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Oceans' worth of water may remain buried in the crust of Mars, and not lost to space as previously long thought, a new study finds. Space.com reports: Data from NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission and the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter revealed that at the rate water disappears from the Red Planet's atmosphere, Mars would have lost a global ocean of water only about 10 to 82 feet (3 to 25 m) deep over the course of 4.5 billion years. Now scientists find that much of the water Mars once had may remain hidden in the crust of the Red Planet, locked away in the crystal structures of rocks beneath the Martian surface. They detailed their findings online March 16 in the journal Science and at the Lunar Planetary Science Conference. In the new study, the scientists found chemical reactions may have led between 30% to 99% of the water that Mars initially had to get locked into minerals and buried in the planet's crust. Any remaining water was then lost to space, explaining the hydrogen-to-deuterium ratios seen on Mars. All in all, the researchers suggested Mars lost 40% to 95% of its water during its Noachian period about 4.1 billion to 3.7 billion years ago. Their model suggested the amount of water on the Red Planet reached its current levels by about 3 billion years ago.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter byennie writes: A new airless bicycle tire called "METL" was introduced today by The SMART Tire Company. The tire is made from shape memory alloys (SMAs) and was originally designed for Mars rover missions (it's headed to Mars in 2026 as part of the Fetch rover). The structural tire claims to be flat-free and high performance, leaning on the unique properties of SMAs developed at NASA for future heavy vehicles in space. According to the company, "the shape memory alloy tire is made from advanced, lightweight materials known as NiTinol+, creating a tire that is elastic like rubber yet strong like titanium, exhibiting perfect shape memory without ever going flat."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: In 2016, a family in Illinois thought that a meteorite had hit their backyard. They called up the geology department at nearby Wheaton College to say that whatever struck their property had started a small fire and had left a weird rock embedded in the scorched dirt. "Meteorites, contrary to popular belief, are cold when they hit the ground," says Benjamin Hess, who was an undergraduate at the college but is now a graduate student at Yale University. "My professor readily figured out that that was probably a lightning strike." When lightning strikes sand, soil or stone, it immediately melts the materials into a glassy clump known as a fulgurite, or lightning rock. When geologists excavated the fulgurite in Illinois, they found something unexpected inside -- an important ingredient for life that had long been thought to be delivered to early Earth by meteorites. A report on the find, in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that this could have been a way for lightning to have played a key role in the emergence of life. When the researchers dug out the fulgurite in Illinois, they first saw glassy bits on its surface. Below that was a thick, tree-root-like structure extending down about a foot and a half. Hess and two colleagues at the University of Leeds analyzed the minerals inside and found one called schreibersite. This reactive mineral contains phosphorus, an essential element for life. Phosphorus "really plays a key role in a lot of the basic cell structures," says Hess. For example, it makes up the backbone of DNA. Phosphorus was abundant in early Earth, but geologists know that it was mostly inaccessible because it was trapped inside nonreactive minerals that don't dissolve easily in water. One explanation for where the phosphorus came from is meteorites, which can contain reactive minerals like schreibersite. But, according to the researchers, lightning offers an alternative source as it doesn't destroy an entire 100-kilometer area when it strikes and there could have been 1 billion to 5 billion lightning flashes every year when life firm emerged, about 3.5 billion years ago.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

KindMind shares a report from ScienceDaily: In 1966, US Army scientists drilled down through nearly a mile of ice in northwestern Greenland -- and pulled up a fifteen-foot-long tube of dirt from the bottom. Then this frozen sediment was lost in a freezer for decades. It was accidentally rediscovered in 2017. In 2019, University of Vermont scientist Andrew Christ looked at it through his microscope -- and couldn't believe what he was seeing: twigs and leaves instead of just sand and rock. That suggested that the ice was gone in the recent geologic past -- and that a vegetated landscape, perhaps a boreal forest, stood where a mile-deep ice sheet as big as Alaska stands today. Over the last year, Christ and an international team of scientists -- led by Paul Bierman at UVM, Joerg Schaefer at Columbia University and Dorthe Dahl-Jensen at the University of Copenhagen -- have studied these one-of-a-kind fossil plants and sediment from the bottom of Greenland. Their results show that most, or all, of Greenland must have been ice-free within the last million years, perhaps even the last few hundred-thousand years. "Ice sheets typically pulverize and destroy everything in their path," says Christ, "but what we discovered was delicate plant structures -- perfectly preserved. They're fossils, but they look like they died yesterday. It's a time capsule of what used to live on Greenland that we wouldn't be able to find anywhere else." The findings appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has once again reiterated that VR support for Xbox was not a focus for the company, following reports earlier today that hinted it was working on a VR headset compatible with the Xbox Series X/S. The Verge reports: The rumor first surfaced after IGN Italy reported that some Italian Xbox users received messages, which translated to "[a]n update for the VR headset is available" and "[u]pdate VR headset," when connecting the recently released Xbox Wireless Headset to their Xbox Series X or Series S consoles. A Microsoft representative told The Verge that "the copy in this error message is inaccurate due to a localization bug," while again reiterating that "VR for console is not a focus for us at this time." Microsoft has yet to explore the VR space for its Xbox consoles. In 2018, the company pulled back on plans to support virtual reality headsets for Xbox in 2018, explaining that it wanted to focus "primarily on experiences you would play on your TV." In late 2019, Xbox boss Phil Spencer tweeted out that although he played "some great VR games" such as Half-Life: Alyx, console VR was not Xbox's focus ahead of the Xbox Series X / S release.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's second-generation Nest Hub will be able to track your sleep via a Soli radar sensor -- not a camera. "Sleep Sensing" is the highlight feature, though, as "there's still a 7-inch display with a middling 600p resolution, a rear-facing fabric-covered speaker, and the device sensors poking through the otherwise uniform bezel," reports Android Police. From the report: According to Google, about 20 percent of first-gen Nest Hubs were placed in bedrooms, and the new Nest Hub can only show its full capabilities when you put it next to your bed. The lack of a camera is actually a selling point here as it ensures a certain degree of privacy. The Hub won't be able to see you, but it still kind of "sees" with radar waves. The Soli radar module creates a bubble where the Hub can track your breathing and movement overnight. Google says Soli in the Hub is accurate enough to detect the general shape and position of a person, but not specific faces or bodies. Combined with temperature and light levels, the Nest Hub can track your sleep and feed that data into Google Fit. Over time, Sleep Sensing can offer actionable tips to improve your sleep, too. This is similar to what you get with various fitness trackers and smartwatches that have sleep monitoring features, but you never have to worry about forgetting to wear your device to bed. Google says the raw Soli data (above) never leaves your Hub -- machine learning enhancements allow the smart display to do all the processing locally to further preserve your privacy. Soli also supports some basic gestures like holding your hand up to pause media or waving to snooze an alarm. Sleep Sensing will be a free feature at launch, but Google is planning to make it a paid add-on in the future.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: For years, Uber has successfully deployed armies of lawyers and lobbyists around the world to fight attempts to reclassify drivers as company workers entitled to higher wages and benefits rather than lower-cost, self-employed freelancers. Now the ride-hailing giant is retreating from that hard-line stance in Britain, one of its most important markets, after a major legal defeat. On Tuesday, Uber said it would reclassify more than 70,000 drivers in Britain as workers who will receive a minimum wage, vacation pay and access to a pension plan. [It does not give the full protections of the classification known as full "employee," which includes paternity and maternity leave and severance pay if dismissed, among other benefits.] The decision, Uber said, is the first time the company has agreed to classify its drivers in this way, and it comes in response to a landmark British Supreme Court decision last month that said Uber drivers were entitled to more protections. The decision represents a shift for Uber, though the move was made easier by British labor rules that offer a middle ground between freelancers and full employees that doesn't exist in other countries. That middle ground makes it unclear whether Uber will change its stance elsewhere. More labor battles are coming in the European Union, where policymakers are considering tougher labor regulations of gig-economy companies, as well as in the United States. In a statement, Uber said last month's court decision "provides a clearer path forward as to a model that gives drivers the rights of worker status -- while continuing to let them work flexibly, in the same way they have been since Uber's launch in the U.K. in 2012." Uber hasn't disclosed how much the reclassification would increase its operating costs, but the company maintains that it will become profitable this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Conservative lawmakers in Utah have a passed a proposal this month requiring all cellphones and tablets sold in the state to automatically block pornography. It's unknown whether Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, will sign or veto the proposal. He has until March 25 to decide. The Associated Press reports: Supporters argue the restriction is a critical step to help parents keep explicit content away from kids -- especially as more children have their own electronic devices and have been forced to spend more time online during the pandemic. Combating porn is a perennial issue for Utah lawmakers who have previously mandated warning labels on print and online pornography and declared porn a "public health crisis." Utah's generally conservative culture means racy mainstream magazines and lingerie catalogs can be considered risque. Leaders of the predominant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints faith have also drawn attention to what they consider the harms of pornography. Even if Cox signs the measure, it wouldn't go into effect unless five other states also enacted similar laws, a provision added after manufacturers and retailers voiced concerns that it would be difficult to implement the filters for a single state. If Cox signs the bill, Utah appears poised to become the first state to mandate filters on devices, according to two prominent technology experts and the bill's sponsor, though federal internet restrictions aimed at preventing kids from accessing porn were passed in the late 1990s and later stuck down in the courts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Nvidia made a big deal about reducing the hash rate of Ethereum mining on its new RTX 3060 graphics card last month. A special system was supposed to make the RTX 3060 undesirable for cryptominers, but Nvidia has now confirmed that it has accidentally unlocked those restrictions with a new driver. "A developer driver inadvertently included code used for internal development which removes the hash rate limiter on RTX 3060 in some configurations," says an Nvidia spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. "The driver has been removed." While Nvidia has now removed the driver, the genie is out of the bottle. Nvidia's latest 470.05 beta driver automatically unlocks performance for most RTX 3060 cards, boosting hashing rates for Ethereum mining. Mirrors of the driver can easily be found online, and Nvidia won't be able to prevent RTX 3060 owners from continuing to use this driver in the future.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alibaba's internet browser has been removed from several app stores in China as the company's feud with the Chinese government continues. From a report: Android app stores including those operated by Huawei and Xiaomi have blocked downloads or removed Alibaba's "UC Browser," according to Huawei and Xiaomi phone owners who spoke to CNBC. However, one Samsung phone owner in China said they could still see the browser in Samsung's app store. The UC Browser is also still available on Apple's App Store. It comes after the UC Browser was criticized on a TV show, broadcast by state-owned broadcaster CCTV, about misleading online medical advertising. The show accused the browser of allowing private hospitals to bid for the names of China's best known hospitals in keyword searches. Thus potentially luring patients to their websites instead of the public hospitals they are supposed to visit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nokia on Tuesday announced plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs within two years to trim costs and invest more in research capabilities. Reuters reports: After taking over the top job last year, Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark has been making changes to recover from product missteps under the company's previous management that hurt its 5G ambitions and dragged on its shares. He announced a new strategy in October, under which Nokia will have four business groups and said the company would "do whatever it takes" to take the lead in 5G, as it banks on also capturing share from Huawei. Lundmark is expected to present his long-term strategy, discuss action plans and set financial targets during the company's capital markets day on Thursday. The company said in a statement it expects about 600 million euros ($715 million) to 700 million euros of restructuring and associated charges by 2023. It expects the current restructuring to lower its cost base by about 600 million euros by the end of 2023. Half of the savings are expected to be realized in 2021. Nokia currently has 90,000 employees, and has cut thousands of jobs following its acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent in 2016.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Big Four all lean on the online encyclopedia at no cost. With the launch of Wikimedia Enterprise, the volunteer project will change that -- and possibly itself too. From a report: From the start, Google and Wikipedia have been in a kind of unspoken partnership: Wikipedia produces the information Google serves up in response to user queries, and Google builds up Wikipedia's reputation as a source of trustworthy information. Of course, there have been bumps, including Google's bold attempt to replace Wikipedia with its own version of user-generated articles, under the clumsy name "Knol," short for knowledge. Knol never did catch on, despite Google's offer to pay the principal author of an article a share of advertising money. But after that failure, Google embraced Wikipedia even tighter -- not only linking to its articles but reprinting key excerpts on its search result pages to quickly deliver Wikipedia's knowledge to those seeking answers. The two have grown in tandem over the past 20 years, each becoming its own household word. But whereas one mushroomed into a trillion-dollar company, the other has remained a midsize nonprofit, depending on the generosity of individual users, grant-giving foundations, and the Silicon Valley giants themselves to stay afloat. Now Wikipedia is seeking to rebalance its relationships with Google and other big tech firms like Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, whose platforms and virtual assistants lean on Wikipedia as a cost-free virtual crib sheet. Today, the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates the Wikipedia project in more than 300 languages as well as other wiki-projects, is announcing the launch of a commercial product, Wikimedia Enterprise. The new service is designed for the sale and efficient delivery of Wikipedia's content directly to these online behemoths (and eventually, to smaller companies too). Conversations between the foundation's newly created subsidiary, Wikimedia LLC, and Big Tech companies are already underway, point-people on the project said in an interview, but the next couple of months will be about seeking the reaction of Wikipedia's thousands of volunteers. Agreements with the firms could be reached as soon as June.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rockstar Games has paid a modder $10,000 for identifying a way to make Grand Theft Auto Online load significantly faster. From a report: The modder, who goes by the handle 't0st,' recently posted their discovery of a single-thread CPU bottleneck that occurs in the PC version of the hit multiplayer mode. They created a fix they claim enables the game to load 70% faster, and included a message for Rockstar, advising that the issue "shouldn't take more than a day for a single dev to solve." Reports spread of t0st's discovery and Rockstar has confirmed not only that this works, but that it will release an official fix in a future update for the game. In a statement to PC Gamer, the company said: "After a thorough investigation, we can confirm that player t0st did, in fact, reveal an aspect of the game code related to load times for the PC version of GTA Online that could be improved. "As a result of these investigations, we have made some changes that will be implemented in a forthcoming title update."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just as LastPass nerfs the free tier of its popular password manager, Dropbox has swooped in with a free version of its own password app -- but there's a bit of a catch. From a report: Dropbox today announced that Passwords will soon be free to all of its users, whether they're on its free basic plan or one of its premium individual or business tiers. Beginning in early April, any Dropbox user will be able to access a limited version of Passwords that will securely store up to 50 credentials. The catch here, of course, is that most people likely have more than 50 passwords to various accounts, and a password manager should ideally be used for all of them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the course of the last several weeks, Google has been adding App Privacy labels to its iOS apps in accordance with Apple's App Store rules, but it took Google multiple months to begin sharing the information. There was speculation that Google's delay meant that it had something to hide, which DuckDuckGo is leaning into with a blog that highlights Google's data collection and calls out the company for "spying" on users. [...] DuckDuckGo claims that Google "wanted to hide" the information that it collects, which is why Google took so long to roll out support for App Privacy labels. Most people are likely not surprised at the extent of the data that Google collects, but having it in one spot in the âOEApp StoreâOE is a stark reminder.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The new generation of Intel Core CPUs is here. Intel is using a new architecture on its ancient 14nm process to power the 11th-generation Rocket Lake-S processors. From a report: That results in some significant power improvements, but it also means that Intel can only fit 8 cores on its flagship Core i9-11900K. That sacrifice to the number of cores looks bad compared to the 12-core AMD Ryzen 9 5900X or even the last-gen 10-core i9-10900K. But Intel is also promising massive improvements to efficiency that should keep the Rocket Lake-S parts competitive -- especially in gaming. Rocket Lake-S CPUs launch March 30. The $539 Core i9-11900K has 8 cores and 16 threads with a single-core Thermal Velocity boost of 5.3GHz and 4.8GHz all-core boost. The slightly more affordable $399 i7-11700K boosts up to 5GHz, and the i5-11600K is $262 with 6 cores at a 4.9GHz boost. While the lack of cores is going to hurt Rocket Lake-S CPUs in multi-threaded applications, Intel claims that its 19% improvement to instructions per clock (IPC) will make up much of the difference. The UHD graphics processor in the CPUs also deliver 50% better performance than last generation. Of course, Intel is focusing on games because that is where its processors remain the most competitive versus AMD. And that should continue with its Rocket Lake-S chips. These high-clocked parts with improved performance should keep up and even exceed AMD's Zen 3 chips in certain games, like Microsoft's Flight Simulator (according to Intel).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has reportedly agreed to show Russian users a prompt to preinstall some apps when they're first using an iPhone or other device. From a report: If a user doesn't select one of the government-approved apps, it won't be installed, according to newspaper Vedomosti. The company is said to have agreed to the measure to abide by a law that comes into effect on April 1st. The Russian-made apps include Mail.ru's email service, the MIR payment system, social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki and Kaspersky Lab antivirus software, according to RFE. Android users reportedly won't get to opt out and all of the software will be preinstalled on those devices.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google will lower its Play commissions globally for developers that sell in-app digital goods and services on its marquee store, the company said, following a similar move by rival Apple late last year. From a report: The Android-maker said on Tuesday that starting July 1, it is reducing the service fee for Google Play to 15% -- down from 30% -- for the first $1 million of revenue developers earn using Play billing system each year. The company will levy a 30% cut on every dollar developers generate through Google Play beyond the first $1 million in a year, it said. Citing its own estimates, Google said 99% of developers that sell goods and services with Play will see a 50% reduction in fees, and that 97% of apps globally do not sell digital goods or pay any service fee. Google's new approach is slightly different from Apple, which last year said it would collect 15% rather than 30% of App Store sales from companies that generate no more than $1 million in revenue through the company's platform. That drop doesn't apply to iOS apps if a developer's revenue on Apple platform exceeds $1 million. "We've heard from our partners making $2 million, $5 million and even $10 million a year that their services are still on a path to self-sustaining orbit," wrote Sameer Samat, VP of Android and Google Play, in a blog post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Encrypted messaging app Signal has stopped working in China and is now only accessible via a virtual private network (VPN). From a report: China blocks many foreign apps and services including those from Facebook and Google. But Signal had previously not been barred by the so-called Great Firewall. Signal claims to be end-to-end encrypted, meaning the company itself nor any outsiders can view the contents of messages between a sender and the intended recipient. This also means authorities cannot snoop on messages. CNBC tested Signal on three different devices and messages did not go through, suggesting it has been blocked by authorities. The app was still available for download via Apple's China App Store.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some of China's biggest technology companies, including ByteDance and Tencent, are testing a tool to bypass Apple's new privacy rules and continue tracking iPhone users without their consent to serve them targeted mobile advertisements. From a report: Apple is expected in the coming weeks to roll out changes it announced last June to iPhones that it says will give users more privacy. Until now, apps have been able to rely on Apple's IDFA system to see who clicks on ads and which apps are downloaded. In future, they will have to ask permission to gather tracking data, a change which is expected to deal a multibillion-dollar bombshell to the online advertising industry, and has been fought by Facebook, since most users are expected to decline to be tracked. In response, the state-backed China Advertising Association, which has 2,000 members, has launched a new way to track and identify iPhone users called CAID, which is being widely tested by tech companies and advertisers in the country. ByteDance, the owner of the social video app TikTok, referred to CAID in an 11-page guide to app developers obtained by the Financial Times, suggesting that advertisers "can use the CAID as a substitute if the user's IDFA is unavailable." People close to Tencent and ByteDance confirmed the companies were testing the system, but both companies declined to comment. Several efforts are under way to get around Apple's rules, but CAID is the biggest challenge to them yet, and the iPhone maker declined to comment directly on it. But in a move that sets the stage for a major confrontation, Apple denied that it would grant any exceptions. "The App Store terms and guidelines apply equally to all developers around the world, including Apple," the company said. "We believe strongly that users should be asked for their permission before being tracked. Apps that are found to disregard the user's choice will be rejected."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Huawei will begin charging mobile giants like Apple a "reasonable" fee for access to its trove of wireless 5G patents, potentially creating a lucrative revenue source by showcasing its global lead in next-generation networking. From a report: The owner of the world's largest portfolio of 5G patents will negotiate rates and potential cross-licensing with the iPhone maker and Samsung Electronics, Chief Legal Officer Song Liuping said. It aims to get paid despite U.S. efforts to block its network gear and shut it out of the supply chain, but promised to charge lower rates than rivals like Qualcomm, Ericsson AB and Nokia Oyj. Huawei should rake in about $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion in patent and licensing fees between 2019 and 2021, executives said without specifying which of those stemmed from 5G. It's capping per-phone royalties at $2.50, according to Jason Ding, head of Huawei's intellectual property department. China's largest technology company by revenue wants a seat at the table with tech giants vying to define the rapidly evolving field of connected cars, smart homes and robotic surgery. Battles are unfolding over who profits from 5G that may dwarf the size and scope of the tech industry's first worldwide patent war -- the one over smartphones. But having only just become a major player in 5G standards boards, Huawei is now grappling with U.S. sanctions that have all but crippled its smartphone business and threaten to hamstring its networking division abroad.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Hackaday: Probably the best known brand of cutter comes from Cricut, and that company has dropped a bombshell in the form of an update to the web-based design software that leaves their now very annoyed users with a monthly upload limit of 20 new designs unless they sign up for a Cricut Access Plan that costs $9.99 on monthly payments. Worse still, a screenshot is circulating online purporting to be from a communication with a Cricut employee attempting to clarify matters, in which it is suggested that machines sold as second-hand will be bricked by the company. We'd like to think that given the reaction from their online community the subscription plan will backfire, but unlike the world of 3D printing their market is not necessarily an online-savvy one. A crafter who buys a Cricut from a bricks-and-mortar warehouse store and uses it with Cricut cartridges may not balk at being required to pay rent to use hardware that's already paid for in the same way a member of our community with a 3D printer would. After all, Cricut have always tried to make their software a walled garden. However if the stories about second-hand models being bricked turn out to bear fruit that might be a different matter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shares a report from Phys.Org: A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science demonstrates that under realistic environmental conditions oil drifting in the ocean after the DWH oil spill photooxidized into persistent compounds within hours to days, instead over long periods of time as was thought during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This is the first model results to support the new paradigm of photooxidation that emerged from laboratory research. After an oil spill, oil droplets on the ocean surface can be transformed by a weathering process known as photooxidation, which results in the degradation of crude oil from exposure to light and oxygen into new by-products over time. Tar, a by-product of this weathering process, can remain in coastal areas for decades after a spill. Despite the significant consequences of this weathering pathway, photooxidation was not taken into account in oil spill models or the oil budget calculations during the Deepwater Horizon spill. The UM Rosenstiel School research team developed the first oil-spill model algorithm that tracks the dose of solar radiation oil droplets receive as they rise from the deep sea and are transported at the ocean surface. The authors found that the weathering of oil droplets by solar light occurred within hours to days, and that roughly 75 percent of the photooxidation during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred on the same areas where chemical dispersants were sprayed from aircraft. Photooxidized oil is known to reduce the effectiveness of aerial dispersants. The study has been published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Electrek: Researchers at ETH Zurich and Empa have chemically modified wood and made it more compressible, turning it into a mini-generator. When compressed, it generates an electrical voltage. Such wood could serve as a biosensor or as a building material that harvests energy. Ingo Burgert and his team at public research university ETH Zurich and Swiss federal laboratory Empa have proven that wood is much more than just a building material. Their research enhances the properties of wood in order to use it for new applications. For instance, they have already developed high-strength, water-repellent, and magnetizable wood. Now, together with the Empa research group led by Francis Schwarze, the team has used one chemical and one biological process to generate electrical voltage from a type of wood sponge. In doing so, they amplify what is known as the "piezoelectric effect" of wood. The findings appear in the journal Science Advances.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Renewable electricity production needs to grow eight times faster than the current rate to help limit global heating, according to a report. The International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) said urgent action was needed to keep pace with rising demand for electricity, which could require a total investment of $131 trillion in renewables by 2050. Francesco La Camera, the director general of Irena, said the "window of opportunity" to achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement was closing fast. "The recent trends show that the gap between where we are and where we should be is not decreasing but widening. We are heading in the wrong direction," La Camera said. "We need a drastic acceleration of energy transitions to make a meaningful turnaround. Time will be the most important variable to measure our efforts." The agency's outlook report says keeping a lid on rising temperatures will require electricity to surpass fossil fuels as the dominant source of energy before 2050, as more economies electrify transport and heating to help cut carbon emissions. Clean electricity will also be in high demand to produce "green hydrogen" to burn in heavy industry and manufacturing plants where direct electrification is not possible. The surge in electricity use could mean that electric power will make up just over half of all energy consumed by 2050, compared with 21% in 2018. Fossil fuels have made up almost two-thirds of energy consumption in recent years but may be reduced to 10% by 2050.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has discontinued its original HomePod after four years. It says that it will continue to produce and focus on the HomePod mini, introduced last year. The larger HomePod offered a beefier sound space but the mini has been very well received and clearly accomplishes many of the duties that the larger version was tasked with. The sound is super solid (especially for the size) and it offers access to Siri, Apple's assistant feature.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Adobe doesn't want third-parties to pirate its software, so the company regularly sends out DMCA notices to remove infringing copies," reports TorrentFreak. In a recent tweet, F-Secure researcher Mikko Hypponen mentioned that the software company removed one of his tweets that linked to an old copy of Acrobat Reader for MS-DOS, which came out more than 27-years ago, shortly after the PDF was invented. From the report: The security researcher posted the tweet five years ago and at the time there were no issues. The message was copied a few weeks ago by his own Twitter bot, which reposts all his original tweets five years later. "They sent a DMCA notice to my bot (@mikko__2016) when it posted that tweet on the tweet's 5th anniversary. The original tweet is fine," Hypponen notes. While the original tweet is still up, the reposted message was swiftly removed by Twitter. Not just that, the bot's account was locked as well, which is standard practice nowadays. Looking more closely at the takedown notice, we see that it was sent by the "brand protection analyst" at Incopro, which is one of Adobe's anti-piracy partners. It doesn't provide any further details on the reasons for taking it down, other than an alleged copyright infringement. Things get even more curious when we look at the full DMCA notice, posted by the Lumen database. This shows that the tweet was listed among other links, which all point to "infringing' copies of more recent software. Intriguingly, the notice also reveals that Hypponen's original tweet was targeted as well, albeit indirectly. The takedown notice lists t.co/tbAT0CH25o, which still points to the 2016 tweet today, so Twitter decided not to take action there. We wonder if the DMCA notice is intentional at all. Over the years we have seen many bizarre takedown claims, which are often the result of automated filters. That may be a plausible explanation here as well. In that case, it shows that DMCA takedown process is far from perfect. However, if Adobe seriously has a problem with the fact that a 27-year-old copy of Acrobat Reader is being shared on an external site, it's more effective to target the site where it's hosted. Not the person who links to it in a tweet.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Telegram is riding high, adding tens of million of users this year. Now the bill is coming due. WSJ: The messaging service and social-media platform owes creditors roughly $700 million by the end of April, according to people briefed on the company's plans and loan documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. At the same time, Telegram Group must cover rising equipment and bandwidth expenses because of its rapid growth, despite going years without attempting to generate revenue. Telegram is one of the few significant social-media challengers to Facebook on a trajectory toward one billion users active each month by the end of 2022, up from roughly 550 million today. But first Pavel Durov, the Dubai-based Russian emigre who owns Telegram, needs to figure out how to convert his app's momentum into a self-sustaining business. [...] To pay the bills, Mr. Durov is issuing investors $1 billion to $1.5 billion of company debt, with the promise of discounted equity if the company eventually goes public, the people briefed on the plans said. He has also announced plans to start selling ads in public Telegram channels as soon as later this year, as well as offering other premium services for businesses and users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Firefox's "Compact density" option, which reduces the size of the user interface, is set to disappear when Mozilla rolls out its Proton visual redesign for the browser later this year. PCMag reports: A bug was posted on Mozilla's bug tracking system entitled "Remove compact mode inside Density menu of customize palette." The reasons given for its removal include the fact it's "currently fairly hard to discover" and "we assume gets low engagement." The development team wants to "make sure that we design defaults that suit most users and we'll be retiring the compact mode for this reason." The Bugzilla thread highlights a desire for compact density to be retained as an option, but it doesn't seem likely to survive right now. When Proton arrives, the Normal and Touch density options are expected to remain, with Touch increasing the size of the user interface to make it more finger-friendly. Meanwhile, the development team is optimizing the Normal density for displays that use 768 pixels for height, while most displays now use a higher resolution than that. Hopefully this doesn't mean the UI will be larger than it is now by default.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Reuters, "India will propose a law banning cryptocurrencies, fining anyone trading in the country or even holding such digital assets." From the report: The bill, one of the world's strictest policies against cryptocurrencies, would criminalize possession, issuance, mining, trading and transferring crypto-assets, said the official, who has direct knowledge of the plan. The measure is in line with a January government agenda that called for banning private virtual currencies such as bitcoin while building a framework for an official digital currency. But recent government comments had raised investors' hopes that the authorities might go easier on the booming market. Instead, the bill would give holders of cryptocurrencies up to six months to liquidate, after which penalties will be levied, said the official, who asked not to be named as the contents of the bill are not public. Officials are confident of getting the bill enacted into law as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government holds a comfortable majority in parliament. If the ban becomes law, India would be the first major economy to make holding cryptocurrency illegal. Even China, which has banned mining and trading, does not penalize possession. According to the senior official, the plan is to ban private crypto-assets while promoting blockchain. "We don't have a problem with technology. There's no harm in harnessing the technology," said the official, adding the government's moves would be "calibrated" in the extent of the penalties on those who did not liquidate crypto-assets within the law's grace period. The report notes that 8 million investors in India now hold 100 billion rupees ($1.4 billion) in crypto-investments.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A lapsed domain registration tied to WeLeakInfo, a wildly popular service that sold access to more than 12 billion usernames and passwords from thousands of hacked websites, "let someone plunder and publish account data on 24,000 customers who paid to access the service with a credit card," reports Krebs on Security. This comes after the service was seized a little over a year ago by the FBI and law enforcement partners overseas. From the report: In a post on the database leaking forum Raidforums, a regular contributor using the handle "pompompurin" said he stole the WeLeakInfo payment logs and other data after noticing the domain wli[.]design was no longer listed as registered. "Long story short: FBI let one of weleakinfo's domains expire that they used for the emails/payments," pompompurin wrote. "I registered that domain, & was able to [password] reset the stripe.com account & get all the Data. [It's] only from people that used stripe.com to checkout. If you used paypal or [bitcoin] ur all good." Cyber threat intelligence firm Flashpoint obtained a copy of the data leaked by pompompurin, and said it includes partial credit card data, email addresses, full names, IP addresses, browser user agent string data, physical addresses, phone numbers, and amount paid. One forum member commented that they found their own payment data in the logs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thelasko shares a report from NPR: A member of the World Health Organization investigative team says wildlife farms in southern China are the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic. China shut down those wildlife farms in February 2020, says Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist with EcoHealth Alliance and part of the WHO delegation that travelled to China earlier this year. During that trip, Daszak says, the WHO team found new evidence that these wildlife farms were supplying vendors at the Huanan market in Wuhan with animals. Daszak told NPR that the government response was a strong signal that the Chinese government thought those farms were the most probable pathway for a coronavirus in bats southern China to reach humans in Wuhan. Those wildlife farms, including ones in the Yunnan region, are a part of a unique project that the Chinese government has been promoting for 20 years now. "They take exotic animals, like civets, porcupines, pangolins, raccoon dogs and bamboo rats, and they breed them in captivity," says Daszak. The agency is expected to release the team's investigative findings in the next two weeks. In the meantime, Daszak gave NPR a highlight of what they figured out. "China promoted the farming of wildlife as a way to alleviate rural populations out of poverty," Daszak says. The farms helped the government meet ambitious goals of closing the rural-urban divide, as NPR reported last year. "It was very successful," Daszak says. "In 2016, they had 14 million people employed in wildlife farms, and it was a $70 billion industry." Then on February 24, 2020, right when the outbreak in Wuhan was winding down, the Chinese government "put out a declaration saying that they were going to stop the farming of wildlife for food," says Daszak. The farms were then shut down. "They sent out instructions to the farmers about how to safely dispose of the animals -- to bury, kill or burn them -- in a way that didn't spread disease." Daszak thinks the government did this because these farms could be where the coronavirus jumped from a bat into another animal and then into people. During WHO's mission to China, NPR reports that "Daszak said the team found new evidence that these farms were supplying vendors at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, where an early outbreak of COVID occurred."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elon Musk is getting in on the NFT gold rush by selling a new electronic music track he's apparently produced as an NFT. The Verge reports: Yes, you've heard that right -- it's a song about non-fungible tokens, which Musk appears to have minted (or plans to mint) on the blockchain. Musk did not include a link to the NFT, so it's not clear if it's already live or if Musk plans to initiate the sale at a later date. It's also not clear on which platform Musk intends to sell the NFT. We also don't know if the song has a name, but we have some clues. The looping video attached to the song Musk posted to Twitter on Monday displays the words "Vanity Trophy" orbiting around a golden orb affixed to the top of a literal trophy reading "HODL," short for the phase "hold on for dear life." [...] At various points in the short video, the words along the trophy shift from "computers" to "never sell" while a female vocalist sings lyrics over top like "NFT for your vanity" and "computers never sleep." Did I mention that the trophy also has little gold dogs, or "doges" if you will, rotating around it, too? The techno song drop is appropriate considering Musk named himself the "technoking" of Tesla in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Meanwhile, chief financial officer Zach Kirkhorn's new position is "Master of Coin." Both Elon and Zach "will also maintain their respective positions as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer," the filing concludes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tinder and Match have announced a new partnership with Garbo, a non-profit, female-founded background check platform. In theory, it should allow Tinder (and Match Group's other sites) to ping Garbo's database and proactively show users when it finds something they might want to be aware of. Engadget reports: If you're not familiar with Garbo, it was founded by Kathryn Kosmides, a "survivor of gender-based violence" who wanted to make it easier to find information about people you may connect with online. Garbo's platform aggregates numerous data sources to provide details on an individual, including "arrests, convictions, restraining orders, harassment, and other violent crimes." The organization's site says that often times, you don't even need a last time to find some details on an individual -- a first name and phone number will work. As part of the deal, Garbo's platform will be available to people using Match Group apps, starting with Tinder later this year. [...] Garbo cites making ridesharing services safer as another core initiative for the non-profit in addition to working with dating services, so it wouldn't surprise us to see a similar partnership appear between Garbo and companies like Uber or Lyft -- but for now, it's starting with Tinder.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thelasko writes: Microsoft is reporting an outage of Office 365, including Microsoft Teams. On its status page, Microsoft adds: Users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft services. User impact: Users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365, Azure, and Dynamics 365 services, including the Service Health Dashboard. More info: Any service that leverages Azure Active Directory (AAD) may be affected. This includes but is not limited to Microsoft Teams, Forms, Exchange Online, Intune and Yammer. Current status: We've identified the underlying cause of the problem and are taking steps to mitigate impact. We'll provide an updated ETA on resolution as soon as one is available. Scope of impact: This issue could affect any user.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Joseph Cox: I didn't expect it to be that quick. While I was on a Google Hangouts call with a colleague, the hacker sent me screenshots of my Bumble and Postmates accounts, which he had broken into. Then he showed he had received texts that were meant for me that he had intercepted. Later he took over my WhatsApp account, too, and texted a friend pretending to be me. Looking down at my phone, there was no sign it had been hacked. I still had reception; the phone said I was still connected to the T-Mobile network. Nothing was unusual there. But the hacker had swiftly, stealthily, and largely effortlessly redirected my text messages to themselves. And all for just $16. I hadn't been SIM swapped, where hackers trick or bribe telecom employees to port a target's phone number to their own SIM card. Instead, the hacker used a service by a company called Sakari, which helps businesses do SMS marketing and mass messaging, to reroute my messages to him. This overlooked attack vector shows not only how unregulated commercial SMS tools are but also how there are gaping holes in our telecommunications infrastructure, with a hacker sometimes just having to pinky swear they have the consent of the target. "I used a prepaid card to buy their $16 per month plan and then after that was done it let me steal numbers just by filling out LOA info with fake info," said Lucky225, the pseudonymous hacker who carried out the attack, referring to a Letter of Authorization, a document saying that the signer has authority to switch telephone numbers. In a statement to Motherboard, Senator Ron Wyden said: "Itâ(TM)s not hard to see the enormous threat to safety and security this kind of attack poses. The FCC must use its authority to force phone companies to secure their networks from hackers. Former Chairman Paiâ(TM)s approach of industry self-regulation clearly failed."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Too many young people around the world are excluded from accessing the web, and getting them online should be a priority for the post-Covid era, Tim Berners-Lee has said. From a report: In a letter published to mark the 32nd birthday of the web, its founder says the opportunity "to reimagine our world and create something better" in the aftermath of Covid-19 must be channelled to getting internet access to the third of people aged between 15 and 24 who are offline. "The influence of young people is felt across their communities and online networks," Berners-Lee writes. "But today we're seeing just a fraction of what's possible. Because while we talk about a generation of 'digital natives,' far too many young people remain excluded and unable to use the web to share their talents and ideas. "A third of young people have no internet access at all. Many more lack the data, devices and reliable connection they need to make the most of the web. In fact, only the top third of under-25s have a home internet connection, according to Unicef, leaving 2.2 billion young people without the stable access they need to learn online, which has helped so many others continue their education during the pandemic." Even though young people are more likely than the typical global citizen to have internet access -- roughly half the world is online, but the figure rises to 70% of people aged between 15 and 25 -- Berners-Lee argues that aiming to connect every young person in the world to the web would reap dividends. He also says doing so would be relatively cheap compared with the cost of many government programmes launched over the last 12 months. He estimates that an investment of $428bn over the next decade would provide everyone with a quality broadband connection.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is expanding an existing program that gamifies warehouse work to encourage its fulfillment center employees to improve their efficiency and compete against others for digital rewards like virtual pets, according to a new report from The Information. From a report: The program is called FC Games, and it includes as many as six arcade-style mini-games that can be played only by completing warehouse tasks in the workplace. It's been known since at least 2019 that Amazon uses gamification in the form of workstation games to try to incentivize employees to improve productivity, but The Information reports that Amazon is now expanding those methods to warehouses in at least 20 states throughout the country. Many of the games tend to be simple virtual representations of how fast the worker is completing a task. One, called MissionRacer, moves a car around a track while a picking employee sorts products into appropriate boxes, as reported by The Washington Post at the time. "Employees have told us they enjoy having the option to join in these workstation games, and we're excited to be taking their feedback and expanding the program to even more buildings throughout our network," Kent Hollenbeck, an Amazon spokesperson, tells The Information. "Even with this expansion, the program remains completely optional for employees; they can switch in or out of different games depending on their preference, can play anonymously, or not play at all -- the choice is theirs."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Germany on Monday halted use of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, the Health Ministry announced in a statement, with Italy, France and Spain following suit later in the day. Several other EU countries have stopped use of the vaccine because of the possibility of blood clots. From a report: The Health Ministry announced that use of the vaccine was "suspended as a precaution" on the basis of advice from the national health regulator, the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI). According to the Health Ministry, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will decide "whether and how the new information will affect the authorization of the vaccine" pending an investigation. "After new reports of thrombroses of the cerebral veins in connection with the vaccination in Germany and Europe, the PEI considers further investigations to be necessary," the Health Ministry announced. German Health Minister Jens Spahn said "the decision is a professional, not political one," following advice from the PEI. Spahn said the risk of blood clots from the AstraZeneca jab is low, but could not be ruled out. "The most important thing for confidence is transparency," Spahn said during a briefing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MojoKid writes: AMD announced new additions to its EPYC server processor lineup today, codenamed Milan. The company's EPYC 7003 series brings with it significantly improved IPC and per-core performance, better multi-core scaling, and more flexible memory configuration options, in a package that's socket compatible with its previous-gen CPUs. Like the current AMD Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors, new EPYC 7003 CPUs leverage AMD's new Zen 3 microarchitecture. Unlike its desktop parts, however, EPYC 7003 server processors use much larger packaging and feature up to CPU nine chiplets (up to eight 7nm CPU dies and a 12nm IO die), with up to 64 physical cores and 128 threads per socket. As things stand today, Intel doesn't currently have any Xeon processors that can match AMD in terms of single-socket core density. As such, AMD's EPYC 7003 series should consistently offer better performance in many workloads. Pricing for these new big iron processors ranges from $913 or the 16-core 7313P, and up to $7,890 for the powerful EPYC 7763, which AMD is calling "the world's highest-performing server processor." Though nearly $8K is not cheap, AMD appears to be continuing its aggressive price strategy with the EPYC 7003 series, relative to Intel's Xeon Scalable processors. The company also announced a who's who of data center and cloud service OEMs supporting the new platform, including AWS, Azure, Dell Technologies, HPE, Cisco, Google Cloud, Oracle and others.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple says its App Store now supports more than 330,000 jobs in the U.K., a 10% increase over the past year, despite the pressures of the global health crisis on the nation's economy. From a report: According to Apple, 2020 was a "breakthrough year" for the iOS app economy, with developers in the U.K. generating more than $5 billion in total earnings, which represents 22% in growth compared to the previous year. The company says a similar trend was reflected in Europe, where the iOS app economy has grown to support 1.7 million jobs -- a 7% percent increase since 2019. Apple published similar press releases in Germany and France, claiming that the App Store supports over a quarter of a million jobs in each of those two countries.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

General Motors said on Monday that due to the global semiconductor chip shortage the U.S. automaker is building certain 2021 light-duty full-size pickup trucks without a fuel management module, hurting those vehicles' fuel economy performance. From a report: The lack of the active fuel management/dynamic fuel management module means affected models, equipped with the 5.3-liter EcoTec3 V8 engine with both six-speed and eight-speed automatic transmission, will have lower fuel economy by one mile per gallon, spokeswoman Michelle Malcho said. Malcho emphasized all trucks are still being built, something GM has repeatedly stressed it would try to protect as pickups are among GM's most profitable models. She declined to say the volume of vehicles affected. "By taking this measure, we are better able to meet the strong customer and dealer demand for our full-size trucks as the industry continues to rebound and strengthen," Malcho wrote in an email. The change runs through the 2021 model year, which typically ends in late summer or early fall, she said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adobe just dropped its latest software updates via the Creative Cloud and among those updates is a new feature in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) called "Super Resolution." You can mark this day down as a major shift in the photo industry, writes PetaPixel. From the report: I have seen a bit of reporting out there on this topic from the likes of PetaPixel and Fstoppers, but other than that the ramifications of this new feature in ACR have not been widely promoted from what I can see. The new Super Resolution feature in ACR essentially upsizes the image by a factor of four using machine learning, i.e. Artificial Intelligence (AI).The PetaPixel article on this new feature quoted Eric Chan from Adobe: Super Resolution builds on a technology Adobe launched two years ago called Enhance Details, which uses machine learning to interpolate RAW files with a high degree of fidelity, which resulted in images with crisp details and fewer artifacts. The term 'Super Resolution' refers to the process of improving the quality of a photo by boosting its apparent resolution," Chan explains. "Enlarging a photo often produces blurry details, but Super Resolution has an ace up its sleeve: an advanced machine learning model trained on millions of photos. Backed by this vast training set, Super Resolution can intelligently enlarge photos while maintaining clean edges and preserving important details." What does this mean practically? Well, I immediately tested this out and was pretty shocked by the results. Though it might be hard to make out in the screenshot below, I took the surfing image shown below, which was captured a decade ago with a Nikon D700 -- a 12MP camera -- and ran the Super Resolution tool on it and the end result is a 48.2MP image that looks to be every bit as sharp (if not sharper) than the original image file. This means that I can now print that old 12MP image at significantly larger sizes than I ever could before. What this also means is that anyone with a lower resolution camera, i.e. the current crop of 24MP cameras, can now output huge image files for prints or any other usage that requires a higher resolution image file. In the three or four images I have run through this new feature in Photoshop I have found the results to be astoundingly good.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook, trying to counteract the spread of false information about vaccines, is planning to label posts about Covid-19 shots with a link to information from medical authorities including the World Health Organization. From a report: On Facebook-owned Instagram, which already has information labels on some posts, the wording will become clearer on messages from users seeking to discourage people from getting shots. For example, the company plans to say on some posts that "Covid-19 vaccines go through many tests for safety and effectiveness before they're approved." Facebook and Instagram have been used for years to spread fear about vaccines, because information with the potential to scare others and spark emotions has a better chance of getting shared and commented on, boosting it into more feeds on the platforms. The company, seeing the rise in vaccine hesitancy during the Covid-19 pandemic, has started to take stronger measures, banning repeat offenders who spend false information and directing users to a central Covid-19 information center. It announced the new labels Monday in a blog post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spain could become one of the first countries in the world to trial the four-day working week after the government agreed to launch a modest pilot project for companies interested in the idea. From a report: Earlier this year, the small leftwing Spanish party Mas Pais announced that the government had accepted its proposal to test out the idea. Talks have since been held, with the next meeting expected to take place in the coming weeks. "With the four-day work week (32 hours), we're launching into the real debate of our times," said Inigo Errejon of Mas Pais on Twitter. "It's an idea whose time has come." From New Zealand to Germany, the idea has been steadily gaining ground globally. Hailed by its proponents as a means to increase productivity, improve the mental health of workers and fight climate change, the proposal has taken on new significance as the pandemic sharpens issues around wellbeing, burnout and work-life balance. Leftwing parties in Spain -- where a 44-day strike in Barcelona in 1919 resulted in the country becoming one of the first in western Europe to adopt the eight-hour workday -- have seized on the idea. "Spain is one of the countries where workers put in more hours than the European average. But we're not among the most productive countries," said Errejon. "I maintain that working more hours does not mean working better." While the exact details of the pilot will be hashed out with the government, his party has proposed a three-year, $59.6 million project that would allow companies to trial reduced hours with minimal risk. The costs of a company's foray into the four-day work week, for example, could be covered at 100% the first year, 50% the second year and 33% the third year. "With these figures, we calculate that we could have around 200 companies participate, with a total of anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 workers," said Hector Tejero of Mas Pais. "The only red lines are that we want to see a true reduction of working hours and no loss of salary or jobs."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The Border Gateway Protocol was first described in 1989...," according to Wikipedia, "and has been in use on the Internet since 1994." But now long-time Slashdot reader jovius reports that a startup named Syntropy "aims to replace BGP as the default routing method of the internet, by using nodes around the world to constantly gather data of the inefficiencies of the current network."The intelligence is then used to route data via the most efficient routes. Actual tests with hundreds of servers have proved that latencies can be reduced by tens to hundreds of milliseconds. The connections are by default encrypted, and jitter is also reduced. Eventually, the company-run servers are augmented with tens of thousands of nodes run by users/smart devices, who are rewarded for their work. The team was recently joined by former SVP at Verizon Shawn Hakl and former Chief Product Officer at AT&T Roman Pacewicz. One of the founders of Syntropy is the co-founder of Equinix and NANOG Bill Norton. Syntropy is an Oracle and Microsoft partner, and transforming into a foundation and DAO to govern the protocol work. Decentralised autonomous routing protocol (or DARP) has just been opened for community testing, and the system is live on https://darp.syntropystack.com/.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Verge reports:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the latest batch of 60 Starlink satellites into orbit Sunday, and returned to Earth successfully, landing on its Of Course I Still Love You drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, the company announced. Sunday's mission marked a record ninth flight and landing for this Falcon 9 booster, SpaceX said... Sunday's launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center was the second in the past few days for SpaceX, which sent another of its Falcon 9 rockets skyward from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday. That launch also brought 60 satellites into orbit. Sharing a video about the mission, CNET calls it "a new standard for rocket recycling."The first stage that boosted the satellites is a veteran of five previous Starlink missions, Crew Dragon's first demonstration flight, a SiriusXM satellite launch and a Canadian Space Agency satellite mission. The fairing, or nose cone, also previously flew on the Transporter-1 ride-share mission.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A federal judge in Washington blocked the Defense Department from restricting U.S. investment in the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi Corp," reports Bloomberg:In the final days of the Trump administration, the Defense Department placed Xiaomi on a list of companies with alleged links to the Chinese military, triggering financial restrictions that were scheduled to go into effect next week. But on Friday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras put a temporary halt to the ban, siding with Xiaomi in a lawsuit that argued that the move was "arbitrary and capricious" and deprived the company of its due process rights. Contreras said Xiaomi was likely to win a full reversal of the ban as the litigation unfolds and issued an initial injunction to prevent the company from suffering "irreparable harm." After the ban was announced, the smartphone manufacturer faced the prospect of being de-listed from U.S. exchanges and deleted from global benchmark indexes. Xiaomi is the third-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world by volume. In the third quarter, it surpassed Apple Inc. in smartphone sales, according to the International Data Corporation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it," declared the Agile Manifesto, nearly 20 years ago. "Through this work we have come to value..." * Individuals and interactions over processes and tools* Working software over comprehensive documentation* Customer collaboration over contract negotiation* Responding to change over following a planToday a new ZDNet article asks how far the tech industry has come in achieving the vision of its 12 principles — and why Agile is often "still just a buzzword."The challenge arises "because many come to agile as a solution or prescription, rather than starting with the philosophy that the Agile Manifesto focused on," says Bob Ritchie, VP of Software at SAIC. "Many best practices such as automated test-driven development, automated builds, deployments, and rapid feedback loops are prevalent in the industry. However, they are frequently still unmoored from the business and mission objectives due to that failure to start with why." Still, others feel we're still nowhere near achieving the vision of the original Agile Manifesto. "Absolutely not at a large scale across enterprises," , says Brian Dawson, DevOps evangelist with CloudBees. "We are closer and more aware, but we are turning a tanker and it is slow and incremental. In start-ups, we are seeing much more of this; that is promising because they are the enterprises of the future." Agile initiatives "all too often are rolled out from, and limited to, project planning or the project management office. To support agile and DevOps transformation, agile needs to be implemented with all stakeholders." Some organizations turn to agile "as a panacea to increase margins by cutting cost with a better, shinier development process," Ritchie cautions. "Others go even further by weaponizing popular metrics associated with agile capacity planning such as velocity and misclassifying it as a performance metric for an individual or team. In these circumstances, the promises of the manifesto are almost certainly missed as opportunities to engage and collaborate give way to finger pointing, blame, and burnout." What's missing from many agile initiatives is "ways to manage what you do based on value and outcomes, rather than on measuring effort and tasks," says Morris. "We've seen the rise of formulaic 'enterprise agile' frameworks that try to help you to manage teams in a top-down way, in ways that are based on everything on the right of the values of the Agile Manifesto. The manifesto says we value 'responding to change over following a plan,' but these frameworks give you a formula for managing plans that don't really encourage you to respond to change once you get going."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The Spanish government on Thursday announced legislation that classifies food delivery riders as employees of the digital platforms they work for, not self-employed," reports the Associated Press:The Minister for Labor, Yolanda Díaz, said the new law is "pioneering" and is part of "a modernization of the labor market" in Spain, updating regulations in accordance with technological developments to ensure workers' rights are upheld... The legal changes are the latest affecting companies and workers in the gig economy. Last month, Britain's top court ruled that Uber drivers should be classed as "workers" and not self-employed, in what was seen as a major setback for the ride-hailing giant. The Spanish government agreed on the new law with the country's main business groups and trade union confederations. But the law, which is expected to come into force within months, was quickly contested by an association of digital platforms providing food delivery services and by some riders who prefer the flexibility of being self-employed. The Association of Service Platforms calls the rule "an assault on the most basic principles of the freedom to do business..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.