SoylentNews

[Update 1: Added three links that were omitted from the story. --MartyB]------RamiK writes:Author reverse engineers a Kraze HD7K disposable vape (electronic cigarette):

fliptop writes:A great public resource is at risk of being destroyed:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

upstart writes:FCC Fines Major U.S. Wireless Carriers for Selling Customer Location Data:

owl writes:https://www.os2museum.com/wp/how-not-to-release-historic-source-code/

hubie writes:Ability of PlugX worm to live on presents a vexing dilemma: Delete it or leave it be:

JoeMerchant writes:

Wet Wipes to be Banned Across the UK Because of Plasticupstart writes:A survey found 20 wet wipes on every 100 metres of UK beach:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/04/no-surprise-russia-vetoes-un-resolution-reaffirming-ban-on-nukes-in-space/

taylorvich writes:https://newatlas.com/medical/cows-milk-particles-oral-rna-therapy/

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/04/can-an-online-library-of-classic-video-games-ever-be-legal/

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:Pinch of salt warning - These are Seagate's claims not independently verified.

mrpg writes:https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/18/world/pluto-heart-planetary-collision-scn/index.html

hubie writes:If 'you're doing it anyway, you might as well' get paid:

upstart writes:American Airlines keeps mistaking 101-year-old passenger for baby:

upstart writes:Not Boeing again!An emergency slide falls off a Delta Air Lines plane, forcing pilots to return to JFK in New York:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:TSMC Readies Lower-Cost 4nm Manufacturing Tech: Up To 8.5% Cheaper

Frosty Piss writes:https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-principal-audio-maryland-baltimore-county-pikesville-853ed171369bcbb888eb54f55195cb9cAthletic director used AI to frame principal with racist remarks in fake audio clip, police say

canopic jug writes:Over at his personal blog, Kevin Norman describes how he has modified his motorized standing desk to raise and lower on its own according to a schedule. His post DeskOps: Commanding My Desk with HTTP - How I Brought Hysteresis Problems to the Desk Where I Solve Hysteresis Problems goes into a fair amount of detail about how he went about wiring it up and the problems which arose and how he fixed them. The active part uses an ESP-32 based microcontroller to change the desk's height using the I^2C protocol.

Freeman writes:You can now buy a flame-throwing robot dog for under $10,000

Freeman writes:Broadband lobby groups prepare lawsuit, calling rules a "net fatality"

owl writes:https://www.multicians.org/shell.html

quietus writes:

The specific process by which Google enshittified its search (24 Apr 2024)owl writes:https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

hubie writes:https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/24/1091740/chinese-keyboard-app-security-encryption/

fliptop writes:A GitHub flaw, or possibly a design decision, is being abused by threat actors to distribute malware using URLs associated with Microsoft repositories,making the files appear trustworthy:

DannyB writes:FAA to require reentry vehicles licensed before launch

canopic jug writes:Gearnews has an article about use of Raspberry Pi microcomputers in digital signal processing (DSP) systems, observing that digital synthesizers are essentially computers in specialized housings. In addition to the complex software, there is a lot of work in making an enclosure with useful controls and displays. Increasingly manufacturers are building their synthesizers around the Raspberry Pi:

Windows 11 Start menu ads are now rolling out to everyonelooorg writes:W11 rolling out ads (or "recommendations") in the start-menu. I guess this explains blocking alternative start menus. Security and Performance reasons standing in the way of the "recommendation-dollars".https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/24/24138949/microsoft-windows-11-start-menu-ads-recommendations-setting-disable

pkrasimirov writes:https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68881369

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/04/kremlin-backed-hackers-exploit-critical-windows-vulnerability-reported-by-the-nsa/

fliptop writes:The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted 3-2 on Tuesday to ban noncompete agreements that prevent tens of millions of employees from working for competitors or starting a competing business after they leave a job:

quietus writes:Remember graphene, the single-atom-thick material nobody has managed to bring to production scale (yet)?Problem with graphene -- and other 2D materials -- is that their atoms have always tended to cluster together to make nanoparticles instead. Instead of a clean sheet of material, you'll get a 3D blob, and a mournful look at the Star Trek poster on your lab wall.Now scientists have managed to make such a 2D, single-atom, layer, using a fairly simple technique. This opens up the possibility of having a valid candidate for mass production.The new technique was discovered through the well-honed scientific process of trying (and failing) to do something else. In this case, the investigators started out with a material containing atomic monolayers of silicon sandwiched between titanium carbide. The researchers' aim was to coat this electrically conductive ceramic with a thin layer of gold, at a high temperature, to make a contact. (Maybe someone of the team had plumbing problems at home.)To their surprise, instead of a nice golden coat they ended up with intercalation, where one material in a layered structure is replaced by another. In this case, the silicon atoms were replaced with gold atoms. Some smart-ass noted that this meant they effectively had a 2D layer of gold atoms sandwiched in between layers of something else. Maybe, if we remove the titanium carbide?How they got the idea is not clarified (an iaido practitioner in the ranks, one presumes), but the team turned to an etching technique used by ancient Japanese blacksmiths. While the process immediately showed promise, the researchers said that finding the exact formula involved months of trial and error, but no limbs were lost.In the end, what was crucial was the solution and duration of application of the reagent (Murakami's etch) used, as well as complete darkness. That's because light hitting Murakami's reagent can produce cyanide, which dissolves gold. When trying to create a 2D gold sheet, having it dissolve is clearly an unwanted result.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

upstart writes:The universe may be dominated by particles that break causality and move faster than light, new paper suggests:

JoeMerchant writes:Braarudosphaera bigelowii is a species of algae, a coastal coccolithophore in the fossil record going back 100 million years. It has recently been found to have engulfed a cyanobacterium that lets them do something that algae, and plants in general, can't normally do: "fixing" nitrogen straight from the air, and combining it with other elements to create more useful compounds.

quietus writes:The EU is at it again -- with unleashing a new raft of legislation upon world+donkey.Maybe some of the colored tape bureaucrats are avid readers of Soylentnews, as this time they got top management in their crosshairs.EU members need to implement the directive into national law by January 16, next year (2025). Full text of the directive here, interesting reviews here and here, and a link to the EU's wider Cybersecurity Strategy (which also involves security of hardware and software products) here.The culprit of service is the second generation of the EU's Cybersecurity Directive (NIS2). The new legislation widely extends its scope to nearly any company with more than 50 employees and 10M+ in yearly revenue. On top of that, the number of industrial sectors which are deemed essential in terms of critical infrastructure doubles from 6 to 12, including ICT service management, government institutions, post and courier services, manufacturing companies, the food-processing industry, waste water management, space companies, research organisations and the chemical industry as a whole. Suppliers to these companies can also fall under the new regulation.In practice, national centers for cybersecurity will be responsible to execute cybersecurity checks through audits and/or unannounced security scans. If the target company neglects their recommendations, it risks heavy fines: at least 2 percent of worldwide revenue up to a maximum of 10 million for companies with more than 250 employees, or more than 50 million yearly revenue. Smaller companies risk at least 1.4 percent of yearly revenue with a maximum of 7 million.These fines cannot just be classified under company expenses, though. Under the new regulation, CEOs and board members are obligated to follow cybersecurity training, and to sign off on all cybersecurity measures. They are deemed personally responsible, and run the risk of being barred temporarily from similar roles, and -- most importantly -- of having to pay the resulting fine out of their own pocket, not through the company.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

damnbunni writes:https://hackaday.com/2024/04/19/end-of-life-for-z80-cpu-and-peripherals-announced/Zilog To End Standalone Sales Of The Legendary Z80 CPU

upstart writes:US Air Force successfully tests AI-controlled fighter jet in dogfight against human pilots:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/linus-torvalds-reiterates-his-tabs-versus-spaces-stance-with-a-kernel-trap/

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

acid andy writes:https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/04/philosopher-daniel-dennett-dead-at-82/

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/thousands-complain-about-prime-videos-wrong-titles-lost-episodes-other-errors/

Mojibake Tengu writes:Michael Larabel of Phoronix informs us:

canopic jug writes:The Conversation has an article about five things their team learned when researching 16th century beer making. A lot has changed since then, such as standardized grain varieties, standardized yeasts, standardized hops varieties, standardized temperatures, and so on.

Anonymous Coward writes:University of Queensland researchers have built a generator that absorbs carbon dioxide (CO2) to make electricity."This nanogenerator is made of two components: a polyamine gel that is already used by industry to absorb CO2 and a skeleton a few atoms thick of boron nitrate that generates positive and negative ions," Dr Wang said."In nature and in the human body, ion transportation is the most efficient energy conversion - more efficient than electron transportation which is used in the power network.""At present we can harvest around 1 per cent of the total energy carried intrinsically by gas CO2 but like other technologies, we will now work on improving efficiency and reducing cost.""We could make a slightly bigger device that is portable to generate electricity to power a mobile phone or a laptop computer using CO2 from the atmosphere," Professor Zhang said."A second application on a much larger scale, would integrate this technology with an industrial CO2 capture process to harvest electricity."https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2024/04/uq-turns-co2-sustainable-power