Once the animals had some time to get used to the machines, the drones would drop cargo nets over them to pick them up one by one and carry them to safety. On Wednesday, Aerocamaras' Jaime Pereira confirmed that the company had officially received permission from authorities to carry out the rescue mission. To get the state's blessing, the firm had to complete a test mission that consisted of a quarter-mile (1.2-kilometer) flight with the drone supporting a load of 33 pounds (15 kilograms), which it did successfully. Still, the mission will be treacherous. "It is very difficult, technically it is the most complicated thing we have done by far," Pereira told the Spanish broadcaster Telecinco. "We are risking a lot." For one, the cargo net for the rescue mission is designed to hold about 50 pounds (24 kilograms), enough to transport one dog at a time. The operators have to be sure to time their lift-off perfectly to avoid picking up more than one dog and having them fall. Pereira also told Reuters that the drone only has 8 minutes of battery life, meaning the trips will have to be meticulously planned and executed: The operator will have only 4 minutes to get the dog into the net, and another 4 minutes to fly them back to safe ground. "What we don't want is to run out of battery when flying over the lava," he said. The expedition will mark a series of high-stakes first. "It's the first time an animal is being rescued with a drone and the first time it has to be captured," Pereira told Reuters.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CEOs and other managers are increasingly under the microscope as some investors use artificial intelligence to learn and analyze their language patterns and tone, opening up a new frontier of opportunities to slip up. Reuters reports: In late 2020, according to language pattern software specialist Evan Schnidman, some executives in the IT industry were playing down the possibility of semiconductor chip shortages while discussing supply-chain disruptions. All was fine, they said. Yet the tone of their speech showed high levels of uncertainty, according to an algorithmic analysis designed to spot hidden clues in -- ideally unscripted -- spoken words. "We found that IT sector executives' tone was inconsistent with the positive textual sentiment of their remarks," said Schnidman, who advises two fintech companies behind the analysis. Within months of the comments, companies including Volkswagen and Ford were warning about a severe shortage of chips hitting output. Share prices in auto and industrial firms fell. IT executives now said there was a supply squeeze. Schnidman holds that computer-driven quant funds accessing scores assigned to the tone of the managers' words, versus scores assigned to the written words, would have been better positioned before the industry turmoil. Some investors nonetheless see the technology -- known as natural language processing (NLP) -- as one new tool to gain an edge over rivals, according to Reuters interviews with 11 fund managers that are using or trialling such systems. They say traditional financial data and corporate statements are so heavily mined nowadays that they offer little value.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Japanese police on Monday arrested a 43-year-old man for using artificial intelligence to effectively unblur pixelated porn videos, in the first criminal case in the country involving the exploitative use of the powerful technology. Masayuki Nakamoto, who runs his own website in the southern prefecture of Hyogo, lifted images of porn stars from Japanese adult videos and doctored them with the same method used to create realistic face swaps in deepfake videos. But instead of changing faces, Nakamoto used machine learning software to reconstruct the blurred parts of the video based on a large set of uncensored nudes and sold the content online. Penises and vaginas are pixelated in Japanese porn because an obscenity law forbids the explicit depictions of genitalia. Nakamoto reportedly made about $96,000 by selling over 10,000 manipulated videos, though he was arrested specifically for selling 10 fake photos at about $20 each. Nakamoto pleaded guilty to charges of copyright violation and displaying obscene images and said he did it for money, according to NHK. He was caught when police conducted a "cyber patrol," the Japanese broadcaster reported. "This is the first case in Japan where police have caught an AI user," Daisuke Sueyoshi, a lawyer who's tried cybercrime cases, told VICE World News. "At the moment, there's no law criminalizing the use of AI to make such images." For example, Nakamoto was not charged with any offenses for violating the privacy of the actors in the videos.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. regulators on Wednesday signed off on extending COVID-19 boosters to Americans who got the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine and said anyone eligible for an extra dose can get a brand different from the one they received initially. The Associated Press reports: The Food and Drug Administration's decisions mark a big step toward expanding the U.S. booster campaign, which began with extra doses of the Pfizer vaccine last month. But before more people roll up their sleeves, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will consult an expert panel later this week before finalizing official recommendations for who should get boosters and when. The latest moves would expand by tens of millions the number of Americans eligible for boosters and formally allow "mixing and matching" of shots -- making it simpler to get another dose, especially for people who had a side effect from one brand but still want the proven protection of vaccination. Specifically, the FDA authorized a third Moderna shot for seniors and others at high risk from COVID-19 because of their health problems, jobs or living conditions -- six months after their last shot. One big change: Moderna's booster will be half the dose that's used for the first two shots, based on company data showing that was plenty to rev up immunity again. For J&J's single-shot vaccine, the FDA said all U.S. recipients should get a second dose at least two months following their initial vaccination.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google today released Chrome v95, the latest version of its popular web browser and a version that contains several changes that will likely cause problems for a considerable part of its users. The problematic changes include: removing support for File Transfer Protocol (FTP) URLs -- ftp://removing support for the Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) standard, used in old-generation security keys (Chrome will only support FIDO2/WebAuth security keys going forward)adding file size limits for browser cookiesremoving support for URLs with non-IPv4 hostnames ending in numbers, such as http://example.0.1In addition to breaking changes, Chrome 95 also comes with a new UI component called the "Side Panel," which can be used to view the Chrome browser's Reading List and Bookmarks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook is planning to change its company name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, The Verge reports, citing an unnamed source. From the report: The coming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company's annual Connect conference on October 28th, but could unveil sooner, is meant to signal the tech giant's ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail. The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Major retailers, including Amazon and Ikea, are beginning to clean up their shipping pollution. From a report: A group of companies pledged yesterday that by 2040, they'll only contract ships using zero-carbon fuels to move their goods. Both Ikea and Amazon were among the 15 companies responsible for the most maritime import pollution in 2019, according to one recent analysis. Joining Amazon and Ikea in the commitment are Unilever, Michelin, and clothing retailer Inditex, which owns Zara and other brands. German retailer Tchibo, Patagonia, sports gear company Brooks Running, and FrogBikes are part of the deal, too. The aim is to leave behind heavy fuel oil in favor of alternatives that don't release planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions. But there will still be plenty of hurdles ahead to rein in shipping pollution. "This will be a catalyzing force and a game-changer for the industry to really push for the decarbonization of the sector," says Kendra Ulrich, shipping campaigns director at the environmental nonprofit Stand.earth, which was one of the authors of the 2019 import pollution report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Beanless brews can cut deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions dramatically -- but what will happen to workers in traditional coffee-growing regions? From a report: Heiko Rischer isn't quite sure how to describe the taste of lab-grown coffee. This summer he sampled one of the first batches in the world produced from cell cultures rather than coffee beans. "To describe it is difficult but, for me, it was in between a coffee and a black tea," said Rischer, head of plant biotechnology at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, which developed the coffee. "It depends really on the roasting grade, and this was a bit of a lighter roast, so it had a little bit more of a tea-like sensation." Rischer couldn't swallow the coffee, as this cellular agriculture innovation is not yet approved for public consumption. Instead, he swirled the liquid around in his mouth and spit it out. He predicts that VTT's lab-grown coffee could get regulatory approval in Europe and the US in about four years' time, paving the way for a commercialized product that could have a much lower climate impact than conventional coffee. The coffee industry is both a contributor to the climate crisis and very vulnerable to its effects. Rising demand for coffee has been linked to deforestation in developing nations, damaging biodiversity and releasing carbon emissions. At the same time, coffee producers are struggling with the impacts of more extreme weather, from frosts to droughts. It's estimated that half of the land used to grow coffee could be unproductive by 2050 due to the climate crisis. In response to the industry's challenges, companies and scientists are trying to develop and commercialize coffee made without coffee beans. VTT's coffee is grown by floating cell cultures in bioreactors filled with a nutrient. The process requires no pesticides and has a much lower water footprint, said Rischer, and because the coffee can be produced in local markets, it cuts transport emissions. The company is working on a life cycle analysis of the process. "Once we have those figures, we will be able to show that the environmental impact will be much lower than what we have with conventional cultivation," Rischer said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The central government of China in Beijing has announced a decision to allow foreign entities to invest in the ownership of VPN (virtual private network) services in the country. From a report: Under this new policy, foreign investors can only own up to 50% of China-based VPN companies. This allows China to retain state control over local and approved products while still offering a significant incentive for investment. Apart from VPNs, the policy update also includes changes in the investment caps on information services for app stores, internet connection services, and more. This comes as somewhat of a surprise for a country that has been fighting foreign VPNs for years now, hindering their presence in China and imposing fines and other penalties to users who ignored the banning orders.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine is adding Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to a lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica data-mining scandal. From a report: Racine announced the addition on Twitter this morning, saying his investigation had revealed that Zuckerberg was "personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook's failure to protect user data." The 2018 lawsuit accuses Facebook (and now Zuckerberg) of misrepresenting its policies around third-party data access and compromising user privacy with lax protections. The attorney general's office alleges that Facebook violated the Consumer Protection Procedures Act and seeks civil damages for the offense. A judge allowed the case to proceed despite Facebook's efforts to halt it in 2019.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A weekend cyberattack against Sinclair Broadcast Group was linked to one of the most infamous Russian cybergangs, called Evil Corp, Bloomberg reports. From the report: The Sinclair hackers used malware called Macaw, a variant of ransomware known as WastedLocker. Both Macaw and WastedLocker were created by Evil Corp., according to the two people, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters. Evil Corp. was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2019. Since then, it has been accused by cybersecurity experts of rebranding in an attempt to avoid the sanctions. People in the U.S. are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with sanctioned entities, including paying a ransom. "Sinclair appears to have been hit by Macaw ransomware, a relatively new strain first reported in early October," said Allan Liska, a senior threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future Inc. "There have not been any other Macaw victims publicly reported."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PayPal is exploring an acquisition of social media company Pinterest, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday. From a report: San Jose, California-based PayPal has recently approached Pinterest about a potential deal, the people said, asking not to be identified because the talks are private. The companies have discussed a potential price of around $70 a share, which would value Pinterest at roughly $39 billion, one of the people said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology will build a new factory at its Japanese production site in Hiroshima at a cost of 800 billion yen ($7.0 billion), the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper reported on Wednesday. Reuters: The new facility will make DRAM chips, which are widely used in data centres, with production set to begin in 2024, the report said, without citing sources. COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home demand for electronic devices is causing shortages of non-memory chips that has forced some manufacturers, such as automakers and smartphone makers, to curtail production. That has also reduced sales of DRAM memory chips, but some industry watchers expect demand to rebound helped by an expansion of data centres.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has hit a new all-time high above $65,000. From a report: The crypto broke above its previous high of $64,889 reached in April. Bitcoin is currently changing hands for around $65,607, up 4.2% over the past 24 hours. The latest rally pushed bitcoin's year-to-date terms to 122%, according to CoinDesk data. The largest cryptocurrency appears to have gotten a push on Tuesday from the launch of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, the first exchange-traded fund approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to invest in bitcoin futures. Indeed, the new fund, traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker $BITO, garnered a first-day trading volume of more than $1 billion, ranking it among the most successful launches of all time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gold and precious metals are to be extracted from old phones and laptops by Britain's coin-maker. From a report: The Royal Mint plans to introduce a world-first technology to the UK to recycle gold from electronic waste. Fewer than one fifth of electronic waste ends up being recycled, estimates show. The mint's chief executive Anne Jessopp said the technology would help to "make a genuine impact on one of the world's greatest environmental challenges." The Royal Mint has signed an agreement with Canadian start-up Excir to recover 99% and more of gold from devices' circuit boards. It said the chemistry selectively targets and extracts precious metals from circuit boards in seconds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Under Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, the Federal Communications Commission is seeking to create new rules targeting spam text messages. Like another recent proposed rulemaking from the agency, the policy would push wireless carriers and telephone companies to block the spam before it ever gets to your phone. "We've seen a rise in scammers trying to take advantage of our trust of text messages by sending bogus robotexts that try to trick consumers to share sensitive information or click on malicious links," Rosenworcel said. "It's time we take steps to confront this latest wave of fraud and identify how mobile carriers can block these automated messages before they have the opportunity to cause any harm."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study by Wang and a team including researchers from the US Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC), and battery company A123 Systems, [...] shows that batteries with recycled cathodes can be as good as, or even better than those using new state-of-the-art materials. The findings have been published in the journal Joule. IEEE Spectrum reports: The team tested batteries with recycled NMC111 cathodes, the most common flavor of cathode containing a third each of nickel, manganese, and cobalt. The cathodes were made using a patented recycling technique that Battery Resources, a startup Wang co-founded, is now commercializing. The recycled material showed a more porous microscopic structure that is better for lithium ions to slip in and out of. The result: batteries with an energy density similar to those made with commercial cathodes, but which also showed up to 53% longer cycle life. While the recycled batteries weren't tested in cars, tests were done at industrially relevant scales. The researchers made 11 Ampere-hour industry-standard pouch cells loaded with materials at the same density as EV batteries. Engineers at A123 Systems did most of the testing, Wang says, using a protocol devised by the USABC to meet commercial viability goals for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. He says the results prove that recycled cathode materials are a viable alternative to pristine materials.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thelasko shares a report from Ars Technica, written by Peter Opaskar: Frank Herbert's 1965 sci-fi novel Dune gets a new film adaptation -- this one helmed by Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049) -- later this month. But before Ars Technica reviews the movie, there's the matter of its predecessor: 1984's Dune, made by a then up-and-coming filmmaker named David Lynch. Detractors call Lynch's saga -- a tale of two noble space families 8,000 years in the future, fighting over the most valuable resource in the universe amidst sandworms the size of aircraft carriers -- incomprehensible, stilted, and ridiculous. It lost piles of money. Yet fans, especially in recent years, have reclaimed Lynch's film as a magnificent folly, a work of holy, glorious madness. So which group am I in? Both. Am I about to describe Dune as "so bad it's good"? No, that's a loser take for cowards. I once half-heard a radio interview with someone speculating that the then-current artistic moment was not "so bad it's good," and it wasn't "ironic" either -- it was actually "awesome." (I didn't catch who he was, so if any of this sounds familiar, hit me up in the comments.) Art can speak to you while at the same time being absurd. The relatable can sometimes be reached only by going through the ridiculous. The two can be inseparable, like the gravitational pull between a gas giant and its moon -- or Riggs and Murtaugh. The example the radio interviewee gave was of Evel Knievel, the '70s daredevil who wore a cape and jumped dirt bikes over rows of buses. Absurd? Heavens, yes. A feat of motorcycling and physicality? Absolutely. But beyond that, we can relate to Knievel's need to achieve transcendence at such a, shall we say, niche skill. We might also marvel at our own ability to be impressed by something that should be objectively useless but is instead actually awesome. A more contemporary example might be Tenet. It's a relentless international thriller about fate and climate change and the need for good people to hold evil at bay. But it's also a "dudes rock!" bromance between Two Cool Guys in Suits spouting sci-fi mumbo-jumbo. It can't be one without the other. "I have faith in Denis Villeneuve and his new version of Dune starring Timothee Chalamet," says Opaskar. "But it will probably be a normal movie for normal people, in which characters with recognizable emotions talk in a recognizable way and move through a plot we understand to achieve clearly defined goals. Which is all fine and good, but how likely is it to inspire sick beats for '90s kids doing ecstasy?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the first time, a pig kidney has been transplanted into a human without triggering immediate rejection by the recipient's immune system, a potentially major advance that could eventually help alleviate a dire shortage of human organs for transplant. Reuters reports: The procedure done at NYU Langone Health in New York City involved use of a pig whose genes had been altered so that its tissues no longer contained a molecule known to trigger almost immediate rejection. The recipient was a brain-dead patient with signs of kidney dysfunction whose family consented to the experiment before she was due to be taken off of life support, researchers told Reuters. For three days, the new kidney was attached to her blood vessels and maintained outside her body, giving researchers access to it. Test results of the transplanted kidney's function "looked pretty normal," said transplant surgeon Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the study. The kidney made "the amount of urine that you would expect" from a transplanted human kidney, he said, and there was no evidence of the vigorous, early rejection seen when unmodified pig kidneys are transplanted into non-human primates. The recipient's abnormal creatinine level - an indicator of poor kidney function - returned to normal after the transplant, Montgomery said. Montgomery's team theorized that knocking out the pig gene for a carbohydrate that triggers rejection - a sugar molecule, or glycan, called alpha-gal - would prevent the problem. The genetically altered pig, dubbed GalSafe, was developed by United Therapeutics Corp's Revivicor unit. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2020, for use as food for people with a meat allergy and as a potential source of human therapeutics. Other researchers are considering whether GalSafe pigs can be sources of everything from heart valves to skin grafts for human patients.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The UK government has announced plans to launch a $551 million (400 million pounds) package of investment alongside the US billionaire Bill Gates to boost the development of new green technologies. Boris Johnson said the deal would help power a "green industrial revolution" and develop emerging technologies that were currently too expensive to be commercially successful but were essential to hitting the government's climate goals. Speaking at a Global Investment Summit at the Science Museum in London on Tuesday, the prime minister said the partnership would help develop UK technology related to carbon capture and storage, long-term battery life, jet zero (zero-carbon aviation) and green hydrogen technology. "I think these are all technologies that have massive potential but are currently underinvested in, by comparison with some others," Johnson said. "We will only achieve our ambitious climate goals if we rapidly scale up new technologies in areas like green hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuels -- technologies that seemed impossible just a few years ago." The UK has already pledged at least £200m to the development of new British green technologies. Gates announced on Tuesday that he would match the commitment via Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a coalition of private investors he leads in funding innovative approaches to tackling the climate crisis.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix just released an action-packed teaser for its live-action adaptation of the 1998 Japanese anime series "Cowboy Bebop." From a report: A 10-episode series -- which chronicles a group of cosmos-hopping bounty-hunters and is based on the cartoon of the same name -- will premiere on Netflix next month [...]. The 2 1/2-minute trailer, titled "The Lost Session," featured characters Spike Spiegel (voiced by John Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir) and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) running after a runaway target while squabbling about how to best catch the enemy. The trailer also teased the show's main villain, Vicious (Alex Hassell), as well as a snippet of the song "Green Bird" from the original series episode "Ballad for Fallen Angels." The group's spaceship, the Bebop, was also featured in the clip. A full trailer will be released on Oct. 26, just ahead of the Nov. 19 debut on Netflix.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft continues to baby-step around the obvious, but it has officially deprecated the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) as it pushes the desktop-focused Windows App SDK (formerly called Project Reunion) and WinUI 3 as the future of Windows application development. Paul Thurrott reports: For those unclear on the matter, the Windows App SDK basically takes key UWP technologies and new technologies like WinUI 3 that will not be backported to UWP and makes them available to developers in a way that is not tied to specific Windows releases (as was the case with individual UWP features). In this way, Microsoft can "deliver on the agility and backward compatibility developers need to reach across the entire Windows ecosystem" while not leaving developers behind. Going forward, UWP will only receive "bug, reliability, and security fixes," and not new features, Microsoft says, indicating that it is now deprecated. Developers with UWP apps in the market who "are happy with [the] current functionality in UWP" can of course continue to keep using UWP. But those who want "the latest runtime, language, and platform features," including WinUI 3, WebView 2, .NET 5, full compatibility with Windows 10 version 1809 or newer, and any upcoming new features will have to migrate their apps to the Windows App SDK.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Akamai researchers have analyzed 10,000 JavaScript samples including malware droppers, phishing pages, scamming tools, Magecart snippets, cryptominers, etc. At least 26% of them use some form of obfuscation to evade detection, indicating an uptick in the adoption of this basic yet effective technique. BleepingComputer reports: Obfuscation is when easy-to-understand source code is converted into a hard to understand and confusing code that still operates as intended. Threat actors commonly use obfuscation to make it harder to analyze malicious scripts and to bypass security software. Obfuscation can be achieved through various means like the injection of unused code into a script, the splitting and concatenating of the code (breaking it into unconnected chunks), or the use of hexadecimal patterns and tricky overlaps with function and variable naming. But not all obfuscation is malicious or tricky. As the report explains, about 0.5% of the 20,000 top-ranking websites on the web (according to Alexa), also use obfuscation techniques. As such, detecting malicious code based on the fact that is obfuscated isn't enough on its own, and further correlation with malicious functionality needs to be made. This mixing with legitimate deployment is precisely what makes the detection of risky code challenging, and the reason why obfuscation is becoming so widespread in the threat landscape.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The newly announced 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models have HDMI ports, but they have a limitation that could be frustrating for many users over the long term, according to Apple's specs page for both machines and as noted by Paul Haddad on Twitter. The page says the HDMI port has "support for one display with up to 4K resolution at 60 Hz." That means users with 4K displays at 120 Hz (or less likely, 8K displays at 60 Hz) won't be able to tap the full capability of those displays through this port. It implies limited throughput associated with an HDMI 2.0 port instead of the most recent HDMI 2.1 standard, though there are other possible explanations for the limitation besides the port itself, and we don't yet know which best describes the situation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As Paul Thurrott reports, Brave is removing Google Search as its default search engine. From the report: Going forward, the Brave web browser will default to Brave Search. "Brave Search has grown significantly since its release last June, with nearly 80 million queries per month," Brave CEO and co-founder Brendan Eich says. "Our users are pleased with the comprehensive privacy solution that Brave Search provides against Big Tech by being integrated into our browser. As we know from experience in many browsers, the default setting is crucial for adoption, and Brave Search has reached the quality and critical mass needed to become our default search option, and to offer our users a seamless privacy-by-default online experience." Brave Search is built on top of an independent index, and doesn't track users, their searches, or their clicks, the firm says. And starting with Brave 1.3 on desktop and Android, and Brave 1.32 on iOS, it will be the default search engine in the browser, instead of Google, in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. It is also replacing Qwant in France and DuckDuckGo in Germany, and Brave says that more locales will be added in the next several months. Existing users can keep their chosen search engine default, of course, and new users who prefer other search engines can configure as needed. Brave Search doesn't display ads today, but the free version of the service will soon be ad-supported. An ad-free Premium version is coming "in the near future," Brave says. Along with this search engine news, Brave announced the Web Discovery Project (WDP), "which it describes as a privacy-preserving system for users to anonymously contribute data to improve Brave Search results," writes Thurrott. "The WDP is an opt-in feature that protects user privacy and anonymity by ensuring that contributed data is not linked to individuals, their devices, or any set of users." It has a GitHub repo available to help you learn more about this system.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today, Google has officially launched Android 12 for select Pixel devices. The Verge reports: It's available to install right now on Pixel 3 and up, including the Pixel 3A, Pixel 4, Pixel 4A, Pixel 4A 5G, the Pixel 5, and the Pixel 5A. It'll launch on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, as well. Android 12 will be coming later this year to Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Tecno, Vivo, and Xiaomi devices. The most noticeable feature in Android 12 is the new Material You design, which lets you go a little deeper to tweak the look of the homescreen to your liking. It's more expressive than previous versions of Android, with tools to let you coordinate colors that can extend across app icons, pull-down menus, widgets, and more. Speaking of widgets, many of those have been updated to match the new look, and Google shared today that by the end of October, it plans to have over a dozen new or refreshed widgets available for its first-party apps. Google has published a blog post detailing more features available in this release, including the "Pixel-first" features like Material You.Read more of this story at Slashdot.