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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Cold War couldn't stop gaming from thriving in the Eastern Bloc. From the late 1980s through the early 1990s, a generation of young people living behind the Iron Curtain designed and released their own video games and arcade cabinets. Now, you can play English translations of some of these lost classics of early gaming. One is a text adventure where a Soviet military officer hunts and kills Rambo. The translated games all come from Slovakia and are a collaboration between the Slovak Game Developers Association and the Slovak Design Museum. According to Stanislav Hrda, one of the programmers who created the games on offer, making video games was something only kids did. "The games were not sold in shops and the authors were not entitled to remuneration," he said in the post explaining the project. "Therefore, practically no one could engage in video game programming as a business activity, and adult programmers worked at most in state institutions on large mainframe computers. Thus, video game programmers became mainly teenagers." The computing power was limited and the teenagers' technological knowhow almost non-existent so many of these early games were text adventures. "These could also be programmed in the simpler Basic language that every home computer had built in," Hrda said. "Text-based games offered the opportunity to imprint one's fantasies into a world of characters, locations, descriptions of reality or fantasy at will. That is why hundreds of such video games were created in the 1980s in Czechoslovakia. The authors from the ranks of teenagers portrayed their friends, but also heroes from films that were distributed on VHS tapes or from the pop-cultural world of the West from the occasionally available comics, films, TV series and books." Hrda loved American action movies and programmed the video game Satochin, a text adventure where a Soviet officer hunts John Rambo. "The game was very hard to win," Hrda told Ars Technica. "Whenever you made a small mistake, you would die. So before you win, you are killed ten times by Rambo." [...] The project has localized ten games for Western audiences, including Satochin, with plans to tackle more over the next few years. "The games translated over the next 2-3 years after the end of the project will represent almost the complete video game production from the period of 8-bit computers in Slovakia, with an emphasis on text adventure games," the site said. English versions are available here and can be played in the Fuse emulator. The Slovak versions can be played online through the project's website.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ASML Holding has reported a fire at its factory in Berlin, Germany. No one was hurt and the fire was put out on Sunday night, but the incident could exacerbate the current global computer chip shortage. Here's what ASML said about the incident: The fire was extinguished during the night and fortunately no persons were injured during this incident. At this point it is too early to make any statement on the damage or whether the incident will have any impact on the output plan for this year. It will take a few days to conduct a thorough investigation and make a full assessment. As soon as we have such assessment, we will provide an update. The Register reports: ASML is the world's largest supplier of photolithography systems, the machines used to manufacture integrated circuits. Its units -- which cost tens of millions of dollars -- use lasers to etch components into blank silicon wafers, to within an accuracy of nanometers. Berliner Glas, where the fire was extinguished, was acquired by ASML in 2020, and says that over "1,200 employees" work at the firm, now known as ASML Berlin, developing and producing "several key components for ASML lithography systems, including wafer tables and clamps, reticle chucks and mirror blocks." These are key components for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and deep ultraviolet (DUV) systems. EUV, in particular, which helps ASML's semiconductor-making clients print chips in much finer detail and at a lower cost, is seen as one of the drivers behind the firm's predictions of a $1 trillion semiconductor industry by 2030. The Dutch firm's customers include TSMC and Intel. Berlin's fire department said last night that an automatic cleaning system had caught fire across an area of 200m^2 on the second floor of a three-storey "industrial" building in Waldkraiburger Strasse in Berlin's Britz district in the Neukolln area. Resources deployed at the site included a drone that could access the roof. The Berlin company's stated production area is 31,780m^2. A spokesperson confirmed to The Register that a part of the Berlin factory was closed -- but said other parts of the factory were still operating. The firm's stock price dipped 2 per cent on the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"On Tuesday morning, all five layers of the James Webb Space Telescope were fully locked into place," writes Slashdot reader quonset. The BBC reports: There were many who doubted the wisdom of a design that included so many motors, gears, pulleys and cables. But years of testing on full-scale and sub-scale models paid dividends as controllers first separated the shield's different layers and then tensioned them. The fifth and final membrane was locked into place at 16:58 GMT. "The unfurling and securing of the sun shield is part of what NASA refers to as '29 days on the edge,' writes quonset, citing an article from CNN. "During the 29 days, Webb will set up shop, unfurling its giant gold mirror and the protective tennis court-size sunshield. This process involves thousands of parts that must function harmoniously, in the right sequence. Fortunately, each step can be controlled from the ground in case there are issues." "The next step is the unboxing of the mirror which had to be folded to fit inside the nose cone of the rocket for launch. If all goes well, by the end of the weekend, the mirror will be in place and ready for testing before full operations begin."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Popcorn Time, the once-popular app that made watching pirated movies and television shows almost as easy as using Netflix, has shut down. Bloomberg News: The app debuted in 2014 and within a year became one of the most popular services for accessing illegal video content. Popcorn Time's creators deserted the service shortly after its introduction, and emails released after a hack of Sony Group indicated law enforcement may have played a role. But the app's code was open-source, and other developers jumped in to release new versions. In 2015, a developer associated with Popcorn Time told Bloomberg that the service wasn't responsible for piracy because it didn't host any stolen material itself. The software instead offered a link to computers around the world hosting the content through the file-sharing system BitTorrent. "The torrent world was here with millions of users way before us and will be here with BILLIONS of users way after us," he said at the time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Intel launched its 12th Generation Core family of processors late last year, it was only a small set of overclockable parts for desktops that came to market. Featuring Intel's new hybrid core design, the hardware proved competitive and cost effective, making it a very interesting time to be a consumer. However, the main battle for volume sales is typically in the mid-range and notebook segments which power millions of devices, and Intel is launching these processors today. From a report: These include the 35 W and 65 W desktop processors, new desktop coolers, and a handful of 45W+ laptop offerings for the creator and gaming markets. While all the glitz and the glamour goes to the high-profile overclockable processors in any given generation, the bulk of Intel's sales actually comes from the standard, run-of-the-mill hardware that gets put into the majority of commercial and pre-built hardware. To that end, Intel usually releases anywhere from 10 to 50+ new desktop processors to fill in the markets where needed. These processors usually come from anything up to four base physical designs, and parts of those chips are disabled depending on yield or market demand and sold accordingly. For Alder Lake, Intel is launching 22 new desktop processors, from $42 dual core Celerons at 35W all the way up to $489 Core i9-12900 parts. Split down, here's what all the Core names mean: Core i9: 8 Performance Cores + 8 Efficiency CoresCore i7: 8 Performance Cores + 4 Efficiency CoresCore i5: Either 6P+4E, or 6P onlyCore i3: 4 Performance Cores onlyPentium: 2 Performance Cores onlyCeleron: 2 Performance Cores only Just putting Core i5 aside for a split second, what we have here is a scale of hardware that changes in performance cores, but only a select few have efficiency cores. This is because Intel is using two base physical designs for this hardware: either a large 8P+8E chip or a smaller 6P only chip. The smaller chip makes the economics of the lower core count processors work out better, but it does mean that one of the key features for Alder Lake, the hybrid CPU, will be limited to the high-end hardware only.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The World Health Organization said a coronavirus variant found in France hasn't become much of a threat since it was first identified in November. From a report: The variant "has been on our radar," Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager on Covid, said at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. "That virus had a lot of chances to pick up." The variant was identified in 12 people in the southern Alps around the same time that omicron was discovered in South Africa last year. The latter mutation has since traveled the globe and kindled record levels of contagion, unlike the French one that researchers at the IHU Mediterranee Infection -- helmed by scientist Didier Raoult -- nicknamed IHU. The first patient identified with the variant was vaccinated and had just returned from Cameroon, IHU researchers wrote in a paper published on the medRxiv server in late December where they first drew attention to the atypical mutations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Whether it's cigarettes or alcohol, many governments have legislated that companies must warn consumers of the negative effects of their products. This is often achieved on packaging or required in advertising. France is now intending to bring such measures to the automotive industry, forcing carmakers to supplement ads with messages about greener transport alternatives, as reported by CTV News. Coming into force on March 1st, the legislation is the product of years of lobbying from French environmental groups. The law requires the mention of one of three statements in any given advert. Roughly translated, these are "For short journeys, walk or cycle," as well as "think about carpooling" and "Take public transport daily." These messages must be included in all advertising, whether in print, online, or broadcast on radio or TV. The messages must be clearly visible on screen, or in the case of radio ads, be spoken aloud after the ad proper is finished. A hashtag, #SeDeplacerMoinsPolluer, is also required to be displayed in certain contexts, which translates to "Move without pollution." Fines for non-compliance can range up to $56,450. It's part of a wider push to cut down on transport emissions in France, with private cars making up a full 15 percent of the country's greenhouse gas output. The country has already pledged to end the sale of gas and diesel-powered cars by 2040, while the city of Paris has banned older, more polluting vehicles from the city center.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reader segaboy81 shares a report: When Microsoft announced Windows 11 in June of 2021, it was greeted with mixed reactions by the tech press. Some outlets praised the round corners and modern design elements, while others conjectured that visual elements from the remains of Windows 10x had simply been transplanted onto a stable, familiar base. All the while, Microsoft had been gaining a loyal following with what was purported to be last version on Windows. Windows, like Arch Linux, had essentially become a rolling release. That all changed with the announcement of the Surface Pro 8, Surface Go 3, and Surface Laptop Studio. The road has been long for many users, mired with controversy regarding TPM 2.0, AMD Ryzen performance pitfalls, and more. We are a full two months into the official release of Windows 11, but driver support for Microsoft's Surface line of devices listed on the official compatibility list is still incomplete. Counting AMD and Intel variants of the Surface Laptop and the 2021 lineup of new hardware, there are 16 base Surface configurations that support Windows 11. Five of them still don't have a Windows 11 driver package two months after release. They are as follows: Surface Go 2, Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 2, Surface Laptop 3 (Ryzen), and Surface Studio 2.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

All 2021 and 2022 LG smart TVs will be equipped with a health education and telehealth app from the senior-focused health platform Independa, the company announced today. The platform will allow users to set up and have telehealth appointments through their TV. From a report: While telehealth visits via apps on smartphones and computers have become normal for many patients during the pandemic, using a TV-sized screen to see a doctor can be helpful for people with eyesight issues, says Kian Saneii, Independa's founder and CEO. It also makes it easier for doctors to ask people to stand up or show more of their body during the visit. "You can't hold your phone out far enough to show the right thing," he says. "Versus on the TV, you can walk around, you can bend your arm -- the actual engagement becomes more effective." Users have to set up separate accounts with the on-demand doctor and dentist services on the Independa platform, and they're prompted to do so through a QR code. Some people might be able to have their visit covered by insurance, but right now, most patients will pay a flat fee -- $75 for a dentist's call and around $55 for a doctor, Saneii says. That could be a barrier to some users. On-demand telehealth programs also often don't connect back to patients' medical records, which could make it difficult to pass information from those visits back to their regular doctors. Further reading: Samsung is Putting NFTs in Its Smart TVs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At its CES press conference today, NVIDIA teased a new flagship GPU: the RTX 3090 Ti. It says more details will arrive soon, but handed out a few specs to tide its fans over until then. From a report: As a refresher, NVIDIA currently has the RTX 3090 at the top of its stack, with the RTX 3080 Ti close behind and the RTX 3080 as the mainstream flagship. All three are based on the same GA102 chip, with the number of active cores, clock speeds and memory configurations being the key differentiators. The RTX 3090 Ti will usurp the 3090 as the ultra high-end GPU outside of its creator line. Like the 3090, the 3090 Ti will have 24GB of GDDR6X memory, except it'll be running at 21Gbit/s, as opposed to the 19.5Gbit/s of the 3090's memory. NVIDIA also says the GPU is capable of calculating 40 shader teraflops, 78 RT teraflops and 320 tensor (AI) teraflops That compares to the 3090's 35.6 shader teraflops, 69.5 RT teraflops and 285 tensor teraflops.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DuckDuckGo, a privacy-oriented search engine, netted more than 35 billion search queries in 2021, a 46.4% jump over 2020 (23.6 billion). From a report: That's big. Even so, the company, which bills itself as the "Internet privacy company," offering a search engine and other products designed to "empower you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online without any tradeoffs," remains a rounding error compared to Google in search. Whether it remains a highly successful (and profitable) rounding error, however, could depend on how serious we become about the privacy of our searches.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AnandTech: The notebook market is a tough nut to crack with a single solution. People want that mix of high performance at the top, cost effectiveness at the bottom, and throughout there has to be efficiency, utility, and function. On the back of a successful ramp last year, AMD is striking the notebook market hot again in 2022 with the launch of its new Ryzen 6000 Mobile processors. These 'Rembrandt' APUs feature AMD's latest RDNA2 graphics, up to eight Zen3+ cores with enhanced power management features, and it uses TSMC's N6 manufacturing process for performance and efficiency improvements. Yesterday AMD disclosed that they would be launching the new Ryzen 6000 Mobile series today -- updated cores, better graphics, more features, all in a single monolithic package a little over 200 mm2. There will be 10 new processors, ranging from the traditional portable 15 W and 28 W hardware, up to 35 W and 45 W plus for the high-end gaming machines. AMD is expecting 200+ premium systems in the market with Ryzen Mobile in 2022. At the heart of the design is AMD's Zen 3+ core, which affords an improvement in power management between the cores, but keeps the Zen 3 performance characteristics. The focus here is mainly to improve idle power consumption and power when using accelerators, to help extend the life of ultraportable devices -- AMD is claiming 15-40% lower power between web browsing and video streaming. There is a frequency uplift as well, with the top processors going up to 5.0 GHz. AMD is claiming up to 1.3x single thread performance for the Ryzen 7 6800U.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony is setting some pretty grand expectations with its 2022 TV lineup -- led by the introduction of the world's first consumer QD-OLED TV. From a report: The company's current and well-regarded OLED sets use panels from LG Display that are tuned with Sony's own processing. But the new flagship Bravia XR A95K TV will include a QD-OLED (quantum dot organic light emitting diode) panel manufactured by none other than Samsung Display. It'll come in 65-inch and 55-inch sizes, with both coming in at 4K resolution. It was rumored that Samsung Electronics might announce a QD-OLED 4K TV at CES 2022, but that hasn't panned out so far. So it's Sony that gets the prime spotlight instead. Samsung Display has been developing QD-OLED for a number of years, and the display technology could become something of a middle step between standard OLED and the MicroLED displays that only Samsung is selling right now -- for ungodly sums of money. QD-OLED is designed to combine the best traits of OLED (perfect blacks, infinite contrast, etc.) with benefits of quantum dot LED TVs like improved brightness and more vivid color reproduction at higher brightness levels. It's not a major new approach like Micro LED, but more of a progression from where things have stood for a few years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: A job posting for a US Senior Manager, Amazon Future Engineer reveals Amazon's ambitious expansion plans for K-12 CS education in the U.S. and beyond: "We believe computer science can unleash creativity and unlock human potential. Amazon Future Engineer is a global, childhood-to-career, education program designed to increase access to computer science education to young people from underserved and underrepresented communities. [...] We are looking for a leader to increase our reach and impact in the United States among students in our primary target population: students attending, graduating from, or living in neighborhoods served by Title I public schools. In the U.S., we currently reach more than 6,000 Title I schools and have awarded 300 college scholarships. We seek to continue scaling our reach and impact in Title I schools, but more importantly to grow our impact on the students we serve. [...] This leader will also work closely with the Amazon Future Engineer global product team as a Voice of the Customer conduit for students and teachers in the HQ regions and U.S. more broadly. In addition, this leader will serve as a colleague to other Product Managers leading local implementation of AFE programs in other countries (including among others, the UK, France, and Canada). [...] Amazon Future Engineer is a pillar program of Amazon in the Community. While the day-to-day work of AFE focuses on CS education, this role requires a systems-thinker who understands that educational needs intersect with other needs addressed by other AITC pillar programs (e.g., hunger, housing equity). This role will collaborate and coordinate with other Amazon community impact initiatives." Interestingly, Code.org's GitHub documentation and code suggests that the tech-backed nonprofit has been helping Amazon achieve its Title I reach-and-impact ambitions. In the code, NCES data from the U.S. Dept. of Education is used with Amazon-specified cutoffs to qualify certain teachers and schools for participation in the $50M Amazon Future Engineer program, as well as their eligibility for other "Free stuff from Amazon". Comments in routine afe_high_needs explain how the code "determines if [a] school meets Amazon Future Engineer criteria" and is deemed "eligible if the school is any of the following: a) title I school, b) more than 40% URM [underrepresented minority] students, or c) more than 40% of students eligible for free and reduced meals." National School Lunch Program eligibility data is often used as a proxy for the number of students living in poverty (in 2015, a majority of public school students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch). In a second job posting for a Sr. Product Manager, Amazon Future Engineer, Amazon reveals its plans for K-12 CS education also go beyond software: "We're looking for leader for a new initiative that combines hands-on STEM learning for K12 students with pathways into careers in hardware design engineering. You will envision and launch a new 'maker challenge' to ignite student's natural creativity to solve problems that matter to them through technology. Additionally, you will work backward from diverse hardware engineers working today to create an experimental early career scholar-internship cohort that allows students to gain a foothold as technology professionals. You will be adept at partnership with schools and nonprofits that serve underserved communities, business units that excel in hardware engineering, and Amazon Future Engineer's broader team. You will be instrumental in delivering a hands-on and hardware centric nucleus at the center of our company-wide goal to reach 1.6 million underrepresented students globally with equitable computer science learning."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, knew his partner loved word games, so he created a guessing game for just the two of them. As a play on his last name, he named it Wordle. But after the couple played for months, and after it rapidly became an obsession in his family's WhatsApp group once he introduced it to relatives, Mr. Wardle thought he might be on to something and released it to the rest of the world in October. From a report: On Nov. 1, 90 people played. On Sunday, just over two months later, more than 300,000 people played. It's been a meteoric rise for the once-a-day game, which invites players to guess a five-letter word in a similar manner as the guess-the-color game Mastermind. After guessing a five-letter word, the game tells you whether any of your letters are in the secret word and whether they are in the correct place. You have six tries to get it right. Few such popular corners of the internet are as low-frills as the website, which Mr. Wardle built himself as a side project. There are no ads or flashing banners; no windows pop up or ask for money. There is merely the game on a black background. "I think people kind of appreciate that there's this thing online that's just fun," Mr. Wardle said in an interview on Monday. "It's not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It's just a game that's fun." This is not Mr. Wardle's first brush with suddenly capturing widespread attention. Formerly a software engineer for Reddit, he created two collaborative social experiments on the site, called The Button and Place, that each were phenomena in their moment. But Wordle was built without a team of engineers. It was just him and his partner, Palak Shah, killing time during a pandemic. Mr. Wardle said he first created a similar prototype in 2013, but his friends were unimpressed and he scrapped the idea. In 2020, he and Ms. Shah "got really into" the New York Times Spelling Bee and the daily crossword, "so I wanted to come up with a game that she would enjoy," he said. The breakthrough, he said, was limiting players to one game per day. That enforced a sense of scarcity, which he said was partially inspired by the Spelling Bee, which leaves people wanting more, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: A new COVID-19 vaccine, developed by researchers from the Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, is being offered patent-free to vaccine manufacturers across the world. Human trials have shown the vaccine to be safe and effective, with India already authorizing its use as production ramps up to over 100 million doses per month. The vaccine has been named Corbevax and it is based on a traditional protein-based technology that has been safely used for decades. Like other COVID-19 vaccines, Corbevax focuses on the coronavirus spike protein, but instead of using mRNA to direct our cells to produce those spike proteins internally it delivers lab-grown spike proteins to the body. The researchers took the gene that codes for the spike protein and engineered yeast to produce it. These proteins are collected, purified, and combined with an adjuvant to enhance immune responses. This exact method has been used to produce the hepatitis B vaccine for years. In late 2020 the US research team developing the vaccine joined forces with India-based pharma company Biological E to begin clinical trials and establish manufacturing capacity. Across 2021 those clinical trials included several thousand participants and ultimately found Corbevax to be safe and effective at generating robust immune responses to SARS-CoV-2. The trial data was compared to an already approved vaccine called Covishield (the Indian-made version of Astrazeneca's well-known COVID-19 vaccine). Corbevax generated significantly fewer adverse effects than Covishield and produced superior immune responses. Neutralizing antibody responses to Corbevax indicate the vaccine should be at least 80 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 from the Delta variant. Specific data against the Omicron variant is expected soon but it is hypothesized to be at least as effective as most currently available vaccines. Perhaps the most important feature of this new vaccine is the fact it has been developed as a patent-free product that can be easily manufactured by vaccine-producers around the world. The project has been described as "gift to the world" by researcher Peter Hotez. "India is the first country to issue emergency authorization to Corbevax and Biological E reportedly has 150 million doses ready to go, with production capacity set for 100 million doses per month from February," reports New Atlas.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mercedes-Benz has unveiled a concept electric vehicle it claims would be able to run for more than 620 miles before needing to recharge. Engadget reports: Should it come to fruition and live up to that promise, the Vision EQXX would beat the range of the Lucid Air Dream Edition by more than 100 miles and the Tesla Model S Long Range Plus by around 220 miles. Based on the automaker's simulations, the Vision EQXX would use less than 10 kWh to travel 62 miles on public roads, delivering an efficiency of more than 6 miles per kWh. Converted into fossil fuel consumption, Mercedes says that's around the "golden figure" of 1 liter of gasoline per 62 miles. The battery is half the size of and 30 percent lighter than the one in the EQS. However, it still has a capacity of almost 100 kWh. What's more, there are ultra-thin solar panels on the roof that can add up to 25 km (15.5 miles) of range. The Vision EQXX is a lightweight car (1,750 kg or 3,858 lbs) that has been aerodynamically optimized. The automaker says that, with a drag coefficient of cd 0.17, the EV is more aerodynamic than a football (which has a cd of 0.18 to 0.2). What's more, Mercedes claims that 95 percent of battery energy is directed to the wheels. Teams from Mercedes' research and development centers worked with its Formula 1 and Formula E engineers on the concept. They harnessed digital tools to reduce waste and weight by cutting out excess material -- the wheels are made with magnesium and the brake discs are built with aluminum alloy. The Vision EQXX uses recycled and plant-based materials too. As for the interior, the Vision EQXX's infotainment system has a single 47.5-inch, mini-LED 8K screen. Like the Hyperscreen in the EQS, it spans almost the entire width of the cabin, though this is a one-piece display. The automaker worked with NAVIS Automotive Systems on a navigation system with zoom and scroll functions that include a satellite view. The "Hey Mercedes" voice assistant is integrated into the infotainment system too.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, more than 1 million people in the U.S. were diagnosed with COVID-19 on Monday. Bloomberg reports: The highly mutated variant drove U.S. cases to a record, the most -- by a large margin -- that any country has ever reported. Monday's number is almost double the previous record of about 590,000 set just four days ago in the U.S., which itself was a doubling from the prior week. It is also more than twice the case count seen anywhere else at any time since the pandemic began more than two years ago. The highest number outside the U.S. came during India's delta surge, when more than 414,000 people were diagnosed on May 7, 2021.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Security researcher Trevor Spiniolas has discovered a vulnerability "capable of locking iOS devices into a spiral of freezing, crashing, and rebooting if a user connects to a sabotaged Apple Home device," reports The Verge. From the report: The vulnerability [...] can be exploited through Apple's HomeKit API, the software interface that allows an iOS app to control compatible smart home devices. If an attacker creates a HomeKit device with an extremely long name -- around 500,000 characters -- then an iOS device that connects to it will become unresponsive once it reads the device name and enter a cycle of freezing and rebooting that can only be ended by wiping and restoring the iOS device. What's more, since HomeKit device names are backed up to iCloud, signing in to the same iCloud account with a restored device will trigger the crash again, with the cycle continuing until the device owner switches off the option to sync Home devices from iCloud. Though it's possible that an attacker could compromise a user's existing HomeKit-enabled device, the most likely way the exploit would be triggered is if the attacker created a spoof Home network and tricked a user into joining via a phishing email. To guard against the attack, the main precaution for iOS users is to instantly reject any invitations to join an unfamiliar Home network. Additionally, iOS users who currently use smart home devices can protect themselves by entering the Control Center and disabling the setting "Show Home Controls." (This won't prevent Home devices from being used but limits which information is accessible through the Control Center.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Human sexual activity affects cognitive function, health, happiness and overall quality of life -- and, yes, there is also the matter of reproduction. The huge range of benefits is one reason researchers have become alarmed at declines in sexual activity around the world, from Japan to Europe to Australia. A recent study evaluating what is happening in the U.S. has added to the pile of evidence, showing declines from 2009 to 2018 in all forms of partnered sexual activity, including penile-vaginal intercourse, anal sex and partnered masturbation. The findings show that adolescents report less solo masturbation as well. The decreases "aren't trivial," as the authors wrote in the study, published on November 19 in Archives of Sexual Behavior. Between 2009 and 2018, the proportion of adolescents reporting no sexual activity, either alone or with partners, rose from 28.8 percent to 44.2 percent among young men and from 49.5 percent in 2009 to 74 percent among young women. The researchers obtained the self-reported information from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior and used responses from 4,155 people in 2009 and 4,547 people in 2018. These respondents to the confidential survey ranged in age from 14 to 49 years. The study itself did not probe the reasons for this trend. Scientific American spoke with the study's authors, Debby Herbenick and Tsung-chieh (Jane) Fu, about underlying factors that might explain these changes. Among the young, the researchers say social media, gaming and "rough sex" may contribute to this trend. The grief, health challenges, job loss and financial strain of the pandemic can all influence sexual interest and sex drive, too.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

spth writes from a report via German publisher Heise: The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei, China has maintained a temperature of 70 million degrees celsius for 17 minutes at the end of 2021. It had previously held 120 million degrees celsius for 101 seconds and 160 million degrees celsius for 20 seconds. The goal is to keep 100 million degrees for one week. The purpose of the research at EAST is to support the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in Cadarache, France. The reactor maintained these temperatures for exactly 1,056 seconds, or 17 minutes, 36 seconds, notes the Institute of Plasma Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences in an announcement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After deliberating for more than 40 hours over six days, jurors in the Elizabeth Holmes criminal trial have found Holmes guilty on four of 11 charges of defrauding the company's investors and patients. She was found not guilty on four counts. NPR reports: When the verdict was read, Holmes had no visible reaction. She sat masked in the courtroom and later hugged members of her family in the front row of the court. Holmes could face up to 20 years in prison, although legal experts say her sentence is likely to be less than that. During the nearly four-month federal trial in San Jose, jurors heard from over 30 witnesses called by prosecutors. Together, they painted Holmes as a charismatic entrepreneur who secured hundreds of millions of dollars in investment for a medical device that never delivered on her promises. When Theranos' technology fell short, the government argued, Holmes covered it up and kept insisting that the machines would transform how diseases are diagnosed through blood tests. The jury's decision followed seven days of deliberations. Still, the jury could not reach a unanimous decision on three charges, which will be resolved at a later date.. Holmes took the witness stand for more than 20 hours to defend herself. She accused her ex-boyfriend and former deputy at Theranos, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, of sexual abuse, saying that clouded her sense of judgement. Balwani faces a separate fraud trial in the same court in February. Holmes also showed remorse on the stand. She said she wished she had handled some key business matters differently. But she blamed others for the downfall of Theranos. She said lab directors whom she had trusted were the ones closest to the technology. And she said Balwani, not her, oversaw the company's financial forecasts, which were later discovered to be grossly inflated. Yet the government offered evidence that Holmes had an iron grip on Theranos' operations. Prosecutors argued she did not stop -- and even helped spread -- falsehoods about the company that misled investors into pouring millions into the startup. Theranos' value, once estimated at more than $9 billion, was ultimately squandered.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Bowie's estate has sold his entire songwriting catalog to Warner Music, including classics like "Space Oddity," "Let's Dance" and "Heroes," in the latest blockbuster deal for music rights. The New York Times reports: Warner's music publishing division, Warner Chappell, announced the agreement on Monday, saying that it encompassed Bowie's entire corpus as a songwriter, from the material on his 1967 debut album, "David Bowie," to his final album, "Blackstar," released just before Bowie's death in 2016 at age 69. The deal, for more than 400 songs, also includes soundtrack music; the material for Bowie's short-lived band Tin Machine from the late 1980s and early '90s; and other works. The price of the transaction was not disclosed, but is estimated at about $250 million. "These are not only extraordinary songs, but milestones that have changed the course of modern music forever," Guy Moot, the chief executive of Warner Chappell, said in a statement. David Bowie, the so-called "most wired rock star on the planet," has been featured in a number of Slashdot stories over the years. In 2002, Bowie talked about his new album, distribution deal with Sony, and how he's "fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing." In the late 90s, Bowie advocated for MP3s, telling The Guardian that they "could change the entire idea of what music is -- and that isn't so bad." Years later, he seemed to agree that concert ticket prices needed to increase to offset the rise in P2P file sharing and illegal downloads.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Five of the world's most powerful nations have agreed that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought" in a rare joint pledge to reduce the risk of such a conflict ever starting. The pledge was signed by the US, Russia, China, the UK and France, the five nuclear weapons states recognized by the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) who are also the five permanent members of the UN security council. They are known as the P5 or the N5. Such a common statement on a major issue of global security has become a rarity at a time of increasing friction between Russia, China and the west. With Moscow threatening to invade Ukraine and China signaling its readiness to use military force against Taiwan, the joint statement represents a renewed commitment to prevent any confrontation turning into a nuclear catastrophe. A senior US state department official said the wording of the statement had been hammered out at P5 meetings over several months, despite the high-tension environment. "At the base level to be able to say that this is how we think about these risks, and this is an acknowledgement that it is something that we want to avoid, particularly during a difficult time, I think is noteworthy," the official said. The release of the statement had been timed to coincide with the five-yearly review conference of the NPT, but that conference has been postponed amid the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, and disagreements on whether the session could be held virtually. "We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought," the statement said, echoing a joint declaration by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev at a 1985 summit in Geneva. The NPT was a bargain between states without nuclear weapons, who pledged not to acquire them, and the five nuclear-armed states, which promised to disarm. The review conference, originally planned for 2020, was expected to be contentious as a result of the stalling of momentum towards disarmament and the moves made by the five weapons states to modernize their arsenals. Four other countries with nuclear weapons, not recognized under NPT: Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea -- have also shown no signs of reducing their stockpiles. Meanwhile, the breakdown of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran and the deadlock so far in attempts to salvage it, have raised the risks of nuclear proliferation, particularly in the Middle East. Monday's joint statement was aimed at improving the atmosphere at the NPT review conference.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China is continuing to hold off from issuing new game licenses to app developers producing for the App Store and other platforms, in regulatory inaction that has reportedly led to the shuttering of around 140,000 small game studios and related companies in the country. By contrast, 180,000 video game firms shut down during all of 2020. Apple Insider reports: Under Chinese law, game developers must be licensed in order to sell games in the App Store and in other app marketplaces. While regulators stopped issuing new licenses in late 2021, it seems that the ban on new licenses is set to continue into 2022. The National press and Publication Administration (NPPA), which issues licenses for games in China, is continuing to abstain from publishing lists of new approved games. Following on from a suspension that started at the end of July, the South China Morning Post reports it has now become the longest suspension of new game licenses since a nine-month blackout in 2018. Regulators decided to suspend game license approvals in July as approvals for new games were considered "a bit too aggressive" in the first half of 2021, reports indicated. At the time it wasn't advised how long the hiatus would last, except that one unnamed source said it would be for "a while." The lack of a license means a game cannot be submitted to the regional App Store, nor can it be updated. Apple has been suspending updates and pulling games from the China App Store that didn't have a license from the NPPA since July 2020, to comply with local laws. The report speculates that the freeze "may be connected to a government crackdown on gaming addiction."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The new version of Samsung's Eco Remote features "RF harvesting capabilities that let the remote preserve its charge by 'collecting routers' radio waves and converting them to energy,'" reports The Verge. It can also be charged with solar energy. From the report: Aside from the new RF harvesting option, the Eco Remote can be charged from both outdoor and indoor light or (for the fastest results) over USB-C. Samsung says it's introducing a white model of the remote this year, which the company says is meant to better complement its "lifestyle" TVs like The Frame, Serif, and Sero. As with the original remote, the intention here is to ditch AAA batteries. Samsung has previously estimated that switching to solar-powered remotes could avoid 99 million discarded batteries over the course of seven years. It has also explored other ways of self-charging the internal battery such as "harnessing the kinetic energy that's created when the remote is shaken" and "using the vibrational energy that's created when the microphone picks up sounds." But this time around it settled on adding RF harvesting as another way to keep the clicker functioning whenever you need it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Jurors in the Elizabeth Holmes criminal trial have been unable to reach a verdict in three of the 11 counts of fraud she has been charged with, according to a note read in court today. Eight men and four women have been deliberating for more than 40 hours over six days, much of which occurred before an extended holiday weekend. Today is their first day back from break. It's unclear what decision the jury reached in the eight counts they have been able to agree on. Judge Edward Davila reread part of the instructions he previously gave the jury, ones that outline the burden of proof to overcome the presumption of innocence. Davila also read to the jury a modified version of model instructions that are given to deadlocked juries. [...] After hearing the new instructions, the jury was sent back to deliberate the three charges further.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Given that 2021 was a blockbuster year for NFTs, it's not particularly surprising that major tech companies are incorporating Non-Fungible Tokens into their CES lineup. From a report: The latest comes from Samsung, which revealed a new "NFT Aggregation Platform" designed for its smart TVs. The platform, which will be available on Samsung's MicroLed, Neo QLED and The Frame models, allows users to browse and buy NFTs directly from their sets. The platform pulls in NFTs from several marketplaces, so users can preview the art and see other relevant details, like who created the work, as well as relevant blockchain metadata.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times: After a year of fertility treatments, Yael Geller was thrilled when she found out she was pregnant in November 2020. Following a normal ultrasound, she was confident enough to tell her 3-year-old son his "brother or sister" was in her belly. But a few weeks later, as she was driving her son home from school, her doctor's office called. A prenatal blood test indicated her fetus might be missing part of a chromosome, which could lead to serious ailments and mental illness. Sitting on the couch that evening with her husband, she cried as she explained they might be facing a decision on terminating the pregnancy. He sat quietly with the news. "How is this happening to me?" Ms. Geller, 32, recalled thinking. The next day, doctors used a long, painful needle to retrieve a small piece of her placenta. It was tested and showed the initial result was wrong. She now has a 6-month-old, Emmanuel, who shows no signs of the condition he screened positive for. Ms. Geller had been misled by a wondrous promise that Silicon Valley has made to expectant mothers: that a few vials of their blood, drawn in the first trimester, can allow companies to detect serious developmental problems in the DNA of the fetus with remarkable accuracy. In just over a decade, the tests have gone from laboratory experiments to an industry that serves more than a third of the pregnant women in America, luring major companies like Labcorp and Quest Diagnostics into the business, alongside many start-ups. The tests initially looked for Down syndrome and worked very well. But as manufacturers tried to outsell each other, they began offering additional screenings for increasingly rare conditions. The grave predictions made by those newer tests are usually wrong, an examination by The New York Times has found. That includes the screening that came back positive for Ms. Geller, which looks for Prader-Willi syndrome, a condition that offers little chance of living independently as an adult. Studies have found its positive results are incorrect more than 90 percent of the time. Nonetheless, on product brochures and test result sheets, companies describe the tests to pregnant women and their doctors as near certain. They advertise their findings as "reliable" and "highly accurate," offering "total confidence" and "peace of mind" for patients who want to know as much as possible. Some of the companies offer tests without publishing any data on how well they perform, or point to numbers for their best screenings while leaving out weaker ones. Others base their claims on studies in which only one or two pregnancies actually had the condition in question. These aren't the first Silicon Valley firms to try to build a business around blood tests. Years before the first prenatal testing company opened, another start-up, Theranos, made claims that it could run more than a thousand tests on a tiny blood sample, before it collapsed amid allegations of fraud. In contrast with Theranos, the science behind these companies' ability to test blood for common disorders is not in question. Experts say it has revolutionized Down syndrome screening, significantly reducing the need for riskier tests. However, the same technology -- known as noninvasive prenatal testing, or NIPT -- performs much worse when it looks for less common conditions. Most are caused by small missing pieces of chromosomes called microdeletions. Others stem from missing or extra copies of entire chromosomes. They can have a wide range of symptoms, including intellectual disability, heart defects, a shortened life span or a high infant mortality rate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last night we asked what books you'd enjoyed reading this year. Here's how Bill Gates had answered the same question on his personal blog Gates Notes:When I was a kid, I was obsessed with science fiction. Paul Allen and I would spend countless hours discussing Isaac Asimov's original Foundation trilogy. I read every book by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert Heinlein. (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress was a particular favorite.) There was something so thrilling to me about these stories that pushed the limits of what was possible. As I got older, I started reading a lot more non-fiction. I was still interested in books that explored the implications of innovation, but it felt more important to learn something about our real world along the way. Lately, though, I've found myself drawn back to the kinds of books I would've loved as a kid. My holiday reading list this year includes two terrific science fiction stories. One takes place nearly 12 light-years away from our sun, and the other is set right here in the United States — but both made me think about how people can use technology to respond to challenges. I've also included a pair of non-fiction books about cutting-edge science and a novel that made me look at one of history's most famous figures in a new light. I read a lot of great books this year — including John Doerr's latest about climate change — but these were some of my favorites... Gates' picks include a dystopian science fiction novel by nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro (Klara and the Sun) and Project Hail Mary. ("It requires a leap of faith, but it's got a lot of science in it...") The nonfiction titles included Walter Isaacson's book about CRISPR, The Code Breaker and Jeff Hawkins' A Thousand Brains. Gates reveals his recommendations in a fanciful video where Christmas-y window displays include icons from his recommended books — including William Shakespeare.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"China has formally approved three missions targeting the south pole of the moon, with the first to launch around 2024..." reports Space.com, "each with different goals and an array of spacecraft."The trio make up the so-called fourth phase for the Chinese lunar exploration program, which most recently landed on the moon last December with a sample-return mission dubbed Chang'e 5. Wu Yanhua, deputy head of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), told China Central Television (CCTV) in a recent interview that the three missions had been approved. Chang'e 7 will be the first to launch; Wu did not provide a timeline, but previous reporting indicates a hoped-for launch around 2024, with the mission to include an orbiter, a relay satellite, a lander, a rover and a "mini flying craft" designed to seek out evidence of ice at the lunar south pole. The various component spacecraft will carry a range of science instruments including cameras, a radar instrument, an infrared spectrum mineral imager, a thermometer, a seismograph and a water-molecule analyzer; the mission will tackle goals including remote sensing, identifying resources and conducting a comprehensive study of the lunar environment... Chang'e 8 will launch later this decade and will be a step toward establishing a joint International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) with Russia and potentially other partners. The mission is expected to test technology for using local resources and manufacturing with 3D printing, according to earlier Chinese press statements.... The ILRS plan includes development of a robotic base which can be later expanded to allow astronauts to make long-term stays on the lunar surface in the 2030s. China had previously scheduled their lunar research station for the year 2035, reports the South China Morning Post. The newspaper cites concerns from Zhang Chongfeng, deputy chief designer of China's manned space programme, that America's space program might ultimately seize common land on the moon.The US government and Nasa have proposed the Artemis Accords to set rules for future lunar activities. Already signed by more than a dozen US allies, the accords allow governments or private companies to protect their facilities or "heritage sites" by setting up safety zones that forbid the entry of others. China and Russia are opposed to the accords because this challenges the existing international protocols including the UN's Moon Agreement, which states that the moon belongs to the entire human race, not a certain party, according to Zhang. But to effectively counter the US on the moon, China would have to "take some forward-looking measures and deploy them ahead of schedule", he said in a paper published in domestic peer-reviewed journal Aerospace Shanghai in June... Instead of building an orbiting "gateway", China would directly put a nuclear-powered research station on the moon. The unmanned facility would allow visiting Chinese astronauts to stay on the moon for as long as their American peers but only at a fraction of the cost. To counter the US territorial claims, China would also deploy a mobile station. This moon base on wheels would be able to roam freely on the lunar surface for over 1,000km, and the use of artificial intelligence technology would mean astronauts need not be present for its operation. And, unlike the American programme, which focuses on surface activities, China would pay a great deal of attention to the exploration of caves, which could provide a natural shelter for the construction of permanent settlements.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kalper (Slashdot reader #57,281) shares news from Bleeping Computer:Microsoft Exchange on-premise servers cannot deliver email starting on January 1st, 2022, due to a "Year 2022" bug in the FIP-FS anti-malware scanning engine. Starting with Exchange Server 2013, Microsoft enabled the FIP-FS anti-spam and anti-malware scanning engine by default to protect users from malicious email. According to numerous reports from Microsoft Exchange admins worldwide, a bug in the FIP-FS engine is blocking email delivery with on-premise servers starting at midnight on January 1st, 2022. Security researcher and Exchange admin Joseph Roosen said that this is caused by Microsoft using a signed int32 variable to store the value of a date, which has a maximum value of 2,147,483,647. However, dates in 2022 have a minimum value of 2,201,010,001 or larger, which is greater than the maximum value that can be stored in the signed int32 variable, causing the scanning engine to fail and not release mail for delivery. When this bug is triggered, an 1106 error will appear in the Exchange Server's Event Log stating, "The FIP-FS Scan Process failed initialization. Error: 0x8004005. Error Details: Unspecified Error" or "Error Code: 0x80004005. Error Description: Can't convert "2201010001" to long." Microsoft will need to release an Exchange Server update that uses a larger variable to hold the date to officially fix this bug. However, for on-premise Exchange Servers currently affected, admins have found that you can disable the FIP-FS scanning engine to allow email to start delivering again... Unfortunately, with this unofficial fix, delivered mail will no longer be scanned by Microsoft's scanning engine, leading to more malicious emails and spam getting through to users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Each player gets 15 minutes for all moves (plus a 10-second-per-move increment) at the World Rapid Chess Championship. But players only get three minutes for all moves (plus a 2-second-per-move increment) in the World Blitz Chess Championship. So what happened? World chess champion Magnus Carlsen entered both events, and... A little-known 17-year-old from Uzbekistan made a clean sweep of Magnus Carlsen and the global chess elite on Tuesday, incidentally setting a world age record. Nodirbek Abdusattorov won the World Rapid championship in Warsaw, claiming en route the scalps of Magnus Carlsen and the No 1's last two challengers, Fabiano Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi... After 21 rounds of three-minute games on Wednesday and Thursday, France's Maxime Vachier-Lagrave defeated Poland's Jan-Krzysztof Duda in a tie-break to win the World Blitz title. The 18-year-old world No 2, Alireza Firouzja, was third but Carlsen was well adrift in 12th place. He said: "Some days you just don't have it. I was nowhere near close to the level I needed to be today." At 17 years three months Abdusattorov becomes the youngest ever world champion in open competition... After 13 rounds he was in a quadruple tie on 9.5 points with Carlsen, Caruana and Nepomniachtchi, but the regulations excluded Carlsen and Caruana from the play-off due to their inferior tie-breaks. An angry Carlsen denounced the rules as "idiotic. Either all players on the same amount of points join the play-off or no one does..." [In the final play-off game] Abdusattorov easily drew with Black, then won the second game despite twice missing mate in two near the end.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thousands of people — included hundreds of men — were accused of witchcraft in Scotland, the Guardian reports, "from allegations of cursing the king's ships, to shape-shifting into animals and birds, or dancing with the devil." Many were executed.Now, three centuries after the Witchcraft Act was repealed, campaigners are on course to win pardons and official apologies for the estimated 3,837 people — 84% of whom were women — tried as witches, of which two-thirds were executed and burned... [W]ell-known cases include Lilias Adie, from Torryburn, Fife, who was accused of casting a spell to cause a neighbour's hangover; while Issobell Young, executed at Edinburgh Castle in 1629, was said by a stable boy to have shape-shifted into an owl and accused of having a coven.... The [pro-pardon advocacy site] Witches of Scotland notes that signs associated with witchcraft — broomsticks, cauldrons, black cats and black pointed hats — were also associated with "alewives", the name for women who brewed weak beer to combat poor water quality. The broomstick sign was to let people know beer was on sale, the cauldron to brew it, the cat to keep mice down, and the hat to distinguish them at market. Women were ousted from brewing and replaced by men once it became a profitable industry. Wikipedia has a page with a list of people executed for witchcraft. Citing modern scholars, it places the total number of people executed for witchcraft in Europe and America between 40,000 and 50,000. But the Guardian also notes a recent statement from the head of the pro-pardon advocacy group Witches of Scotland. "Per capita, during the period between the 16th and 18th century, we [Scotland] executed five times as many people as elsewhere in Europe, the vast majority of them women."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

4,346 flights were cancelled worldwide by this morning, including 2,508 in the U.S. Airlines have been blaming cancellations on increasing Covid-19 infections among flightcrews creating staffing shortages, the Associated Press reports. "More than 12,000 U.S. flights have been canceled since December 24..."Saturday's disruptions weren't just due to the virus, however. Wintry weather made Chicago the worst place in the country for travelers, with 800 flights scrubbed at O'Hare Airport and more than 250 at Midway Airport. Forecasts called for nine inches of snow... Among international carriers, China Eastern scrubbed more than 500 flights, or about one-fourth of its total, and Air China canceled more than 200 flights, one-fifth of its schedule, according to FlightAware. "The nationwide spike in Omicron cases has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation," United Airlines told Forbes — as they cancelled 221 flights on Saturday. Forbes adds that Omicron "has continued to spread at an alarming rate across the U.S., with over 585,000 reported new cases on December 30 — a new record-high, according to the New York Times' tracking data."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reuters reports:U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday asked AT&T and Verizon Communications to delay the planned January 5 introduction of new 5G wireless service over aviation safety concerns. In a letter Friday seen by Reuters, Buttigieg and FAA Administrator Steve Dickson asked AT&T Chief Executive John Stankey and Verizon Chief Executive Hans Vestberg for a delay of no more than two weeks as part of a "proposal as a near-term solution for advancing the co-existence of 5G deployment in the C-Band and safe flight operations." The aviation industry and FAA have raised concerns about potential interference of 5G with sensitive aircraft electronics like radio altimeters that could disrupt flights.... Earlier Friday the two companies accused the aerospace industry of seeking to hold C-Band spectrum deployment "hostage until the wireless industry agrees to cover the costs of upgrading any obsolete altimeters." Buttigieg and Dickson said under the framework "commercial C-band service would begin as planned in January with certain exceptions around priority airports...." The carriers, which won the spectrum in an $80 billion government auction, previously agreed to precautionary measures for six months to limit interference... Wireless industry group CTIA said 5G is safe and spectrum is being used in about 40 other countries.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Thousands of people received a surprise gift on Christmas Day this year," reports CNBC, "when European bank Santander accidentally deposited £130 million ($176 million) across 75,000 transactions."The mistake happened when payments from 2,000 business accounts in the U.K. were processed twice, meaning some employees saw their wages double, while suppliers also got more than they were expecting. The bank said the duplicate payments were caused by a "scheduling issue" that has now been rectified. It is now trying to recuperate the mistaken payments, many of which have gone into bank accounts operated by rival banks. "We're sorry that due to a technical issue, some payments from our corporate clients were incorrectly duplicated on the recipients' accounts," a Santander spokesperson told CNBC... Santander said it also has the ability to recover the funds directly from people's accounts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"With the successful extension of Webb's second sunshield mid-boom, the observatory has passed another critical deployment milestone," NASA announced Friday, adding that the sunshield "now resembles its full, kite-shaped form in space..."The completion of the sunshield cover and mid-boom deployments over the past two days marks a critical milestone for Webb: all 107 membrane release devices associated with the sunshield deployment — every single one of which had to work in order for the sunshield to deploy — have now successfully released. Webb has 178 of these 'non-explosive actuators' in all; 107 were used to keep the sunshield safe and folded prior to deployment... While the deployments took longer than expected today, that was due to the operations team moving forward with caution and according to the protocols they laid out for dealing with unpredictable situations... The two mid-boom arms are now locked in their final position. They will hold the sunshield membranes in their proper place, as the team turns to the final stage in the sunshield's deployment: tensioning. In the coming days, the team will separate and then individually tension each of the five sunshield layers, stretching them into their final, taut shape. This will create space between the membranes to allow heat to radiate out, making each successive layer of the sunshield cooler than the one below... Sunshield tensioning will take at least two days but may take longer, due to the complexity of the process and the flexibility built into the timeline. Universe Today shares a video showing the complexity of the sunshield operation. Long-time Slashdot reader necro81 writes that "Unlike other nail-biting JWST events like the rocket launch, something of this size and complexity has never been attempted in space. "After this, the telescope's optics will be in the shade forevermore, and can begin cooling to the frigid operating temperature needed to detect infrared light."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post reports:China is turning a major part of its internal Internet data surveillance network outward, mining Western social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to equip its government agencies, military and police with information on foreign targets, according to a Washington Post review of hundreds of Chinese bidding documents, contracts and company filings. China maintains a countrywide network of government data surveillance services — called public opinion analysis software — that were developed over the past decade and are used domestically to warn officials of politically sensitive information online. The software primarily targets China's domestic Internet users and media, but a Washington Post review of bidding documents and contracts for over 300 Chinese government projects since the beginning of 2020 include orders for software designed to collect data on foreign targets from sources such as Twitter, Facebook and other Western social media.... These surveillance dragnets are part of a wider drive by Beijing to refine its foreign propaganda efforts through big data and artificial intelligence. They also form a network of warning systems designed to sound real-time alarms for trends that undermine Beijing's interests... Some of the Chinese government's budgeting includes buying and maintaining foreign social media accounts on behalf of police and propaganda departments.... The documents describe highly customizable programs that can collect real-time social media data from individual social media users. Some describe tracking broad trends on issues including U.S. elections... The exact scope of China's government public opinion monitoring industry is unclear, but there have been some indications about its size in Chinese state media. In 2014, the state-backed newspaper China Daily said more than 2 million people were working as public opinion analysts... In June 2020, Twitter suspended 23,000 accounts that it said were linked to the Chinese Communist Party and covertly spreading propaganda to undermine pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. This month, Twitter said it removed a further 2,048 accounts linked to Beijing and producing coordinated content undermining accusations of rights abuses in Xinjiang. Experts say those accounts represent a small fraction of China's efforts to boost pro-Beijing messaging on foreign social media. Reached for comment, a Twitter spokesperson told the Post," We prohibit use of our API for surveillance purposes, as per our developer policy and terms." The Post adds that Facebook "did not respond to requests for comment about whether it is aware of the monitoring...."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Another 12 months gone by, and with it nearly 8,000 new Slashdot headlines — so which ones drew the most views? Click here for lists of Slashdot's top 10 most-visited and most-commented stories of the year — and also the all-time top 10 lists since Slashdot's creation in 1997. Here's some of 2021's highlights: Two of this year's most-visited stories involved Linus Torvalds. (Although one just reported Torvalds "Tells Anti-Vaxxer To Shut Up On Linux Mailing List.") Another story in April found Torvalds saying Rust was at least closer to use in Linux kernel development — while also calling C++ "a crap language." One of the biggest stories of the year was Richard Stallman's return to the Free Software Foundation. The third most-visited story of the year covered the pushback against his return from the EFF, the Tor Project, Mozilla, and the creator of Rust. Remember that big electrical outage that left millions of Texans without power in the middle of a winter storm? As the crisis was still raging, CNN asked the million-dollar question: who's actually to blame? This became Slashdot's 9th most-visited story of the year — and also the 7th most-commented. Two of the 10 most-visited stories of the year were "Ask Slashdot" technical questions: In April RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) asked whether a software RAID is better than a hardware RAID? And in January of 2020 Slashdot reader lsllll asked for suggestions on a a battery-powered wi-fi security camera supporting FTP/SMB Interestingly, one of the year's most-commented poll topics had asked whether bitcoin would break $100,000 before the end of 2021. 4,951 voters — a full 25% — had said "Yes" — and were off by more than half, with bitcoin actually tumbling 8% in the last week of 2021 to wind up somewhere near $46,371 as of late Friday afternoon. At the time of the poll — October 8th — the price of Bitcoin was already up to $53,963. One month later it had reached it's highest price of 2021 — $67,582 — before dropping 31.7% over the next 53 days. In the October poll asking whether bitcoin would reach $100,000 in the final 84 days of 2021 — another 14,687 Slashdot readers voted "No."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russia's state media watchdog will require Netflix to offer state television channels to its Russian customers after it added the U.S.-based streaming service to its register of "audio-visual services" this week. From a report: Roskomnadzor's register, which was created in late 2020, applies to online streaming services with over 100,000 daily users and requires them to comply with Russian law and register a Russian company. Registered services are also required to provide streams of 20 major Russian federal television channels. From March 2022, Netflix will be obliged to offer broadcasts from flagship state-owned Channel One, entertainment-focused NTV and the Russian Orthodox Church's in-house channel Spas, which means "Saved," to its users within Russia. The laws that Netflix must now obey include controversial provisions banning the promotion of "extremism" -- a restriction which has been used against supporters of the anti-Kremlin opposition.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NPR reports: In late November, more than 110 people gathered at a crowded Christmas party at a restaurant in Oslo. Most of the guests were fully vaccinated. One had returned from South Africa just a few days earlier and was unknowingly carrying the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. Ultimately, about 70% of the partygoers were infected. Scientists who traced this super spreader event concluded it was evidence that omicron was "highly transmissible" among fully-vaccinated adults. Just over a month later, omicron's speedy worldwide ascent now makes it abundantly clear that the party wasn't an isolated example. In country after country, the new variant has outcompeted its predecessor, the delta variant -- with one case of omicron sparking at least three other new infections on average. Cases have soared to record highs in parts of Europe and now the U.S., where about half a million new infections have been recorded in a single day. "This is a game-changing virus, especially in the vaccinated population where people have had a level of invincibility," says Sumit Chanda, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research. Indeed, in a world where vaccinations and infections have built up immunity, other variants were having trouble gaining a foothold. Yet omicron is thriving. "This changes the calculus for everybody," says Chanda. And so scientists are trying to figure out: What accounts for omicron's lightning quick spread? While it's still early, they're starting to piece together why the new variant is so contagious -- and whether that means old assumptions about how to stay safe need to be revamped. [...] The variant's many mutations on the spike protein allow it to infect human cells more efficiently than previous variants could, leaving many more people again vulnerable. Because of that, "immune escape" alone could be the major reason why the variant looks so contagious compared to delta, which was already highly transmissible. In fact, omicron has been spreading at a pace that's comparable to how fast the original strain of the coronavirus spread at the very beginning of the pandemic despite the world's newfound levels of immunity. "The playing field for the virus right now is quite different than it was in the early days," says Dr. Joshua Schiffer, an infectious disease researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. "The majority of variants we've seen to date couldn't survive in this immune environment." Even delta was essentially at a "tie," he says, where it was persisting, but "not growing very rapidly or decreasing very rapidly." A new study from Denmark suggests that much of the variant's dominance comes down to its ability to evade the body's immune defenses. Researchers compared the spread of omicron and delta among members of the same household and concluded that omicron is about 2.7 to 3.7 times more infectious than the delta variant among vaccinated and boosted individuals.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's hard to imagine home life without the internet, particularly amid the coronavirus pandemic. Now a law going into effect in Washington state is acknowledging that. CNET News: Starting in the new year, home sellers in Washington will be required to share their internet provider on signed disclosure forms that include information about plumbing, insulation and structural defects. "Does the property currently have internet service?" the disclosure form will now ask, along with a space to say who the provider is. The law doesn't require sellers to detail access speeds, quality or alternative providers. The new disclosure is the latest in an array of efforts by lawmakers across the country to respond to our increasing reliance on home internet connectivity for work, education and entertainment. That internet connection has become even more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has upended the lives of billions of people, forcing quarantines and lockdowns as people adjust to a new normal of daily life.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A spate of new studies on lab animals and human tissues are providing the first indication of why the Omicron variant causes milder disease than previous versions of the coronavirus. From a report: In studies on mice and hamsters, Omicron produced less damaging infections, often limited largely to the upper airway: the nose, throat and windpipe. The variant did much less harm to the lungs, where previous variants would often cause scarring and serious breathing difficulty. "It's fair to say that the idea of a disease that manifests itself primarily in the upper respiratory system is emerging," said Roland Eils, a computational biologist at the Berlin Institute of Health, who has studied how coronaviruses infect the airway. In November, when the first report on the Omicron variant came out of South Africa, scientists could only guess at how it might behave differently from earlier forms of the virus. All they knew was that it had a distinctive and alarming combination of more than 50 genetic mutations. Previous research had shown that some of these mutations enabled coronaviruses to grab onto cells more tightly. Others allowed the virus to evade antibodies, which serve as an early line of defense against infection. But how the new variant might behave inside of the body was a mystery. "You can't predict the behavior of virus from just the mutations," said Ravindra Gupta, a virologist at the University of Cambridge. Over the past month, more than a dozen research groups, including Dr. Gupta's, have been observing the new pathogen in the lab, infecting cells in Petri dishes with Omicron and spraying the virus into the noses of animals. As they worked, Omicron surged across the planet, readily infecting even people who were vaccinated or had recovered from infections. But as cases skyrocketed, hospitalizations increased only modestly. Early studies of patients suggested that Omicron was less likely to cause severe illness than other variants, especially in vaccinated people. Still, those findings came with a lot of caveats.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The top eight US media groups plan to spend at least $115bn on new movies and television shows next year in pursuit of a video streaming business that loses money for most of them. From a report: The huge investment outlays come amid concerns that it will be harder to attract new customers in 2022 after the pandemic-fuelled growth in 2020 and 2021. Yet the alternative is to be left out of the streaming land rush. "There is no turning back," said media analyst Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson. "The only way to compete is spending more and more money on premium content." The Financial Times calculated the planned expenditures based on company disclosures and analyst reports. One entertainment executive called them "mind-boggling." Most of the companies -- a list that includes Walt Disney, Comcast, WarnerMedia and Amazon -- are set to rack up losses on their streaming units. Including sports rights, the aggregate spending estimate rises to about $140bn. Disney's investment in streaming content is likely to grow 35-40 per cent in 2022, according to estimates by Morgan Stanley. The company's spending on all new movies and TV shows is expected to reach $23bn, though the number rises to $33bn including sports rights -- up 32 per cent from its total content spending in 2021 and 65 per cent from 2020.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Somehow CES 2022 is still happening in a little over a week, despite the single-largest surge in COVID-19 cases ever recorded in the United States. The electronics show will be far less enormous than usual, but not necessarily because organizers at the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) wanted it to be that way. CTA president Gary Shapiro went as far as to post an extensive rant on LinkedIn (and in the Las Vegas Review-Journal) about why, exactly, CES is still happening. He says CES "will and must go on." Let's take a moment or two to read through Shapiro's op-ed. We promise it's worth the time. Here are some of our favorite ways in which the CTA president explains his reasoning: 1. If we do not cancel, we face the drumbeat of press and other critics who tell the story only through their lens of drama and big name companies. We suppose this applies to us (pretty meta of us). Anyway, it's pretty telling that Shapiro's leaning on "bad press" -- not the ongoing public health crisis -- as a reason to not cancel the show. 2. I will feel safer at CES with our vaccine and masking mandate than I do when I'm running every day errands, including food shopping! Sorry, what? CES is notorious for packing attendants in like sardines. What kind of grocery store is this man going to? 3. It may be messy. But innovation is messy. It is risky and uncomfortable. Well, sure, innovating isn't a clean process, but CES isn't actually fostering innovation. The innovation's already done before these companies arrive on the showroom floor. 4. For those who are vaccinated and willing to take the minor risk of Omicron and a quarantine, CES may be worth it. I'm sorry, did this man just refer to COVID-19 (you know, the one that's killed more than 2 million people) as a "minor risk"? CES also said today that it will end a day earlier.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

fahrbot-bot writes: The world is full of beautiful equations, numbers and calculations. From counting beads as toddlers to managing finances as adults, we use math every day. But scientists often go beyond these quotidian forms of counting, to measure, weigh and tally far stranger things in the universe. From the number of bubbles in a typical glass of beer to the weight of all the coronavirus particles circulating in the world, LiveScience notes the 10 weird things scientists calculated in 2021. Number of bubbles in a half-pint glass of beer: up to 2 million bubbles, about twice as many as Champagne. Weight of all SARS-CoV-2 particles: between 0.22 and 22 pounds (0.1 and 10 kilograms).Counted African elephants from space for the first time -- Earth elephants (using satellites and AI) not Space Elephants.Acceleration of a finger snap: maximal rotational velocities of 7,800 deg/s and a maximal rotational acceleration of 1.6 million deg/s squared -- in seven milliseconds, more than 20 times faster than the blink of an eye, which takes more than 150 milliseconds.Calculated pi to 62.8 trillion decimal places.Updated the "friendship paradox" equations.Theoretical number and mass of all Black Holes: about 1% of all ordinary matter (not dark matter) in the universe.How long would it take to walk around the moon? At 4 hours a day, it would take about 547 Earth days, or about 1.5 years.How many active satellites currently orbit the planet? As of September 2021, there were around 7,500 active satellites in low Earth orbit.The "absolute limit" on the human life span: probably 120 to 150 years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting today, eligible US residents can apply for help with their internet bills under the new Affordable Connectivity Program. The program launched today with $14.2 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in November. From a report: Households can apply to take up to $30 a month off their internet service bill. For households on qualifying Tribal lands, the discount is up to $75 per month. The program could help to connect millions of people to the internet who haven't had access to it at home, especially in communities that have historically faced more barriers to getting online. Almost a third of people living on Tribal lands lacked high-speed internet at home in 2017, according to a report by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). That's compared to just 1.5 percent of city-dwellers without high-speed internet access. On top of limited infrastructure, cost is often another barrier. The United States has the second-highest broadband costs out of 35 countries studied by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). And American Indian and Alaska Native people have the highest poverty rate of any race group in the US, according to the US Census Bureau.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: Slashdot has surveyed personal New Year's resolutions in the past. So this year, how about coming up with a list of New Year's resolutions you'd like to see tech companies keep in 2022? As for me, I'd like to see the tech giants resolve to making their desktop software work in the Cloud (and not just for Business), include a programming language with their desktop and mobile OS, provide the capability to share 'meaningful' file names, and allow developers to cap their Cloud charges. Is that too much to ask for in 2022?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What are some books that you read this year that you enjoyed reading? Doesn't have to be those that released this year -- though if possible, mention any recently published books. Further reading: Ask Slashdot: What's a 2021 Movie or TV Show That You Enjoyed Watching?Read more of this story at Slashdot.