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An anonymous reader shares a report: A ten-year longitudinal study published in the Journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking on a group in early adolescence from as young as ten years old, investigated how playing violent video games at an early age would translate into adulthood behavior (23 years of age). Titled "Growing Up with Grand Theft Auto: A 10-Year Study of Longitudinal Growth of Violent Video Game Play in Adolescents" the study found no correlation between growing up playing video games and increased levels of aggression ten years later. This particular study utilized a more contemporary approach for analyzing its data, known as the person-centered approach. Traditional studies use a variable-centered approach whereby researchers treat each variable, or characteristic, as related to another variable. An example would be that exercising is related to a reduced incidence of heart disease. This has been particularly valuable when comparing groups. In a person-centered approach researchers combine various algorithms across variables to determine how these variables compare among individuals. This approach provides a more accurate depiction of how variables relate to the individual.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report [the story is behind a paywall; alternative source]: Seven years ago, Apple made a staggering discovery: Among the employees at a factory in China that made most of the computer ports used in its MacBooks were two 15-year-olds. Apple told the manufacturer, Suyin Electronics, that it wouldn't get any new business until it improved employee screening to ensure no more people under 16 years of age got hired. Suyin pledged to do so, but an audit by Apple three months later found three more underage workers, including a 14-year-old. Apple, which has promised to ban suppliers that repeatedly use underage workers, stopped giving Suyin new business because of the violations. But it took Apple more than three years to fully cut its ties with Suyin, which continued to make HDMI, USB and other ports for older MacBooks under previous contracts. A person close to Suyin, which is headquartered in Taiwan, said that the company hadn't intentionally hired underage workers and that it had passed Apple's audits in later years. Apple no longer does business with Suyin. But the previously unreported episode, drawn from documents reviewed by The Information and interviews with people who have direct knowledge of Apple's dealings with Suyin, is a stark example of the dilemmas Apple faces in fulfilling its pledges to put workers first and not use manufacturers that consistently violate labor laws. And it demonstrates the fine line Apple has to walk in balancing the need to maximize profits with the expectation that it will prioritize good working conditions for its own employees and its suppliers'. [...] In interviews, 10 former members of Apple's supplier responsibility team -- the unit in charge of monitoring manufacturing partners for violations of labor, environmental and safety rules -- claimed that Apple avoided or delayed cutting ties with offenders when doing so would hurt its business. For example, the former team members said, Apple continued working with some suppliers that refused to implement safety suggestions or that consistently violated labor laws.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries will soon complete in Austria the world's largest steel plant capable of attaining net-zero carbon dioxide emissions. Mitsubishi Heavy, through a British unit, is constructing the pilot plant at a complex of Austrian steelmaker Voestalpine. Trial operation is slated to begin in 2021. From a report: The plant will use hydrogen instead of coal in the reduction process for iron ore. The next-generation equipment will produce 250,000 tons of steel product a year. The global steel industry generated about 2 billion tons of CO2 in 2018, according to the International Energy Agency -- double the volume in 2000. The steel sector's share among all industries grew 5 percentage points to 25%. Iron ore reduction accounts for much of the CO2 emissions in steelmaking. Japanese steelmakers including Nippon Steel are developing hydrogen-consuming reduction processes based on the conventional blast furnace design. Mitsubishi Heavy's plant adopts a process called direct reduced iron, or DRI. New blast furnaces require trillions of yen (1 trillion yen equals $9.6 billion) in investment. Although DRI equipment produces less steel, the investment is estimated at less than half of blast furnaces. For DRI to attain the same level of cost-competitiveness as blast furnaces, low-cost hydrogen will be key. Market costs for hydrogen now stand at around 100 yen per normal cu. meter, estimates the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bloomberg Editorial Board: Amid raging wildfires, rolling blackouts and a worsening coronavirus outbreak, it has not been a great year for California. Unfortunately, the state is also reeling from a manmade disaster: an exodus of thriving companies to other states. In just the past few months, Hewlett Packard Enterprise said it was leaving for Houston. Oracle said it would decamp for Austin. Palantir, Charles Schwab and McKesson are all bound for greener pastures. No less an information-age avatar than Elon Musk has had enough. He thinks regulators have grown "complacent" and "entitled" about the state's world-class tech companies. No doubt, he has a point. Silicon Valley's high-tech cluster has been the envy of the world for decades, but there's nothing inevitable about its success. As many cities have found in recent years, building such agglomerations is exceedingly hard, as much art as science. Low taxes, modest regulation, sound infrastructure and good education systems all help, but aren't always sufficient. Once squandered, moreover, such dynamism can't easily be revived. With competition rising across the U.S., the area's policy makers need to recognize the dangers ahead. In recent years, San Francisco has seemed to be begging for companies to leave. In addition to familiar failures of governance -- widespread homelessness, inadequate transit, soaring property crime -- it has also imposed more idiosyncratic hindrances. Far from welcoming experimentation, it has sought to undermine or stamp out home-rental services, food-delivery apps, ride-hailing firms, electric-scooter companies, facial-recognition technology, delivery robots and more, even as the pioneers in each of those fields attempted to set up shop in the city. It tried to ban corporate cafeterias -- a major tech-industry perk -- on the not-so-sound theory that this would protect local restaurants. It created an "Office of Emerging Technology" that will only grant permission to test new products if they're deemed, in a city bureaucrat's view, to provide a "net common good." Whatever the merits of such meddling, it's hardly a formula for unbounded inventiveness. These two traits -- poor governance and animosity toward business -- have collided calamitously with respect to the city's housing market. Even as officials offered tax breaks for tech companies to headquarter themselves downtown, they mostly refused to lift residential height limits, modify zoning rules or allow significant new construction to accommodate the influx of new workers. They then expressed shock that rents and home prices were soaring -- and blamed the tech companies. California's legislature has only made matters worse. A bill it enacted in 2019, ostensibly intended to protect gig workers, threatened to undo the business models of some of the state's biggest tech companies until voters granted them a reprieve in a November referendum. A new privacy law has imposed immense compliance burdens -- amounting to as much as 1.8% of state output in 2018 -- while conferring almost no consumer benefits. An 8.8% state corporate tax rate and 13.3% top income-tax rate (the nation's highest) haven't helped.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the first time since the service arrived in April 2018, the ESPN+ annual plan is getting a price increase. From January 8th, it'll cost new members $59.99 instead of $49.99. Existing annual subscribers will have until at least March 2nd to renew their plan for $50. From a report: The monthly plan went up by $1 to $5.99 in August, so opting for an annual subscription instead of going month-to-month will save you $12 over a year. Of course, you'll save more if you lock in an annual plan before the increase.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has updated its official guidance for dealing with the fallout from the SolarWinds supply chain attack. From a report: In an update posted late last night, CISA said that all US government agencies that still run SolarWinds Orion platforms must update to the latest 2020.2.1HF2 version by the end of the year. Agencies that can't update by that deadline are to take all Orion systems offline, per CISA's original guidance, first issued on December 18. The guidance update comes after security researchers uncovered a new major vulnerability in the SolarWinds Orion app over the Christmas holiday. Tracked as CVE-2020-10148, this vulnerability is an authentication bypass in the Orion API that allows attackers to execute remote code on Orion installations. This vulnerability was being exploited in the wild to install the Supernova malware on servers where the Orion platform was installed, in attacks separate from the SolarWinds supply chain incident.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the Flash Player officially reaching the end of life tomorrow, Adobe has started to display alerts on Windows computers recommending that users uninstall Flash Player. From a report: When Flash Player is installed, it creates a scheduled task named 'Adobe Flash Player PPAPI Notifier' that executes the following command: "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\FlashUtil32_32_0_0_465_pepper.exe" -update pepperplugin. When this command is executed, it is now displaying an alert thanking users for using Adobe Flash Player and then recommending that they uninstall the program due to its looming end of life. Further reading: Adobe Flash is about to die, but classic Flash games will live on.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In an average year, Spotify Wrapped is a sharing-optimized novelty hinging on nostalgia for a time that's barely passed. But in 2020, this data mirror instead presented many users with unexpected empirical evidence of their pandemic coping mechanisms: a strange hit parade of ambient music, background noise and calming sound effects that soothed them through an unusually anxious and sleepless time. While thousands of users posted in disbelief about their stress-inflected results, the situation made sense to Liz Pelly, a cultural critic who has written extensively about how Spotify and its competitors work to shape our listening habits. "It says a lot about the ways that corporate streaming services have ingrained themselves into our lives and facilitated music listening becoming more of a background experience," she said. [...] The findings of some forthcoming research about pandemic coping mechanisms suggest ambient listening may be part of a larger pattern. Pablo Ripolles, a professor at New York University who studies music and the brain, was part of an international team of researchers that surveyed lockdown habits in Italy, Spain and the United States. Of 43 activities mentioned in a survey the team conducted, like cooking, prayer, exercise and sex, listening to or playing music had one of the biggest increases in engagement during lockdown, as well as the highest number of respondents who said it was the activity that helped them the most.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ticketmaster will pay a $10 million criminal fine to avoid prosecution on U.S. charges it repeatedly accessed the computer systems of a rival whose assets its parent Live Nation Entertainment Inc later purchased. From a report: The fine is part of a three-year deferred prosecution agreement between Ticketmaster and the U.S. Department of Justice, which was disclosed at a Wednesday hearing before U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie in Brooklyn federal court. Ticketmaster's agreement resolves five criminal counts including wire fraud, conspiracy and computer intrusion. It also requires the Beverly Hills, California-based company to maintain compliance and ethics procedures designed to detect and prevent computer-related theft. Ticketmaster primarily sells and distributes tickets to concerts and other events. Prosecutors said that from August 2013 to December 2015, Ticketmaster employees used stolen passwords to repeatedly access computers belonging to its rival to obtain confidential business information. The rival, Songkick, specialized in artist presales, in which some tickets -- often around 8% -- are set aside for fans before general ticket sales begin, in part to foil scalpers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX will try a significantly different approach to landing its future reusable rocket boosters, according to CEO and founder Elon Musk. It will attempt to 'catch' the heavy booster, which is currently in development, using the launch tower arm used to stabilize the vehicle during its pre-takeoff preparations. From a report: Current Falcon 9 boosters return to Earth and land propulsively on their own built-in legs -- but the goal with Super Heavy is for the larger rocket not to have legs at all, says Musk. The Super Heavy launch process will still involve use of its engines to control the velocity of its descent, but it will involve using the grid fins that are included on its main body to help control its orientation during flight to 'catch' the booster -- essentially hooking it using the launch tower arm before it touches the ground at all. The main benefits of this method, which will obviously involve a lot of precision maneuvering, is that it means SpaceX can save both cost and weight by omitting landing legs from the Super Heavy design altogether. Another potential benefit raised by Musk is that it could allow SpaceX to essentially recycle the Super Heavy booster immediately back on the launch mount it returns to -- possibly enabling it to be ready to fly again with a new payload and upper stage (consisting of Starship, the other spacecraft SpaceX is currently developing and testing) in "under an hour." The goal for Starship and Super Heavy is to create a launch vehicle that's even more reusable than SpaceX's current Falcon 9 (and Falcon Heavy) system.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spotify has joined the ranks of streaming services like SoundCloud and YouTube as a hub for bootlegs of popular songs. From a report: With obscured titles like "Jocelyn Flores but you're in the bathroom at a party" by eraylandin, a new take on XXXTentacion's popular "Jocelyn Flores," and "Dead To Me -- Kali Uchis (slowed + bass boosted)" by user Unreal sounds, a rework of Uchis' popular track from her 2018 album "Isolation," these underground remixers have chosen to upload their creations as podcast episodes, hoping to circumvent copyright infringement detection by the platform. Using simple keywords and terms like "chopped and screwed," "slowed and reverbed," "remix," and "mashup" in Spotify's search bar, users can track down bootlegged reworks of songs by many top artists which live on Spotify's podcast hub. Late rapper Juice WRLD, who still commands a cult following, has a full 'podcast series' dedicated to revealing his unreleased songs, like user No Si's podcast titled, "Instagram @xricardol.tx." The podcast contains 'episodes' like "Sugarfish (Leaked)," a song Juice WRLD wrote with The Chainsmokers that was never officially released, despite online rumors that the collaboration would become available in December 2019. These podcasts, like "Instagram @xricardol.tx," only contain the audio of specific songs and almost always list the tracks as individual episodes. There is nothing that resembles the typical characteristics of a podcast.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eric Bangeman, writing for ArsTechnica: Despite over 82 million cases and over 1.75 million deaths due to COVID-19, many people are bound and determined to carry on with normal life. For some, that includes attending Saturday night ragers, just like they did in the Before Times. Reports of yet another secret party being broken up by law enforcement have become distressingly common. Getting guests for these secret parties is at least slightly more difficult now that Apple has pulled Vybe Together -- an app with a tagline that invited users to "get their party on" -- from the App Store. The Verge pointed out that the app had largely been flying under the radar until a tweet from Taylor Lorenz of the New York Times brought some unwelcome, but much-needed scrutiny to the app. One of Lorenz's tweets highlighted Vybe Together's TikTok account, which had posted videos of unmasked people partying indoors while advertising New Years Eve parties. According to Business Insider, TikTok has since removed Vybe Together's account for violating community guidelines.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Moynihan Train Hall, with glass skylights and 92-foot-high ceilings, will open Jan. 1 as an area for Amtrak and Long Island Railroad riders. The New York Times: For more than half a century, New Yorkers have trudged through the crammed platforms, dark hallways and oppressively low ceilings of Pennsylvania Station, the busiest and perhaps most miserable train hub in North America. Entombed beneath Madison Square Garden, the station served 650,000 riders each weekday before the pandemic, or three times the number it was built to handle. But as more commuters return to Penn Station next year, they will be welcomed by a new, $1.6 billion train hall complete with over an acre of glass skylights, art installations and 92-foot-high ceilings that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who championed the project, has likened to the majestic Grand Central Terminal. After nearly three years of construction, the new Moynihan Train Hall, in the James A. Farley Post Office building across Eighth Avenue from Penn Station, will open to the public on Jan. 1 as a waiting room for Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road passengers. For decades, the huge undertaking was considered an absolution of sorts for one of the city's greatest sins: the demolition in the 1960s of the original Penn Station building, an awe-inspiring structure that was a stately gateway to the country's economic powerhouse. The destruction of the station was a turning point in New York's civic life. It prompted a fierce backlash among defenders of the city's architectural heritage, the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission and renewed efforts to protect Grand Central Terminal. That the project has been completed during a period when the city was brought to a standstill is a hopeful reminder that the bustle of Midtown Manhattan will return, Mr. Cuomo said. The train hall "sends a clear message to the world that while we suffered greatly as a result of this once-in-a-century health crisis, the pandemic did not stop us from dreaming big and building for the future," he added. The project has its detractors, who fault state officials for not going far enough in reimagining Penn Station. These critics note that the Moynihan Train Hall will serve only some of the passengers who use Penn Station, ignoring the needs of subway riders.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rohit Prasad, Vice President and Head Scientist of Alexa at Amazon, writes: While Turing's original vision continues to be inspiring, interpreting his test as the ultimate mark of AI's progress is limited by the era when it was introduced. For one, the Turing Test all but discounts AI's machine-like attributes of fast computation and information lookup, features that are some of modern AI's most effective. The emphasis on tricking humans means that for an AI to pass Turing's test, it has to inject pauses in responses to questions like, "do you know what is the cube root of 3434756?" or, "how far is Seattle from Boston?" In reality, AI knows these answers instantaneously, and pausing to make its answers sound more human isn't the best use of its skills. Moreover, the Turing Test doesn't take into account AI's increasing ability to use sensors to hear, see, and feel the outside world. Instead, it's limited simply to text. To make AI more useful today, these systems need to accomplish our everyday tasks efficiently. If you're asking your AI assistant to turn off your garage lights, you aren't looking to have a dialogue. Instead, you'd want it to fulfill that request and notify you with a simple acknowledgment, "ok" or "done." Even when you engage in an extensive dialogue with an AI assistant on a trending topic or have a story read to your child, you'd still like to know it is an AI and not a human. In fact, "fooling" users by pretending to be human poses a real risk. Imagine the dystopian possibilities, as we've already begun to see with bots seeding misinformation and the emergence of deep fakes. Instead of obsessing about making AIs indistinguishable from humans, our ambition should be building AIs that augment human intelligence and improve our daily lives in a way that is equitable and inclusive. A worthy underlying goal is for AIs to exhibit human-like attributes of intelligence -- including common sense, self-supervision, and language proficiency -- and combine machine-like efficiency such as fast searches, memory recall, and accomplishing tasks on your behalf. The end result is learning and completing a variety of tasks and adapting to novel situations, far beyond what a regular person can do.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon announced Wednesday that it's acquiring podcasting company Wondery, expanding its catalog of original audio content. From a report: As part of the deal, Wondery will join Amazon Music, the e-commerce giant's music streaming business. Amazon Music in September added podcasts to its platform, looking to carve out a share of the increasingly competitive podcasting market, in which Spotify, Apple and others have gained ground. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. Wondery, founded in 2016, has produced some of the most popular podcasts in recent years, including true crime series like "Dirty John," "Dr. Death" and "Over My Dead Body." The podcast producer and network says it counts more than 10 million unique listeners each month. WSJ reported earlier this month that Amazon was valuing Wondery at over $300 million in advanced stages of talks before the acquisition.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some sellers on Amazon are tricking the ecommerce platform into displaying thousands of reviews for unrelated products to boost their ranking and mislead customers, ArsTechnica writer Timothy Lee reports. Lee discovered the issue, which has been documented by the media in recent years, after he went to check the review of a drone he had purchased for his children. The product page of drone had glowing reviews for honey. Lee reached out to Amazon, which confirmed that this practice is in violation of its terms and conditions and quickly took down thousands of bogus reviews. He writes: Whatever action Amazon ultimately takes against these particular vendors Amazon's broader efforts leave a lot to be desired. A company shouldn't be able to secure a top slot in search results with such obvious subterfuge. The top-reviewed drones in Amazon's search results came from brands with names that seemed to be chosen at random. My drone was made by "HONGXUNJIE." Other highly-rated drones on Amazon are made by "SHWD," "Taktoppy," "SimileLine," "Hffeeque," "Mafix," "MINOSNEO," and so forth. Clicking on the names of these "brands" takes you to a search result with no additional information on who made these products. Amazon could easily require sellers to provide some basic transparency about these listings -- disclosing where these manufacturers are located, how long they've been in business, and which other brands they own. This might make it easier for Amazon to punish companies that try to mislead customers with fake reviews.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spyware maker NSO Group used real phone location data on thousands of unsuspecting people when it demonstrated its new COVID-19 contact-tracing system to governments and journalists, researchers have concluded. From a report: NSO, a private intelligence company best known for developing and selling governments access to its Pegasus spyware, went on the charm offensive earlier this year to pitch its contact-tracing system, dubbed Fleming, aimed at helping governments track the spread of COVID-19. Fleming is designed to allow governments to feed location data from cell phone companies to visualize and track the spread of the virus. NSO gave several news outlets each a demo of Fleming, which NSO says helps governments make public health decisions "without compromising individual privacy." But in May, a security researcher told TechCrunch that he found an exposed database storing thousands of location data points used by NSO to demonstrate how Fleming works -- the same demo seen by reporters weeks earlier. TechCrunch reported the apparent security lapse to NSO, which quickly secured the database, but said that the location data was "not based on real and genuine data." NSO's claim that the location data wasn't real differed from reports in Israeli media, which said NSO had used phone location data obtained from advertising platforms, known as data brokers, to "train" the system. Academic and privacy expert Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, who was also given a demo of Fleming, said NSO told her that the data was obtained from data brokers, which sell access to vast troves of aggregate location data collected from the apps installed on millions of phones.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ed Bott, writing at ZDNet: With a heartfelt nod to Monty Python, Windows 7 would like you all to know that it's not dead yet. A year after Microsoft officially ended support for its long-running OS, a small but determined population of PC users would rather fight than switch. How many? No one knows for sure, but that number has shrunk substantially in the past year. On the eve of Microsoft's Windows 7 end-of-support milestone, I consulted some analytics experts and calculated that the owners of roughly 200 million PCs worldwide would ignore that deadline and continue running their preferred OS. That was, admittedly, a rough estimate. During the holiday lull at the end of 2020, I decided to go back and run the latest version of those analytics reports. They tell a consistent story. Let's start with the United States Government Digital Analytics Program, which reports a running, unfiltered total of visitors to U.S. websites over the previous 90 days. One of the datasets includes a report of visits from all PCs running any version of Windows, which makes it an ideal proxy for this question. At the end of December 2019, 75.8% of those PCs were running Windows 10, 18.9% were still on Windows 7, and a mere 4.6% were sticking with the unloved Windows 8.x. A year later, as December 2020 draws to a close, the proportion of PCs running Windows 10 has gone up 12%, to 87.8%; the Windows 7 count has dropped by more than 10 points, to 8.5%, and the population of Windows 8.x holdouts has shrunk even further, to a minuscule 3.4%. (The onetime champion of PC operating systems, Windows XP, is now nearly invisible, with its device count adding up to a fraction of a rounding error.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new report by Sensor Tower reveals that 2020 has been a record-setting year for worldwide spending on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, which collectively passed $100 billion in a single year for the first time ever in November. From a report: The trend of increased spending continued over Christmas, when consumers around the world spent an estimated $407.6 million across Apple's App Store and Google Play. This represents a 34.5 percent year-on-year growth from approximately $303 million in 2019. At the same time in 2019, spending only increased by 17.1 percent year-on-year. Spending on Christmas day constituted 4.5 percent of December's total spending so far, which reached nine billion dollars globally on December 27. The majority of holiday spending was on mobile games, which climbed by 27 percent from $232.4 million at the same time last year to $295.6 million. Tencent's "Honor of Kings" was the leading game with approximately $10.7 million in consumer spending, which is a 205.7 percent increase from Christmas 2019. TikTok was the top app for spending outside of games, generating $4.7 million globally. Following previous years, Apple's App Store captured the majority of spending between the App Store and the Google Play Store, with 68.4 percent of spending, up 35.2 percent year-on-year. The Google Play Store saw $129 million in revenue compared to the App Store's $278.6 million.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Detente is ending in the global fight over tech taxes. Earlier this year, France agreed to suspend collection of a tax on digital revenue from large technology companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet's Google. Meanwhile, the U.S. delayed the application of tariffs it was putting on French goods in retaliation for the tax. But now France has resumed collecting what is known as its digital-services tax, a French official said. Other countries, including Italy and the U.K., whose similar taxes went into effect this year, are also set to begin collection in coming months. From a report: The U.S., meanwhile, is set on Jan. 6 to impose tariffs on $1.3 billion of French imports, including cosmetics and handbags. Washington also has pending investigations that could lead to similar tariffs on 10 other countries, including the U.K., Italy, India and Spain. At issue in the dispute is how to tax an increasingly digital economy. For decades, tax treaties have generally allocated corporate profit based on where value is created. But modern multinationals -- particularly ones with digital offerings -- can sell their products across borders in ways that leave little taxable profit in a country where those products are consumed. France and some other big European countries say tech companies should pay more taxes in the countries where their users and clients are located, something that could boost their tax revenues. But in long-running multilateral talks on how to update the tax system, the U.S. has opposed any solution that is too targeted at tech companies -- slowing progress. "These taxes are a reaction to dissatisfaction with how long it has taken to get a global multilateral solution," said Manal Corwin, who served as deputy assistant secretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department in the Obama administration, and now works at accounting firm KPMG. "You may need some trade battles back and forth before there's a strong incentive to say, 'OK, enough.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Tuesday night, McConnell introduced a new bill tying increased stimulus payments to a full repeal of Section 230. From a report: The bill comes amid new momentum for direct $2000 stimulus payments, and increasing pressure on party leaders to appease President Trump's escalating demands. Democratic party leaders criticized the inclusion of Section 230 repeal as an effort to scuttle stimulus talks. "Senator McConnell knows how to make $2,000 survival checks reality and he knows how to kill them," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement Tuesday. "Will Senate Republicans go along with Sen. McConnell's cynical gambit or will they push him to give a vote on the standalone [bill]?" McConnell's bid for a full repeal of Section 230 comes amid increasingly chaotic negotiating over the level of direct payments to be included as part of stimulus efforts. On Sunday, President Trump signed into law Congress' $900 billion COVID-19 relief and government spending package that would provide $600 in stimulus payments to most Americans. In a public statement after signing the bill, Trump urged congressional leaders to hold a standalone vote on increasing direct payments to $2,000.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

VMware said that one of its former top executives, Rajiv Ramaswami, violated his contractual obligations while being courted to be the chief executive officer of rival Nutanix, adding another dimension to a bitter rivalry between the two software makers. From a report: VMware's lawsuit against Ramaswami, who was named CEO on Dec. 9, was filed Monday in California state court in San Jose. The company accused its former chief operating officer of products and cloud services of meeting with Nutanix executives and board members while helping VMware craft a strategy and acquisitions road map. VMware, majority owned by Dell Technologies, said the executive's actions and knowledge of its plans has caused "irreparable injury." Nutanix, which wasn't named as a defendant in the suit, called the case "misguided" and said it's an attempt by VMware to hurt a competitor. "We cannot unring the bell of that conflict that existed during that two-month period that he was engaged with Nutanix while involved in planning for us," Brooks Beard, a VMware vice president and deputy general counsel, said in an interview. "Through this lawsuit, we're hoping that we can find a way to protect VMware's rights and interests, steps that we would have taken, could have taken, had he alerted us of this conflict." The Palo, Alto-based software maker may seek to recoup its compensation to Ramaswami during the time period and wants to "meaningfully engage" with the executive and his new employer to ensure they won't use confidential VMware information to make competitive decisions, Beard added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Like everybody else, book publishers will be happy to see the end of 2020. But for many of them, the year has brought some positive news, which has been as welcome as it was surprising: Business has been good. From a report: With so many people stuck at home and activities from concerts to movies off limits, people have been reading a lot -- or at least buying a lot of books. Print sales by units are up almost 8 percent so far this year, according to NPD BookScan. E-books and audiobooks, which make up a smaller portion of the market, are up as well. "I expect that at the end of the year, when you look at the final numbers," Madeline McIntosh, chief executive of Penguin Random House U.S., said of the industry, "it will have been the best year in a very long time." When the United States slammed shut in March, book sales dropped sharply, but the dip didn't last. While some parts of the industry have continued to struggle, like bookstores and educational publishers, publishing executives say that demand came rushing back around June. Many of these sales went to Amazon, but big-box stores, especially Target, also did well. As essential businesses that sold things like groceries, they were allowed to stay open through the lockdowns. Dennis Abboud, chief executive of ReaderLink, a book distributor to major chains like Walmart, Target and Costco, said his company's online sales nearly quadrupled over last year. "It was really a tale of two cities," Mr. Abboud said. "The beginning of the year was mega soft, and the end of the year was mega strong." Even though the number of people commuting has plummeted this year, audiobook revenue is up more than 17 percent over the same period in 2019, according to the Association of American Publishers, and e-book sales, which had been declining for the past several years, are up more than 16 percent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

krakman writes: Corellium, a security research firm sued by Apple, has won a major legal victory against the iPhone maker. In a ruling that has wide-reaching implications for iPhone security research and copyright law, a federal judge in Florida threw out Apple's claims that Corellium had violated copyright law with its software, which helps security researchers find bugs and security holes on Apple's products. Corellium, co-founded in 2017 by husband and wife Amanda Gorton and Chris Wade, was a breakthrough in security research because it gave its customers the ability to run "virtual" iPhones on desktop computers. Corellium's software makes it unnecessary to use physical iPhones that contain specialized software to poke and prod iOS, Apple's mobile operating system. The judge in the case ruled that Corellium's creation of virtual iPhones was not a copyright violation, in part because it was designed to help improve the security for all iPhone users. Corellium wasn't creating a competing product for consumers. Rather, it was a research tool for a comparatively small number of customers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Another service is joining the Google graveyard, for better or worse. As the latest in a long series of Google service shutdowns, Cloud Print will be terminated in just a few short hours, meaning it will no longer be accessible for ChromeOS customers or others. From a report: Most internet users have probably never used Cloud Print a single time -- it was primarily designed for ChromeOS customers who had limited or no access to traditional printers years ago. However, now that ChromeOS boasts much broader support for printing devices, Cloud Print has effectively become obsolete. It still has a few unique advantages, such as the ability to share your printers with friends, but for the most part, there's no reason for Google to keep it around.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Activist hedge fund Third Point LLC is pushing Intel Corp to explore strategic alternatives, including whether it should keep chip design and production under one roof, according to a letter it sent to the company's chairman on Tuesday that was reviewed by Reuters. From the report: Were it to gain traction, Third Point's push for changes could lead to a major shakeup at Intel, which has been slow to respond to investor calls to outsource more of its manufacturing capacity. It could also lead to the unwinding of some of its acquisitions, such as the $16.7 billion purchase of programmable chip maker Altera in 2015. Third Point Chief Executive Daniel Loeb wrote to Intel Chairman Omar Ishrak calling for immediate action to boost the company's position as a major provider of processor chips for PCs and data centers. The New York-based fund has amassed a nearly $1 billion stake in Intel, according to people familiar with the matter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is testing a new feature that will surface Instagram and TikTok videos in their own dedicated carousel in the Google app for mobile devices -- a move that could help the company retain users in search of social video entertainment from fully leaving Google's platform. From a report: The feature itself expands on a test launched earlier this year, where Google had first introduced a carousel of "Short Videos" within Google Discover -- the personalized feed found in the Google mobile app and to the left of the home screen on some Android devices. To be clear, this "Short Videos" carousel is different from Google's Stories, which rolled out in October 2020 to the Google Search app for iOS and Android. Those "Stories" -- previously known as "AMP Stories" -- consist of short-form video content created by Google's online publishing partners like Forbes, USA Today, Vice, Now This, Bustle, Thrillist and others. Meanwhile, the "Short Videos" carousel had been focused on aggregating social video from other platforms, including Google's own short-form video project Tangi, Indian TikTok competitor Trell, as well as Google's own video platform, YouTube -- which has also been experimenting with short-form content as of late.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is researching keyboards with small displays on the keys to dynamically change the label on each key, according to a newly-granted patent filing. From a report: The filing is titled "Electronic devices having keys with coherent fiber bundles" and was granted to Apple by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on the final patent day of this year. The patent explains how each key on a keyboard could have "an associated key display" connected to "control circuitry in the keyboard" via a "coherent fiber bundle." Apple proposes that each key would be "formed from a fiber optic plate" with "opposing first and second surfaces." While the patent stipulates that each key would need to contain a small display to provide the label, of which any compatible pixel array would work, the foremost technology put forwards by Apple is OLED. The key may be made from materials such as glass, ceramic, metal, or polymer, or even crystalline materials such as sapphire.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the oldest and most well-known iPhone suppliers has been accused of using forced Muslim labor in its factories, according to documents uncovered by a human rights group, adding new scrutiny to Apple's human rights record in China. From a report: The documents, discovered by the Tech Transparency Project and shared exclusively with The Washington Post, detail how thousands of Uighur workers from the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang were sent to work for Lens Technology. Lens also supplies Amazon and Tesla, according to its annual report. Lens Technology is one of at least five companies connected to Apple's supply chain that have now been linked to alleged forced labor from the Xinjiang region, according to human rights groups. Lens Technology stands out from other Apple component suppliers because of its high-profile founder and long, well-documented history going back to the early days of the iPhone.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In recent years, investigators have realized that automobiles -- particularly newer models -- can be treasure troves of digital evidence. Their onboard computers generate and store data that can be used to reconstruct where a vehicle has been and what its passengers were doing. From a report: They reveal everything from location, speed and acceleration to when doors were opened and closed, whether texts and calls were made while the cellphone was plugged into the infotainment system, as well as voice commands and web histories. But that boon for forensic investigators creates fear for privacy activists, who warn that the lack of information security baked into vehicles' computers poses a risk to consumers and who call for safeguards to be put in place. "I hear a lot of analogies of cars being smartphones on wheels. But that's vastly reductive," said Andrea Amico, founder of Privacy4Cars, which makes a free app that helps people delete their data from automobiles and makes its money by offering the service to rental companies and dealerships. "If you think about the amount of sensors in a car, the smartphone is a toy. A car has GPS, an accelerometer, a camera. A car will know how much you weigh. Most people don't realize this is happening." Law enforcement agencies have been focusing their investigative efforts on two main information sources: the telematics system -- which is like the "black box" -- and the infotainment system. The telematics system stores a vehicle's turn-by-turn navigation, speed, acceleration and deceleration information, as well as more granular clues, such as when and where the lights were switched on, the doors were opened, seat belts were put on and airbags were deployed. The infotainment system records recent destinations, call logs, contact lists, text messages, emails, pictures, videos, web histories, voice commands and social media feeds. It can also keep track of the phones that have been connected to the vehicle via USB cable or Bluetooth, as well as all the apps installed on the device. Together, the data allows investigators to reconstruct a vehicle's journey and paint a picture of driver and passenger behavior. In a criminal case, the sequence of doors opening and seat belts being inserted could help show that a suspect had an accomplice.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

References to decades-old computer software are included in the new Brexit agreement, including a description of Netscape Communicator and Mozilla Mail as being "modern" services. From a report: Experts believe officials must have copied and pasted chunks of text from old legislation into the document. The references are on page 921 of the trade deal, in a section on encryption technology. It also recommends using systems that are now vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The text cites "modern e-mail software packages including Outlook, Mozilla Mail as well as Netscape Communicator 4.x." The latter two are now defunct - the last major release of Netscape Communicator was in 1997. The document also recommends using 1024-bit RSA encryption and the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, which are both outdated and vulnerable to cyber-attacks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In November 2019, just a few days after Disney+ launched, Netflix (NFLX) content chief (now co-CEO) Ted Sarandos, speaking at a Paley Center for Media event, said that Disney (DIS) is "bound by" its content universes, a reference mostly to Marvel and Star Wars. He continued: "I do think the risk of being bound in a few universes is that there sometimes may be a melting ice cube of interest over time." That has been the most common knock on Disney for a few years now: that if Disney keeps hitting the Marvel and Star Wars pinatas, fans will get tired of it. But the numbers have proven the theory wrong -- so far. Moviegoers vote with their wallets, and have voted in favor of more Marvel Cinematic Universe installments, more Star Wars stories. Six of the top 10 biggest U.S. box office openings of all time were Marvel movies, four of them "Avengers" movies. "Avengers: Endgame" (2019) is the No. 1 box office release of all time. As for Star Wars, the final three films in the "Skywalker" saga, "The Force Awakens" (2015), "The Last Jedi" (2017), and "The Rise of Skywalker" (2019), each topped $1 billion at the global box office, despite fan criticism of the plot of the final film. Spinoff movie "Rogue One" (2017) also hit the $1 billion mark. But those were all movies, with much-hyped theatrical releases. On Disney+ over the next two years, Disney will truly test the limits of the fatigue theory with Marvel and Star Wars original shows, and might discover that even the most hardcore fans have a threshold. The sheer mountain of original content Disney unveiled at its 2020 Investor Day this month was almost comical: 52 new shows or movies coming in the next three years across Disney Studios, Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, National Geographic, ESPN, and FX. In the first year of Disney+, only a single live-action original series, "The Mandalorian," was enough to propel the platform to 86.8 million subscribers. In 2021, Disney will hit the gas, with six Marvel shows hitting Disney+: "WandaVision" in January; "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" in March; "Loki" in May; animated series "What If...?" in summer; and a "Ms. Marvel" series and "She-Hulk" series (no specific date given, but Disney said 2021). Can even diehard Marvel fans find the time to watch all of those? And those are just the television shows. In theaters over the next two years, Disney will release "Black Widow," "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," "Eternals," "Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," "Thor: Love and Thunder," "Black Panther 2," and "Captain Marvel 2." The Star Wars faucet won't start blasting until 2022 and 2023, when Disney+ will get the Star Wars spinoff shows "Andor," "Ahsoka," "Obi-Wan Kenobi," "Star Wars: Visions," "The Bad Batch," "Rangers of the New Republic," and "Lando." When critics talk about Disney's franchise fatigue risk, they're mostly talking about Marvel and Star Wars, but if you look elsewhere in the Disney+ lineup there are additional examples of the argument. Disney's live-action releases coming over the next two years include a "Cheaper by the Dozen" remake movie, another "Lion King" live action movie, and live-action remakes of "The Little Mermaid," "Pinocchio," and "Peter Pan," plus a sequel to "Enchanted," a Cruella De Vil live-action origin movie, and "Sister Act 3." Disney is also planning a "Night at the Museum" animated series, a "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" animated series, and a "Chip N' Dale" animated movie. The criticism that almost everything Disney is doing is a prequel, sequel, remake, or spin-off is not unwarranted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joe2020 shares a report: A Japanese company and Kyoto University have joined forces to develop what they hope will be the world's first satellites made out of wood by 2023. Sumitomo Forestry said it has started research on tree growth and the use of wood materials in space. The partnership will begin experimenting with different types of wood in extreme environments on Earth. Space junk is becoming an increasing problem as more satellites are launched into the atmosphere. Wooden satellites would burn up without releasing harmful substances into the atmosphere or raining debris on the ground when they plunge back to Earth. "We are very concerned with the fact that all the satellites which re-enter the Earth's atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years," Takao Doi, a professor at Kyoto University and Japanese astronaut, told the BBC. "Eventually it will affect the environment of the Earth. The next stage will be developing the engineering model of the satellite, then we will manufacture the flight model."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Neptune boasts some of the strangest weather in the solar system. The sun's eighth planet holds the record for the fastest winds observed on any world, with speeds cutting through the atmosphere upward of 1,100 miles per hour, or 1.5 times the speed of sound. Scientists still don't know exactly why its atmosphere is so tumultuous. Their latest glimpse of Neptune provided even more reason to be confused. From a report: The Hubble Space Telescope identified a storm in 2018, a dark spot some 4,600 miles across. Since that time, it appears to have drifted toward the equator but then swooped back up north, according to the latest Hubble observations. It also has a smaller companion storm, nicknamed Dark Spot Jr., that scientists think might be a chunk that broke off the main storm. These inky vortexes stand out against the dizzying cerulean blue of the planet, but while they're dazzling to see, their life spans are short, making them even more challenging to study. This is not the first time Neptune's dark spots have behaved so strangely. When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past the planet in 1989, (still the only spacecraft to do so) it observed two storms. One was the original Dark Spot, a large vortex about the size of the Earth. It too had a companion, a smaller, fast moving storm nicknamed Scooter. The first observed Dark Spot also seemed to move south and then back to the north. "When we were tracking the great dark spot with Voyager, we saw it oscillating up and down in longitude," said Heidi Hammel, a member of the imaging team of the Voyager 2 space probe and currently the vice president for science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. "We had enough time on Voyager, that we were able to track the feature for something like four to five months leading up to the flyby. That storm was huge, a big monster," as big as planet Earth.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said on Monday it would suspend trading in cryptocurrency XRP after U.S. regulators last week charged associated blockchain firm Ripple with conducting a $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering. From a report: The move by San Francisco-based Coinbase comes as the firm is preparing for a stock market listing and has confidentially applied with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. It would be the first major U.S. crypto exchange to list on the stock market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Siobhan Roberts, writing for The New York Times: In March of 1970, Martin Gardner opened a letter jammed with ideas for his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. Sent by John Horton Conway, then a mathematician at the University of Cambridge, the letter ran 12 pages, typed hunt-and-peck style. Page 9 began with the heading "The game of life." It described an elegant mathematical model of computation -- a cellular automaton, a little machine, of sorts, with groups of cells that evolve from iteration to iteration, as a clock advances from one second to the next. Dr. Conway, who died in April, having spent the latter part of his career at Princeton, sometimes called Life a "no-player, never-ending game." Mr. Gardner called it a "fantastic solitaire pastime." The game was simple: Place any configuration of cells on a grid, then watch what transpires according to three rules that dictate how the system plays out. Birth rule: An empty, or "dead," cell with precisely three "live" neighbors (full cells) becomes live.Death rule: A live cell with zero or one neighbors dies of isolation; a live cell with four or more neighbors dies of overcrowding.Survival rule: A live cell with two or three neighbors remains alive.With each iteration, some cells live, some die and "Life-forms" evolve, one generation to the next. Among the first creatures to emerge was the glider -- a five-celled organism that moved across the grid with a diagonal wiggle and proved handy for transmitting information. It was discovered by a member of Dr. Conway's research team, Richard Guy, in Cambridge, England. The glider gun, producing a steady stream of gliders, was discovered soon after by Bill Gosper, then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple this month announced a new Launch@Apple mentorship program that's designed for first-generation college students, with the program set to launch in early 2021. From a report: According to a PDF describing Launch@Apple, it is aimed at first-generation college freshmen and sophomores who are majoring in finance, mathematics, economics, business, data analytics, and accounting. It matches college students one-on-one with Apple mentors who are able to provide resources for learning and opportunities for professional growth, with the possibility of job shadowing, paid externships, and paid internships. Apple has not publicly announced Launch@Apple, and it's not entirely clear how the word is being spread. MyHealthyApple shared details this morning, and last week, a LinkedIn post highlighted the program. Ahead of when Launch begins in early 2021, Apple is accepting applications from students with a wide range of GPAs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A computer repair shop owner cited in a controversial New York Post story is suing Twitter for defamation, claiming its content moderation choices falsely tarred him as a hacker. From a report: John Paul Mac Isaac was the owner of The Mac Shop, a Delaware computer repair business. In October, the New York Post reported that The Mac Shop had been paid to recover data from a laptop belonging to Joe Biden's son Hunter, and it published emails and pictures allegedly from a copy of the hard drive. After the Post's sourcing and conclusions were disputed, Facebook and Twitter both restricted the article's reach, and Twitter pointed to its ban on posting "hacked materials" as an explanation. Mac Isaac claims Twitter specifically made this decision to "communicate to the world that [Mac Isaac] is a hacker." He says that his business began to receive threats and negative reviews after Twitter's moderation decision, and that he is "now widely considered a hacker" because of Twitter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shares a report: The embrace between China's intelligence services and Chinese businesses has gotten tighter, U.S. officials say. In 2017, under Xi's intensifying authoritarianism, Beijing promulgated a new national intelligence law that compels Chinese businesses to work with Chinese intelligence and security agencies whenever they are requested to do so -- a move that codified "what was pretty much what was going on for many years before, though corruption had tempered it" previously, a former senior CIA official said. In the final years of the Obama administration, national security officials had directed U.S. spy agencies to step up their intelligence collection on the relationship between the Chinese state and China's private industrial behemoths. By the advent of the Trump era, this effort had borne fruit, with the U.S. intelligence community piecing together voluminous evidence on coordination -- including back-and-forth data transfers -- between ostensibly private Chinese companies and that country's intelligence services, according to current and former U.S. officials. There was evidence of close public-private cooperation occurring on "a daily basis," according to a former Trump-era national security official. "Those commercial entities are the commercial wing of the party," the source said. "They of course cooperate with intelligence services to achieve the party's goals." Beijing's access to, and ability to sift through, troves of pilfered and otherwise obtained data "gives [China] vast opportunities to target people in foreign governments, private industries, and other sectors around the world -- in order to collect additional information they want, such as research, technology, trade secrets, or classified information," said William Evanina, the United States' top counterintelligence official. "Chinese technology companies play a key role in processing this bulk data and making it useful for China's intelligence services," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Finnish Parliament said on Monday that hackers gained entry to its internal IT system and accessed email accounts for some members of Parliament (MPs)fin. From a report: Government officials said the attack took place in the fall of 2020 and was discovered this month by the Parliament's IT staff. The matter is currently being investigated by the Finnish Central Criminal Police (KRP). In an official statement, KRP Commissioner Tero Muurman said the attack did not cause any damage to the Parliament's internal IT system but was not an accidental intrusion either. Muurman said the Parliament security breach is currently being investigated as a "suspected espionage" incident. "At this stage, one alternative is that unknown factors have been able to obtain information through the hacking, either for the benefit of a foreign state or to harm Finland," Muurman said. "The theft has affected more than one person, but unfortunately, we cannot tell the exact number without jeopardizing the ongoing preliminary investigation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canon could take a page from DJI's playback for its next camera. From a report: The company has filed a patent, first spotted by Canon News, that showcases a handheld camera that combines an Osmo Pocket-like design with its RF series of mirrorless lenses. The camera features a swivel mechanism that allows the sensor and lens mount to easily switch between forward-facing and selfie orientations. The design offers several advantages to your traditional camera when it comes to vlogging. The most notable of which is you wouldn't have to contort your hand to properly frame yourself in the shot. The fact the screen is always in front of you would also make it easier to keep tabs on your footage as it's recording.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Monday said it is issuing long-awaited rules to allow for small drones to fly over people and at night, a significant step toward their use for widespread commercial deliveries. From a report: The FAA is also requiring remote identification of most drones, which are formally known as unmanned aerial vehicles, to address security concerns. "The new rules make way for the further integration of drones into our airspace by addressing safety and security concerns," said FAA Administrator Steve Dickson in a statement. "They get us closer to the day when we will more routinely see drone operations such as the delivery of packages." The race has been on for companies to create drone fleets to speed deliveries.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Nordic region once again has become a lucrative place to mine crypto-currencies, thanks to a plunge in electricity prices. From a report: The wettest weather in at least 20 years boosted production from hydro-electric plants, leaving Sweden and Norway with some of the lowest power prices in the world. The resulting glut in the most important raw material for making the virtual coins coincided with a year when the price of Bitcoin almost quadrupled. The currencies are made in giant computer farms that process complex algorithms in halls as big as airport hangars. That makes electricity one of the key inputs, with operations sometimes consuming as much power as that used by 70,000 households. The current market dynamics give big miners alternatives to places where Bitcoin are usually created such as China, Kazakhstan and Canada. Their luck follows several years of poor margins from higher electricity costs and lower prices for most virtual currencies. Many of the the miners that were attracted to the region during the last rally in 2017 have left. "The ones that stayed through the difficult period, like us, are quite happy now," said Philip Salter, head of operations at Hong Kong-based Genesis Mining, which operates a data center in Boden, Sweden. "There were times we were not making any profit at all, but during the last year our profitability has more than tripled." Unusually wet weather along with mild temperatures boosted hydro reservoirs across Nordic region to the highest level in more than 20 years, leaving the area awash in generation capacity. The result is power prices close to zero for extended periods. Average prices this year are about a third of those in Germany, Europe's biggest power market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tesla will begin its operations in India "early" 2021, a top Indian minister said on Monday, a day after the tech carmaker said it was confident it would enter the world's second most populated market next year. From a report: The American car company will begin operations with sales in early 2021 and then "maybe" look at assembling and manufacturing of cars in the country, India's transport minister Nitin Gadkari told newspaper Indian Express. How early? Definitely not next month, Musk tweeted over the weekend. Tesla, which broke ground in early 2019 on a $5 billion factory in China -- its first outside of the U.S. -- has for years expressed interest in expanding to India. But in a 2018 tweet, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk shared that "some government regulations" in India had emerged as a roadblock.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A group of mysterious hackers has carried out a clever supply chain attack against Vietnamese private companies and government agencies by inserting malware inside an official government software toolkit. From a report: The attack, discovered by security firm ESET and detailed in a report named "Operation SignSight," targeted the Vietnam Government Certification Authority (VGCA), the government organization that issues digital certificates that can be used to electronically sign official documents. Any Vietnamese citizen, private company, and even other government agency that wants to submit files to the Vietnamese government must sign their documents with a VGCA-compatible digital certificate. The VGCA doesn't only issue these digital certificates but also provides ready-made and user-friendly "client apps" that citizens, private companies, and government workers can install on their computers and automate the process of signing a document.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers may have found a way to reduce the environmental impact of air travel in situations when electric aircraft and alternative fuels aren't practical. Wired reports that Oxford University scientists have successfully turned CO2 into jet fuel, raising the possibility of conventionally-powered aircraft with net zero emissions. From a report: The technique effectively reverses the process of burning fuel by relying on the organic combustion method. The team heated a mix of citric acid, hydrogen and an iron-manganese-potassium catalyst to turn CO2 into a liquid fuel capable of powering jet aircraft. The approach is inexpensive, uncomplicated and uses commonplace materials. It's cheaper than processes used to turn hydrogen and water into fuel. There are numerous challenges to bringing this to aircraft. The lab method only produced a few grams of fuel -- you'd clearly need much more to support even a single flight, let alone an entire fleet. You'd need much more widespread use of carbon capture. And if you want effectively zero emissions, the capture and conversion systems would have to run on clean energy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Chinese citizen journalist who covered Wuhan's coronavirus outbreak has been jailed for four years. From a report: Zhang Zhan was found guilty of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble", a frequent charge against activists. The 37-year-old former lawyer was detained in May, and has been on hunger strike for several months. Her lawyers say she is in poor health. Ms Zhang is one of several citizen journalists who have run into trouble for reporting on Wuhan. There is no free media in China and authorities are known to clamp down on activists or whistleblowers seen as undermining the government's response to the outbreak.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's next president takes office in three weeks and two days. What changes should he make to America's space program? An opinion writer at Bloomberg tackles the question:Donald Trump badly wanted to be the president who sent Americans back to the moon. Instead, his administration has presided over Artemis, a lunar-landing program plagued by "uncertain plans, unproven cost assumptions, and limited oversight," according to a new watchdog report. Pieces of the program, including the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, are billions of dollars over budget, years past deadline and poised to eat into NASA's more promising projects. As a result, the U.S. space agency will almost certainly miss its goal of landing Americans on the moon again by 2024. President-elect Joe Biden inherits the task of deciding what to do next. - He should focus on what has made the U.S. space program distinctive in recent years: the power of private competition... - The government bears all the risk of missed deadlines and rising costs. A more efficient alternative is fixed-price contracts, in which a company keeps as profit whatever's left over after it completes its assigned task. Beginning in 2006, NASA has used such contracts to boost the development of private space companies capable of reaching the International Space Station. The initiative has worked far better than anyone could've expected. In a 2011 report, NASA expressed bewilderment that SpaceX, then a young upstart, managed to develop its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket for just $390 million — as opposed to a likely cost of $1.7 billion to $4 billion under traditional cost-plus assumptions. Today, the rocket delivers hardware and astronauts for companies and space agencies around the world. Come January, the Biden administration should take a similar approach to the troubled Artemis system. Step one should be eliminating SLS and Orion altogether in favor of cheaper private-sector alternatives.... Currently, there are a number of Artemis elements being developed under fixed-price contracts, including future lunar landers. The new administration should use a similar approach with as many aspects of the project as possible, thereby harnessing the efficiency and inventiveness of private competition.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The price of Bitcoin increased 50% — in the last four weeks. Now priced at $26,579, "Bitcoin is crashing — upward," quips CNN Business:The digital currency has a market value north of $500 billion. Think Bitcoin is just a fad? It's worth more than Visa or Mastercard. Or Walmart... Its rapid rise has been remarkable — or insane, depending on your appetite for risk. But there's some logic to the run-up: Investors are pouring money into bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies during the Covid-19 pandemic as the Federal Reserve sent interest rates near zero (and expects to keep them there for several more years), severely weakening the US dollar. That makes bitcoin, comparatively, an attractive currency. There's a set limit to the number of bitcoins on the planet, and investors believe that once the supply runs out, the digital coin's value can only increase. Also aiding in bitcoin's soaring valuation: Big, name-brand investors are stockpiling it, and huge consumer companies are embracing it. That's adding a dose of validity and appeal to cryptocurrency for mainstream investors. For example, a top executive at BlackRock [the world's largest asset manager, with $7.81 trillion in assets under management] recently said the cryptocurrency can replace gold, and Square and PayPal have both embraced bitcoin. The article also includes some advice from Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of the global investment firm Skybridge Capital (who was also, for 10 days, White House Communications Director):Scaramucci said people have begun to accept bitcoin — and since it appears in so few portfolios, it has plenty of room to grow. Still, bitcoin is a volatile asset and will be a risky holding if you invest in it. "This thing has a tendency to crash up," he said. "It is due for a correction, and these corrections can be violent." Scaramucci said bitcoin could suddenly tumble 20% to 50%."You have to be very cautious," he added. But he also highlighted bitcoin's staying power over the course of the past decade: If you took $1 and put 99 cents of it in cash and a penny in bitcoin, that investment strategy would have outperformed $1 invested in the S&P 500 over the last 10 years, he noted. "Bitcoin's best days are ahead of it, but it's going to be volatile and I think people need to be prepared for it," Scaramucci told CNN Business.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Verge writes:Lei Jun, the CEO of Chinese phone maker Xiaomi, has confirmed that its upcoming Mi 11 phone will not come with a charger, citing environmental concerns. While that's a legitimate argument against providing yet another hunk of plastic that resembles all the other chargers people already have, Xiaomi joined other phone makers who poked fun at Apple a few short months ago for not including chargers with the iPhone 12. Jun made the remarks on Chinese social media site Weibo, saying people have many chargers which creates an environmental burden, and therefore the company was canceling the charger for the Mi 11. Apple's decision not to include chargers with the iPhone 12 was met with some derision, and competitors like Samsung reminded customers in an ad that charging bricks were "included with your Galaxy." That Galaxy ad has apparently been deleted, however, as rumors continue to build that Samsung won't include a charger with its upcoming Galaxy S21 phones.Read more of this story at Slashdot.