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New submitter myinnerbanjo writes: With plastics in oceans becoming more and more of a global disaster, Microsoft uses recycled ocean plastic to create a new computer mouse:"We wanted to do something that's different," said Corinne Holmes, director of environmental compliance, Windows & Devices. "I don't want the clean stuff. We wanted to push the bar. This plastic wasn't from a collection bin sitting on the beach. It was recovered out of a river. It's dirty. It was sitting there for six months, not three weeks."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Outsiders have long profited from Africa's riches of gold, diamonds, and even people. Digital resources have proven no different. Millions of internet addresses assigned to Africa have been waylaid, some fraudulently, including through insider machinations linked to a former top employee of the nonprofit that assigns the continent's addresses. Instead of serving Africa's internet development, many have benefited spammers and scammers, while others satiate Chinese appetites for pornography and gambling. New leadership at the nonprofit, AFRINIC, is working to reclaim the lost addresses. But a legal challenge by a deep-pocketed Chinese businessman is threatening the body's very existence. The businessman is Lu Heng, a Hong Kong-based arbitrage specialist. Under contested circumstances, he obtained 6.2 million African addresses from 2013 to 2016. That's about 5% of the continent's total -- more than Kenya has. The internet service providers and others to whom AFRINIC assigns IP address blocks aren't purchasing them. They pay membership fees to cover administrative costs that are intentionally kept low. That left lots of room, though, for graft. When AFRINIC revoked Lu's addresses, now worth about $150 million, he fought back. His lawyers in late July persuaded a judge in Mauritius, where AFRICNIC is based, to freeze its bank accounts. His company also filed a $80 million defamation claim against AFRINIC and its new CEO. It's a shock to the global networking community, which has long considered the internet as technological scaffolding for advancing society. Some worry it could undermine the entire numerical address system that makes the internet work.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Norway is on track to bid farewell to the sale of new petrol and diesel-powered cars by April 2022, according to new analysis released by the Norwegian Automobile Federation (NAF). From a report: According to monthly new car sales data released by Norway's Road Traffic Information Council (OVF), the last internal combustion engine vehicle is set to leave the dealership next April, almost three years ahead of the Norwegian government's 2025 stated target for the phasing out completely of sales of new petrol and diesel cars. Norway's equivalent of VFACTS tell an interesting story. In the first eight months of 2021, vehicles without any type of electrification -- battery electric vehicle, plug-in hybrid, hybrid -- made up less than 10 per cent of (9.66 per cent) new car sales. Out of a total of 110,864 new car registrations, petrol cars accounted for 4.93 per cent and diesel for just 4.73 per cent. That's down from 21 per cent from the previous year and more than 50 per cent as recently as 2017 where in the first eight months, petrol and diesel cars accounted for over 25 per cent each out of a total of 102,873 registrations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Italian winemakers have increasingly relied on migrant workers for the autumn harvest, but travel restrictions and soaring wage costs are pushing many to turn to machines. From a report: Last year's grape harvest was a harrowing scramble at Mirko Cappelli's Tuscan vineyard. With the Italian border closed because of the pandemic, the Eastern European workers he had come to rely on couldn't get into the country. The company he had contracted to supply grape pickers had no one to offer him. He ultimately found just enough workers to bring the grapes in on time. So, this year Mr. Cappelli made sure he wouldn't face the same problem: He spent â85,000, equivalent to $98,000, on a grape-harvesting machine. The coronavirus pandemic is pushing the wine industry toward automation. Covid-related travel restrictions left severe shortages of agricultural workers last year, as Eastern Europeans and North Africans were unable to reach fields in Western Europe. Though the shortages have eased this year, the difficulty of finding workers has accelerated the shift, which was already under way across the agricultural sector. While harvests of some crops, like soybeans and corn, are already heavily automated, winemakers have been slower to make the switch. Vintners debate whether automated harvesting is more likely to damage grapes, which can affect the quality of the wine. The cost is a deterrent for many small farmers. Some European regions even ban machine harvesting. For many vintners in Europe and the U.S., however, the difficulty of finding workers -- a problem they say had grown steadily for years but became acute during the pandemic -- has pushed them to take the robot plunge. It is a change that will outlast the pandemic and could shift longstanding migration patterns that bring tens of thousands of foreign workers to Italy, France and Spain for agricultural harvests each year. Ritano Baragli, president of Cantina Sociale colli Fiorentini Valvirgilio, a winemaker's group in Tuscany, said it has been getting harder to find pickers for several years, as locals increasingly shun the physically demanding, low-paid, short-term work while the demand for pickers has increased. But last year was the worst labor shortage of his half-century career in wine. Use of harvesting machines among the group's members increased 20% this year in response, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A massive security breach at Twitch has exposed a wealth of information pertaining to the website's source code, unreleased projects, and even how much the top streamers make. As data analysts and journalists work to decipher what exactly is contained in the hundreds of gigabytes of information, others are still wondering how this happened. From a report: Such a breach seemed like it was increasingly likely to some. The Verge has spoken to multiple sources who claim that during their time at Twitch, the company valued speed and profit over the safety of its users and security of its data. This data breach, which Twitch blames on an error to a server configuration, is the latest in a series of security and moderation problems that have plagued the Amazon-owned streaming platform. In August, hate raids in which marginalized streamers were subjected to uncontrollable numbers of bots spamming hate speech erupted across Twitch. Streamers banded together to create the #twitchdobetter hashtag and organized a walkout on September 1st to bring attention to the problem and spur Twitch to deploy safety measures to stem the hate tide. In response, Twitch acknowledged streamers' complaints, urged patience, and promised it was working on tools that would help to better protect streamers and their communities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Dutch antitrust authority has found that Apple's rules requiring software developers to use its in-app payment system are anti-competitive and ordered it to make changes, Reuters reported on Thursday, in the latest regulatory setback for the iPhone maker. From a report: Apple's app-store payment policies, in particular its requirement that app developers exclusively use its payment system where commissions range between 15% and 30%, have long drawn complaints from developers. The Dutch investigation into whether Apple's practices amounted to an abuse of a dominant market position was launched in 2019 but later reduced in scope to focus primarily on dating market apps. They included a complaint from Match Group, owner of the popular dating service Tinder, which said Apple's rules were hindering it from direct communications with its customers about payments. The Netherlands' Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) last month informed the U.S. technology giant of its decision, making it the first antitrust regulator to make a finding the company has abused market power in the app store, though Apple is facing challenges in multiple countries.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan's Fair Trade Commission will investigate whether Apple and Google are leveraging their dominance in the smartphone operating system market to eliminate competition and severely limit options for consumers. From a report: The study will involve interviews and surveys with OS operators, app developers and smartphone users, commission Secretary-General Shuichi Sugahisa told reporters Wednesday. The initiative will explore market conditions not only for smartphones, but for smartwatches and other wearables. The antitrust watchdog will compile a report outlining OS market structure and the reason why competition has remained static. The commission will work with the central government's Digital Market Competition Council, which is moving forward with its own market probe. Practices found to be anticompetitive will be itemized in the report, along with possible violations of Japan's law against monopolies. In February, the government implemented the Act on Improving Transparency and Fairness of Digital Platforms. If officials decide that the law applies to the OS market, OS operators will be told to submit regular reports on transactions to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. In Japan, Apple's iOS commands a nearly 70% share among smartphone operating systems while Android's share stands at 30%. Any developer of apps -- whether they specialize in music, streaming videos, e-books or mobile games -- need to match the software with specifications of the operating systems if they want to appear on smartphones.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Transportation Security Administration will introduce new regulations that compel the most important U.S. railroad and airport operators to improve their cybersecurity procedures, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Wednesday. From a report: The upcoming changes will make it mandatory for "higher-risk" rail transit companies and "critical" U.S. airport and aircraft operators to do three things: name a chief cyber official, disclose hacks to the government and draft recovery plans for if an attack were to occur. The planned regulations come after cybercriminals attacked a major U.S. pipeline operator here, causing localized gas shortages along the U.S. East Coast in May. The incident led to new cybersecurity rules for pipeline owners in July. "Whether by air, land, or sea, our transportation systems are of utmost strategic importance to our national and economic security," Mayorkas said. "The last year and a half has powerfully demonstrated what's at stake." A key concern motivating the new policies comes from a growth in ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure companies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Valve has posted an official teardown of its upcoming handheld gaming PC, the Steam Deck. Before diving into the teardown, though, the company spends about a minute to strongly caution against taking one apart unless you're sure you know what you're doing. "Even though it's your PC -- or it will be once you've received your Steam Deck -- and you have every right to open it up and do what you want, we at Valve really don't recommend that you ever open it up," a Valve representative said in the video. "The Steam Deck is a very tightly designed system, and the parts are chosen carefully for this product with its specific construction, so they aren't really designed to be user-swappable." Despite its warnings, however, the company likely understands that people are going to take the Steam Deck apart anyway, so this video could be a handy resource for people who are considering doing so. In the video, Valve shows how to swap out two parts of the system. First, Valve shows how to replace the thumbsticks. The company cautions that they are completely custom, but says that it will offer a source for "replacement parts, thumbsticks, SSDs, and possibly more" in the coming months. After that, Valve shows how to swap out the SSD, which could be helpful for people who may have reserved the cheapest version of the device with an eMMC hard drive with the intention of upgrading it themselves. Be aware that all versions of the Steam Deck use an m.2 connector, including the version with the eMMC drive, so if you plan to make a swap, you're going to have to reinstall the OS and bring over any games you might have had loaded on your other drive.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In late September, Carbios, a French startup, opened a demonstration plant in central France to test the use of enzymes to recycle PET, one of the most common single-use plastics and the material used to make most beverage bottles. MIT Technology Review reports: While we've had mechanical methods for recycling some plastics, like PET, for decades, chemical and enzyme-based processes could produce purer products or allow us to recycle items like clothes that conventional techniques can't process. [...] Carbios's new reactor measures 20 cubic meters -- around the size of a cargo van. It can hold two metric tons of plastic, or the equivalent of about 100,000 ground-up bottles at a time, and break it down into the building blocks of PET -- ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid -- in 10 to 16 hours. The company plans to use what it learns from the demonstration facility to build its first industrial plant, which will house a reactor about 20 times larger than the demonstration reactor. That full-scale plant will be built near a plastic manufacturer somewhere in Europe or the US, and should be operational by 2025, says Alain Marty, Carbios's chief science officer. Carbios has been developing enzymatic recycling since the company was founded in 2011. Its process relies on enzymes to chop up the long chains of polymers that make up plastic. The resulting monomers can then be purified and strung together to make new plastics. Researchers at Carbios started with a natural enzyme used by bacteria to break down leaves, then tweaked it to make it more efficient at breaking down PET. Carbios estimates that its enzymatic recycling process reduces greenhouse gas emissions by about 30% compared to virgin PET. Marty says he expects that number to increase as they work out the kinks. In a recent report, researchers estimated that manufacturing PET from enzymatic recycling could reduce greenhouse gas emissions between 17% and 43% compared to making virgin PET. The report wasn't specifically about Carbios, but it's probably a good estimate for its process, according to Gregg Beckham, a researcher at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a co-author of the report. Carbios's product is about twice as expensive as virgin PET, Marty says. By comparison, mechanically recycled PET is only about 50% more expensive than virgin. Marty points out that Carbios's PET would still only cost about two cents for a small, clear plastic bottle, which he argues is a relatively small expense for manufacturers. Companies may be willing to pay. In a press release earlier this year, Carbios revealed demonstration bottles from partner brands that included PepsiCo and Nestle. Carbios recycled discarded plastic and handed it off to the companies, which used it to make new bottles. Eventually, enzymatic recycling may be able do things that mechanical recycling can't, like recycle clothes or mixed streams of plastics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: At Duke University's Marcus Center for Cellular Cures, parents can enroll their children into a number of clinical trials that aim to study the effects of cells derived from umbilical cord blood on treating the effects of autism and brain injuries; adults can also participate in a trial testing whether cord blood can help them recover from ischemic strokes. And when parents can't get their children into any of these clinical trials, particularly for autism, they often opt for what's called the Expanded Access Program (EAP), in which they pay between $10,000 and $15,000 to get their kids a single infusion. All of the trials use products derived from human umbilical cord blood, which is a source of stem cells as well as other types of cells. The autism trials are using a type of immune cells called monocytes, according to Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, a well-respected Duke professor who's conducting clinical trials into whether cord blood can help with autism, and who has been researching stem cells since the early '90s. (On ClinicalTrials.gov, however, these trials are listed as using mesenchymal stromal cells, which are a completely different type of cord blood cell.) Now, a for-profit company called Cryo-Cell International with ties to Duke researchers has indicated that it plans to open clinics promoting these treatments, under a licensing agreement with the renowned North Carolina university. In their investor presentation, Cryo-Cell said they plan to become "an autonomous, vertically integrated cellular therapy company that will treat patients." Duke and Cryo-Cell's rush to monetize a procedure before it's shown to have solid benefits has created concern, though, across the community of scientists, clinicians, and medical ethicists who study autism treatments. The hope is that these cord blood infusions can improve some autism symptoms, like socialization and language, or decrease the inflammation that some parents and clinicians think might exacerbate autism symptoms. Early study results, however, haven't been very promising. A large randomized clinical trial, the results of which were released in May 2020, showed that a single infusion of cord blood was not, in the words of the researchers, "associated with improved socialization skills or reduced autism symptoms." This is why Duke's latest move comes as such a surprise: The university and Cryo-Cell have told investors that they're planning to open a series of "infusion centers." At these clinics, Cryo-Cell will use Duke's technology and methods to offer cord blood treatments for $15,000 per infusion. In an exuberant presentation for investors (PDF), Cryo-Cell said it estimates an annual revenue of $24 million per clinic; it hasn't disclosed how many clinics it plans to open. At least one will reportedly open in Durham, North Carolina. The move follows a June 2020 announcement that Cryo-Cell had entered into an exclusive patent-option agreement with Duke, allowing it to manufacture and sell products based on patents from Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After Take-Two Interactive sent a legal letter to Github referencing a copyright infringement lawsuit against the people behind the popular re3 and reVC Grand Theft Auto fan projects, Github has now removed the repositories for a second time. Take-Two has also demanded the removal of many project forks and wants Github to take action under its repeat infringer policy. TorrentFreak reports: Just before the weekend, a new entry in Github's DMCA repository revealed the existence of a letter (PDF) sent to Github from Take-Two's legal team. Dated September 9, 2021 (a week after the copyright lawsuit was filed) it informs Github that legal action is underway and it has come to the company's attention that the contentious content (and numerous 'fork' repositories) continue to be made available on Github's website. "We request that Github take expeditious action to remove or disable access to the materials [in the attached exhibit], together with any other instances of the same materials available within the same primary 'GTAmodding/re3' fork network (e.g. in 'private' or newly-created repositories)," it reads. In common with the first DMCA notice, Github has responded by taking the project's repositories down. Given that the defendants in the case already stand accused of previously sending 'bad faith' counter-notices, it seems unlikely that they will follow up with another set of similar responses that will soon be under the scrutiny of the court. Take-Two also follows up with a line that is becoming more and more popular in copyright infringement matters, one that references so-called 'repeat infringers.' "Furthermore, it is requested that Github take appropriate measures to prevent further infringement by the parties responsible, including pursuant to any 'repeat infringer' policies maintained by Github." This means that if any of the contentious content is reposted to Github, Take-Two would like the code repository to implement its own 'repeat infringer' process. It states that "in appropriate circumstances and in its sole discretion, [Github will] disable and terminate the accounts of users who may infringe upon the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of GitHub or others." The letter also provides a laundry list of repository forks that, on the basis they are also infringing, should be removed. While Github appears to have complied in many cases, there are two notable exceptions. After being targeted by earlier DMCA takedowns, Github users 'td512' and 'erorcun' filed DMCA counter-notices to have their repositories restored. The former previously informed TorrentFreak that he believed Take-Two's infringement claims to be incorrect. At the time of writing, both repos are still online.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has introduced a number of new "eco-friendly routing" tools to Google Maps, including the ability to view the route that's most fuel-efficient, and how much you can save on fuel with a slight detour. Here's a list of the new features rolling out for consumers, as reported by Fast Company: 1.) When you search for flights on Google, you'll see the CO2 emissions for each flight, with green badges for the lowest-footprint options. The tool also calculates emissions per seat; first-class seats have a larger footprint since they take up more of the plane.2.) If you search for appliances like furnaces in the U.S., you'll now see suggestions in Google's Shopping tab for the most cost-effective and sustainable options.3.) Google Finance now shows sustainability scores for companies, based on data from the nonprofit CDP, and the tool will soon also include a sustainability score for your whole portfolio.4.) If you search for hotels, you'll see information about the sustainability of different hotels.5.) In cities that offer bike navigation directions, a new "lite navigation" option will soon be available that lets cyclists easily see their progress, ETA updates, and elevation along the route without having to leave their screen on continuously.6.) Information about bike and scooter share locations will expand to 300 cities around the world.7.) Nest is offering a new service that will let you shift heating and cooling to the times that the grid is cleanest or the energy is least expensive. Another option will let consumers buy renewable energy credits for the energy they're using at home.8.) In new pilots in Israel and Brazil, Google is testing the use of AI to optimize traffic lights. In early results, the intervention saves fuel use (and time, waiting at lights) by 10% to 20%.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has published a new support webpage where they provide an official method to bypass the TPM 2.0 and CPU checks (TPM 1.2 is still required) and have Windows 11 installed on unsupported systems. Bleeping Computer reports: [I]t looks like Microsoft couldn't ignore the fact that bypassing TPM checks is fairly simple, so to avoid having people breaking their systems by using non-standardized third-party scripts, they decided to just give users an official way to do it. Installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware comes with some pitfalls that users must be aware of, and in some cases, agree to before the operating system will install. "Your device might malfunction due to these compatibility or other issues. Devices that do not meet these system requirement will no longer be guaranteed to receive updates, including but not limited to security updates," Microsoft explains in a new support bulletin. [Y]ou will still require a TPM 1.2 security processor, which many will not likely have. If you are missing a TPM 1.2 processor, you can bypass all TPM checks by using this script that deletes appraiser.dll during setup. To use the new AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU bypass to install Windows 11 on devices, Microsoft instructs you to perform the following steps: 1. Please read all of these instructions before continuing.2. Visit the Windows 11 software download page, select "Create tool now," and follow the installation instructions to create a bootable media or download an ISO.3. On Windows, click 'Start', type 'Registry Editor' and click on the icon to launch the tool.4. Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup Registry key and create a new "REG_DWORD" value named "AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU" and set it to "1". Alternatively, you can download a premade Registry file that you can double-click on and merge it to create the above value for you.5. Reboot your system Having done all that, you may now upgrade to Windows 11 by double-clicking on the downloaded ISO file and running Setup.exe or by using the bootable Windows 11 media you created in Step 1. Microsoft states that standard installation options such as 'Full Upgrade', 'Keep Data Only', and 'Clean Install', will all be available as usual.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stare at a blank wall in any room, and you are unlikely to learn much more than the paint color. But a new technology can inconspicuously scan the same surface for shadows and reflections imperceptible to the human eye, then analyze them to determine details, including how many people are in the room -- and what they are doing. From a report: This could be used to spy on activity from around a corner, learn more from a partial view of a space or watch someone avoiding a camera's line of sight. As people move around a room, their bodies block a portion of any available light to create subtle and indistinct "soft shadows" on walls. Brightly colored clothing can cast a dim, reflected glow. But these faint signals are usually drowned out by ambient light from a main source. "If we could do something like subtracting this ambient term from whatever we are observing, then you would just be left with camera noise -- and signal," says Prafull Sharma, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sharma and other M.I.T. researchers isolated that ambient term by filming a wall in a room as its occupants moved around and averaging the frames over time. This eliminated the shifting shadows cast by the humans, leaving only the light from the main source, plus shadows from furniture or other stationary objects. Then the researchers removed this term from the video in real time, revealing moving shadows on the wall. Next, Sharma's team recorded blank walls in several more rooms in which the researchers enacted various scenarios and activities. Groups of one or two people moved around outside the camera's view. Others crouched, jumped or waved their arms. Then the team fed the videos into a machine-learning model to teach it which soft shadow patterns indicated which behavior. The resulting system can automatically analyze footage of a blank wall in any room in real time, determining the number of people and their actions. The work was accepted as an oral presentation at the 2021 International Conference on Computer Vision in October. Although this system can function without calibration in any room, it performs poorly in dim lighting or in the presence of a flickering light source such as a television.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple says that as of January 31st, 2022, all applications will need to offer people a method of deleting their accounts. This applies to all iOS, iPadOS and macOS apps. Engadget reports: The company announced this requirement alongside other App Store guideline changes at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in June as part of a push to give users more control over their data. As The Verge notes, Apple is only requiring developers to let people "initiate deletion of their account from within the app," so apps might send you to a website or even a chat with an agent before you can actually close your account.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Chinese province that was the initial epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak made significant purchases of equipment used to test for infectious diseases months before Beijing notified international authorities of the emergence of a new coronavirus, according to research by a cybersecurity company. The province's purchase of polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, testing equipment, which allows scientists to amplify DNA samples to test for infectious disease or other genetic material, shot upward in 2019, with most of the increase coming in the second half of the year, the Australian-U.S. firm Internet 2.0 found. Hubei province is home to Wuhan, the large Chinese city where the first known cases of the virus emerged. The World Health Organization reported that its China Country Office was informed on Dec. 31, 2019, that cases of pneumonia from an unknown cause had been detected in the city. Based on the research, Internet 2.0 concluded with "high confidence that the pandemic began much earlier than China informed the WHO about Covid-19," according to the report. The cybersecurity firm, which specializes in digital forensics and intelligence analysis, called for further investigation. But several medical experts said the Internet 2.0 report wasn't enough information to draw such conclusions. For one thing, PCR testing, which has been in broad use for several decades, has been been growing in popularity as it has become a standard method to test for pathogens, according to one of the experts. In addition, PCR equipment is widely used in laboratories to test for many other pathogens beside Covid-19, including in animals, and is commonly found in modern hospitals and labs. China was also dealing with an outbreak of African swine fever across the country in 2019.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AMD said Windows 11 can cut game performance on Ryzen CPUs by 10 to 15 percent, and the operating system may not utilize AMD's "preferred core" technology, but a fix is in the works. PCWorld reports: A support note on AMD's web site published this week said Windows 11 may increase L3 cache latency a whopping threefold, which can cause slowdowns in latency sensitive applications. Lighter duty, cache-sensitive games might see a 3 percent to 5 percent hit, and lighter-duty games as e-sports titles could see frame rates drop from 10 to 15 percent. AMD also said its "preferred core" feature, which tells the operating system which core in each CPU can hit the highest clock, also doesn't work right in Windows 11. Each CPU is tested to see which core will run the fastest at the factory and is marked so the OS will dispatch tasks to that "preferred core." Since Windows 11 doesn't seem to work with it right now, any performance bump from using the best core wouldn't happen. The company said the performance cost would be most noticeable in CPUs with more than 8 cores and with TDP ratings above 65 watts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Parliament today called for a ban on police use of facial recognition technology in public places, and on predictive policing, a controversial practice that involves using AI tools in hopes of profiling potential criminals before a crime is even committed. Politico reports: In a resolution adopted overwhelmingly in favor, MEPs also asked for a ban on private facial recognition databases, like the ones used by the controversial company Clearview AI. The Parliament also supports the European Commission's attempt in its AI bill to ban social scoring systems, such as the ones launched by China that rate citizens' trustworthiness based on their behavior. The non-biding resolution sends a strong signal on how the Parliament is likely to vote in upcoming negotiations of the AI Act. The European Commission's proposal of the bill restricts the use of remote biometric identification -- including facial recognition technology -- in public places unless it is to fight "serious" crime, such as kidnappings and terrorism. The AI Act's lead negotiator, Brando Benifei and almost all of his co-negotiators from other political groups in the Parliament have called for a blanket ban on facial recognition. This is in stark contrast to policies implemented in some EU member countries, who are keen to use these technologies to bolster their security apparatuses.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The U.S. Navy has lost control of the official Facebook page for its destroyer-class warship, the USS Kidd. Someone has hacked the page and, for the past two days, done nothing but stream Age of Empires. The first stream went on for four hours. As first reported by Task & Purpose, the USS Kidd lost control of its Facebook account at 10:26 p.m. on October 3. The destroyer class warship then streamed Age of Empires for four hours under the headline "Hahahahaha." It's since streamed Age of Empires five more times, each time for at least an hour. Whoever is playing sucks, because they never make it past the Stone Age. As of this writing, the six videos are still up and watchable. The Navy confirmed to Task & Purpose that it had been hacked, adding: "We are currently working with Facebook technical support to resolve the issue."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earth is losing some of its glow, a study published in Geophysical Research Letters last week shows. It appears climate change and a natural climate shift have essentially scuffed up our planet. From a report: The study takes a look at earthshine, or the light reflected from the planet that casts a faint light on the surface of the Moon. It's also known as the Da Vinci Glow, because Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to formally write about it. Research has advanced quite a bit since da Vinci's writing 500 years ago, and the new findings use two decades of earthshine data collected at Big Bear Solar Observatory using a special type of telescope to view the Moon. The best time to observe earthshine is when the Moon is waxing or waning. Look at the Moon then, and you may be able to make out a faint outline of the whole Moon in addition to the sliver brightly illuminated by the Sun. That ghostly outline is thanks to earthshine, caused by the sunlight reflecting off our planet. The observatory is perfectly situated to measure earthshine for 40% of the planet, spanning the Pacific and parts of North America. Analyzing the data for roughly 800 nights between 1998 and 2017 showed a small but significant decline in earthshine. There were some year-to-year shifts, but the paper notes that those are "quite muted, with a long-term decline dominating the time series." The scientists used satellite data to gauge what drove the dimming. Land, ice, clouds, and open ocean all have different levels of reflectivity that contribute to earthshine. (The reflectivity of different surfaces is also referred to as albedo.) The findings point to the disappearance of clouds in the tropical Pacific as the culprit in dulling Earth's shine. "The albedo drop was such a surprise to us when we analyzed the last three years of data after 17 years of nearly flat albedo," said Philip Goode, a researcher at New Jersey Institute of Technology and the lead author of the report, in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Justice Department is creating a new team to investigate and prevent hackers from using cryptocurrency exchanges to remain anonymous while extorting money from victims of their attacks, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Wednesday. From a report: The main goal of the new enforcement team is to take down the infrastructure and "criminal supply chain" that allows hackers to carry out ransomware attacks in which victims' data is frozen until they pay a ransom, Monaco said. "Cryptocurrency exchanges want to be the banks of the future," Monaco told the Aspen Cyber Summit. "We need to make sure that folks can have confidence when they use these systems."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A team of more than 40 specialists believes that they have identified the Zodiac Killer, an unnamed serial murderer who operated in the San Fransisco Bay area in the 1960s. From a report: The Case Breakers, a team consisting of former law enforcement investigators, journalists and military intelligence officers, said in a press release that they believe they have identified the Zodiac Killer as Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018. The Zodiac Killer has been connected to five murders between 1968 and 1969. The killer notably taunted authorities through complex riddles and ciphers sent to media and police during the investigations. The Case Breakers say they identified Poste as the killer after uncovering forensic evidence and photos from Poste's darkroom. The team said a few images featured in the press release show scars on his forehead that similarly matches scars on a sketch of the Zodiac. Jen Bucholtz, a former Army counterintelligence agent who works on cold cases, said the team also found deciphered letters sent by the Zodiac that revealed Poste as the killer, according to Fox News. "So you've got to know Gary's full name in order to decipher these anagrams," she said. "I just don't think there's any other way anybody would have figured it out."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When Facebook's platforms went down early on Oct. 4, the online tracker Downdetector was among the first places users looked to find out what was happening. Downdetector, which uses crowdsourcing to track outages, recognized Facebook's problems were dramatically different than a typical outage. Its system automatically released a notification, including a tweet, informing the internet of the disruption. The outage was among the biggest ever declared by Downdetector, said Luke Deryckx, chief technology officer at closely held Ookla LLC, the Seattle-based company that owns it. "Downdetector is a vehicle for users to report their experience," he said, adding that the company crowdsources "users' relationship with the internet." "In this case, we'd received a clear and almost instantaneous signal that there was a Facebook-related outage." The idea of Downdetector was born over drinks at a bar in Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands, in February 2012. Tom Sanders and Sander van de Graaf were both working at IDG Communications Inc., the media publisher of magazines including CIO and Computerworld. Van de Graaf was a developer, and Sanders was the editor in chief. Readers would often call the newsroom to report an online outage at a company or service provider, but the reporters would often get no response -- or have to wait hours -- when they called to ask about the disruption. "We thought, wouldn't there be ways to automate this so we didn't have to check with the press office and we could get the data directly ourselves?" Van de Graaf said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An unknown individual has leaked the source code and business data of video streaming platform Twitch via a torrent file posted on the 4chan discussion board earlier today. From a report: The leaker said they shared the data as a response to the recent "hate raids" --coordinated bot attacks posting hateful and abusive content in Twitch chats -- that have plagued the platform's top streamers over the summer. "Their community is [...] a disgusting toxic cesspool, so to foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space, we have completely pwned them, and in part one, are releasing the source code from almost 6,000 internal Git repositories," the leaker said earlier today. The leaker claims that the leak contains the "entirety of twitch.tv, with commit history going back to its early beginnings, mobile, desktop and video game console Twitch clients, various proprietary SDKs and internal AWS services used by Twitch, every other property that Twitch owns including IGDB and CurseForge, an unreleased Steam competitor from Amazon Game Studios, and Twitch SOC internal red teaming tools." Twitch has confirmed the breach. In a tweet it said, "We can confirm a breach has taken place. Our teams are working with urgency to understand the extent of this. We will update the community as soon as additional information is available."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Children across much of Africa are to be vaccinated against malaria in a historic moment in the fight against the deadly disease. From a report: Malaria has been one of the biggest scourges on humanity for millennia and mostly kills babies and infants. Having a vaccine -- after more than a century of trying -- is among medicine's greatest achievements. The vaccine -- called RTS,S -- was proven effective six years ago. Now, after the success of pilot immunisation programmes in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, the World Health Organization says the vaccine should be rolled out across sub-Saharan Africa and in other regions with moderate to high malaria transmission. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO said it was "a historic moment." "The long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health and malaria control." Using the vaccine on top of existing tools "could save tens of thousands of young lives each year," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FallOutBoyTonto writes: It is safe to say that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a fan of independent media. In the run-up to elections last month, Putin declared almost every independent media organization operating inside the country a "foreign agent" to stifle dissent and criticism. The intent seems to be to destroy independent media in Russia. Now, this campaign has been extended to coverage of space activities in Russia. The country already prohibits reporting on space activities containing classified information, but a new law extends to coverage of a variety of other space news. Essentially, any person in Russia who now reports on anything that might be even tangentially related to Russia's military activities or space activities will be labeled as a foreign agent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google plans to invest $1 billion in Africa over the next five years to ensure access to fast and cheaper internet and will back startups to support the continent's digital transformation, it said on Wednesday. From a report: The unit of U.S. tech company Alphabet made the announcement at a virtual event where it launched an Africa Investment Fund, through which it will invest $50 million in startups, providing them with access to its employees, network and technologies. Nitin Gajria, managing director for Google in Africa told Reuters in a virtual interview that the company would among others, target startups focusing on fintech, e-commerce and local language content. "We are looking at areas that may have some strategic overlap with Google and where Google could potentially add value in partnering with some of these startups," Gajria said. In collaboration with not-for-profit organisation Kiva, Google will also provide $10 million in low interest loans to help small businesses and entrepreneurs in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa so they can get through the economic hardship created by COVID-19.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple will be hit with an EU antitrust charge over its NFC chip technology -- Reuters reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter -- a move that puts it at risk of a possible hefty fine and could force it to open its mobile payment system to rivals. From a report: The iPhone maker has been in European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager's crosshairs since June last year when she launched an investigation into Apple Pay. Preliminary concerns were Apple's NFC chip which enables tap-and-go payments on iPhones, its terms and conditions on how mobile payment service Apple Pay should be used in merchants' apps and websites, and the company's refusal to allow rivals access to the payment system. The European Commission has since narrowed its focus to just the NFC chip, which can only be accessed by Apple Pay, one of the sources said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan for their development of a new tool to build molecules, work that has spurred advances in pharmaceutical research and lessened the impact of chemistry on the environment. From a report: Their work, while unseen by consumers, is an essential part in many leading industries and is crucial for research. Chemists are among those tasked with constructing molecules that can form elastic and durable materials, store energy in batteries or inhibit the progression of diseases.But that work requires catalysts, which are substances that control and accelerate chemical reactions without becoming part of the final product. "For example, catalysts in cars transform toxic substances in exhaust fumes to harmless molecules," the Nobel committee said in a statement. "Our bodies also contain thousands of catalysts in the form of enzymes, which chisel out the molecules necessary for life." The problem was that there were just two types of catalysts available: metals and enzymes. In 2000, Dr. List and Dr. MacMillan -- working independently of each other -- developed a new type of catalysis that reduced waste and allowed for novel ways to construct molecules. It is called asymmetric organocatalysis and builds upon small organic molecules. "This concept for catalysis is as simple as it is ingenious, and the fact is that many people have wondered why we didn't think of it earlier," said Johan Aqvist, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. Virtually everyone on the planet has come across a product that has benefited from a chemist's expertise. The process of using catalysts to break down molecules or join them together is essential in industry and research.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Tuesday, D-Wave released its roadmap for upcoming processors and software for its quantum annealers. The company is also announcing that it's going to be developing its own gate-based hardware, which it will offer in parallel with the quantum annealer. Ars Technica's John Timmer talked with company CEO Alan Baratz to understand all the announcements. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: The simplest part of the announcement to understand is what's happening with D-Wave's quantum-annealing processor. The current processor, called Advantage, has 5,000 qubits and 40,000 connections among them. These connections play a major role in the chip's performance as, if a direct connection between two qubits can't be established, others have to be used to act as a bridge, resulting in a lower effective qubit count. Starting this week, users of D-Wave's cloud service will have access to an updated version of Advantage. The qubit and connection stats will remain the same, but the device will be less influenced by noise in the system (in technical terms, its qubits will maintain their coherence longer). [...] Further out in the future is the follow-on system, Advantage 2, which is expected late next year or the year after. This will see another boost to the qubit count, going up to somewhere above 7,000. But the connectivity would go up considerably as well, with D-Wave targeting 20 connections per qubit. D-Wave provides a set of developer tools it calls Ocean. In previous iterations, Ocean has allowed people to step back from directly controlling the hardware; instead, if a problem could be expressed as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO), Ocean could produce the commands needed to handle all the hardware configuration and run the problem on the optimizer. D-Wave referred to this as a hybrid problem solver, since Ocean would use classical computing to optimize the QUBO prior to execution. The only problem is that not everyone who might be interested in trying D-Wave hardware knows how to express their problem as a QUBO. So, the new version of Ocean will allow an additional layer of abstraction by allowing problems to be sent to the system in the format typically used by people who tend to solve these sorts of problems. "You will now be able to specify problems in the language that data scientists and data analysts understand," Baratz promised. The biggest part of today's announcement, however, may be that D-Wave intends to also build gate-based hardware. Baratz explained that he thinks that optimization is likely to remain a valid approach, pointing to a draft publication that shows that structuring some optimization problems for gate-based hardware may be so computationally expensive that it would offset any gains the quantum hardware could provide. But it's also clear that gate-based hardware can solve an array of problems that a quantum annealer can't. He also argued that D-Wave has solved a number of problems that are currently limiting advances in gate-based hardware that uses electronic qubits called transmons. These include the amount and size of the hardware that's needed to send control signals to the qubits and the ability to pack qubits in densely enough so that they're easy to connect but not close enough that they start to interfere with each other. One of the problems D-Wave faces, however, is that the qubits it uses for its annealer aren't useful for gate-based systems. While they're based on the same bit of hardware (the Josephson junction), the annealer's qubits can only be set as up or down. A gate-based qubit needs to allow manipulations in three dimensions. So, the company is going to try building flux qubits, which also rely on Josephson junctions but use them in a different way. So, at least some of the company's engineering expertise should still apply.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Tuesday, Instagram announced that it will now combine IGTV's long-form video and Instagram Feed videos into a new format called simply "Instagram Video." TechCrunch reports: These videos, both longer and shorter, will be found on users' profiles in a new "Video" tab. Meanwhile, when people encounter videos on Instagram, they'll be able to tap anywhere on the video to enter into a fullscreen viewing mode. After watching, they can then choose to keep scrolling to discover more video content from creators or tap the back button to exit. None of these changes will impact what Instagram is doing with Reels, though. The company's short-form video platform and TikTok rival will continue to remain separate, we're told. They won't be mixed into this feed of videos, if users choose to scroll. The IGTV app, however, isn't going away. Instagram tells us it will now be rebranded as "Instagram Video" and will host the "Instagram Video" formatted content, along with Instagram Live videos. But it will not host Reels videos. With today's update, users will still be able to upload their non-Reels videos in the same way as before -- by clicking on the plus sign (+) in the top-right corner of the Instagram home page and selecting "Post." Videos can be up to 60 minutes in length. Instagram is also adding new features like trimming, filters, and people and location tagging as part of the updated upload experience. [...] Instagram's goal with these changes will be a more streamlined video experience. Instagram says the changes are rolling out globally starting today across both iOS and Android.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As spotted by Kotaku, Sony has decided to discontinue credit card and PayPal payment options for both the PS3 and the PS Vita on October 27th, 2021, making it frustratingly difficult to use these stores. From the report: To actually buy video games on your video game device, you will need to go to a secondary location and purchase a physical gift card, which you can then use to purchase video games. Alternatively you can use the awkward wallet system to add funds via Sony's website, or by adding funds on your PS4 or PS5, and then spending them on the PS3 or Vita. Either way, this is extremely silly. Sony's complete lack of interest in games preservation, and for keeping games accessible to the people who bought the systems they run on, is deeply infuriating. The games industry has a short memory, made shorter by a constant focus on developing tech, and even shorter again by publishers with no interest in keeping their systems running. I've written before about the importance of libraries in game preservation, and I will take Sony's fuckery as an opportunity to get on my soapbox again. [...]Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: Much of the world is unprepared for the floods, hurricanes and droughts expected to worsen with climate change and urgently needs better warning systems to avert water-related disasters, according to a report by the United Nations' weather agency. Global water management is "fragmented and inadequate," the report published Tuesday found, with nearly 60% of 101 countries surveyed needing improved forecasting systems that can help prevent devastation from severe weather. As populations grow, the number of people with inadequate access to water is also expected to rise to more than 5 billion by 2050, up from 3.6 billion in 2018, the report said. Among the actions recommended by the report were better warning systems for flood- and drought-prone areas that can identify, for example, when a river is expected to swell. Better financing and coordination among countries on water management is also needed, according to the report by the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, development agencies and other groups. The report found that since 2000, flood-related disasters globally rose 134% compared with the previous two decades. Most flood-related deaths and economic losses were in Asia, where extreme rainfall caused massive flooding in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Nepal and Pakistan in the past year. The frequency of drought-related disasters rose 29% over the same period. African countries recorded the most-drought related deaths. The steepest economic losses from drought were in North America, Asia and the Caribbean, the report said. Globally, the report found 25% of all cities are already experiencing regular water shortages. Over the past two decades, it said the planet's combined supplies of surface water, ground water and water found in soil, snow and ice have declined by 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) per year. Despite some progress in recent years, the report found 107 countries would not meet goals to sustainably manage water supplies and access by 2030 at current rates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers at Northwestern University have devised a new method for recording information to DNA that takes minutes rather than hours or days. Interesting Engineering reports: The researchers utilized a novel enzymatic system to synthesize DNA that records rapidly changing environmental signals straight into its sequences, and this method could revolutionize how scientists examine and record neurons inside the brain. To record intracellular molecular and digital data to DNA, scientists currently rely on multipart processes that combine new information with existing DNA sequences. This means that, for an accurate recording, they must stimulate and repress the expression of specific proteins, which can take over 10 hours to complete. The new study's researchers hypothesized they could make this process faster by utilizing a new method they call "Time-sensitive Untemplated Recording using Tdt for Local Environmental Signals," or TURTLES. This way, they would synthesize completely new DNA rather than copying a template of it. The method enabled the data to be recorded into the genetic code in a matter of minutes. "Nature is good at copying DNA, but we really wanted to be able to write DNA from scratch," Northwestern engineering professor Keith E.J. Tyo, the paper's senior author, said, in the press release. "The ex vivo (outside the body) way to do this involves a slow, chemical synthesis. Our method is much cheaper to write information because the enzyme that synthesizes the DNA can be directly manipulated. State-of-the-art intracellular recordings are even slower because they require the mechanical steps of protein expression in response to signals, as opposed to our enzymes which are all expressed ahead of time and can continuously store information."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is reminding us that it will enable two-factor authentication for 150 million more accounts by the end of this year. The Verge reports: In 2018, Google said that only 10 percent of its active accounts were using two-factor authentication. It has been pushing, prodding, and encouraging people to enable the setting ever since. Another prong of the effort will require more than 2 million YouTube creators to turn on two-factor authentication to protect their channels from takeover. Google says it has partnered with organizations to give away more than 10,000 hardware security keys every year. Its push for two-factor has made the technology readily available on your phone whether you use Android or iPhone. A tool that also helps users keep their accounts secure is using a password manager, and Google now says that it checks over a billion passwords a day via its built-in manager for Chrome, Android, and the Google app. The password manager is also available on iOS, where Chrome can autofill logins for other apps. Google says that soon it will help you generate passwords for other apps, making things even more straightforward. Also coming soon is the ability to see all of your saved passwords directly from the Google app menu. Last but not least, Google is highlighting its Inactive Account Manager. This is a set of decisions to make about what happens to your account if you decide to stop using it or are no longer around and able to make those decisions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Facebook went down yesterday for nearly six hours, so did Oculus' services. Since Facebook owns VR headset maker Oculus, and controversially requires Oculus Quest users to log in with a Facebook account, many Quest owners reported not being able to load their Oculus libraries. "[A]nd those who just took a Quest 2 out of the box have reported that they're unable to complete the initial setup," adds PCGamer. As VRFocus points out, "the issue has raised another important question relating to Oculus' services being so closely linked with a Facebook account, your Oculus Quest/Quest 2 is essentially bricked until services resume." From the report: This vividly highlights the problem with having to connect to Facebook's services to gain access to apps -- the WiFi connection was fine. Even all the ones downloaded and taking up actual storage space didn't show up. It's why some VR fans began boycotting the company when it made all mandatory that all Oculus Quest 2's had to be affiliated with a Facebook account. If you want to unlink your Facebook account from Oculus Quest and don't want to pay extra for that ability, you're in luck thanks to a sideloadable tool called "Oculess." From an UploadVR article published earlier today: You still need a Facebook account to set up the device in the first place and you need to give Facebook a phone number or card details to sideload, but after that you could use Oculess to forgo Facebook entirely -- just remember to never factory reset. The catch is you'll lose access to Oculus Store apps because the entitlement check used upon launching them will no longer function. System apps like Oculus TV and Browser will also no longer launch, and casting won't work. You can still sideload hundreds of apps from SideQuest though, and if you want to keep browsing the web in VR you can sideload Firefox Reality. You can still use Oculus Link to play PC VR content, but only if you stay signed into Facebook on the Oculus PC app. Virtual Desktop won't work because it's a store app, but you can sideload free alternatives such as ALVR. To use Oculess, just download it from GitHub and sideload it using SideQuest or Oculus Developer Hub, then launch it from inside VR. If your Quest isn't already in developer mode or you don't know how to sideload you can follow our guide here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The largest public library system in the country has become the latest to eliminate all late fees. Effective immediately, the New York Public Library system will not charge fines on overdue materials, and all library card holders have had their accounts cleared of any prior late fees or fines, including replacement fees for lost materials, the NYPL announced on Tuesday, in what it called a change intended to level the playing field for all library patrons and encourage use of library resources. Fines are "an antiquated, ineffective way to encourage patrons to return their books; for those who can afford the fines, they are barely an incentive," New York Public Library President Anthony W. Marx said in a news release. "For those who can't afford the fines -- disproportionately low-income New Yorkers -- they become a real barrier to access that we can no longer accept. This is a step towards a more equitable society, with more New Yorkers reading and using libraries, and we are proud to make it happen." The Boston Public Library system implemented similar policies in April. California's Burbank Public Library also recently announced that it would no longer charge late fees and wiped all patron accounts clean. A couple years ago the San Diego Public Library scrapped fines, along with the Chicago Public Library. "After the policy change, Chicago public libraries saw an increase in returned materials as well as library card renewals," reports NPR, citing a previous report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The role of Microsoft's .NET Foundation, set up for the governance and support of open-source .NET and related projects, has been questioned by a former board member who resigned in frustration. Here's an excerpt from The Register's report: Rodney Littles II is a software engineer at Megsoft Consulting and core maintainer of an open-source project, ReactiveUI, which is a .NET Foundation project. The .NET Foundation was formed in 2014 and describes itself as "an independent, non-profit organization established to support an innovative, commercially friendly, open-source ecosystem around the .NET platform." Littles joined the .NET Foundation board in August 2020. In his campaign pitch he spoke of a "serious disconnect in the .NET ecosystem" in that Microsoft promotes .NET open source but that the community around it is not healthy. "Maintainers of .NET OSS that Microsoft wants to help thrive are still in rough shape," he said. The sustainability of open-source projects was a key concern, as was expanding the .NET open-source ecosystem. Littles resigned from the .NET Foundation board ahead of its elections in September. He intended to say nothing in public about it, but changed his mind when the foundation posted that "we wish him all the best as he refocuses on his personal life." Concerned friends contacted him, resulting in this post, where he explains some of the background to his resignation and said: "I am fine. No issue in my personal life took me away from the board." According to Littles' post, "the .NET Foundation was not concerned about its membership" and "hasn't been transparent with the community about anything." He asked the foundation: "Are you here to enforce Microsoft's will on .NET Open Source, or are you here to help foster and promote a healthy community?" He added: "The scoreboard doesn't look good for the latter... I watched Microsoft kill an Open Source Project, while my friends in the community demanded the Foundation say something, I felt powerless to do anything. It was clear the reasons I joined the Foundation weren't important." We asked Littles about his experience of being on the board. He joined, he told us, with the awareness that the previous board "was not a fully functioning board... it didn't seem coherent, it didn't seem that it was a board moving towards a goal. They put up the maturity model which I had a very big issue with." Project Maturity was a pilot including "maturity profiles," designed to improve software quality. The project was abandoned shortly after its introduction after community members complained that it was over-reaching, with board member Ben Adams acknowledging that "we didn't then open this discussion up to all projects, to find out if it was acceptable to them, or if there was a better way. This was wrong." Littles told us: "My problem with the maturity model was it seemed too Microsoft bureaucratic... member projects would have to provide a service level agreement for consumers of those libraries... it was elitist and exclusionary. I felt the model should have been more about how do we open up a path for a small open-source library to go from a one-person labour of love to a library that the community can depend on? I felt the focus was more on overseeing and dictating versus nurturing and helping." Microsoft engaged in some strange behavior with regard to its WinGet project, finding out all the details of an existing open-source project called AppGet by dangling the prospect of a job at Microsoft for its creator, but then in effect killing that open-source project though borrowing many of its ideas. Littles was more than disappointed. "The foundation, which is supposed to be the champion for open source, said nothing," Littles told us. "The foundation remained silent and to me, that was extremely loud... that is what made me wake up and realize the foundation doesn't care about the community or incidents like this... the community was in outrage behind this and the Foundation that's supposed to be Microsoft's open source arm said nothing." AppGet was not a .NET Foundation project, but Little felt that "if you're here for open source, you cannot be exclusionary, you cannot say it's not a foundation project so we don't care."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Messaging app Telegram gained over 70 million new users during Monday's Facebook outage, its founder Pavel Durov said on Tuesday, as people worldwide were left without key messaging services for nearly six hours. Reuters reports: Facebook blamed its outage, which kept its 3.5 billion users from accessing services such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, on a faulty configuration change. "The daily growth rate of Telegram exceeded the norm by an order of magnitude, and we welcomed over 70 million refugees from other platforms in one day," Durov wrote on his Telegram channel. Durov said some users in the Americas may have experienced slower speeds as millions rushed to sign up at the same time, but that the service worked as usual for the majority.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: [O]rganizers and programmers with the Mycelium Mesh Project are [...] designing a decentralized, off-grid mesh network for text communications that could be deployed quickly during government-induced blackouts or natural disasters. Mesh networks, a form of intranet distributed across various nodes rather than a central internet provider, have the potential to decrease our collective reliance on telecommunication conglomerates like Spectrum and Verizon. During a civil unrest situation, government operatives could theoretically disconnect established commercial mesh networks by raiding activists' homes and destroying their nodes or super nodes. The Mycelium Mesh Project is addressing this potential weak link by developing a system that could be deployed at a moment's notice in non-locations, such as on abandoned buildings, tree tops, electric boxes and utility poles. Nodes would be cheap, run independently of the power grid, and could be produced with materials that can be obtained locally. So far, the collective has successfully sent and received text messages across thirteen miles during field testing around Atlanta, Georgia with nodes powered by rechargeable batteries harvested from disposable vapes. [...] The Mycelium Mesh Project is still in its relatively early stages of development. Messages aren't encrypted -- a necessary feature for activists -- and the model isn't ready for long-range use. But developers are hopeful that their open-source model will promote cooperation amongst like-minded coders. "The network that we all use will work pretty much fine in 99.9% of the cases. But then when it doesn't, it's a real big problem," Marlon Kautz, an organizer and developer with the project, told Motherboard. "The authorities' control over our communications infrastructure can just completely determine what is politically possible in a situation where the future is really up for grabs, where people are making a move to change things in a serious and radical way." "This is anti-capitalist work, which is non-commercial. We are not trying to start a business," Kautz explained. "We're explicitly trying to take advantage of open source type concepts. So not not only do we want the code that we're developing to be open source, but our entire production model will be."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA has a launch date for that most Hollywood of missions, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, which is basically a dry run of the movie "Armageddon." From a report: Unlike the film, this will not involve nukes, oil rigs or Aerosmith, but instead is a practical test of our ability to change the trajectory of an asteroid in a significant and predictable way. The DART mission, managed by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (!), involves sending a pair of satellites out to a relatively nearby pair of asteroids, known as the Didymos binary. It's one large-ish asteroid, approximately 780 meters across -- that's Didymos proper -- and a 160-meter "moonlet" in its orbit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The partners that license Windows haven't always supported Microsoft's moves to step on their turf with its own tablets and laptops. So how is Microsoft navigating those relationships now? From a report: The CEO of Acer told the Financial Times Microsoft should "think twice" when it first introduced its Surface tablet in 2012. And Asus reportedly felt blindsided when Microsoft chief product officer Panos Panay unveiled the Surface Book -- which was more like a traditional laptop computer -- in 2015. When Panay speaks at Microsoft events about the latest Surface computers, he almost unnaturally enthusiastic and oddly specific about hardware components. Now, he said, he's excited -- he likes to use the word "pumped" -- about the diversity of options for consumers and organizations, no matter who builds the hardware. "OEMs provide choice for customers," Panos said of Microsoft's partners. "Not just choice for choice's sake. What do you want to accomplish? You can pick a device that suits you." In 2016, Microsoft announced a partnership with Lenovo, the world's biggest seller of PCs, in an effort to prevent conflicts that might arise between the Surface business and Windows. "We came to a very simple approach...we call it a level playing field," said Lenovo's leader of worldwide strategic alliances, Christian Eigen, who has known Panay for 15 years. "It means Microsoft does not give, from an operating system point of view, any feature exclusively to Surface."The CEOs of Microsoft and Lenovo communicate four to six times per year, and teams lower down in the organizations talk 12 to 24 times per year, Eigen explained. Microsoft also improved its communications with partners around Windows 11. "It was definitely, by far, more transparent and open and kind of cooperative development," Eigen said. [...] "My whole goal is, 'Hey, what do your customers need?' This is from an OEM brand perspective," Panay said. "Same with Surface. 'What do the Surface customers need?' Ultimately, they're all Windows customers." He said has has had input on every Surface model, including the Surface Laptop Studio PC that went on sale this week.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Evolved Apes is described on NFT marketplace OpenSea as "a collection of 10,000 unique NFTs trapped inside a lawless land." They are "fighting for survival, only the strongest ape will prevail," it says, referring to the project's much-hyped fighting game, which has not materialized. From a report: A week after the project launch, the anonymous developer known as Evil Ape who promised that game, vanished along with the project's official Twitter account and website. But they left traces behind on the blockchain that shows they siphoned 798 ether ($2.7 million) out of the project's funds in multiple transfers. The funds, derived from the initial public sale of NFTs and commissions on the secondary market, were meant for project-related expenses like marketing. Evolved Ape investors noticed several red flags leading up to Evil Ape's rug pull. After the public sale on September 24, the announcements seemed suspiciously unprofessional and several of the leaders were not around anymore, one investor who requested anonymity due to the ongoing fallout from the scam told Motherboard. But they chalked it down to lack of experience at the time. "I don't think this giant storm was ever what was expected," the investor said. According to Mike_Cryptobull, who did not share their real name due to their standing in the community, the Evolved Apes community discovered that the social-media competition winners (a marketing activity to create buzz) hadn't received their NFT prizes from the project, and the artist hadn't been paid either.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The first dog in space. The first man and woman. Now Russia has clinched another spaceflight first before the United States: Beating Hollywood to orbit. From a report: A Russian actress, Yulia Sherepild, a director, Klim Shipenko, and their veteran Russian astronaut guide, Anton Shkaplerov, launched on a Russian rocket toward the International Space Station on Tuesday. Their mission is to shoot scenes for the first feature-length film in space. While cinematic sequences in space have long been portrayed on big screens using sound stages and advanced computer graphics, never before has a full-length movie been shot and directed in space. Whether the film they shoot in orbit is remembered as a cinematic triumph, the mission highlights the busy efforts of governments as well as private entrepreneurs to expand access to space. Earth's orbit and beyond were once visited only by astronauts handpicked by government space agencies. But a growing number of visitors in the near future will be more like Ms. Sherepild and Mr. Shipenko, and less like the highly trained Mr. Shkaplerov and his fellow space explorers. A Soyuz rocket, the workhorse of Russia's space program, lifted off on time at 4:55 a.m. Eastern time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Before the launch on Tuesday, the MS-19 crew posed for photos and waved to family and fans in Baikonur. Mr. Shipenko, the director of the film which is named "The Challenge," held up a script as he waved to cameras.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Victims of ransomware attacks would be required to report payments to their hackers within 48 hours under a proposal from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and Democratic Representative Deborah Ross. From a report: The Ransom Disclosure Act would give the Department of Homeland Security data on ransomware payments, including the amount of money demanded and paid, and the type of currency used. The lawmakers say this is essential to bolster the U.S. government's understanding of how hackers operate and the extent of the ransomware threat. "Ransomware attacks are skyrocketing, yet we lack critical data to go after cybercriminals," Warren said in a statement on Tuesday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is reportedly aiming to bring some of the tech it uses at cashierless Amazon Go stores to your kitchen. According to Insider, the company has been working on a smart fridge that can monitor items and help you order replacements if you're running low on something. From a report: The team behind the Amazon Go systems is said to be heading the charge on the project, which has been in the works for at least two years. The Just Walk Out tech used at Go stores tracks what shoppers put in their carts and automatically charges them when they leave. Members of the Amazon Fresh and Lab126 hardware teams are reportedly involved with the fridge project too. The fridge would monitor the items inside and keep tabs on your purchasing habits, according to the report. If you run low on something you buy frequently, the fridge would notify you and make it easier to order more from Whole Foods or Amazon Fresh, which could give the company's grocery division a boost. The fridge could offer recipe suggestions too, which may prove useful if you forget about an item that's about to expire.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jony Ive: Steve was preoccupied with the nature and quality of his own thinking. He expected so much of himself and worked hard to think with a rare vitality, elegance and discipline. His rigor and tenacity set a dizzyingly high bar. When he could not think satisfactorily he would complain in the same way I would complain about my knees. As thoughts grew into ideas, however tentative, however fragile, he recognized that this was hallowed ground. He had such a deep understanding and reverence for the creative process. He understood creating should be afforded rare respect -- not only when the ideas were good or the circumstances convenient. Ideas are fragile. If they were resolved, they would not be ideas, they would be products. It takes determined effort not to be consumed by the problems of a new idea. Problems are easy to articulate and understand, and they take the oxygen. Steve focused on the actual ideas, however partial and unlikely. I had thought that by now there would be reassuring comfort in the memory of my best friend and creative partner, and of his extraordinary vision. But of course not. Ten years on, he manages to evade a simple place in my memory. My understanding of him refuses to remain cozy or still. It grows and evolves. Perhaps it is a comment on the daily roar of opinion and the ugly rush to judge, but now, above all else, I miss his singular and beautiful clarity. Beyond his ideas and vision, I miss his insight that brought order to chaos. It has nothing to do with his legendary ability to communicate but everything to do with his obsession with simplicity, truth and purity. Steven Levy, writing at Wired: The prudent thing to do would have been to write Steve Jobs'obituary well ahead of his death. We all knew that he did not have much time. For almost a year, even while Apple stuck to the story -- hoping against hope -- that its cofounder and CEO would make it, the body of the world's most iconic executive was telling a different story. It was saying goodbye, and so was he. My own farewell session had come earlier in the year, in the office he occupied on the fourth floor of One Infinite Loop, Apple's headquarters at the time. Fellow journalist John Markoff and I had set up the meeting specifying no agenda, but all three of us knew it was about closure. It was the middle of the work day, and thousands of people were on campus, but not a single call or visitor interrupted our 90-minute conversation. As if he were already a ghost. Despite that evidence, I could not bring myself to pre-write that obituary. Call it denial. So when I got the call late in the afternoon of October 5, 2011, that Jobs was gone, I was stunned. And I had nothing. For the next four hours, I banged away on the computer that Steve Jobs ushered into the world and told the story of his life and legacy as best I could, in all its glory and gimcrackery. In the last paragraph of the obituary I never wanted to write, I said, "The full legacy of Steve Jobs will not be sorted out for a very long time." I think we're still sorting it out. There will never be a leader, innovator or personality quite like him. And we're still living in his world.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. lawmakers pounded Facebook on Tuesday, accusing CEO Mark Zuckerberg of pushing for higher profits while being cavalier about user safety and they demanded regulators investigate whistleblower accusations that the social media company harms children and stokes divisions. Reuters: Coming a day after Facebook and its units including Instagram suffered a major outage, whistleblower Frances Haugen testified in a congressional hearing that "for more than five hours Facebook wasn't used to deepen divides, destabilize democracies and make young girls and women feel bad about their bodies." In an era when bipartisanship is rare on Capitol Hill, lawmakers from both parties excoriated the nearly $1 trillion company in a hearing that exemplified the rising anger in Congress with Facebook amid numerous demands for legislative reforms. As lawmakers criticized Facebook and Zuckerberg, the company's spokespeople fought back on Twitter, arguing Haugen did not work directly on some of the issues she was being questioned on. Senate Commerce subcommittee chair Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said Facebook knew that its products were addictive, like cigarettes. "Tech now faces that big tobacco jawdropping moment of truth," he said. He called for Zuckerberg to testify before the committee, and for the Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Trade Commission to investigate the company. "Our children are the ones who are victims. Teens today looking in the mirror feel doubt and insecurity. Mark Zuckerberg ought to be looking at himself in the mirror," Blumenthal said, adding that Zuckerberg instead was going sailing. Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook's civic misinformation team who has turned whistleblower, said Facebook has sought to keep its operations confidential. "Today, no regulator has a menu of solutions for how to fix Facebook, because Facebook didn't want them to know enough about what's causing the problems. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been need for a whistleblower," she said. The top Republican on the subcommittee, Marsha Blackburn, said that Facebook turned a blind eye to children below age 13 on its sites. "It is clear that Facebook prioritizes profit over the well-being of children and all users."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brazil's Federal Deputy Aureo Ribeiro has revealed that Brazilians could soon be able to buy houses, cars and even McDonald's with Bitcoin. From a report: The South American nation is preparing to vote on a cryptocurrency regulation bill which is expected to be presented to the Plenary of the Chamber of Deputies within the next few days. "We want to separate the wheat from the chaff, create regulations so that you can trade, know where you're buying and know who you're dealing with," Ribeiro said. "With this asset you will be able to buy a house, a car, go to McDonald's to buy a hamburger -- it will be a currency in the country as it happened in other countries." Bill 2.303/15, which calls for the regulation of virtual currencies, was approved for presentation last week. If it gets the thumbs up from the Chamber of Deputies this week, then Brazil looks set to follow El Salvador's example and make Bitcoin legal tender. Further reading: In Brazil, Bitcoin Acceptance Comes With More Regulation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.