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With a devastating second wave of Covid-19 sweeping across India and lifesaving supplemental oxygen in short supply, India's government on Sunday said it ordered Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to take down dozens of social media posts critical of its handling of the pandemic. From a report: The order was aimed at roughly 100 posts that included critiques from opposition politicians and calls for Narendra Modi, India's prime minister, to resign. The government said that the posts could incite panic, used images out of context, and could hinder its response to the pandemic. The companies complied with the requests for now, in part by making the posts invisible to those using the sites inside India. In the past, the companies have reposted some content after determining that it didn't break the law. The takedown orders come as India's public health crisis spirals into a political one, and set the stage for a widening struggle between American social media platforms and Mr. Modi's government over who decides what can be said online. On Monday, the country reported more than 350,000 new infections and more than 2,800 deaths, marking the fifth consecutive day it set a world record in daily infection statistics, though experts warn that the true numbers are probably much higher. The country now accounts for almost half of all new cases globally. Its health system appears to be teetering. Hospitals across the country have scrambled to get enough oxygen for patients.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple on Monday released iOS 14.5, which bring a range of new features to iPhone, including the ability to unlock iPhone with Apple Watch while wearing a face mask, more diverse Siri voices, new privacy controls, skin tone options to better represent couples in emoji, and much more. iOS 14.5 builds on the reimagined iPhone experience introduced in iOS 14, and is available today as a free software update. Regarding the new privacy controls, Apple has described it as: App Tracking Transparency requires apps to get the user's permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies for advertising, or sharing their data with data brokers. Apps can prompt users for permission, and in Settings, users will be able to see which apps have requested permission to track so they can make changes to their choice at any time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple on Monday said it will establish a new campus in North Carolina that will house up to 3,000 employees, expand its operations in several other U.S. states and increase its spending targets with U.S. supplierst. From a report: Apple said it plans to spend $1 billion as it builds a new campus and engineering hub in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, with most of the jobs expected to focus on machine learning, artificial intelligence, software engineering and other technology fields. It joins a $1 billion Austin, Texas campus announced in 2019. The iPhone maker said it would also establish a $100 million fund to support schools in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina and throughout the state, as well as contribute $110 million to help build infrastructure such as broadband internet, roads, bridges and public schools in 80 North Carolina counties. Apple also said it expanded hiring targets at other U.S. locations to hit a goal 20,000 additional jobs by 2026, setting new goals for facilities in Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington state. In Apple's home state of California, the company said it will aim to hire 5,000 people in San Diego and 3,000 people in Culver City in the Los Angeles area. Apple also increased a U.S. spending target to $430 billion by 2026, up from a five-year goal of $350 billion Apple set in 2018, and said it was on track to exceed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook just won its first Oscar. From a report: "Colette," from the social giant's Oculus Studios and EA's Respawn Entertainment game studio, picked up the trophy for documentary short subject Sunday at the 93rd Academy Awards. It's also the first project from the game industry to win an Oscar. The 25-minute film follows former French Resistance member Colette Marin-Catherine as she travels to Germany for the first time in 74 years. "Colette" was created for the World War II-set VR video game "Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond." "Colette" beat out the other contenders on the category: "A Concerto Is a Conversation," from Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers; "Do Not Split," from Anders Hammer and Charlotte Cook; "Hunger Ward," from Skye Fitzgerald and Michael Scheuerman; and "A Love Song for Latasha," from Sophia Nahli Allison and Janice Duncan.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The chief executives of Facebook and Apple have opposing visions for the future of the internet. Their differences are set to escalate later today. The New York Times: At a confab for tech and media moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, in July 2019, Timothy D. Cook of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook sat down to repair their fraying relationship. For years, the chief executives had met annually at the conference, which was held by the investment bank Allen & Company, to catch up. But this time, Facebook was grappling with a data privacy scandal. Mr. Zuckerberg had been blasted by lawmakers, regulators and executives -- including Mr. Cook -- for letting the information of more than 50 million Facebook users be harvested by a voter-profiling firm, Cambridge Analytica, without their consent. At the meeting, Mr. Zuckerberg asked Mr. Cook how he would handle the fallout from the controversy, people with knowledge of the conversation said. Mr. Cook responded acidly that Facebook should delete any information that it had collected about people outside of its core apps. Mr. Zuckerberg was stunned, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly. Facebook depends on data about its users to target them with online ads and to make money. By urging Facebook to stop gathering that information, Mr. Cook was in effect telling Mr. Zuckerberg that his business was untenable. He ignored Mr. Cook's advice. Two years later, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Cook's opposing positions have exploded into an all-out war. On Monday, Apple plans to release a new privacy feature that requires iPhone owners to explicitly choose whether to let apps like Facebook track them across other apps. One of the secrets of digital advertising is that companies like Facebook follow people's online habits as they click on other programs, like Spotify and Amazon, on smartphones. That data helps advertisers pinpoint users' interests and better target finely tuned ads. Now, many people are expected to say no to that tracking, delivering a blow to online advertising -- and Facebook's $70 billion business. At the center of the fight are the two C.E.O.s. Their differences have long been evident. Mr. Cook, 60, is a polished executive who rose through Apple's ranks by constructing efficient supply chains. Mr. Zuckerberg, 36, is a Harvard dropout who built a social-media empire with an anything-goes stance toward free speech. Those contrasts have widened with their deeply divergent visions for the digital future. Mr. Cook wants people to pay a premium -- often to Apple -- for a safer, more private version of the internet. It is a strategy that keeps Apple firmly in control. But Mr. Zuckerberg champions an "open' internet where services like Facebook are effectively free. In that scenario, advertisers foot the bill. The relationship between the chief executives has become increasingly chilly, people familiar with the men said. While Mr. Zuckerberg once took walks and dined with Steve Jobs, Apple's late co-founder, he does not do so with Mr. Cook. Mr. Cook regularly met with Larry Page, Google's co-founder, but he and Mr. Zuckerberg see each other infrequently at events like the Allen & Company conference, these people said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roku is warning its customers with YouTube TV subscriptions that the service could go dark in the coming days due to what it calls Google's "predatory" and "monopoly" behavior. From a report: In a lengthy statement, a Roku spokesperson blasted Google's actions in detail. The tech giant is "attempting to use its YouTube monopoly position to force Roku into accepting predatory, anti-competitive and discriminatory terms that will directly harm Roku and our users." The company has also sent an email to customers this morning expressing the concerns. Roku is arguing that YouTube and Google are out to manipulate the user experience to siphon data and tilt search results in YouTube's favor, among other complaints. It also maintains that Google could require Roku to spend money upgrading microchips or other equipment in order to accommodate YouTube TV. The current agreement between the companies will expire in the next few days. While the Roku statement did not specify a date, this week will see April end and May begin, a turning of the calendar that matches with most distribution contract deadlines.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Nomadland" director Chloe Zhao made history on Sunday by becoming the first woman of color and first Chinese woman to win the Oscar for best director. Official media, major search engines and internet censors in her home country are making as if it didn't happen. From a report: Ms. Zhao's win, just the second time a woman has walked away with best director, unleashed a flurry of congratulatory messages on Chinese social-media sites when it was announced Monday morning Beijing time. By midafternoon, nearly all of the posts had been erased. Searches for her name on Baidu and Sogou, the country's dominant search engines, produced numerous links to news of her previous accolades but only scattered links to deleted articles about the Academy Award honor. State broadcaster China Central Television, the official Xinhua News Agency, and Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily stayed silent on the award throughout the day. Two state media reporters told the Journal they had received orders from China's propaganda ministry not to report on her victory, despite what they described as her status as a Chinese national, because of "previous public opinion." China's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the removal of social-media posts during a regular news conference on Monday, saying it wasn't a diplomatic issue.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"An internal task force found that Facebook failed to take appropriate action against the Stop the Steal movement ahead of the January 6 Capitol insurrection, and hoped the company could 'do better next time,'" writes Buzzfeed:Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of a House of Representatives committee that his company had done its part "to secure the integrity of the election." While the social network did not catch everything, the billionaire chief executive said, Facebook had "made our services inhospitable to those who might do harm" in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection. Less than a week after his appearance, however, an internal company report reached a far different conclusion... Shared on Facebook's employee communication platform last month, the report is a blunt assessment of how people connected to "Stop the Steal," a far-right movement based on the conspiracy theory that former president Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election, used the social network to foment an attempted coup. The document explicitly states that Facebook activity from people connected to Stop the Steal and other Trump loyalist groups including the Patriot Party played a role in the events of Jan. 6, and that the company's emphasis on rooting out fake accounts and "inauthentic behavior" held it back from taking preemptive action when real people were involved... The document contradicts Zuckerberg's statement to Congress about Facebook being "inhospitable" to harmful content about the election, and refutes chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg's January comment that the insurrection was "largely organized on platforms that don't have our abilities to stop hate, don't have our standards and don't have our transparency...." Facebook disputed the idea that the report went against Zuckerberg's and Sandberg's public statements and noted that both had said there was violative content on the platform that the company did not catch... Facebook's researchers also outline the bureaucratic, policy, and enforcement struggles of the social giant when trying to respond to a coordinated, fast-paced movement that exploits its platform to spread hate and incite violence. Despite the company removing the most populous Stop the Steal groups from its platform, the enforcement was "piecemeal" and allowed other groups to flourish. The company admitted that it only realized it was a cohesive movement "after the Capitol Insurrection and a wave of Storm the Capitol events across the country...." Ultimately, the report says, the issue is that the company is not prepared to deal with what it calls "coordinated authentic harm." "We learned a lot from these cases," the report says. "We're building tools and protocols and having policy discussions to help us do better next time." But Buzzfeed's 3,400-article concludes on a skeptical note. "The report echoes previous high-profile examples where Facebook failed to act and later issued a report promising to do better..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times reports:Netflix still rules the streaming universe. As of the end of March, it had 207.6 million total paying subscribers, with about 67 million in the United States, the company noted in an earnings report on Tuesday. But its main competitors — Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV+, as well as the old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu — have cut into Netflix's share of viewers' attention... according to the data firm Parrot Analytics, which has developed a metric to rate not only the number of viewers for given shows, but their likelihood of attracting subscribers to a streaming service. In its latest rankings, Parrot reported that Netflix's share of total demand — a measure of the popularity of its shows — was slightly above 50 percent for the first three months of the year, compared with 54 percent a year ago and 65 percent in the first quarter of 2019. In other words, competitors have started eating into Netflix's dominance. That showed up in the numbers. For the first quarter of 2021, Netflix reported the addition of four million new customers, below the six million it had forecast. The company expects to add only one million new customers for this current quarter ending in June. Netflix shares plummeted about 10 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday, after the earnings announcement... Although competitors are gaining ground, Netflix is in its best financial shape of its history. It hit a milestone at the end of last year, when it said it would no longer look to borrow money to fund its content slate. Another way to look at it: Netflix finally became a truly profitable business after topping 200 million subscribers, each paying an average of $11 a month. In other words: Its competitors are still losing lots of money on streaming.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post reports on a surge in crowdfunding campaigns for basic essentials like rent, food and bills:Sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter or even Facebook allow people and businesses to establish a cause — or set up a page laying out why they (or someone they are raising the money for) need money, and what the cash will go toward. After demand spiked last year, GoFundMe in October formalized a new category specifically for rent, food and bills. More than $100 million had been raised at that time year-to-date for basic living expenses in tens of thousands of campaigns during 2020 — a 150 percent increase over 2019. Both Vancouver-based FundRazr and U.K. crowdfunding website GoGetFunding report similar, though smaller, trends for last year, as well as honeymoon sites PlumFund and HoneyFund. But a year into the pandemic, some individual crowdfunding campaigns are reporting little success raising donations to cover basic expenses... Daryl Hatton, CEO and founder of FundRazr said when he browsed through the campaigns for basic expenses, most were getting little or no donations. "I saw a whole bunch of zeros," he said... GoFundMe hasn't seen a slow-down on activity related to basic expense campaigns. It "continues at an elevated rate," company spokesperson Bobby Whithorne said... The monthly bills category is now one of GoFundMe's largest and has made up 13 percent of all new fundraisers since it was added in October, the company said. The campaigns range from people who have lost their jobs or been evicted to those who have suffered a health emergency and need help paying rent, and more. Meanwhile fundraisers for food in January spiked 45 percent higher than a year before, the company said. On Facebook, people raised $175 million for coronavirus-related fundraisers on the flagship site and Instagram between early March to late December last year, said Elizabeth Davis, a product manager on Facebook's charitable giving team. GoFundMe makes money from many of these new campaigns it hosts and fosters — the company charges credit card processing fees, but primarily makes money from "tips" left on each donation. The tip level is automatically set at 12.5 percent of a donation, though donors can change the amount or decline to tip the company... Despite the surge in crowdfunding, it doesn't replace other societal safety nets, experts said. GoFundMe's chief executive Tim Cadogan published an op-ed in USA Today in February, calling for more robust government programs to help people and insisting to Congress that GoFundMe "can't do your job for you." The article also cites one research team's preliminary finding that more than 40% of coronavirus-related fundraisers on GoFundMe never received a single donation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader gregstumph writes: Dr.Fill, a software program that solves crossword puzzles, finished in first place at the 2021 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, for the first time ever (its previous best was 11th place in 2017). Dr.Fill, created by Matt Ginsberg, has been participating as a non-competitor at the tournament since 2012. This year, Ginsberg made improvements to Dr.Fill with the assistance of a team from the Berkeley NLP Group. The program finished "a scant 15 points ahead of Erik Agard on the main block of puzzles 1-7," Ginsberg posted on Facebook. This was followed by "then solving the playoff puzzle perfectly in 49 seconds" (while according to Wikipedia the fastest human competitor, Tyler Hinman, took three minutes to solve the puzzle). The Facebook post adds graciously, "Total kudos to Erik, the true winner of puzzles 1-7, and to Tyler Hinman, the winner of the event itself."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNBC writes:A copyright lawsuit brought by Craig Wright — the man who has claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the creator of bitcoin — could finally put to bed the years-long mystery over who actually invented the multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency. That's because the success of the lawsuit would likely depend on Wright proving that he did, in fact, author the white paper that originally laid out the technology behind bitcoin. And the case could force the U.K. court to weigh in on whether or not Wright is the actual inventor of bitcoin, according to Reuters. And in fact, Wright says he has evidence that can prove he is the author of the white paper. London's High Court ruled on Thursday that Wright, the Australian computer scientist who first said in 2016 that he created bitcoin eight years earlier, could serve his copyright lawsuit against the anonymous operator and publisher of the website bitcoin.org, according to Reuters. Wright's lawsuit accuses bitcoin.org of copyright infringement for displaying a copy of the infamous bitcoin white paper, which he claims he wrote in 2008 outlining what bitcoin is and how it works. He's asking the court to force bitcoin.org to remove the white paper from the website. Bitcoin.org has refused to remove the white paper from the website, and posted a statement in January saying Wright's "claims are without merit."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bitcoin "fell dramatically in late April," writes The Street, "sinking from its mid-month high of around $64,000" to Sunday's current price of $47,600 — a drop of over 25% in less than two weeks. So this week the Street spoke to Bobby Ong, the chief operating officer at the cryptocurrency data aggregator CoinGecko, asking "Was that just par for the course — normal volatility — of something else?" Ong: The recent bloodbath on April 18 saw a record of approximately $9.77 billion worth of futures contracts liquidated in just 24 hours. There was already a massive amount of leverage in the market in anticipation of the Coinbase initial public offering. The excitement of having the first crypto company IPO also led bitcoin's price to hit a new all-time high of $64,804. However, the direct listing of Coinbase also had a lukewarm reception from stock investors. More recently, there was a lot of fear and uncertainty spreading on social media due to various factors, including (rumors of) the U.S. Treasury taking legal action against certain financial institutions for money laundering, which turned out to be false information. Other than that, CNBC was recirculating news about the crypto ban in India, Turkey banning crypto payments, President Biden proposing a higher capital gains tax, and China bitcoin miners losing power. The selloff happened during the weekend when there were thinner order books. With high leverage and thin order books, even a small decrease in price will trigger a sharp drawdown and cause a downward spiral in price. Naturally, the market also needs to correct itself, because there were many over-leveraged traders. It is also important to note that bitcoin options expire towards the end of every month, which usually causes increased volatility in the last week of each month. TheStreet: Do you see the decline as a chance for people to get into it at a cheaper price? Ong: It depends on that person and their goals. The profiles of buyers today are very different before, when it was mostly libertarians. Today. it's U.S. institutions, and soon it will be governments.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Saturday University of Minnesota researchers emailed the Linux kernel mailing list apologizing for submitting buggy code as part of a research project to see whether it would be accepted. Late Saturday night, the kernel team's Greg Kroah-Hartman replied:Thank you for your response. As you know, the Linux Foundation and the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory Board submitted a letter on Friday to your University outlining the specific actions which need to happen in order for your group, and your University, to be able to work to regain the trust of the Linux kernel community. Until those actions are taken, we do not have anything further to discuss about this issue. thanksRead more of this story at Slashdot.

"Banking giant HSBC has confirmed that top managers in its Canary Wharf HQ have lost their offices and will have to hot-desk on an open-plan floor," reports the BBC, noting it comes as the bank "pursues plans to shrink its office space by 40% in a post-pandemic shake-up."Boss Noel Quinn said the whole bank was embracing "hybrid working" and he would no longer come in five days a week. "My leadership team and I have moved to a fully open-plan floor with no designated desks," he said on Linkedin. Up to now, senior managers have been based on the 42nd floor of the building in east London in their own private offices. But in future, they will be jostling for workspaces two floors down, while their old offices have been transformed into client meeting rooms and other communal spaces. Mr Quinn told the FT that the old arrangement had been "a waste of real estate", adding: "Our offices were empty half the time because we were travelling around the world..." He added that most staff at the bank would be able to work part-time from home in future. "A minority of roles can be done wholly remotely. We estimate, though, that most of our roles could be done in a hybrid way — and that includes myself and the executive team of the bank..." Other firms in the sector have announced plans to embrace hybrid working as employees signal their desire to commute less. One big UK employer, the Nationwide building society, has indicated that it does not intend to force people to return to the office if they have been successfully able to work from home during the pandemic. It said about two-thirds of its 18,000 employees had been working from home for the past year. Forbes has more context:[HSBC's] Quinn wrote in a LinkedIn post, "Having spent more than a year working from home, the last thing I want is to be stuck in an individual office when I return to the building." The chief executive said, "I want to have people around me, to reconnect with colleagues and friends and to be able to speak to them informally..." Having a prime location in a prestigious city is highly expensive and a drag on earnings. If the costs of office space could be dramatically slashed, the banks would see significantly more free cash flow. The other driver is the acknowledgement that many people want to work part or full-time remotely for a variety of reasons. The last year served as a test case, which showed that it's possible to conduct business with a large segment of the workforce being remote... HSBC is not alone in shedding properties in Europe. Lloyds Bank is also moving toward a hybrid model. This entails a 20% cut in office space over the next two years. The move was made after about 77% of Lloyds' 68,000 employees said they wanted to work from home for three or more days a week.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hmmmmmm writes: China plans to launch its next robot lunar lander in 2024, and it will carry equipment manufactured by scientists from France, Sweden, Italy, and Russia, Hu Hao, the program's chief designer, told the Xinhua News Agency on Saturday. The country aims to position the lander, named Chang'e 6, near the lunar south pole where it will collect samples, per the official Xinhua News Agency. The Chang'e 6 lander is part of China's ongoing mission to successfully return moon samples back home "for comprehensive analysis and research," Hu said at a conference, Associated Press reported. For the 2024 mission, The China National Space Administration has invited scientists from around the world to take part in the program, offering to transport solicited payloads into space. So far, four payloads designed by the international scientists have been preliminarily chosen, the Xinhua News Agency reported.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter continues to set records, flying faster and farther on Sunday, April 25, 2021 than in any tests it went through on Earth," reports NASA:The helicopter took off at 1:31 a.m. EDT (4:31 a.m. PDT), or 12:33 p.m. local Mars time, rising 16 feet (5 meters) — the same altitude as its second flight. Then it zipped downrange 164 feet (50 meters), almost half the length of a football field, reaching a top speed of 6.6 feet per second (2 meters per second). [Roughly 4.5 miles an hour.] After data came back from Mars starting at 10:16 a.m. EDT (7:16 a.m. PDT), Ingenuity's team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California was ecstatic to see the helicopter soaring out of view. They're already digging through a trove of information gathered during this third flight that will inform not just additional Ingenuity flights but possible Mars rotorcraft in the future. "Today's flight was what we planned for, and yet it was nothing short of amazing," said Dave Lavery, the project's program executive for Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "With this flight, we are demonstrating critical capabilities that will enable the addition of an aerial dimension to future Mars missions." NASA's chief pilot for the Mars helicopter calls this flight a big step "in which Ingenuity will begin to experience freedom in the sky," according to CNN. From the sky Ingenuity snapped a photo of its own shadow on Mars, and earlier sent back the very first aerial color image — taken 17 feet (5.2-metre) above the surface of Mars by Ingenuity's high-resolution color camera with a 4208-by-3120-pixel sensor.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times reports:A major United Nations report will declare that slashing emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas, is far more vital than previously thought... It also says that — unless there is significant deployment of unproven technologies capable of pulling greenhouse gases out of the air — expanding the use of natural gas is incompatible with keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a goal of the international Paris Agreement... The reason methane would be particularly valuable in the short-term fight against climate change: While methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, it is also relatively short-lived, lasting just a decade or so in the atmosphere before breaking down. That means cutting new methane emissions today, and starting to reduce methane concentrations in the atmosphere, could more quickly help the world meet its midcentury targets for fighting global warming. By contrast, carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, lasts for hundreds of years in the atmosphere... While cutting back on carbon dioxide emissions will remain urgent, "it's going to be next to impossible to remove enough carbon dioxide to get any real benefits for the climate in the first half of the century," said Drew Shindell, the study's lead author and a professor of earth science at Duke University. "But if we can make a big enough cut in methane in the next decade, we'll see public health benefits within the decade, and climate benefits within two decades," he said... Carbon dioxide is the biggest driver of climate change, but methane is more potent in the shorter term, warming the atmosphere more than 80 times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide does over a 20-year period. That's bad news, but it also means that cutting methane emissions may be one of the most effective ways to immediately slow rising global temperatures... Unlike carbon dioxide or most other air pollution, methane isn't released by burning fossil fuels, but comes from leaks and other releases from oil and gas infrastructure, among other sources... Fixing those leaks in theory should pay for themselves by saving money, because capturing the gas means companies capture more product. That potential makes plugging leaks from oil and gas infrastructure the most effective and cheapest way to slow emissions, the U.N. report says... Rolling back methane emissions would prevent more than 250,000 premature deaths, and more than 750,000 asthma-related hospital visits, each year from 2030 onward, the report finds. The lower emissions would also prevent more than 70 billion hours of lost labor from extreme heat and more than 25 million tons of crop losses a year. One professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University tells the Times we've overestimated agriculture's role in methane while underestimating the fuel industry's role, while another researcher found that methane-reduction efforts in the top-polluting industries could slow global warming by 30 percent. "Over all, a concerted effort to reduce methane from the fossil fuel, waste and agricultural sectors could slash methane emissions by as much as 45 percent by 2030, helping to avoid nearly 0.3 degrees Celsius of global warming as early as the 2040s, the report says."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: "More major corporations are abandoning the requirement of a four-year degree. At Apple, half of their employees don't have college degrees," reports NBC News. They also note that JP Morgan is "actively recruiting" people without a college degree for programs that train them for careers in areas like operations or consumer banking (showing one woman who ultimately got a $70,000-a-year position in Human Resources). NBC warns that "this path is untested. Many jobs still require a Bachelor's degree, and on average, a college graduate makes 67% more than a high school graduate." But they add that "as the cost of college rises, some say the returns aren't keeping pace" — cutting to their interview with Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff. "To make a lot of money, you just need to get the skills. You don't need to go to college!" he tells them enthusiastically. "You can do it all online!" NBC provides the example of an immigrant from Colombia who went through free online training with Salesforce that led to a job. And earlier in the segment Benioff admits that "I only went to college because my parents made me go to college...! "Everybody thinks that if you don't have a college degree you can't be successful in the United States, and it's not true... You can create incredible value for the world without a college degree."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Ville de Bitche is a town situated in northwestern France with a rich military history, pastoral landscape, and an unfortunate sounding name," reports Slate. (Adding that the "e" is silent....) "Recently tiny Bitche made international headlines after Facebook mistook the city's name for a swear word and deleted the town's Facebook page."The city's communication manager, Valêrie Degouy, contacted Facebook on March 19 to explain the situation and ask the company to reverse its decision — for the second time. (The page was previously deleted in 2016.) As she awaited Facebook's response — which apologized and reinstated the page Tuesday — Degouy set up a new page for her town, under the name of Marie 57230, her city's postal code. Although Facebook's mistake seems innocuous enough, for the towns located around Bitche, local Facebook pages serve as the main form of communication. Shutting the page down effectively creates a local news blackout. When Rohrbach-les Bitche — a nearby town in the region — heard about the deletion, it quickly rid "ls-Bitche" from its Facebook page name to avoid a similar fate... The residents of Bitche are far from alone in their reliance on Facebook for local news. In the United States alone, more than 2,000 local newspapers have closed over the past two decades, according to an estimate from Joshua Scacco, associate professor of political communication at the University of South Florida. In these news deserts, Facebook has risen as an alternative information source, allowing anyone with an account to share updates and post events... But Facebook is not only filling the local news void — it is tied to local papers' disappearance. "Social and digital media are a contributing factor in thinking about the declines of the presence of local newsrooms, as well as what that coverage looks like for the local newsrooms that remain," Scacco says. Facebook is moving advertising dollars away from local newspapers, and even driving the content local newspapers create. Local news coverage often panders to Facebook's algorithms when creating content and headlines, notes Ashley Muddiman, a communications professor at the University of Kansas.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HealthDay reports:There's no evidence of genetic damage in the children of parents who were exposed to radiation from the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster in Ukraine, researchers say. Several previous studies have examined the risks across generations of radiation exposure from events such as this, but have yielded inconclusive results. In this study, the investigators analyzed the genomes of 130 children and parents from families where one or both parents were exposed to radiation due to the Chernobyl accident, and where children were conceived afterward and born between 1987 and 2002. There was no increase in gene changes in reproductive cells of study participants, and rates of new germline mutations were similar to those in the general population, according to a team led by Meredith Yeager of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, in Rockville, Md.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

destinyland writes: Mystery Science Theater 3000 will be coming back — with a new home online. Though Netflix didn't pick them up for another season after 2019, "We still want to keep making new episodes," series creator Joel Hodgson explains in an online video on Kickstarter. (Also available through the URL MakeMoreMST3K.com.) And with 12 days left to go, 18,969 online fans have already pledged $3,348,705, funding six new episodes... But in addition the first $2 million funded the creation of the Gizmoplex, "our very own virtual online theatre," while the first stretch goal was also funded — the creation of MST3K apps for Android, iOS, and streaming services like AppleTV and Roku. "I'm tired of other people deciding if our show lives or dies," explains Crow T. Robot in the Kickstarter video. "I wanna do that." New host Jonah Heston adds, "If we want MST3K to keep going long-term, maybe networks aren't the most reliable option. Maybe it should be up to the fans to decide how long we keep going..." Their next stretch goal of $4.4 million would fund three more episodes, but will also allow them to also invite backers to the Gizmoplex for live monthly events, "for at least a year." And if they reach their goal of $5.5 million, they'll fund three more episodes — so an entire 12-episode season — as well as 12 short-subject films. The ultimate hope is to host frequent live screenings, premieres, and community events in the Gizmoplex — while fans can even host their own MST3K watch parties whenever they want. And their Kickstarter page even suggests they might someday extend the Gizmoplex into virtual reality (accessible on computer and headsets). I still remember how back in 2008 Joel Hodgson answered questions from Slashdot readers. "I've been a fan so long, I can't even remember when," posted CmdrTaco.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Technology/space pundit Robert Cringely writes that SpaceX's winning bid on NASA's Artemis lunar lander contract was helped by its flexibility in how it would be paid — made possibly by SpaceX's cushy financial position. But he believes that's part of a larger story about SpaceX's "steadily crushing its competitors by building a hyper-efficient space ecosystem where the other guys are just building rockets," arguing that SpaceX has already won the global war of ISPs "at a net cost of ZERO dollars," if not a negative net cost, while realizing a dream of a satellite internet service that for 30 years has eluded investors like Bill Gates: SpaceX making a profit where one would not normally exist comes thanks to U.S. residents who pay telephone and Internet bills. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been socking-away for a decade about $1.8 billion per year from you and me, saving-up to pay for expansions of rural telephony and broadband. There is now about $16 billion in this federal kitty and the FCC is starting to spend it with telephone and internet service providers, paying them to extend broadband and voice services to remote rural users who are presently underserved or unserved completely. All of this is both perfectly legal and even a good idea. Everybody wins. But circumstances are turning out to indicate that SpaceX is probably winning more than anyone else... So far SpaceX has won auctions for service in parts of 35 states for a total of $885 million... SpaceX just bid for potential customers in places where other companies typically didn't even bother to bid. They took the obvious remote customers and apparently won't be over-charging them or the government, either... There is no FCC rule saying Comcast couldn't sub-contract...difficult customers to Starlink... Instead of earning $885 million of those FCC subsidies, Starlink is more likely to gain half of the full $9.2 billion — money that can be used for any purpose including financing that Artemis lander. But remember that satellites are a global resource. If SpaceX launches 4000 or 12,000 Starlink satellites to serve the USA, they'll also serve anywhere else the satellites overfly, even North Korea. The same level of service Starlink offers in Omaha will be available in Vietnam or on tankers in the Pacific ocean. Once Starlink becomes effectively the dominant ISP in America, it will also become the dominant ISP in the world. And all at no cost to SpaceX since the expansion will have been financed from our phone bills. Cringely cites estimates that 40,000 satellites would be enough to serve every Internet user on Earth, as well as IoT devices and even future as-yet-uninvented network services. He also asks whether this might ultimately make it harder for China to censor the internet — and whether Apple might attempt a competing satellite-to-phone network, possibly using technology from Samsung.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Friday on Richard Stallman's personal web site, he posed the question: Am I Doctor Stallman? He's received 15 doctorates honoris causa — doctorates "for honor" — in the company of others whose achievements impressed him...So I was shocked to read an article which describes this as a sleazy marketing scheme, and claims that recipients of these degrees are not supposed to call themselves "Doctor." The article says that universities hand out "honorary doctorates" readily to donors who have essentially bought them, and to performing artists so that they will entertain the students at graduation... But my experience is totally different. I am not an entertainer, except for a few minutes when I don the robe and halo of Saint iGNUcius, and that is comic relief for a long, serious talk. I never donated money to the universities that gave me doctorates, nor could they expect me to. What's more, I never saw such people receive degrees along with me. The other recipients, when there were others, were likewise being honored for their work, not as a quid-pro-quo. Why this difference? My doctorates come from universities in other countries, not in the US. I conjecture that buy-a-doctorate and sing-for-your-doctorate are found in the US only. (How sad for the US...!) [O]n reading that Florida Atlantic University explicitly says that recipients of doctorates honoris causa are not permitted the title of Doctor, I began to wonder about the policies of the universities which had given me degrees, so I asked people at some of those universities about their policies. The replies were quite disparate. One said, like Florida Atlantic, that it was not permitted. Another said I should write "Dr.(h.c.)." Another said it had no objection. So it seems that I am entitled to call myself Dr. Stallman. Why do I do that? The personal reason is that these doctorates recognize decades of work for an important cause, and I am proud of them. The reason that is beyond personal is so that people who know little or nothing of my career may decide, based on the title of "Doctor", to pay a little attention to that work and that cause, which is the free software movement. That may help us defeat the totalitarian control that today's digital technology is designed to impose.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this week Greg Kroah-Hartman of the Linux kernel development team banned the University of Minnesota from contributing after researchers there submitted what he called "obviously-incorrect patches" believed to be part of a research project into whether buggy code would be accepted. Today the professor in charge of that project, as well as two of its researchers, sent an email to the Linux kernel mailing list saying they "sincerely apologize for any harm our research group did to the Linux kernel community."Our goal was to identify issues with the patching process and ways to address them, and we are very sorry that the method used in the "hypocrite commits" paper was inappropriate. As many observers have pointed out to us, we made a mistake by not finding a way to consult with the community and obtain permission before running this study; we did that because we knew we could not ask the maintainers of Linux for permission, or they would be on the lookout for the hypocrite patches. While our goal was to improve the security of Linux, we now understand that it was hurtful to the community to make it a subject of our research, and to waste its effort reviewing these patches without its knowledge or permission. We just want you to know that we would never intentionally hurt the Linux kernel community and never introduce security vulnerabilities. Our work was conducted with the best of intentions and is all about finding and fixing security vulnerabilities... We are a research group whose members devote their careers to improving the Linux kernel. We have been working on finding and patching vulnerabilities in Linux for the past five years... This current incident has caused a great deal of anger in the Linux community toward us, the research group, and the University of Minnesota. We apologize unconditionally for what we now recognize was a breach of the shared trust in the open source community and seek forgiveness for our missteps. We seek to rebuild the relationship with the Linux Foundation and the Linux community from a place of humility to create a foundation from which, we hope, we can once again contribute to our shared goal of improving the quality and security of Linux software... We are committed to following best practices for collaborative research by consulting with community leaders and members about the nature of our research projects, and ensuring that our work meets not only the requirements of the Institutional Review Board but also the expectations that the community has articulated to us in the wake of this incident. While this issue has been painful for us as well, and we are genuinely sorry for the extra work that the Linux kernel community has undertaken, we have learned some important lessons about research with the open source community from this incident. We can and will do better, and we believe we have much to contribute in the future, and will work hard to regain your trust. Their email also says their work did not introduce vulnerabilities into the Linux code. ("The three incorrect patches were discussed and stopped during exchanges in a Linux message board, and never committed to the code.") And the email also clarifies that their research was only done in August of 2020, and "All the other 190 patches being reverted and re-evaluated were submitted as part of other projects and as a service to the community; they are not related to the 'hypocrite commits' paper. These 190 patches were in response to real bugs in the code and all correct — as far as we can discern — when we submitted them... Our recent patches in April 2021 are not part of the 'hypocrite commits' paper either."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Just before the end of the Trump administration, an obscure Florida company began announcing routes to IP addresses owned by the Pentagon," writes long-time Slashdot reader whoever57. The Washington Post calls it "a huge unused swath of the Internet that, for several decades, had been owned by the U.S. military."What happened next was stranger still. The company, Global Resource Systems LLC, kept adding to its zone of control. Soon it had claimed 56 million IP addresses owned by the Pentagon. Three months later, the total was nearly 175 million. That's almost 6 percent of a coveted traditional section of Internet real estate — called IPv4 — where such large chunks are worth billions of dollars on the open market... "They are now announcing more address space than anything ever in the history of the Internet," said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis for Kentik, a network monitoring company, who was among those trying to figure out what was happening... The change is the handiwork of an elite Pentagon unit known as the Defense Digital Service, which reports directly to the secretary of defense. The DDS bills itself as a "SWAT team of nerds" tasked with solving emergency problems for the department and conducting experimental work to make big technological leaps for the military... Brett Goldstein, the DDS's director, said in a statement that his unit had authorized a "pilot effort" publicizing the IP space owned by the Pentagon. "This pilot will assess, evaluate and prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space," Goldstein said. "Additionally, this pilot may identify potential vulnerabilities...." The specifics of what the effort is trying to achieve remain unclear... What is clear, however, is the Global Resource Systems announcements directed a fire hose of Internet traffic toward the Defense Department addresses... Russell Goemaere, a spokesman for the Defense Department, confirmed in a statement to The Washington Post that the Pentagon still owns all the IP address space and hadn't sold any of it to a private party.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After 45 years, NBC's popular TV show "Saturday Night Live" has lined up its richest guest host ever. CNN reports:In one of the more surprising announcements in the recent history of "Saturday Night Live," the NBC variety show said Saturday that its next host will be Elon Musk, the eccentric CEO of Tesla and one of the richest people on the planet. USA Today adds:The coveted slot, usually occupied by British actors like Carey Mulligan or former boy band members like Nick Jonas, is now reserved on May 8 for Tesla CEO and SpaceX chief engineer, Musk. He'll be joined by musical guest Miley Cyrus... The official Twitter page for "SNL" announced the news in its usual format, a photo of sticky notes with the guest's name. "SNL" captioned the tweet with three rocket ship emojis.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader DesertNomad summarizes a report from EE Times:It's been known for a long time that the various Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) systems are easily jammed; the more "interesting" problem is the potential to spoof a GNSS signal and by spoofing use that to cause GNSS receivers to determine incorrect positions. The challenge lies in the observation that the navigation messages can be constructed by bad actors on the ground. Work going on for several years now has been to provide crypto signatures that have the potential to authenticate valid transmissions. Current commercial receivers can't take advantage of that, so there may be industry-wide needs to update the receiver devices. "The vulnerability of the global positioning system, or GPS, is widely acknowledged..." reports EE Times:Spoofing creates all kinds of havoc. For example, it can be used to hijack autonomous vehicles and send them on alternate routes. Spoofing can alter the routes recorded by vehicle monitors, or break geofences used to guard operational areas. It also poses a risk to critical infrastructure, including power, telecommunication and transportation systems. Jan van Hees, business development and marketing director for GNSS receiver maker Septentrio, provided these analogies: "Jamming involves making so much noise that the [satellite signal] disappears. Spoofing is like a phishing attack on the signal." The U.S. Coast Guard has recently tracked a growing number of high-profile incidents involving GPS interference. For example, the loss of GPS reception in Israeli ports in 2019 left GPS-guided autonomous cranes inoperable, collateral damage from the Syrian civil war. In 2016, more than 20 ships off the Crimean peninsula were thought to be the victim of a GPS spoofing attack which shifted the ships' positions on electronic chart displays to land. The article recommends real-world auditing, testing, and risk assessment, adding that one pending fix is signal encryption "including a framework called open service navigation message authentication (OSNMA)."The OSNMA anti-spoofing service developed for the European GNSS system, enables secure transmissions from Galileo satellites to encryption-enabled GNSS receivers. In the midst of final testing, OSNMA will soon be available free to users... A secret key on the satellite is used to generate a digital signature. Both the signature and key are appended to navigation data and transmitted to the receiver. OSNMA is designed to be backward-compatible, so that positioning without OSNMA still works.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"An Oklahoma woman was recently informed that she was charged with felony embezzlement of rented property for not returning a VHS tape over 20 years ago," reports Business Insider:Caron McBride reportedly rented the "Sabrina The Teenage Witch" tape at a now closed store in Norman, Oklahoma in 1999, according to KOKH-TV. She was charged a year later, in March 2000, after it was not returned, KOKH-TV reported citing documents. McBride was notified about the charge by the Cleveland County District Attorney's Office when she was attempting to change the name of her license after she got married, the news station reported... "I had lived with a young man, this was over 20 years ago. He had two kids, daughters that were 8, 10, or 11 years old, and I'm thinking he went and got it and didn't take it back or something. I have never watched that show in my entire life, just not my cup of tea. Meanwhile, I'm a wanted felon for a VHS tape," McBride told the news station. "Documents show the movie was rented at movie place in Norman, Oklahoma, which closed in 2008..." reports one local news station:McBride said over the last 20 years, she's been let go from several jobs without being given a reason why, and said it now all makes sense. "This is why. Because when they ran my criminal background check, all they're seeing is those two words: felony embezzlement," McBride said. "The DA's office says the charge was filed under a previous district attorney," reports a local Oklahoma station, "and after reviewing the case, they thought it was fit to dismiss it." But McBride still has to get an attorney to expunge the incident from her record.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Associated Press reports:In a ruling that reversed one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history, 39 people who ran local post offices had their convictions for theft, fraud and false accounting overturned Friday because of what an appeals court said was clear evidence of "bugs, errors or defects" in an IT system. The decision follows a years-long, complex legal battle that could see Britain's Post Office face a huge compensation bill for its failures following the installation, from 1999, of what turned out to be the defective Horizon computerized accounting system in local branches. Dozens of staff were convicted after the Fujitsu-supplied system pointed to an array of financial misdemeanors that bewildered the postal workers. Six others had their convictions quashed previously, while another 700 or so workers also are believed to have been prosecuted between 2000 and 2014... Jobs, homes and marriages were lost as a result of wrongful convictions, and some did not live long enough to see their names cleared by Britain's Court of Appeals. Confirmation that the convictions were quashed was met with cheers and tears. A few bottles of bubbly were also popped. Martin S. (Slashdot reader #98,249) writes, "As a software geek, the part I find most troubling is that blind faith that those in authority placed in the software without proper accounting..." The BBC reports some desperate sub-postmasters even "attempted to plug the gap with their own money, even remortgaging their homes, in an (often fruitless) attempt to correct an error." The judge in the case complains that for years the Post Office had "consistently asserted that Horizon was robust and reliable" and "effectively steamrolled over any subpostmaster who sought to challenge its accuracy," according to an article in The Scotsman:Nick Read, Post Office chief executive said: "I am in no doubt about the human cost of the Post Office's past failures and the deep pain that has been caused to people affected. Many of those postmasters involved have been fighting for justice for a considerable length of time and sadly there are some who are not here to see the outcome today and whose families have taken forward appeals in their memory. I am very moved by their courage." There were 73 convictions in Scotland caused by the failure. Although a total of 47 postmasters in England and Wales have had their cases referred to the Appeal Court, there has never been similar action in Scotland. However, now the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has written to the people it believes may also have been the victims of possible miscarriages of justice in Scotland relating to the Horizon computer system.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From Mike Melanson's "This Week in Programming" column:"The Rustening at Microsoft has begun," tweeted Microsoft distinguished engineer Miguel de Icaza. What de Icaza is referring to is a newly-offered course by Microsoft on taking the first steps with Rust, which much of the Twitterverse of Rust devotees sees as a sign that the company is further increasing its favor for their crab-themed language of choice. Of course, this isn't the first we've heard of Microsoft looking to Rust to handle the 70% of Microsoft vulnerabilities that it says come from using the memory-unsafe C++ programming language in its software. A few years back now, Microsoft launched Project Verona, a research programming language that takes a bite from Rust in the realm of ownership and is said to be inspired by Rust, among others. More recently, however, Microsoft announced the preview of Rust for Windows, which "lets you use any Windows API (past, present, and future) directly and seamlessly via the windows crate (crate is Rust's term for a binary or a library, and/or the source code that builds into one)." With Rust for Windows, developers can now not only use Rust on Windows, they can also write apps for Windows using Rust... According to the project description, the Windows crate "lets you call any Windows API past, present, and future using code generated on the fly directly from the metadata describing the API and right into your Rust package where you can call them as if they were just another Rust module" and that, along with the introduction of a course for learning Rust, is precisely what has all those Rust devotees so excited. InfoWorld has more information...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter, tweeted Wednesday that bitcoin "incentivises renewable energy." And Elon Musk responded "True." The BBC adds that the tweets came "despite experts warning otherwise."The cyrptocurrency's carbon footprint is as large as some of the world's biggest cities, studies suggest. But Mr Dorsey claims that could change if bitcoin miners worked hand-in-hand with renewable energy firms. One expert said it was a "cynical attempt to greenwash" bitcoin. China, where more than two-thirds of power is from coal, accounts for more than 75% of bitcoin mining around the world... The tweet comes soon after the release of a White Paper from Mr Dorsey's digital payment services firm Square, and global asset management business ARK Invest. Entitled "Bitcoin as key to an abundant, clean energy future", the paper argues that "bitcoin miners are unique energy buyers", because they offer flexibility, pay in a cryptocurrency, and can be based anywhere with an internet connection. "By combining miners with renewables and storage projects, we believe it could improve the returns for project investors and developers, moving more solar and wind projects into profitable territory," it said. Author and bitcoin critic David Gerard described the paper as a "cynical exercise in bitcoin greenwashing". "The reality is: bitcoin runs on coal," he told the BBC.... "Bitcoin mining is so ghastly and egregious that the number one job of bitcoin promoters is to make excuses for it — any excuse at all."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Security researcher Marc Rogers (also a BBC contributor) tweeted this morning "I guess theres no hiding it now. We lost Dan Kaminsky yesterday. One of the brightest lights in infosec and probably the kindest soul I knew. The vacuum he leaves behind is impossible to measure. Please keep speculation to yourself and be respectful of his family and friends." In later tweets, Rogers says he was proud that Kaminsky was his friend, adding "I could literally wrote a book of Dan Kaminsky tales. From shenanigans at events all over the world, to parties and just crazy stuff that happened at the spur of a moment. But most about his crazy brilliant kind generous ideas and offers of help and support. He was one of a kind." Even the stories in Kaminsky's Wikipedia entry are impressive:He is known among computer security experts for his work on DNS cache poisoning, and for showing that the Sony Rootkit had infected at least 568,200 computers and for his talks at the Black Hat Briefings. In June 2010, Kaminsky released Interpolique, a beta framework for addressing injection attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting in a manner comfortable to developers. On June 16, 2010, he was named by ICANN as one of the Trusted Community Representatives for the DNSSEC root. "Dan was a force of nature," adds Marc Rogers on Twitter. "A hacker who saw not just 1 or 2 moves ahead but so many you sometimes wondered if he was playing the same game: I asked him for a demo. He brought a record turntable he used to move a VM forwards & backwards in time like a DJ scratching."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The mayor of Los Angeles is proposing the largest universal income pilot program in America, saying he hopes the program will "light a fire across our nation." Newsweek reports:Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has proposed giving a "universal basic income" of $1000 a month to 2,000 poor local families for one year... The program would give 2,000 families below the federal poverty line monthly $1,000 checks for 12 months. The families could then spend the money however they please. Garcetti said he hopes the program could provide a model for similar anti-poverty initiatives in other cities. "We have to end America's addiction to poverty..." Garcetti told LAist, a local news site affiliated with Southern California Public Radio. Similar programs are also being floated in at least four other L.A. county districts, according to the Los Angeles Times... If approved, Garcetti's program would be at least the 12th time that a U.S. region has offered a basic income to its citizens. Bloomberg notes that Los Angeles "will be the recipient of more than $1.3 billion in federal stimulus funds from the recently passed American Rescue Plan, which could be used to fund the payouts."Garcetti, a Democrat in his second term, is co-chair of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, which has been advocating for the policy at the federal level and funding local programs. The group, which has 43 elected officials as members, was founded last year by then-Stockton-mayor Michael Tubbs. It has received $18 million in seed money from Twitter Inc. co-founder Jack Dorsey as well as $200,000 from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable arm of Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News's parent company. California cities have been taking a lead with these programs... In San Francisco, grants and some revenue from hotel taxes will fund monthly payments of $1,000 to about 130 artists for six months beginning next month. Organizers said the pilot is the first to solely target artists. Oakland will tap private donations this summer to fund its guaranteed income program, providing $500 monthly to about 600 poor families. Still, a majority of Americans oppose the federal government providing a guaranteed basic income, according to a survey last year by the Pew Research Center... Ultimately the costs of such programs will be too big for cities to finance alone, he said. But with data proving it works, Garcetti said states and the federal government could be inspired to fund them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA has tweeted a video showing the arrival of four astronauts from three countries on the International Space Station early Satuday morning. CNN describes the significance to their arrival — and what the astronauts will do during their six-month stay in space:This mission, dubbed Crew-2, marks the third-ever crewed flight for Elon Musk's company and the first to make use of a previously flown, privately-owned rocket booster and spacecraft... On Saturday morning, the capsule slowly aligned itself and moved in to dock directly with one of the space station's ports. The crew consists of NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Akihiko Hoshide with Japan's JAXA space agency. A prime focus of the astronauts' mission will be research with "tissue chips," or "small models of human organs containing multiple cell types that behave much the same as they do in the body" and that NASA hopes will advance the development of drugs and vaccines, according to the space agency. That work will build on years of studying biological and other scientific phenomena aboard the ISS, where the microgravity environment can give scientists a better fundamental understanding of how something works. Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet, and Hoshide joined seven astronauts already on board the station, four of whom arrived on a different SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in November. That brings the space station's current total of personnel to 11 — one of the largest crews the ISS has ever hosted. But that number will quickly drop back down to seven when four of the astronauts who'd been on board hitch a ride home from the station on April 28.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from South China Morning Post: In a rare public appearance since retiring nearly three years ago, Morris Chang, the 89-year-old founder of the world's largest contract chip maker, said China is not yet a competitor in chipmaking and that Taiwan should defend its leadership in semiconductor manufacturing. "Mainland China has given out subsidies to the tune of tens of billions of US dollars over the past 20 years but it is still five years behind TSMC," Chang said. "Its logic chip design capability is still one to two years behind the US and Taiwan. The mainland is still not yet a competitor." In his speech, Chang also took a swipe at US chip giant Intel, describing its recent decision to enter the contract chip making market as "very ironic" because it turned down an opportunity to invest in TSMC more than three decades ago. Contract chip makers like TSMC typically take orders from so-called fabless chip makers like Qualcomm, which design their products but outsource the manufacturing. Chang said he was rejected by Intel when he approached it for funding in 1985. "In the past, Intel was the alpha sneering at us and thought that we would never get big," he said. "They never thought the business of [outsourced] wafer fabrication would become so important today." Chang said the US is also at a disadvantage compared with Taiwan because it lacks engineers dedicated to the semiconductor manufacturing sector, adding that the "US level of dedication to manufacturing was absolutely no match for that of Taiwan." "What I need right now are capable and dedicated engineers, technicians and operators. And they have to be willing to throw themselves into manufacturing," he said. "In the US, doing manufacturing isn't popular. It hasn't been popular for decades."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Sacramento CBS affiliate KOVR-TV, Yana Sydnor called the police to report a possible home invasion. Turns out, it was a robovac that her son turned on before leaving for the weekend. Android Police reports: At 1 a.m., she and her 2-year-old daughter woke up to loud booms coming from her stairs disrupting her meditation music. She texted her friends about the sounds before they quickly responded, urging her to call 911. "I hear someone walking down my stairs, so it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom," Sydnor recalls telling the dispatcher. Desperate to exit the house and avoid a run-in with the invader, she ran to the bathroom, put her daughter in the tub, and thought about grabbing a ladder to get them both outside to ground level. Officers arrived within 10 minutes of Sydnor's call. They rammed the front door wide open only to find a poor robovac, fresh from a tumble down a flight of stairs. "My son turned on the vacuum cleaner because he didn't want to do chores before he left for the weekend," she explained to the reporter after a moment of exasperated silence. The vacuum hadn't been used for 2 years and, even after the fall, it still works. We couldn't make out the make and model of the robovac, so we don't quite know if it could stop itself from going over the ledge much less what exactly happened in this case if it did have the ability.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from Politico: The Pentagon has briefed top lawmakers on intelligence surrounding suspected directed-energy attacks against U.S. troops, and officials identified Russia as a likely culprit, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. The briefings included information about injuries sustained by U.S. troops in Syria, the people said. The investigation includes one incident in Syria in the fall of 2020 in which several troops developed flu-like symptoms, two people familiar with the Pentagon probe said. After this article was published, Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told lawmakers during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that he has seen "no evidence" of such attacks against U.S. troops in the Middle East. The investigation is part of a broader effort to look into directed-energy attacks on U.S. officials across multiple agencies in recent years. Since late 2016, close to 50 officials have reported symptoms of a mysterious illness that became known as "Havana syndrome" among U.S. diplomats posted in Cuba. Symptoms included acute ringing and pressure in the ears, as well as loss of hearing and balance, fatigue and residual headaches. Some victims have suffered long-term brain damage. A report commissioned by the State Department and released in December pointed to "directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy" as the most probable cause for the "Havana syndrome" incidents.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a Science Magazine blog, written by Derek Lowe: Excellent news today: we have word of the most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered. A year-long trial in Burkina Faso has shown 77% efficacy, which is by far the record, and which opens the way to potentially relieving a nearly incalculable burden of disease and human suffering. This new vaccine (R21) uses a circumsporozoite protein (CSP) antigen -- that's a highly conserved protein of the parasite, involved in several functions as the parasite makes the move from mosquito to human and into different human tissues such as the salivary glands. This has been a vaccine ingredient before, such as in the RTS,S vaccine (the first one ever licensed), but R21 has a much higher proportion of CSP assembled into a virus-like particle. It also uses the exact same adjuvant from Novavax (Matrix-M) that they are using in their coronavirus vaccine -- you can't keep a good adjuvant down, and this Chilean-soapbark-based one seems to really kick the immune system up under all circumstances. The higher-adjuvant cohort showed 77% vaccine efficacy, and the lower-adjuvant one showed 74% with (as you'd expect) overlapping confidence intervals. The first group had significantly higher antibody levels, though, and they're currently doing an additional year of follow-up to see how long the protection lasts and if these doses differentiate themselves. The antibody levels at the one-year mark in both groups were significantly higher than with the RTS,S vaccine, and in particular, antibodies against the repeat section in the middle of the circumsporozite protein seemed to correlate strongly with protection. No safety problems so far. The team is now planning a larger Phase III at five different African site, with varying seasonality and malaria loads.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Salon reports amateur-hour mistakes in the attempted rollout of FRANK, a social media site envisioned by Mike Lindell of MyPillow," writes Slashdot reader Tom239. "A Drupal expert described the code as 'not even student work.'" From the report: Speaking to Salon on Thursday afternoon about Lindell's site, one "Acquia Certified Drupal Grand Master," who oversees a technology firm that employs numerous other "grandmasters," said that Lindell's site was set up for failure from its inception, noting that its developers -- whom Lindell compared to Navy SEALs -- had failed to carry out basic "Drupal 101" tasks. One coder who spoke to Salon in great detail explained the potential shortcomings of the pillow maven's program code and the patchy work done by his developer team. "Drupal can power high powerful websites, sites with lots of traffic," the expert said, adding that it isn't the right software to build a social media site with, since it's not designed to handle a large amount of user-generated content. "Lindell's website was basically trying to make soup for scratch for everybody," said the expert, who claimed more than 25 years of experience in the IT field. "In my professional opinion, it will be extremely unlikely, if not impossible, for Lindell to accomplish his vision with Drupal and his own servers," the expert told Salon. "Despite how much I love it, Drupal simply isn't the right tool for the number of users with the features that he wants to provide. It would take a massive effort of 12 to 18 months to build out the needed hosting setup and application architecture, and this would come with an enormous degree of risk. The idea that he could do this in just a couple of months is patently absurd, and I think the results speak for themselves." "When I was looking at the code, in the browser, they basically launched the site while it was still in development mode," one expert told Salon, citing the fact that developers had failed to check a box to aggregate files on the platform as the first red flag he ran across. "Their files were not aggregated, and by the way, that's a check box in Drupal -- you literally check a box and click save, My jaw dropped when I saw that. I was like, 'They did not try to launch this thing without aggregation turned on!'" The second major red flag another Drupal expert found was that Lindell's site was spitting out coded error messages to users, which leaves the platform vulnerable to attacks. "This is a shit show," the expert said, calling this an "obvious" issue that coders learn how to prevent in "Drupal 101." Elsewhere it was reported that Lindell's supposed free-speech haven will not allow swearing, pornography, or the use of 'god's name in vain'.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Dish Network is partnering with Amazon to roll out 5G service in Las Vegas," writes Slashdot reader fermion. "They will evidently not only be the first cloud-based 5G service, but also will allow Amazon to test its network in a large telecommunication situation." CNBC reports: Dish will start operating "the first standalone, cloud-based 5G Open Radio Access Network in the United States, beginning with Las Vegas later this year," the company said in a statement Wednesday. The statement said Amazon and Dish will work together to see how organizations including Amazon and AWS use 5G or build their own networks. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. Dave Brown, vice president of AWS' core Elastic Compute Cloud service, told CNBC's "TechCheck" on Wednesday that the collaboration with Dish will "absolutely" serve as a sort of case study Amazon can take to other telecommunications providers to show that 5G networks can run in clouds, rather than in data centers with special-purpose infrastructure.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Honda will end production of combustion motors by 2040 as it embarks on a wide-reaching drive to achieve total carbon neutrality by 2050 and to advance the development of its zero-emission powertrain solutions. AutoCar reports: Company president Toshihiro Mibe detailed a series of ambitious objectives at a press conference in Japan today, where he solidified the brand's commitment to leading "advancements which will be made in the areas of mobility, the power unit, energy and robotics." By 2050, Honda aims to achieve carbon neutrality across "all products and corporate activities," which will see it shift focus predominantly to developing environmentally friendly powertrains and overhauling its supply chain to ensure products are "made from 100% sustainable materials." The brand had already confirmed it would offer exclusively electrified passenger cars in Europe by the end of 2022, but is now solidifying its global electrification strategy for the coming years. By 2030, Honda plans for 40% of its sales to be pure-electric or fuel cell (FCEV) vehicles, rising to 80% by 2035 and 100% by 2040. Specific goals for the European market have yet to be fully detailed, but a strategic partnership with General Motors will accelerate electrification efforts in North America, while a total of 10 new Honda-badged EVs will be launched in the Chinese market "within five years" - the first of which will be the production version of the e:prototype shown at Shanghai last week. Honda has also confirmed that in the second half of the decade, it will launch a range of EVs atop its new 'e:Architecture' platform. The models will arrive in the US first, before being rolled out to other regions, likely including Europe.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Now, thanks to Comcast and Broadcom, we're seeing the first tests of full-duplex (FDX) DOCSIS 4 system-on-chip (SoC) devices. Comcast's tests, done between Philadelphia and Denver, show that FDX can work with DOCSIS 4. FDX enables cable internet providers to run a high-speed internet connection both upstream and downstream simultaneously. In other words, while you won't see symmetric speeds, you will someday see 10 Gbps downstream and 6 Gbps upstream over Comcast's hybrid-fiber coaxial (HFC) network. Comcast has been working towards this for years. The company has been working to bring DOCSIS 4 FDX to market pretty much since CableLabs' set the specification in 2017. There is another way to deliver DOCSIS 4 speeds: Extended Spectrum DOCSIS (ESD). This is easier to deploy since it "only" raises to 1.8Gbps while keeping downstream and upstream traffic separate as has been the case with previous DOCSIS versions. Comcast, though, is investing heavily in chasing the top price of 10Gbps. It's possible that a single chipset could support both FDX and ESD, but we're still years away from that silicon being forged. [...] In the tests, which use experimental Broadcom SoCs, in a simulated network environment, they hit speeds of over 4Gbps both up and downstream simultaneously. This was done using DOCSIS 4's echo cancellation and overlapping spectrum techniques. The businesses expect future optimization to push the throughput even faster. We still don't know when these speeds will arrive in our small offices/home offices (SOHO). CableLabs doesn't even expect to test hardware for DOCSIS 4 certification until 2022. Nor, has Comcast announced any kind of deployment roadmap.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel on Friday recommended the U.S. resume using the Johnson and Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, saying the benefits outweighed the risk. CNBC reports: The recommendation, which was adopted 10-4 with one abstention, by the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, will pave the way for U.S. regulators to lift their recommended pause on using the J&J shot as early as this weekend. The committee, an outside panel of experts that advises the CDC, decided to postpone a decision on the vaccine last week while officials continued to investigate cases of six women, ages 18 to 48, who developed cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, or CVST, in combination with low blood platelets within about two weeks of receiving the shot. The Food and Drug Administration and CDC on April 13 asked states to temporarily halt using J&J's vaccine "out of an abundance of caution" following reports of the rare blood clots. Within hours of the warning, more than a dozen states as well as some national pharmacies halted inoculations with J&J's vaccine, some replacing scheduled appointments with either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. Rare blood clots with low platelets are occurring at a rate of 7 per 1 million vaccinations in women ages 18 to 49 for the J&J shot and 0.9 per 1 million in women age 50 and older, according to a slide presented at the CDC panel meeting. CDC has confirmed 15 cases total of rare blood clot conditions, which includes 12 women who developed blood clots in the brain. Three women have died and 7 remained hospitalized, according to the slides. There are no confirmed cases in men, though officials have said they are reviewing potential additional cases. A CDC model presented at the meeting showed not resuming the use of J&J's vaccine would delay immunizing all adults intending to get the shots by 14 days. J&J executives told the committee the benefits of its vaccine still outweighed its risks, adding that the shots would prevent deaths and hospitalizations. They suggested a new warning label for the vaccine that explains the risk of blood clots.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Britain's Court of Appeals has cleared a group of 42 sub-postmasters and postmistresses for theft, fraud and false accounting. They were convicted, with some imprisoned, after the Post Office installed faulty software in the branches where these office operators worked. The BBC reports: Following the convictions - including theft, fraud and false accounting -- some former postmasters went to prison, were shunned by their communities and struggled to secure work. Some lost their homes, and even failed to get insurance owing to their convictions. Some have since died. They always said the fault was in the computer system, which had been used to manage post office finances since 1999. The Horizon system, developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu, was first rolled out in 1999 to some post offices to be used for a variety of tasks including accounting and stocktaking. But from an early stage it appeared to have significant bugs which could cause the system to misreport, sometimes involving substantial sums of money. Horizon-based evidence was used by the Post Office to successfully prosecute 736 people. But campaigners fought a long and series of legal battles for compensation in the civil courts, which have been followed by referrals by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. A Post Office spokesman said: "We sincerely apologize to the postmasters affected by our historical failures. Throughout this appeals process we have supported the quashing of the overwhelming majority of these convictions and the judgment will be an important milestone in addressing the past." Long-time Slashdot reader Martin S. reacts: As a software geek, the part I find most troubling is that blind faith that those in authority placed in the software without proper accounting. Accounting systems and Software are deterministic, well they should be. IF the system/software worked correctly, this missing money must have shown up somewhere. Software defects are always traceable. It might be expensive and time consuming but persistence will win in the end. Somebody somewhere is responsible for this and defacto framing of these people is criminal in principle, if not in law.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A series of senior European MPs have been approached in recent days by individuals who appear to be using deepfake filters to imitate Russian opposition figures during video calls. Those tricked include Rihards Kols, who chairs the foreign affairs committee of Latvia's parliament, as well as MPs from Estonia and Lithuania. Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the UK foreign affairs select committee, has also said he was targeted. "Putin's Kremlin is so weak and frightened of the strength of @navalny they're conducting fake meetings to discredit the Navalny team," Tugendhat posted in a tweet, referring to the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. "They got through to me today. They won't broadcast the bits where I call Putin a murderer and thief, so I'll put it here." Kols uploaded a photograph of Leonid Volkov, an ally of Navalny, and a screenshot of his doppelganger taken from the video call. Volkov said the two looked virtually identical. "Looks like my real face -- but how did they manage to put it on the Zoom call? Welcome to the deepfake era " he wrote. Kols said he had been approached by email by a person claiming to be Volkov and had held a short video-conference call with him, where they discussed support for Russian political prisoners and the Russian annexation of Crimea. Only later did he realise he may have been the victim of a hi-tech prank, he said. "Quite a painful lesson, but perhaps we can also say thanks to this fake Volkov for this lesson for us and Lithuanian and Estonian colleagues," he wrote. "It is clear that the so-called truth decay or post-truth and post-fact era has the potential to seriously threaten the safety and stability of local and international countries, governments and societies." Volkov accused a Russian duo named Vovan and Lexus, who regularly target western officials, of being behind the call.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spotify wants to be the industry's No. 1 distributor of podcasts -- and it's willing to forgo some revenue in order to counter Apple's push into podcast subscriptions. From a report: Next week, Spotify will launch its podcast subscription option for partners. But the company will be letting content creators keep 100% of the subscription fees: Spotify will not take a cut of podcast subscription revenue, sources confirmed, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. By contrast, Apple will keep up to 30% of podcast subscription fees under its program, which is launching next month. Currently, Spotify doesn't allow customers to pay for subscriptions through Apple in-app purchases -- and Spotify has been a very vocal critic of Apple's App Store policies, which has included lodging a formal complaint with the European Union alleging anticompetitive behavior. Similarly, you won't be able to purchase Spotify podcast subscriptions through Apple.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is shutting its two main car factories temporarily due to a shortage of computer chips. From a report: The difficulties at Britain's biggest carmaker echo similar problems at other manufacturers, including Ford, who have been hit by a global shortage of chips. JLR said there would be a "limited period" of closure at its Halewood and Castle Bromwich sites from Monday. A mixture of strong demand and Covid shutdowns at chipmakers has also hit phone, TV and video games companies. Tata-owned JLR said in a statement: "We have adjusted production schedules for certain vehicles which means that our Castle Bromwich and Halewood manufacturing plants will be operating a limited period of non-production from Monday 26th April. We are working closely with affected suppliers to resolve the issues and minimise the impact on customer orders wherever possible." Production at a third factory, at Solihull, will continue. The Castle Bromwich factory makes the Jaguar XE, XF and F-Type models, and employs about 1,900 people. Halewood makes the Range Rover, Evoque and the Land Rover Discovery Sport, and has about 4,000 workers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What do you call a collection of black holes? The question has taken on an urgency among astronomers inspired by the recent news of dozens of black holes buzzing around the center of a nearby cluster of stars. The New York Times: In the last few years, instruments like the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors have recorded space-time vibrations from the collisions of black holes, making it clear beyond doubt that these monstrous concentrations of nothingness not only exist but are ubiquitous. Astronomers anticipate spotting a great number of these Einsteinian creatures when the next generation of gravitational-wave antennas are deployed. What will they call them? There are gaggles of geese, pods of whales and murders of crows. What term would do justice to the special nature of black holes? A mass? A colander? A scream? Jocelyn Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, an astrophysicist at Vanderbilt University, and colleagues are developing an international project called the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, that will be able to detect collisions between all sizes of black holes throughout the universe. She was trying to run a Zoom meeting of the group recently "when one of the members said his daughter was wondering what you call a collective of black holes -- and then the meeting fell apart, with everyone trying to up one another," she said in an email. "Each time I saw a suggestion, I had to stop and giggle like a loon, which egged us all on more." The question was crowdsourced on Twitter recently as part of what NASA has begun calling black hole week (April 12-16). Among the many candidates so far: A crush. A mosh pit. A silence. A speckle. A hive. An enigma. Or a favorite of mine for of its connection to my youth: an Albert Hall of black holes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan's central government has declared a third state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic with new restrictions imposed in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures. Local leaders requested the move as they face a sharp rise in new coronavirus cases. From a report: The declaration comes as Tokyo prepares to host the Summer Olympics, slated to begin in July, and just before Japan enters one of its biggest holiday seasons, Golden Week, in late April. The emergency measures stop short of a full lockdown, but they impose limits on restaurants and other businesses. The strictest rules will apply to places that sell alcohol or offer karaoke. They'll be asked to close entirely, while many other establishments will close at 8 p.m. The new policies, which carry fines but largely rely on voluntary compliance, go into effect on Sunday and will run through at least May 11. Nationwide, Japan is seeing spikes in new cases and hospitalizations, both of which are soaring toward the record heights that were seen at the start of 2021. Some 5,452 people tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.Read more of this story at Slashdot.